This episode starts starts with an encounter that has me sitting outside a coffee shop on the Upper East Side, age 21, when a purported mystic who can see the future approaches. "You're going to be a big star," she extolls. I smile kindly, rolling my eyes so as to play it cool, deep down wondering if she is right -- and kind of believing she is. Fast forward seven years and I am met with a question: Would I have developed the courage, gumption, fervor to chase my dreams had she not given me that unwitting push?

Monocycle with Leandra Medine

Episode 65: I Am What My Mind Tells Me I Am

Gucci commissioned 15 artists to create a series of pieces with images and copy that tell a story about the fragrance. Leandra chatted with three of them — Emma Allegretti, Joy Miessi and Amber Vittoria — about their process for a podcast episode which means [sweetly scented drumroll please]…Monocycle hath returned!!!!!! In partnership with Gucci.

Ep 64: Monocycle Is Back! And It Smells So Gucci

When I was nine years old, my dad told me that everyone has an interesting story if you are willing to listen to it. Over the past month, I have really enjoyed treating Monocycle like a bicycle, listening to the stories of particularly interesting people, some more public than others, and getting into the thick of what it means to be a person in the world, whether in the context of being a woman, owning your vanity or experiencing grief. But for old times' sake (and because sometimes talking is more satisfying than writing), here's an episode of Monocycle that features no one but me, my sound booth and that background music you probably wish never to hear again but that is probably not going anywhere any time soon. The choice topic is self-esteem, a human condition that has come up in so many of my conversations as of late because it seemingly impairs me, but see the thing is that I've been masquerading it as otherwise-titled experiences (self love, self respect, compassion and so on) for at least the last year. Sometimes it is so liberating to finally land on a spade and to be able to call it one even if you don't have a next step, or solution in place. We're only running six minutes and 40 seconds long this week, so enjoy this episode while you take a coffee break, or sit on the toilet, or braid your pubic hair. HAPPY FRIDAY! T-minus 10...

Ep 63: Self-Esteem

Bozoma Saint John wears her flair on her sleeve: beads, rhinestones, gold accents; you name it, she's got it. As for the clothes, there is no color too bold, print too loud or silhouette too challenging for Uber's Chief Brand Officer to try. On traditional executive uniforms, she asks with genuine wonder in her voice, "Who made these rules, and why do we listen to them?" But there's more to Bozoma Saint John than the impressive way in which she carries herself, the seemingly effortless confidence that she holds and espouses, the degree to which she believes in herself and wants to be the best, do the best and perpetuate the best: She is also incredibly empathetic. You almost get the sense that she's lived multiple lives, and this is why, for whatever reason, when she speaks to you, it is almost like she is speaking directly to your soul. Please enjoy a very candid conversation in this week's episode of Monocycle. There's a bit of everything: advice for the grieving, a sound way to reconcile hardship, how she has become such an unflinching cheerleader for herself (and how, too, we can learn from this), and a little something about the persistence, reliance and beauty in the way the sun rises, day in and out. Just like, you know, we do.

Ep 62: A Conversation With Bozoma Saint John

In this week’s episode of Monocycle, unofficially called Bicycle every time I have an interview subject, Karla Welch — celebrity stylist to the likes of Ruth Negga, Karlie Kloss, Justin Bieber, Olivia Wilde, Tracee Ellis Ross and so on and so forth — shares a number of important facts that are as revealing as they are sentimental. At one point, when I try to prod on how she manages burn out, she rejects my assertion that everyone experiences burn out, proclaims perennial gratefulness for her role in Hollywood (she is originally from Canada, and moved to L.A. not for work, but for love) and suggests that perhaps those who burn out don’t yet quite have strong enough relationships with themselves manufactured to perfection. “I never have FOMO because I like my own company,” she said. Enjoy a listen and should you feel so inclined, do too, buy a t-shirt from her remarkably successful collaboration with Hanes. Amelia gushed about them earlier this fall. I’m just going to say co-sign.

Ep 61: An Interview With Karla Welch

This week's episode of Monocycle is more like an episode of Bicycle because there are two stakeholders (wheels?) present in the conversation: myself and Lena Dunham. When I set out to interview her, I had a fairly strong sense of what we might talk about, like the evolution of Lenny Letter, life after Girls, New York vs. Los Angeles. What unfolded was a genuinely organic conversation about life, failing and succeeding and how similar they are, self esteem, family and love. While listening back to this episode, I realized it sounds less like a podcast recording and more like an intimate conversation, which, to me, is really the goal of an interview. I very much hope you enjoy the structure as we plan to continue rolling out various interviews over the course of the next couple of months. As always, any and all feedback is welcome, so sock it to me in the comment depository below. Happy birthday, btw!!! (What? It could be...)

Ep 60: A Conversation With Lena Dunham

This month's theme on Man Repeller is family, which is so all-encompassing it can seem overwhelming. Where do you start with a family dynamic? Where do you begin with the complicated relationships that engulf the word's meaning? Are we even talking about the biological literals of a "family?" If we're not, what constitutes a family? If we are, why are we doing that? Our theme of the month announcement was met with some very intelligent content recommendations from you (the community!), which ran a gamut from the lighthearted and farfetched to the convoluted and deep-seated but one particular remark regarding a reader's relationship with her mother and wanting to, essentially, emancipate herself/make sure not to become her really stuck with me: I've been at that rodeo for the greater half of at least the past two years. I've written about it at length. And spoken a Monocycle episode that touched upon it. Hell, we even dedicated an entire month's theme to it. So here we are, back again, talking about our moms because one relationship that will never not be interesting to dissect as it evolves at the wildly rapid pace it does is the one between girl and woman, woman and woman, daughter and mother.

Ep 59: Cut Your Mom Some Slack!

Welcome back to Fridays with Monocycle. Today's episode is about purpose. I've talked about purpose before, but this time it's different. This time it's about how to identify it, why it's important, how you know when you've lost it and how to nurture it when it's back. I tried something different for this episode and wrote it out before I spoke it, so if I sound like I'm reading off a teleprompter, that's because I am. Can't wait to hear what you think!

Ep 58: Finding Your Purpose

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW! Are we capable of change, or what? Is it terrible if we don't -- can't -- change? What if the expectations were to learn how to better manage the qualities we dislike in ourselves instead of to do away with them completely? Would we feel more whole as individuals, knowing that we're not supposed to do 180s, and that on the contrary, we just have to be who we are? In this week's episode of Monocycle, I take you on a psychological trip (which is different from a vacation) that poses these questions, sets out to answer some of them and utilizes the trenches of my memory to navigate all of the above. At one point, we're in 11th grade, and at another, we're back in the present. There is some dilly dallying, some questioning of whether there is such thing as an original thought, but the majority of the content revolves around the titular question and doesn't really answer it but does offer a respite from Fashion Week, so...enjoy at your own risk!

Ep 57: Do We Ever Really Change?

Helloooooooooo ladies and gentlemen of the jury! How are you doing? How has your week been? Your month? Your quarter? Your whole damn year? Mine has been weird, which doesn't say much because I have concluded that weird is the least effective adjective one can use as an illuminating descriptor in the entire dictionary. It can mean anything, good or bad. How does this ice cream taste? "Weird." How are you feeling? "Weird." Do you see how by answering these questions I'm not answering them at all? If you are wondering whether I have lost it, the jig is up, I probably have. But I'm digressing. Man, I feel like a kid of 21, blogging into a computer with reckless abandon. Will THEY edit me? Will they not? It's been like, three days since I hit my finger tips to this keyboard and let the words flow out of my brain. It's also been like, days, since the words flowing out of my brain have sounded like anything more than BLOO BLEEP BLA BLING KRING TING LING SHANTI. (In case you didn't pick up on that, those words don't actually mean anything, at least not in my native Language of the Hidden Temple.) What? Nothing. Never mind. Let's stop beating around the bush -- the point is that Monocycle is back and so long as I don't accidentally fuck up my life or it doesn't accidentally fuck me up (see: December 2016), my anticipation is that we (Monocycle, Malcolm Gladwell and me) are back for the long haul. The long haul! So sit back, relax, grab a coffee and enjoy the next 11 minutes.

Ep 56: Back With a Vengeance

You're probably wondering about what my ideal outfit is, right? But you would only know why I'm asking this question if you have started listening to the episode already. Before I continue forward with this intro, let me just explain said outfit: this kimono, these shorts, these shoes. Dress like a lady of leisure, but don't actually be one. That's my mantra for the summer of 2017. Glad that's out of the way! Now that we are engaged to be married, let me continue on topic: this week's episode of Monocycle is part of the theme of the month in that it's about what it's like to work with your best pal. When you think best pal, often you think of the women (or men!) you've known since they were girls (or boys!). The people you grew up with, or who you met in a social environment. While Amelia and I met in a work setting (we were interns together at the same start up in 2009), we became fast, personal friends. This process of burgeoning friendship was accelerated when she creepily booked a ticket to Paris and came to visit me when I was abroad just two months after we met, but you can hear more about that act of a true serial killer in the episode. Between then and the time she started at Man Repeller, there were about 4 years of unadulterated friendship colored by love and heartbreak and pillow talk and one very strange blog idea (it was called Pony Tales and Broken Nails) which frankly, made me want to work with her more. A lot of people warned us about what could happen to a friendship when soiled by the transactional nature of a business partnership, but so far, we're doing okay.

Ep 55: What It's Like to Work With Your BFF

There was an article that ran in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago called "The Personal Essay Boom is Over." In it, writer Jia Tolentino reflected on the writing genre's heyday -- citing sites that no longer exist, like xoJane and Gawker as having heralded the uncomfortably intimate or conversely curiously insignificant style of storytelling. The headline alone, of course, scared the shit out of me given that I don't think I even know how to have a thought about a third-party without somehow bringing it back to me. So much of what I write rides on the events of my life -- I wear my guts on my sleeve. I can't help it. I'm not even sure I want to help it. And when it comes to the writers who are enlisted to represent the Man Repeller ethos, it is my belief the best kind of editorial leader is willing to let her writer explore their identities -- to express what's on their minds within a controlled environment. This week on Monocycle, our editorial director, Leslie Price and I talk about the personal essay boom. Is it over? Perhaps. What does that mean for properties who thrive on it, who believe their best content is personal. Good content, of course, can't ever be "over." So what makes it good? How are we serving it? Are there ways we can do it better. Listen in and share a thought and if you're curious... This episode of Monocycle is edited by Nicholas "Quazzy" Herd. Logo illustration by Kelly Shami. Photo by Mel Finkelstein/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images.

Ep 54: The End of the Personal Essay

Have you started listening to this week’s episode of Monocycle yet? I’m listening to it now as I write this intro and want to ask that you disregard the way I’m inflecting in the first 20 or so seconds of the episode. I don’t know why my voice is doing that thing! I sound so phony. Baloney. But maybe that is exactly apropos given this week’s topic: ~identity~ (I know, when is it ever not about identity, right?). But the thing I keep coming back to as I listen and remember how I was feeling and what I was thinking when I recorded this fucker earlier in the week is the below scene from a movie that truly and devastatingly slipped under the Academy Award’s radar. I don’t know either! A lot of what I argue in the episode pertaining to the question of whether you can outgrow your identity has to do with clothes because I imbue so much of who I am into what I wear (I wrote a piece last week that dealt with some of this). I have insofar not come to any eye-opening conclusions; the best I have done is suggest that I just hang in. Don’t make any crazy changes — cut my hair, cancel people from my life, completely eliminate the contents of my closet from my wardrobe, etc. If you’re in an emotional flux that is similar, maybe we can not do anything together. This episode of Monocycle is edited by Nicholas “Quazzy” Herd. Logo illustration by Kelly Shami.

Ep 53: Outgrowing Your Identity

Ask and ye shall receive! Following a special episode of The Chatroom with Drew Barrymore, which went live a few weeks ago after months and months of toiling with the expansive range of topics that were covered during our conversation in December, the longer-form podcast episode is here for your ear (plugs). If I'm being really honest, sitting down with Drew following a particularly tumultuous month was like Xanax for my soul -- there is an undeniable warmth about the way in which she looks at you (and into your soul, frankly), a true earnestness when she not just sympathizes but also empathizes with what you want to say, and you always get the sense, no matter what she's talking about, that it's coming from the heart. Have a listen and then nod in agreement as I say: We are all Josie Grossie. This episode of Monocycle was edited by Samara Breger. Logo illustration by Kelly Shami.

Ep 52: An Extra-Special Monocycle with Drew Barrymore

It sounds scary as hell because when nothing is new, nothing is changing either, and when nothing is changing, you're stuck. And being stuck is painful. But I see the metaphor like this: I've been clutching a wall near the bottom of an emotional pit called rock-bottom for the past four months and have been trying so hard to crawl out when what I really need to do is just let myself fall, chill down there for a minute, and then, once I've relaxed, start trying to get out. Or something like that. So this episode is about why I've been quiet, but I guess it's also about letting yourself feel how you feel and be how you are (isn't it always?) and not getting so frustrated when you're not where you thought you would be (see what I mean about the one-note thinking?). Pls say you understand! Related Stories: The Thought Process of Being Negative I Tried Hypnosis to Get Out of My Own Head I Tried a Mood-Lifting Food Diet The Baby I Lost, the Person I’m Finding Welcome to Laugh it the Fuck Off Month Monocycle is edited by Nicholas Quazzy Alexander. Logo illustration by Kelly Shami; Photo by BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Ep 51: Feeling Stuck

A ten minute digest from author, humorist and creator of Man Repeller, Leandra Medine. New shows published weekly.

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Monocycle with Leandra Medine

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