PODCAST · religion
Curious Hearts
by Vera Lester
A non-dogmatic spiritual podcast for people who did everything right and still feel like something's missing :: high-achievers, organizers, healers running on empty, and anyone carrying pain or grief they're tired of hiding. I'm Vera, and I don't have this figured out either-- just sharing some reliable paths back to your truest & steadiest self, and honest conversations with folks walking this path. veralester.substack.com
Episodes
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Live: Vera and Michelle Cassandra Johnson talk about You Are Protected
The subtitle of Michelle’s book, You Are Protected is all I needed to be sold: “Invoking Spiritual Support to Sustain Your Energy.” I learned from Diana Rose Harper (an extraordinary astrologer and thought leader) that as a Leo Rising, one of my core goals in this life is to sustain and maintain...
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Ep. 48: Rachel Sager
One of the greatest lessons of spiritual practice is this: You Are Here. There is only this moment, right now, where you are. There is only this place, right here, where you are. You can only be Here, Now. When we learn to surrender to the fullness of the present moment, right where we are, we…
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Ep. 47: Adventures of Spirit
Some practices are ones we can do all the time — not just every day, but every minute. Others are reserved for special moments, when we’re invited on a call to adventure. That’s todays episode of Curious Hearts. In most spiritual and religious traditions, there are specific pilgrimages that a...
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Ep. 46: Denise Hancock
I'm passionate about finding ways to bring our spiritual practice into our everyday life. It's easy to cleave the two, or think that we can't bring our full spiritual selves into the world. I think both the world and we suffer that way. Denise Hancock is an extraordinary example of what grounded,...
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Ep. 45: Spiritual Practice is Resistance Work
I know I’m doing something right because I’m nervous to upload this episode. So often, spiritual practices are considered “apolitical.” And perhaps they are — I’m not attached to a political system or a political party. I am attached to our collective freedom from suffering. So if your system or...
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Ep. 44: Liz
This episode is a little different. Okay, it’s a LOT different. My 12 yearold niece asked for months to come on my podcast, so for her birthday this year I gave her an invitation to the pod. This is that episode. We talk a little about “spiritual stuff,” but Liz is mostly silly and creative and...
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Ep. 43: Taking Humor Seriously
Laughter is the most honest prayer. When asked to imagine a spiritual teacher, I don’t usually picture someone laughing. I imagine a chaste monk, high in a mountain cave, eyes closed in meditation. But my inherited stereotype that “practice is serious” is just that - a stereotype. An assumption.…
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Ep. 42: Jenny Hughes
Who’s taking care of the caretakers? It’s all I can think when I think about Jenny. It takes an especially generous heart to be a trauma therapist. To know the details of the worst of humanity, and still be able to find joy and hope — this is a lesson we all need. Jenny taught me about something...
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Ep. 41: Pain as Spiritual Initiation
This isn’t the episode I planned. Over the last week, I’ve been meditating and writing about compassion. But we can’t talk about compassion without first acknowledging pain and suffering. This episode may be a little heavier than usual — so if you don’t have the bandwidth, you have full…
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Ep. 40: Zia
Sometimes everyday mystics are immigration lawyers. That’s the story of today’s guest. When I first met Zia, she was working as a local immigration attorney for a non-profit. (It is not a great time to be an immigration attorney, if you hadn’t noticed.) You’d expect someone with a caseload in the...
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Ep. 39: The Transformative Practice of Humility
Welcome back, Curious Hearts. And welcome to the most misunderstood and transformative spiritual practices there is. I did not understand humility for a long time — and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think humility has been twisted and used as a way to force people into submission. For a lot…
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Ep. 38: Aycee Brown - Embody Your Magic
I’m not interested in spiritual practices to escape the world. I long for practices that allow us to move authentically and skillfully in the world. That’s the kind of work this week’s guest, Aycee Brown, teaches. Aycee Brown’s new book Embody Your Magic is thesis in three short words. How do be...
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Ep. 37: The Dance of Change
Welcome Back, Curious Hearts. I recorded this episode a couple weeks before you’ll hear it, and in that time there’s been a pretty significant change in my life. The details of the change don’t matter. What does matter is that I need the lesson right now just as much as anyone. When we resist...
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Ep. 36: Tann Cordell-Schneider
Ep. 36: Tann Cordell-Schneier: The Breath is Everything.Tann and I had never talked explicitly about our spiritual lives, but I have known for a long time how much she listens to the world around her. She has been my primary bodyworker for many years, and her way of practicing is unlike almost…
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Ep. 34: The Prayer of Brushing Your Teeth
I love thinking about meditation as “spiritual showers.”You don’t only shower once. Ideally, you shower every single day. Forever. You don’t shower well enough once that you suddenly are clean forever. That’s how meditation is. That’s how all of our spiritual practices are. The reality of this...
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Ep. 35: Neel Sus
Conversations with folks like Neel are the reason I started this podcast. I wanted to normalize spiritual life. It’s so much more common to hear people share deeply personal stories — we talk about finances and sex and taxes and death so much more than our grandparents. We were taught not to talk...
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Ep. 33: Sierra Austin-King
One of the greatest gifts of my work is the people: they’re people doing extraordinary work who are committed to their own growth. Sierra is no different — but in additional to all of that, I feel eternally humbled that she trusts me. I officiated Sierra’s wedding at Congo Square in New Orleans.…
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Ep. 32: Faith is Doubt
Welcome back, curious hearts! Thanks for your patience with me during my Mardi Gras hiatus. These are high holidays for me, and the energy of costume making and celebration really takes over. And then recovering and getting back to “normal life” is its own effort. I seriously considered recording…
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Ep. 31: Sam Reynolds
My aspiration in the interview episodes of Curious Hearts is to reflect the extraordinary diversity of human spiritual life. Our internal worlds are the closest understanding we have of the Divine: vast, extraordinary, and always inspiring. No wonder we’re so curious. The magic of this…
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30: Self-Study
In this episode, I reflect on the practice of self-study and why it matters so much in moments of cultural upheaval, confusion, and pain. When the world feels overwhelming, it is tempting to turn all our attention outward. But lasting change asks something deeper of us. It asks us to look inward...
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Ep. 29: Seán Johnson
In many ways, Seán is the reason Curious Hearts exists. He was my first yoga teacher, and he led my teacher training, and has been a mentor and now a friend for many years. His commitment to anti-dogmatic practice is imprinted on everything I do, and without that north star, I would not be doing...
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Ep. 28: Infinite Divinities?
My concept of the Divine and my relationship with It has changed over the years. As I grow and change, how I understand this vast unknowable mystery also changes. This is one of many places where religion and spirituality diverge. In our current world, I am aware of how risky it is to say that we...
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Ep. 27: Michelle Cassandra Johnson
I met Michelle Cassandra Johnson through her anti-racist work for yoga studios, and have had the privilege to work with her over the years as her work as evolved — including doing deep grief work, ancestral work, and watching as she has developed a deep spiritual relationship with her beehives....
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Ep. 26: Creativity
This is a quick episode because there isn’t must to say: instead, it’s time to DO. If you’re at home, find a blank piece of paper and some colored pencils or crayons. Or open the cabinet and cook something without a recipe. Make up a new song. Write a poem. Your access to creating something is…
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Ep. 25: Court VonLindern
One of the gifts of my work is getting to connect with other deep thinkers and feelers about the nature of the divine. What is “god?” When that word gets stuck in my throat, why is it getting stuck? What is our calling as divine beings in these human vessels? What do we owe each other?I think…
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Ep. 24: Unity
This episode marks six months of Curious Hearts. It’s become a welcome ritual for me, even in the months where it has felt harder to get my thoughts together. This episode is one that I tripped over a few times before I could get it recorded. To me, this principle is both essential and…
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Ep. 23: Paige Bradley-Pecoul
Paige and I met at a workshop, and we were instant kin. She has a kind of grounded magic to her, a realness, on top of decades of yoga practice. I had the privilege of sitting by her side weeks after her husband died, and talking about the complications of grief. We could talk about how all our…
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Ep. 22: Gratitude
This episode is an exploration of the spiritual powers of gratitude, and why it’s archetypal across so many traditions — as a strong suggestion if not a requirement. May your day be full of reminders to feel grateful for everything you might otherwise take for granted, and may your gratefulness...
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Ep. 21: Rev. jessica young chang
This episode is full of full-belly laughs and deep conversations about spirit and just how hard it is to be in the world right now. I am honored to call Reverend jessica young chang a dear friend, and I am so excited to share this conversation with you. There’s nothing else to say about it…
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Ep. 20: Paradox
To get to my own spiritual path, I first had to clear away the overgrowth of my brain. I am a smart person, but I was also raised by parents who valued education. I am incredibly grateful for that, and I still find a tremendous joy in learning new things and wrestling with complicated concepts.…
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Ep. 19: Matt Candler
Matt Candler is one of my favorite kinds of people. He’s humble. He’s funny. And he’s not willing to change paths. One of the hardest things for each of us to learn in the course of our lives is the way we used to do things isn’t the best way anymore. We often wrestle with the guilt of our old...
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Ep. 18: Courage
It took me all week to record this episode. The form and the content of this work are often the same. I often find that I live out these episodes for a week at a time before I can sit down to record. Recording an episode about Courage required courage. In many ways, this episode is a distillation...
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Ep. 17: Bear Hickman
In May of 2022, I took a leap of faith and traveled across the country to the Northwest Astrology Conference. I’m grateful for so much of what I learned in that journey, but perhaps most grateful for meeting my new friend Bear Hickman.Bear is an esoteric healer, astrologer, and psychotherapist…
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Ep. 16: You Have Everything You Need
St. Theresa of Avila calls it the “Interior Palace.” Rumi talks about the treasure buried underneath our own house. It’s a truth that we’ve been fighting for centuries: you can’t buy this. No one sell it to you, and there’s no easy fix. The treasure you’re seeking is inside. What you’re looking…
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Ep. 15: Lee H.
This episode was a big deal for me: it was the first time I interviewed someone I had never met before. I launched Curious Hearts to learn how people from all backgrounds, walks of life, and beliefs live a spiritual life. To me, it is especially important to talk to people I don’t know — because...
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Ep. 14: Attention
In a world that is clamoring and competing for your precious attention, learning to direct and re-direct our attention is a powerful skills. In an “attention economy,” your focus is the currency. Are you spending it wisely?Like most things other that are simple and powerful, mastering our…
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Ep. 13: Bear Hebert
Thirteen years ago, I sat at the Downtown Wild Lotus Yoga studio, deep in the Marigny, to listen to an information session about a yoga teacher training. My boyfriend at the time joked that we should “weld me up a tall bike.” I was used to being CBD-downtown, not downtown-downtown. To say I was…
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Ep. 12: You Can't Go It Alone
“The divine is in the space between us.” The lessons of community have been so much harder for me than I think they should be. If many hands make light work, then why is it so hard to reach out for help? Do I really want to work so hard all the time? Being with other people doesn’t always feel...
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Ep. 11: Isabelle Guzman
Isabelle Guzman is a medicine woman, an artist, a dancer, a photographer, and a retired body worker. Our spiritual paths have crossed and interwoven for years, and I’m so delighted to share this conversation with you. A lot of Isabelle’s work focuses on celebration of the magic in every day life,...
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Ep. 10: Listening
Listening is as sacred a spiritual practice as anything else I know. It gives us a framework for how to witness the world without needing to act immediately, training us to be responsive and not reactive. It’s also a direct portal into deep appreciation of everything that already here for us —...
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Ep. 9: Priya Dey-Sarkar
Like many of my guests, Priya is a bit of a paradox: she is both pipeline engineer and a bhatki yoga teacher, an energy business executive and Vedic astrologer. She describes her own childhood spiritual life as “chaotic” and “unorthodox.” Growing us as the child of Bengali immigrants, she had...
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Ep. 8: Making Meaning
🌀 Making Meaning is more than a spiritual principle — it might be the spiritual principle. In this episode, we dive into the human instinct to ask, “Why am I here?” and trace how our stories — inherited, imagined, and evolving — shape our personal purpose, and how our meaning shapes our choices...
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Ep. 7: Sam Brandao
Welcome back, curious hearts — This week’s episode is a tender, smart, and surprisingly funny conversation with my longtime friend Sam Brandao — a law professor, musician, and someone I’ve known since we were awkward, opinionated teenagers trying to make sense of the world. (Spoiler alert: we're...
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Ep. 6: Practicing Stillness
Ok, Curious Hearts. It’s time. We can’t just talk about practice. We can’t only read about it, study, or think about it. Thinking is great, but it has never brought me the same deep peace that practice does. Because I know how hard it can be to just sit down and do it, these practice episodes are...
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Ep. 5: Renee Blanchard
Welcome back, Curious Hearts. Renee Blanchard is so smart, wise, and funny. If you knew her from Church Alley Coffee, the deeply soulful little shop she ran for over a decade in New Orleans, you know she’s a natural hostess. But you might not know about her incredibly deep spiritual life. She’s...
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Episode 4: Why Time Isn’t Linear
We’ve been sold the myth that time moves in a straight line—that if we just keep going, we’ll eventually “get there.” But anyone who’s done real healing work, grieved deeply, practiced anything with devotion, or simply paid attention knows that’s not how it works. I’m excited to share this…
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Episode 3: On Practice
Practice is the non-negotiable anchor and safety net to help us survive this world on fire. In this episode I share a little of my own history of practice, what elements make up a spiritual practice, and why it is such an essential lifeline. Have any insights that come up during the episode? Let…
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Episode 2: Becca Rich
I am really excited to share with you my first interview episode today with Becca Rich. Becca and I have known each other for many years, and have watched each other grow personally and spiritually along the way. Her wisdom is truly beyond her years. She works as a holistic time coach and she...
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Episode 1: Welcome Back, Curious Hearts.
Welcome Curious Hearts! This is the inaugural episode of "Curious Hearts: Making Meaning in a World on Fire". I created this podcast out of a deep curiosity I have about non-traditional spiritual journeys, and the everyday spiritual practices that help us get through the day. In this episode, I...
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An Ancestral Story
The audio companion of the story of Annie & Peter Goetzen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit veralester.substack.com/subscribe
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A non-dogmatic spiritual podcast for people who did everything right and still feel like something's missing :: high-achievers, organizers, healers running on empty, and anyone carrying pain or grief they're tired of hiding. I'm Vera, and I don't have this figured out either-- just sharing some reliable paths back to your truest & steadiest self, and honest conversations with folks walking this path.
veralester.substack.com
HOSTED BY
Vera Lester
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Curious Hearts have?
Curious Hearts currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Curious Hearts about?
A non-dogmatic spiritual podcast for people who did everything right and still feel like something's missing :: high-achievers, organizers, healers running on empty, and anyone carrying pain or grief they're tired of hiding. I'm Vera, and I don't have this figured out either-- just sharing some...
How often does Curious Hearts release new episodes?
Curious Hearts has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Curious Hearts?
You can listen to Curious Hearts on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Curious Hearts?
Curious Hearts is created and hosted by Vera Lester.
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