PODCAST · society
Don’t Think Twice
by Amrita Vijay & Andrew Stephens
Amrita and Andrew are ”platonic life partners,” artistic co-conspirators, and parents to a good baby. In 2024: Season 2 will reflect on one year of parenting as friends, and *lots* more. We will turn the lens to re-imagining the ways in which people relate to one another in the modern world: whether in family, community, partnership, or romance.Season 1 documented our path from friends to family as we decided to become parents. All the juicy backstory you could ask for.”Season 0” is the first 41 episodes that preceded this over the years: foundational and central, fun and ridiculous. Without these episodes -- exploring freelancing, and living life off the beaten path -- there is no ”us.”Faced with making an unconventional choice that has the potential to bring you joy? Don’t Think Twice!
Episodes
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Season 2, Part 10: State of the Union
It's the end of a season, and it's the end of a year. A+A get cozy and reflect on haunted calendars, open-door pooping, being more woo-woo, the true meaning of christmas morning, and what happens when people assume we're regular straight marrieds. All along the way it becomes clear how much our...
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Season 2, Part 9: We Solve the Housing Crisis with Michael Freedman-Schnapp
We cannot pursue radical ideas of friendship, co-living, and community without talking about HOUSING. It's been the unspoken elephant in the room in some of our past episodes on group living, platonic life partnerships, aging, and queer chosen family. You might have listened to those episodes...
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Season 2, Part 8: Sarah Schulman on Activism and Collective Power
Our special guest, writer and activist Sarah Schulman, joins us to discuss the practical realities of building community from her perspective as an activist, community organizer, and artistic mentor! This season, we have explored the ways we can forge friendship and chosen family. One angle we...
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Season 2, Part 7: Aging is Hard; Friends Can Help.
Today, a topic that many of us would rather avoid: old age. We discuss what it looks like to grow old in today's increasingly lonely world, where people have fewer children, divorce is more common, and the reality of nuclear family and housing norms means that elders often end up isolated. Here's…
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Season 2, Part 6: Group Living with Lola Milholland
Today we speak with writer Lola Milholland, who has a new book out called "Group Living and Other Recipes" -- a hilarious and profound memoir on communal living experiments. How can we make our home lives more expansive and imaginative? Can our living setups support deeper connection with our...
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Season 2, Part 5: Hopping off the "Relationship Escalator" with Rhaina Cohen
In this episode, we welcome Rhaina Cohen, who literally wrote the BOOK on intimate friendships. "The Other Significant Others" profiles several friends whose relationships challenge us to rethink the default choices around sex, romance, intimacy, and family. How can these friendships help us…
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Season 2, Part 4: Just Us Two
This is a podcast on intimate friendship, and on today's episode, we strip that down to the basics. A breezy summer confection of just us two, dishing as we love to do: ...debating where to stand at a concert; yearning for a Gen Z selfie consultant; reveling in the pleasure of being RIGHT…
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Season 2, Part 3: The Dinner Party
Amrita and Andrew invite six friends around the dinner table to discuss friendship and intimacy: our co-host Marina, plus college friends, an ex-boyfriend, a neighbor...all with different perspectives on romance and family. We talk about what makes people get close, the difference between...
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Season 2, Part 2: Parental Guidance Suggested
One of people's first questions is "how do your families feel about all this?" --so we decided to ask them ourselves. Andrew and Amrita had one-on-one phone conversations with our parents and siblings to talk family dynamics, and then sat down with Marina to hash it all out. Our families have...
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Season 2, Part 1: One year of platonic co-parenting
We've made it to our baby's first birthday (!) and we're celebrating with a new season of Don't Think Twice. How has the past year been? What are the expectations versus reality of parenting as friends? Did things shake out as we imagined in last year's Season 1 episodes? Join us and find out!...
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Season 1, Part 10: Family Ties
We've come full circle in our tale of preparing for co-parenting: FAMILY. Andrew and Amrita's biological families will be fused together by this new baby -- what will that look like for a platonic couple? How will our very different religious and cultural upbringings come into play for our new...
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Season 1, Part 9: Sex and Romance
We're nearing the end of our Baby Episodes! But we can't leave without confronting how sex and dating will work in Amrita and Andrew's new roles as friends raising a child together. Host Marina Weiss does a little after-hours therapy and guides us in an open and vulnerable conversation about our...
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Season 1, Part 8: It’s Different for Boys
In this week's exploration of nontraditional family, we look at a male perspective on parenthood. Andrew sits down with our friend JR Andre - an educator and school administrator who is on the pathway to parenthood along with his husband. We talk gay fatherhood, navigating relationships with the...
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Season 1, Part 7: It’s Different for Girls
On our journey to explore nontraditional family, we're taking a couple episodes to explore the gendered issues around the decision to have children (or not). This week, an episode very close to Amrita's heart. Special guest Ciara Pressler is an accomplished author and entrepreneur, and also...
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Season 1, Part 6: The Business (and Law) of babymaking
We've gotten a lot of questions about the legal aspects of our platonic coparenting situation, and there's plenty to discuss! We get into the finer points of tax policy for self-employed parents -- plus, our experience with the fabulous Chosen Family Law Center, who are helping us iron out a...
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Season 1, Part 5: Pregnancy feels and facts
Things are chugging along. Now that the baby's cooking, how has it been? BFFs Amrita and Andrew steer through the pregnancy as friends, finding new ways to care for one another, and maintain boundaries. We also have several notes about the raggedy-ass American health care system....especially as...
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Season 1, Part 4: The (Most Accurate) Conception
All right people, time for this baby to get made (And we know you're curious, just admit it). In this week's installment, best buds Amrita and Andrew answer pressing questions such as: Why now? How did we, you know....do it? What's the "new" old-fashioned way? Why is it all so UNscientific? Plus,...
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Season 1, Part 3: The Big Chill
Platonic life-partners Andrew and Amrita initially started their fertility journey by freezing embryos. In this episode, we take you through all the gritty details of cooking up frozen egg babies, as a nontraditional couple: from psychological fitness, to baton-twirling vaginal ultrasounds, to...
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Season 1, Part 2: The Decision to Parent
In this special run of episodes, hosted by Marina Weiss, platonic life-partners Amrita and Andrew explore the decision to make a baby together. In this installment: how has a lifetime of unconventional choices – professionally, personally, creatively – led to the decision to make a family in an...
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Season 1, Part 1: From Friends to Family
Amrita and Andrew are friends, business partners, creative collaborators, and now…they have a baby on the way. In this podcast, we have always advised "Don't Think Twice!" when it comes to making off-the-beaten-path career & creative choices. In this special run of episodes, we will be exploring…
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S0 EPISODE 41: Tell Me Sweet Little Lies
This month, your faithful freelancers talk falsehoods: Amrita's most egregious white lies; candles that secretly smell like farts; Andrew's explainer on why suburbs are a massive Ponzi scheme; and our conclusion that sex apps are the only truthful way to meet non-liars online.
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S0 EPISODE 40: Daddy, Don’t Take Me to the Friends Experience
This month, Amrita and Andrew get back into a freelance work rhythm, avoid ancient knitting curses, get hooked on mnemonics, sweat (only) the small stuff, and take a deep dive on "nostalgia experiences" and their implication on artistic culture. We also research opossums, pull someone's legs out…
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S0 EPISODE 39: Defining Style (and Winter Survival) back in Brooklyn
Having concluded our year of writerly uprootedness, 2022 finds us settling back home in Brooklyn. An exchange about art, taste, and value leads us to a surprising Ruling Principle of Style, and approaching Andrew's first-time drawing class with a beginner's mind leads to a valuable reminder about...
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S0 EPISODE 38: Bye-bye Big Easy
Recorded on our final day in New Orleans, we opine on crucial topics: garbage strikes, fecal transplants, gimp masks on company calls, Andrew's crooked face, breaking bad habits, why Presidents make terrible dinner guests, our scathing indictments on the state of modern musical theatre, and more....
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S0 EPISODE 37: Hurricane runaway edition
Taking refuge from Ida's wrath, we talk New Orleans evacuation, gator attacks, the importance of resource-sharing, and how to ask for help getting a manager. We get comfortable having no life plans, decide whether we ought to feel bad for CEOs right now, and ponder death (and Tulsa).
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S0 EPISODE 36: Hot Witch Summer
This is the beach-read of podcast episodes: Andrew nervously dabbles in nude sleeping, we go on a New Orleans ghost tour (and maybe became witches??), Amrita's body is a highly evolved machine for anxiety and digesting spoiled dairy, we take a magical trip to a suburban mall, and we consider the...
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S0 EPISODE 35: Effort is Overrated?
This month, we enter the affordable housing lottery (a program all creatives should know about!); admit our worst job rejections; dispense dubious advice for applying to "day jobs"; and deliver some harsh reviews for 90s sitcom pilots. Oh, and find out Amrita's new favorite thing about white people!
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S0 EPISODE 34: Finding (Artistic) Roots in Uprootedness
Amrita and Andrew grill each other about the meaning of creativity, work, and artmaking at the brink of the world reopening. How has the pandie changed how our we define fulfillment? What does a return to "normal" entail for freelancers/creatives? How have our relationships changed: to writing,...
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S0 EPISODE 33: Big Bayou Energy
We update you on our forays into self-producing original short films, volunteering at New Orleans vaccination sites, Lent resolutions, principles of dominance and submission, neighborhood hoarders, and bayou tales. Stick with us to the end for evidence of our faux "theatrical" monologues, neither...
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S0 EPISODE 32: pandemic Mardi Gras valentine
Amidst one of NOLA's strangest Carnival seasons, we hit bigtime pandemic fatigue with our writing, and decide to take artistic action! We also recap our Mardi Gras day, make the case for dictionaries, and discuss covid dating, sleep sweat, and Andrew's wish for a prescription-strength lifehack.
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S0 EPISODE 31: Crescent City cha-cha
Peripatetic, poetic, and chic, your beloved untethered freelancers have landed in New Orleans for the winter - to script, pitch, and seek adventure. We talk all about our first impressions of NOLA culture; plus: murderous rental cars, roller-skate trends, and how on earth do we approach…
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S0 EPISODE 30: That Old Cape Cod
We wrapped up 2020 living inside a Hallmark Christmas movie, with 2 months of misty ideation in Cape Cod. Don cozy socks and sip bourbon with us as we chew on: our befuddlement with the suburbs, our essential creature comforts for itinerant living, the ebbs and flows of creative work during the...
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S0 EPISODE 29: Motor City mishegoss
We are officially 2020 pandemic nomads! In this heartfelt, tipsy, political dispatch from Detroit, we dive into rust-belt renewal, being full-time writers, future relationships, sex, the inevitable death of capitalism, and a dash of thicc thigh appreciation. The freelance life has never been…
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S0 EPISODE 28: New York Sabbatical
We took a midsummer writers retreat to the hills of North Carolina, where we made some big decisions about our writing careers, professional lives, contemplated big life changes, and a decision we never thought possible: taking a break from NYC. (the horror!). We take you through all of this…
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S0 EPISODE 27: a #DEFUND special report
Our June interview is a must-listen for anyone --especially New Yorkers-- eager for police reform. From a budget standpoint, what does it actually MEAN to #defundthepolice? What are they spending all that money on, anyway? What does pragmatic change look like? Our darling friend and DC budget…
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S0 EPISODE 26: The World, Upended
Our May 2020 episode comes out in June, because it's quarantine and there are no rules (including calendars)! Things have gotten way awfuller in our city and world since we recorded this...but if you feel you'd like to spend a comforting hour chatting with friends, come sit with us. We grow...
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S0 EPISODE 25: Driving Ms Viper Pt 2
In the second half of our April 2020 episode, we continue our conversation with our friend and artistic collaborator Veronica Viper. Our wine-fueled chatter plunges us deep into thought-provoking territories of burlesque, drag, misogyny, queer identity, and making art that speaks to our times.…
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S0 EPISODE 24: Driving Ms. Viper, Pt 1
We skipped releasing a March episode due to pandemic reasons... so we're bringing you TWO episodes in April. We are so excited to speak with our friend and creative collaborator Veronica Viper. She is a burlesque performer, a producer, a working artist, and an all around stand-up gal. We have a...
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S0 EPISODE 23: Sufficiently-gazed navels
To be honest, sweeties, we bushwhack some thorny issues in our Feb '20 episode. We support and confront each other about seasonal depression, performance anxiety, improvisational skills, how to be present in a pitch meeting, and how to be better creative partners to one other. What are the roles…
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S0 EPISODE 22: Don't be a jerk in 2020
What don't we cover in our January installment? Eclipses, pyramid schemes, questionable electoral tactics, fro-yo closets, "Real-ID" nightmares, and what to do when people hate you at work. It's all here.
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S0 EPISODE 21: Strangers in the tundra
Andrew reviews Amrita's latest purchases with a jaundiced eye, our homes are completely falling apart, Andrew makes new friends in rural Minnesota/Canada, and we contemplate the existential dread of (A) "Friends" nostalgia, and (B) dating someone with your own name.
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S0 EPISODE 20: Dollywood or bust!
We discuss how to avoid succumbing to the "cult of busyness" -- even when your to-do list grows truly infinite ...but first, we break down Amrita's recent pilgrimage to the mecca of all things Dolly Parton!
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S0 EPISODE 19: one mic is all it takes
In this late-spring minisode 2, Amrita makes a shocking mom-retail choice, Andrew explores new email signoffs for professional correspondence, plus we discuss syndicated radio queen Delilah, high school thrifting, the perils of living alone, and being 100% baffled by low-flow toilets.
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S0 EPISODE 18: don't call it a comeback!
In which: our company turned one year old (!), we do a photo shoot, Andrew tries to change his mean resting face, Amrita tries rich-lady pilates, and we embark on full fashion makeovers.
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S0 EPISODE 17: New Year, Same Us
Back in the saddle! We catch you up on our 2018 of TOO many jobs (fashion! opera! jetsetting!), and bring you a whole cornucopia of New Year's odds and ends: leaning into the wintry misery of MLK weekend, bizarre visualizations for the gym, and super disturbing 2019 trends in AI, wellness, and...
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S0 EPISODE 16: Money Matters (but Social Justice matters more); with Rhonda Woodbery
This week we welcome Andrew's mother Rhonda -- business owner, accounting guru, & social media liberal firebrand. Rhonda talks money matters for freelancers, career advice, tips on social justice for troubled times, and lifting up women's voices. Plus: burn your ballet flats! But definitely don't...
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S0 EPISODE 15: I Hear a Symphony: with Jim Bertini
We're back, and summer's on! We talk about Resting Commute Face, the anthropology of metal shows, and force a very good natured audio engineer to answer our basic-ass audiophile questions, and find out how he makes the hustle work for him [excellent musician, technician, and human Jim Bertini]
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S0 EPISODE 14: Send Noodz Please: with Lola Milholland
Come along on our deep dive into riveting noodle politics with Umi Organic founder, Lola Milholland. We also cover the nightmare of "audience participation", and Andrew's figure skating dreams.
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S0 EPISODE 13: Every day I Write the Book: with Vanessa King
It's 2018: so far, Andrew is unemployed and Amrita is hangry...but we're definitely going places! We bring you our conversation with wonderful TV writer/producer Vanessa King about all things television and writing, and the fascinating zigs and zags that brought her to her career today.
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S0 EPISODE 12: Holiday Sneer
In this special wintery episode, we reveal our sloppiest office holiday party hijinks, how to compose killer playlists, and the *big secret* behind Shen Yun.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Amrita and Andrew are ”platonic life partners,” artistic co-conspirators, and parents to a good baby. In 2024: Season 2 will reflect on one year of parenting as friends, and *lots* more. We will turn the lens to re-imagining the ways in which people relate to one another in the modern world: whether in family, community, partnership, or romance.Season 1 documented our path from friends to family as we decided to become parents. All the juicy backstory you could ask for.”Season 0” is the first 41 episodes that preceded this over the years: foundational and central, fun and ridiculous. Without these episodes -- exploring freelancing, and living life off the beaten path -- there is no ”us.”Faced with making an unconventional choice that has the potential to bring you joy? Don’t Think Twice!
HOSTED BY
Amrita Vijay & Andrew Stephens
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Don’t Think Twice have?
Don’t Think Twice currently has 61 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Don’t Think Twice about?
Amrita and Andrew are ”platonic life partners,” artistic co-conspirators, and parents to a good baby. In 2024: Season 2 will reflect on one year of parenting as friends, and *lots* more. We will turn the lens to re-imagining the ways in which people relate to one another in the modern world:...
How often does Don’t Think Twice release new episodes?
Don’t Think Twice has 61 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Don’t Think Twice?
You can listen to Don’t Think Twice 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 Don’t Think Twice?
Don’t Think Twice is created and hosted by Amrita Vijay & Andrew Stephens.
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