This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil

Many women spend years building successful careers, raising families, checking every box, and creating lives they can be proud of—only to realize something important is missing: community. Somewhere along the way, connection becomes something to get to later, replaced by busyness, productivity, and the belief that meaningful relationships will somehow happen on their own.

In this episode of This Is Woman's Work, Nicole Kalil sits down with journalist, podcast creator, and author Katherine Goldstein to explore why friendship isn't enough, why community requires intention, and how small acts of neighboring can create the kind of meaningful support so many women are longing for. Together, they challenge the idea that connection is reserved for extroverts or people with unlimited free time, offering practical ways to build deeper relationships through everyday interactions.

In This Episode, Nicole and Katherine Discuss:

The difference between friendship and community—and why both matter.

Why so many women are missing the "middle ring" of meaningful relationships.

How modern life has made building community more difficult.

Why community often becomes most important during times of crisis.

How to shift from waiting to "find your people" to intentionally building connection.

Why no community will ever meet 100% of your needs—and why that's okay.

Katherine's definition of "neighboring" and why small actions matter.

The concept of "deep casual" gatherings and how low-pressure hosting creates stronger relationships.

Why lowering the bar for entertaining actually leads to deeper connection.

The importance of protecting community from logistical burnout.

The surprising types of groups Katherine recommends not relying on to build lasting community.

Why investing in nearby relationships can create the support systems we all need.

Together, these insights offer a practical and refreshing roadmap for building the kind of community that sustains us in everyday life.

Thank you to our sponsors!

To see what Scribe could look like for your team, head to https://scribe.how/TIWW and mention TIWW for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans

Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 70% off your first year

Connect with Katherine:

Substack: https://thedoubleshift.substack.com/

Website: katherinegoldstein.com

Pre-order the Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/796461/neighboring-by-katherine-goldstein/

Related Podcast Episodes:

The Connection Cure: Social Prescribing, Loneliness, and Why Belonging Is Medicine with Julia Hotz | 373

The Power of Conscious Connection with Talia Fox | 263

Creating A Connected Community to Grow Your Business with Kami Guildner | 221

Share the Love:

If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We tell women to speak up, set boundaries, advocate for themselves, negotiate for more, and stop waiting for permission. Great advice. But there's one tiny problem: What the hell are we actually supposed to say?

Because knowing what you want and knowing how to ask for it are two very different skills. Especially when your brain decides to take an unscheduled vacation right when you need it most.

Joining This Is Woman's Work is Emily Lampkin, author of Duct Tape and White Lies, founder of the Women Leader series, and a speaker and advisor with more than 25 years of experience helping women lead, succeed, and get what they want.

In this episode, we explore:

How to ask for what you want without overexplaining, oversharing, or apologizing

What to say when you freeze in a difficult conversation and can't find the right words

How to set boundaries and say no without feeling guilty or needing to justify yourself

Why self-advocacy and self-promotion aren't bragging, and how to confidently communicate your value

Practical strategies for asking for a raise, negotiating a promotion, and creating career opportunities

Why every woman needs a "swimsuit friend" who will tell her the truth

How to handle rejection, follow up when you're ghosted, and stop taking every no personally

Why taking action before you feel ready is the secret to building confidence and getting what you want

Because confidence doesn't come from getting every conversation right. It comes from trusting yourself enough to have the conversation.

Thank you to our sponsors!

To see what Scribe could look like for your team, head to https://scribe.how/TIWW and mention TIWW for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans

Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 70% off your first year

Connect with Emily:

Website: https://www.emilylampkin.com/

Book: https://www.emilylampkin.com/author

FB: https://www.facebook.com/emily.k.lampkin

LI: linkedin.com/in/emilylampkin

Related Podcast Episodes

The 3 N’s - Negotiation, Networking & No with Kathryn Valentine | 327

201 / How To Find The Right Words When Creating Boundaries with Amy Green Smith

Powerfully Likeable with Dr. Kate Mason | 364

Share the Love:

If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women are taught to be agreeable, accommodating, self-sacrificing, and well-behaved. To stay quiet, make everyone comfortable, and take up as little space as possible.

Yeah, no thanks.

What if the goal isn't to become a better-behaved woman, but to reclaim who we were before the world taught us to shrink?

Avril Millar, author of Feral: A Grown Woman's Guide to a Free and Ferocious Life, joins Nicole Kalil to challenge societal expectations keeping women small. After five careers, losing everything in her 40s, and starting over at 50, Avril is now 74 and has plenty to say about confidence, self-love, reinvention, and refusing to be tamed.

We explore:

What it means to be feral and reclaim your authentic self

How societal conditioning teaches women to be agreeable and self-sacrificing

Why midlife and menopause can be opportunities for reinvention

How to recognize the expectations and "shoulds" holding us back

Why trusting your intuition starts with learning to pause

How to stop worrying about what other people think

Why self-awareness is essential to confidence and personal growth

How to build a healthier relationship with yourself and practice unconditional self-love

What Avril has learned about resilience, starting over, and embracing life at 74

Being feral isn't about being reckless or selfish. It's about questioning the rules we've been following, trusting ourselves, and deciding which expectations no longer deserve our obedience.

Perhaps the most important relationship we'll ever have is the one we have with ourselves. So it's time to stop becoming who everyone else needs us to be and start embracing who we actually are.

We were never meant to become less of ourselves. We were meant to become more.

Thank you to our sponsors!

To see what Scribe could look like for your team, head to https://scribe.how/TIWW and mention TIWW for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans

Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 70% off your first year

Connect with Avril:

Website: https://www.avrilmillar.com

Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Avril-Millar/author/B00DCLLFUS

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avrilmillar

IG: https://www.instagram.com/avrilmillar/

Related Podcast Episodes:

On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be “Good” with Elise Loehnen | 388

Aging Out of F*cks (Your Confidence Upgrade) with Ellen Scherr | 394

Reinventing Your Career (Again and Again) with Ilana Golan | 374

Share the Love:

If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've traded ancient oracles and crystal balls for algorithms, but our desire to predict the future hasn't changed. Today, AI predictions influence everything from hiring and healthcare to loans and personal decisions. But predictions aren't facts, and prophecy isn't destiny. So who's really in control?

Carissa Véliz, Oxford AI ethics expert and author of Privacy Is Power and Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI, joins Nicole Kalil to explore the intersection of prophecy, artificial intelligence, privacy, and power — and why we should think twice before letting algorithms decide our future.

We explore:

Why AI is a prediction machine, not a truth machine

How AI predictions influence hiring, healthcare, loans, and major life decisions

What ancient prophecies can teach us about modern algorithms

How algorithmic bias and self-fulfilling prophecies threaten fairness and freedom

Why ChatGPT can sound convincing while being completely wrong

The hidden privacy risks of using AI tools

How to protect critical thinking, personal agency, and decision-making in an AI-driven world

AI can make life easier, but that doesn't mean it should make our decisions. Understanding how these systems work helps us question their predictions, protect our privacy, and reclaim our power.

Prediction is not destiny. Data is not the whole story. And an algorithm doesn't get to decide what's possible for us.

The future isn't something we wait to have predicted. It's something we create.

Thank you to our sponsors!

To see what Scribe could look like for your team, head to https://scribe.how/TIWW and mention TIWW for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans

Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 70% off your first year

Connect with Carissa:

Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/759692/prophecy-by-carissa-veliz/

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carissa-v%C3%A9liz-a5781555/

Related Podcast Episodes:

Unmasking AI with Dr. Joy Buolamwini | 259

AI, Hiring, and the Future of Work (Without Selling Your Soul) with Katie Fortunato | 395

THE INSTABILITY OF TRUTH: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion with Rebecca Lemov | 333

Share the Love:

If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a confidence expert has a wardrobe malfunction in front of hundreds of women? One hell of a lesson in self-trust.

After an 11-week European sabbatical, Nicole Kalil returned to the keynote stage feeling rusty, nervous, and full of self-doubt. Despite 20 years of teaching confidence, her brain was busy imagining everything that could go wrong.

Turns out, none of those things happened. Instead, her left boob decided to make its own keynote presentation.

In this unfiltered and unhinged solo episode, Nicole shares what an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction taught her about overcoming self-doubt, letting go of perfectionism, and trusting herself when life doesn't go according to plan.

We explore:

Why even confidence experts struggle with self-doubt

How overthinking and catastrophizing fuel fear of failure

Why perfectionism can't protect us from embarrassment

The power of vulnerability, humor, and embracing imperfection

How to build real confidence by trusting yourself through the unexpected

Confidence isn't knowing everything will work out. It's trusting that we'll be okay even if it doesn't.

And sometimes, that lesson comes with a little unexpected exposure.

Thank you to our sponsors!

To see what Scribe could look like for your team, head to https://scribe.how/TIWW and mention TIWW for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans

Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 70% off your first year

Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at Greenlight.com/TIWW. Don't wait to teach your kids real-world money skills!

Connect with Nicole:

Subscribe to Nicole’s Substack: https://nicolekalil.substack.com/

Related Podcast Episode:

On Sabbaticals, Reinvention, and Getting Older | Unfiltered & Unhinged

When a One-Star Review Means You’ve Officially Arrived | Unfiltered & Unhinged

Am I Being a Bitch… Or Just Finally Being Honest? | Unfiltered & Unhinged

Share the Love:

If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices