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Pam King: In our world of urgency, certitudes, and immediate access to a flood of information, could it be that a humble curiosity, inspired awe, and delightful wonder might give us the strength to heal and to thrive?
Using an expansive emotional vocabulary matched with wit and care, TV host, podcaster, and author Kelly Corrigan is inviting the world to relational vulnerability, compassionate curiosity and stalwart bravery to face our biggest problems through listening and loving wonder.
Kelly Corrigan: There’s a lot of stuff that’s happening. That’s invisible to the outer world that’s happening inside every house. around the globe that is deeply brave and very complex.
if you have parents who gave you enough love, then you enter the world with enough capacity to be super curious.
And if you’re still trying to get your love, then that’s the dominant driver of your behavior. And getting love might look like being listened to, being heard instead of being the listener.
I would say that my religion is wonder.
Like it’s a real source of calm for me. It’s a source of getting small. I feel much, much smaller in the frame
Nobody’s listening. It’s like a whole world of talkers, like 98 percent of the world is just talking.
So embrace intellectual humility. Just ask questions all day long. It will work everywhere, every time. Just ask. Ask questions.
Tell me more. What else? Go on.
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
Kelly Corrigan is a journalist of wonder. Through hundreds and hundreds of conversations with some of the world’s most interesting people, she approaches both timeless questions and contemporary problems. Through focused and generous listening, an attitude of awe, and a joyful expectation to be surprised and delighted, even in life’s most challenging and painful circumstances.
She’s the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs, including Tell Me More, The Middle Place, glitter and Glue, and Lyft. Her most recent offering is a children’s book, hello World, which celebrates the people in our lives and explores the meaningful connections that come from asking each other questions.
Her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, is a library of conversational wisdom ranging from current events to arts and entertainment to psychology and philosophy, and an approach to spirituality and transcendence through the gift of everyday ordinary life.
Kelly is a master of conversational hospitality. Downright funny storytelling and journalistic listening. She’s also the PBS television host of Tell Me More, and recently spoke on bravery at the 40th Annual TED Conference. You can find her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, wherever you listen to podcasts, and her full library of resources at kellycorrigan.com. Check our show notes to learn more.
Pam King: In my conversation with Kelly Corrigan, we discuss
approach to having conversations that feel transformative. The kind that unlock and open us up.
How Wonder grounds her spirituality and personal vocation.
The profound lessons she learned from her mother and father, and how each showed up for her when she was at her lowest.
How to learn wisdom and leadership through coaching and mentoring. What it means to be brave in our world today.
And how to communicate love through the simple act of listening through three simple invitations. Tell me more, what else, and go on.
Kelly, welcome to With and For. It is such an honor and thrill to have you join me on the show.
Kelly Corrigan: Oh, it’s my pleasure.
Pam King: You are, a seasoned journalist of wonder. the sheer number of stories that you have heard, lives you have listened to, to some of the most interesting, wise, and impactful people, that I know of. it’s just really mind boggling. I’m really curious. Oh, To, probe a little bit how those conversations might have changed your life over time.
Kelly Corrigan: One thing that I’ve noticed over and over again is that I’m often totally delighted at a booking. So let’s say we’re going to interview David Byrne or Brian Stevenson or Samantha Power or Melinda Gates or Judd Apatow, and I’m all whipped up. Bono is a perfect example. I couldn’t have been more excited.
Beside myself, long time U2 listener could imagine myself as like a 14 year old with those albums in my room on my record player. With my ear to the speaker then all of a sudden to think I’m going to be in a conversation with him right here, right now, for 90 minutes. It’s just sort of outrageous. But what happens almost instantly with any of these people, especially the ones that I kind of have on my own personal Mount Rushmore of wisdom and creative talents and powers is that they become people instantly.
And what brings that out is talking about people’s parents and their childhood. And so I’ve found over time that I’m even more interested in the thing that I’ve always been interested in, which is who raised you. And where and what happened that you still remember vividly.
Pam King: Sitting down for a conversation with Kelly felt like going out for coffee with a close friend. I felt drawn into and enveloped by her voracious curiosity. We meandered through topics that were both intimate and relevant.
I felt like we could have talked for hours. And the conversation itself was an example of how to listen and how to find each other.
you are a beautiful synthesizer as you listen, and I’m so excited to glean from your own life, as well as the many that you have listened to.
Kelly Corrigan: I think it goes back to writing nonfiction.
You know, I’ve written four books about family life. They’re all true stories from my own experience as a kid, as a parent, as a wife. And when I’m writing, I’m thinking this will be worth writing if I can remember the details vividly, even now at 56. So if I remember French braiding my hair and putting it into Princess Leia buns and then spraying it all into place and then putting on my gunny sack dress with my high collar and then coming down the stairs and seeing my brother’s faces kind of drop like, oops, I blew it.
Like this is not going to work. like, I sort of believe that. A strong, detailed memory of an experience is an indicator that there’s a lot there for you, that, that it’s worth mining on the page. And then I feel when I’m talking to these personal heroes, that whatever they could tell you in gory detail from when they were eight or 16 is sort of an unlock to who they are as an adult, as a, as a creative force, as a force for change in the world.
Pam King: That’s amazing, I so appreciate that. And you do that so deftly with your guests. And in your own telling of stories, your recent TED talk, I was just chuckling. just your ability to embrace and find extraordinary in the ordinary, in such a disarming way is so beautiful. It’s, it’s really profound. it, one of the things that I so admire about you is you are so at ease with yourself.
And that is extended to your guests, that they become so, they seem at home with you.
Kelly Corrigan: Part of that’s age. Don’t you think? I mean, I feel. I also feel that the more kind of fancy people you meet that, and the more quickly they become just regular people with a, a life and looking for a sandwich at lunchtime and got to go pick somebody up from violin practice at three. And, you know, all the quotidian facts of their life that make us equals in some weird way, it, it puts you at ease.
So that combined with age, which is essentially the repeated discovery that many things you thought mattered didn’t, puts you at ease. And then the third piece for me is that there’s just so many people in the world. There’s 8 billion people here. Like it doesn’t matter what I say and do, it doesn’t matter what you say and do.
There’s, I mean, even in smaller numbers, I find comfort, like there’s 3 million active podcasts.
Pam King: Incredible.
Kelly Corrigan: So like for me to get nervous about this. It’s kind of crazy, like, there’s just so much content in the world. It just comes up and it goes down, it comes up and it goes down. you know, when I remember writing The Middle Place, my first book, Oh, that’s where it’s all this energy of mine, all this whole enormous experience that’s unfolding for me is going to end up to be one of the thousands of books that’s for sale in this one store in this one town. Like, and rather than finding that depressing, I find it liberating. It’s like, right, so whatever you’re, you’re like in your epic journey, but your epic journey is one of 8 billion epic journeys simultaneously unfolding at this moment. So. Don’t take it too seriously, like stay in it and enjoy it and, and ring it for everything it’s worth.
Pam King: And for me, what an extraordinary paradox of one of a billion voices, but also your voice matters so much. And, and, and I mean that to extend that to every human being that every human being’s voice matters, but yours in particular has found a profound place in our culture.
Kelly Corrigan: I heard this at a, a bat mitzvah once and I thought it was so cool. And I don’t really know the details around it, but there’s this story about how being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one of billions And holding in the other pocket that you are a never to be repeated miracle. And that adulthood is knowing when to pull out which piece of paper.
Pam King: Absolutely. I love that.
Kelly Corrigan: It’s like, you know, you do have to do what you can do. There are things that you can do, do them. But also, you know,
don’t, yeah, don’t, don’t lose track of the fact that, dot, dot, dot.
Yes, Oh my goodness. so we share age in common. I’m also 56. So, Bono was a big reference for me. In fact, my husband said the only person you’re allowed to have an affair with would be Bono.
He was your carve out? Mine’s Ryan Gosling.
I don’t think everyone wants me to have an affair with Ryan Gosling because he thinks I’ll actually fall in love. Which I probably would, right? Doesn’t he seem like the funniest, smartest,
nicest?
Pam King: he might. speaking of life details, you are one who has done awesome chronicling of your life. that’s so inspiring, empowering, and I think helps us bring meaning to our ordinary and mundane. But I’d love for our audience to hear a bit about your story. Some of those details, that have shaped you and just to give context to this woman that you are now, mother.
Journalist of Wonder Podcaster, et cetera. give us some context for your life.
Kelly Corrigan: Well, the first line of The Middle Place is the thing you need to know about me is I’m George Corrigan’s daughter. And that, that is the thing you need to know about me. I don’t think I ever wrote a truer line in my life. So I had this father who was just another ordinary Joe on planet earth, but was a world class listener and a born enthusiast. And that meant that he could take an interest in almost anyone and within minutes, like discover the thing about them that was so unusual and so lovable. so he wasn’t looking for people just like him, although he brightened every time he met someone who was from Baltimore or played lacrosse or had two boys or loved pond hockey he could also immediately become engaged in something that he knew nothing about.
So the great context of my life is that he was my father.
And then the other piece of context is that my mother, was Mary Corrigan.
This is for my mom, even though when I called her to say, Hey, have you heard of TED, T E D? She said, Oh my God, Kelly, it’s not another virus, is it?
Pam King: Kelly recently gave a TED Talk on bravery at the 40th anniversary of the TED conference, and I found her talk incredibly moving Sharing about the connection between love and bravery. And how courage can be a path toward emotional intelligence, healing, and resilience in the midst of suffering.
Kelly Corrigan: As a 21 year old, I was drawn to the word brave. So, odyssey on the brain, I went out adventure collecting.
We, who, untrained and always a little off guard, still dare to do love. To be love. That’s brave. Just a few weeks after she gave this talk, her mother passed away.
My mother,uh, who just died six weeks ago, she It has become so fascinating to me in the last 20 years since I became a mother, which is so common, I think for women to suddenly perk up and think, who are you?
What did you want? Were you happy with the way it all turned out? she was a woman who, uh, was not sent to a four year college. She lived with her parents and then she moved in with my dad and was his bride. She had the three of us. And she became like the COO and the CFO of our family. So within the four walls, she was the alpha.
In the world, she was an introvert and, and not hugely motivated by, social outings. It wasn’t something she craved and it wasn’t something that she relished. She could do it, but she was really a girlfriend personally. She loved this little set of women that she hung around with. They call themselves the pigeons, which was a twist on the hens.
And so she was comfortable with and loyal to a very small set of people, our family, the church, she went to church every single day, and then the pigeons and watching her run our family the way she did and the devotion with which she tried to raise proper adults. And then understanding how complicated that is.
Of course, you just totally underestimate all the twists and turns when you’re the kid. You think when I’m an adult, I’m going to do it this way. Then you’re an adult and you’re like, Oh my God, I have no idea what to do. How many of these scenarios are going to come at me where I have no training and no preparation.
I’ve never heard one story like this one before to lean on. And that’s really the heart of the TED talk is to get at like that kitchen table bravery. Like what is it that we’re absorbing when we’re in family life, when we’re devoted to our family members and as things are coming flying at us. It’s in real time, like pop quizzes, like crazy interpersonal pop quizzes.
And the kid tells you something, they say, I feel suicidal. I don’t think I’m a girl. I kissed my friend. I stole something. I cut myself. I stopped taking the medication. I have been accused of rape. I mean, the list goes on and on. And these are just examples from the people in my life. Like the, the people, my girlfriends.
That’s what they’re absorbing in their families. And that’s what I wanted to get at in that talk is like, well, that’s, if you ask me, like that’s bravery. And the theme of the Ted conference was brave, like the brave and the brilliant. And they were talking about going to outer space and AI and making robots dance.
And I was like, yeah, okay, but also there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening. That’s invisible to the outer world that’s happening inside every house. It’s around the globe that is deeply brave and very complex. So that’s the context of my life is I was really well loved by two really interesting people who had a lot of, a lot of gifts.
Pam King: I want to start by saying I’m so sorry for the loss of your mom. That was just weeks ago and, I so appreciate how you are able to hold both the grief and the goodness of her life and the quirky parts and celebrate them, and, and begin to make sense of them. I think that’s really powerful.
Kelly Corrigan: Well, there’s so many people who lose their parents at worst times in their lives and in worse ways.
So she was almost 85. I was with her nonstop for the last eight days. It was kind of perfect.
Pam King: That is
Kelly Corrigan: loved her. She loved me. It was just an uncomplicated scenario. And when you’re out there and people are saying, I’m so sorry about your mom, and then you say, are your parents still alive?
What you get back
Pam King: mm
Kelly Corrigan: a lot of stories that make you realize that if you get to like hold hands with a person as they’re dying at 85,
you win.
Pam King: Uh. that’s how it went down both times.
that it’s easy, but you have this incredible gift to be so present to the moment, to find wonder in dinner table conversations or fighting over sweatshirts in the hallway. And that is such a beautiful thing. And I’m curious, you had these two parents who were so different and, and, Is it by following their example, did you soak it up by osmosis?
You seem to have these same gifts as your dad. Did you, when did you start to discover that you have this ability to wonder with people?
Kelly Corrigan: well he was a person you would want to emulate
was a person who was enormously consistent
as was the reaction the world gave him. So you’re witness to that over and over and over again and then you live in this absolute sea of people saying, are you George Corrigan’s daughter? God, I love
that guy. so the reinforcement loop is pretty strong.
Pam King: mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: But also, you have to actually think that other people are more interesting than you are.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: does. I think a lot of people are still hungry to be heard, and they’re so hungry to be heard that they can’t listen yet. Like they don’t feel fulfilled or like they haven’t had their turn yet. And so they still want to talk and they still want to be validated and they still want to
Pam King: be the interviewee. Hmm hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: and so the gift of my parents was that I left my childhood feeling more or less full. I didn’t come into my adulthood thinking, God damn it. Who’s listening to me? Who’s caring about me? Why isn’t anyone ever asking me questions? Why isn’t anybody shine, anybody shining a light on me?
I felt like I had been loved and people cared about me. Not excessively, not obsessively, but you know, like I was safe in the world. And if you’re safe, That’s the sort of foundation for curiosity. If you think the world’s out to get you, if you think you’re being screwed, if you think that you are not being respected in the way you deserve, then you don’t, you don’t have any energy to give to other people.
You’re so busy trying to get yours. I’ve never thought this before the second. Or put together this link, but I think that might be it, which is to say that if you have parents who gave you enough love, then you enter the world with enough capacity to be super curious.
And if you’re still trying to get your love, then that’s the dominant driver of your behavior. And getting love might look like being listened to, being heard instead of being the listener.
Pam King: Mm hmm. I,I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but so much of how I understand thriving has to do with receiving love, leaning into love, whether family, friends, God, beauty, and living it out and offering it to others. And I think, you know, even from an attachment, psychological perspective, when people have received enough love, they have a sense of having a secure base that they can go out and explore, they can wonder, they can hold other people’s pain because they have the capacity to hold their own pain because they are ensconced in love.
And, and that’s such a gift. And I’m, I’m feeling very sensitive to listeners who right now might be like, yeah, but. That wasn’t my journey or
my story. I didn’t necessarily get that. Love
Kelly Corrigan: I mean,
I fought with my mom like every day of my life until I was 18. I mean, I didn’t even like look her direction until I was 25. I didn’t, I didn’t ask her a question until I was 30. Like I, I didn’t, I didn’t get that I had this resource,
Pam King: Mm mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: she was so insanely consistent, even if she was, even if I was getting punished all the time, even if she was not very effusive or affectionate, which she wasn’t.
There, there was a stability, there was a consistent, stable base. And that was plenty for me, given that I had this dad person who was so effusive and affectionate.
Pam King: Yes, that’s such a gift. I’m curious in people that you’ve interviewed who maybe haven’t had that foundation, knowingly or not, have you heard stories of how people can recover that sense of being loved, and can, you know, reenter the world not in desperation of trying to claim the space and demanding love and attention.
Kelly Corrigan: I feel like a common theme that’s come through between 70 episodes of the PBS show and 400 episodes of the podcast, is that it only takes one person. and I think the research bears that out. I’m not a social scientist, but
oftentimes people will say, my mother couldn’t help me, but my grandmother did.
Or my father was an alcoholic, but my mother stood by me. Or there was a coach or a teacher or somebody that ran their, the school choir or a college counselor who saw me and heard me and like Nick Hornby, the great writer, the British writer who wrote High Fidelity and About a Boy and lots of great stuff.
He said that he had this teacher in school who said, Hornby, come here, I brought you a book. And he gave him like this huge fat book, like a 700 page book. And that Nick carried it around school, you know, for like two months. And then people say, what are you carrying that big book for? And he’d say, Oh, Mr.
So and so gave it to me. He thought it’d be good for me. And it just completely filled him with a sense of pride and being seen as this intellectual and a person who loved story and a person who could handle real literature at a young age. And, and, and, and there he was as a 60 plus year old man, telling me the story
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: interview when we only had an hour together and that was on the top of his mind is that guy giving him that book.
And I think whether it’s entirely. happening in that moment, or if it continues to kind of happen in our minds as our narrative hardens or calcifies over time, either way, I think it is like a buffer. So I think that, I think that what social science would tell us, and of course what these, all of these people I’ve interviewed would tell you anecdotally is you don’t have to get it from your mom or your dad. There are other sources.
Pam King: And I love, you holding up that very concrete example of giving a book. How uncomplicated that is. I mean, that teacher had to know him and see him. But how we in our own lives can be book bearers to other young people or other adults in our lives that, that might need that concrete symbol or demonstration of love.
And half the time we don’t know when we’re doing
Kelly Corrigan: Isn’t it amazing? I was a coach. I was a JV lacrosse coach in Piedmont, California for four Springs, I think. And God, you learned so much. I mean, you learned so much coaching
Pam King: huh.
Kelly Corrigan: and it’s it can be a weirdly impactful position to be in. And as soon as you grok that, which, you know, you see it in these girls eyes that they’re waiting to say, like, did you see it?
Did you see it? I got the ground ball. Or, you know, I, I. Did the 100 sprint faster than anybody else or, and so then it became clear to me that my words had double their usual meaning because when you’re parenting, which I was doing actively at the same time as I was coaching, you feel like your words are just like hitting the wall and sliding down and getting swept away.
Like it’s not clear that they’re being internalized by your children, but when you’re coaching, it feels like, Oh my God, they’re like this. And then it, then it made me double back and say, well, if everybody’s listening to me, like, what do I want to emphasize? And I had this really fun thing that I love to do, which was we would have a moment on the field where five people would touch the ball and a girl would shoot and score.
Pam King: mm
Kelly Corrigan: And then we’d round up again. And I would say, it started with you. So I’d go back to the first player to touch the
ball. So it was way on the defensive end and the. And they, they fought it out and they got a ground ball and they took a 10 yards up and made a pass. And so instead of celebrating the goal, which is what everyone will celebrate, like you have to counter program to the world and the world loves the person who scores the goal
Pam King: hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: and the world often forgets to note, like it started all the way at the other end when Emma beat that girl to the ground ball, almost lost it, kept fighting, got it, got away from her and got it out of her stick.
So. I think that that’s a fun, it’s, it’s fun and kind of intriguing to trace back where the beginning of good things happening is.
Pam King: hmm. That’s a great life skill. I hear your curiosity in that. You are constantly asking. and I, I just want to call out, I’m so taken by your gift of wonder, of being able to behold things, like even just really ordinary and, and there’s meaning and there’s delight, in them even when they’re hard.
but when you’re talking about the girls coaching them, you see people. And I, I, when I listen to you interview people, I know they feel so seen. And like folks like Bono and Nick Hornby, they’ve, well Nick isn’t seen as by many people, but he’s, his works are. but you have a unique way of seeing people and letting people know when they’re seen and
Kelly Corrigan: Well, I must say, I mean, I was incredibly soft on those girls, you know, like the girl who’s wearing two jog bras cause her boobs just came in like rolling thunder or the girls covered with zits or the girl who still has her braces on when everybody’s past them or the girl who’s wearing makeup to practice cause she’s so insecure.
you know, like that my feeling for them was so strong. In fact, I, when I was giving a little talk at the end of the season barbecue party or whatever, I totally burst into tears and Claire, my daughter was like, dude, don’t be weird. And I was like, I know, I know that is so weird, but I really felt it.
And can I just say the nicest thing speaking of being seen is someone saw me. This mom named Stephanie Marshburn had a kid on one of my teams, and those kids just became seniors. They just graduated in May. And I had moved on. I had left California and moved to New York City in Bozeman, Montana. And Stephanie got the girls together and said, the girls wanted me to send you a picture of them.
It’s senior night at Piedmont high school. And they’re all, it’s my girls all pointing at the camera at me. And I was like, wow. That means so much to me.
Pam King: Mm hmm. Super powerful. Yeah. You have that impact on people. That’s
Kelly Corrigan: she had that impact on me. She, she, that was her giving me a book. You know what I
Pam King: Yes. Yes, exactly. I’m so grateful that you got to receive, some of what you offer so generously.
I asked Kelly about her Roman Catholic upbringing and how that influenced her approach to relationships, community, and seeking love and transcendence in the world. Having been married in the Catholic Church, she described the practical and wise strategy for premarital counseling led by her priest.
So. I am a social scientist, and most of my time actually goes into studying, like,What psychologically is happening in, in spiritual development or religious development? And I know you were raised Catholic, but I’d love, to hear you describe a bit of your spiritual upbringing and where that started and, and where that’s led you today.
Mm. We went to church every Sunday. We did the Stations of the Cross with my mom, which means you, there’s 14 I think, and you walk around the church when nobody’s doing Mass and you see the story of Jesus, like, going up on the cross and dying on the cross and coming out of the grave three days later on Easter and, you know, We did confession.
Kelly Corrigan: We had to go to confession in the booth and my older brother would go face to face. And I was like, wow, he’s incredible. That’s amazing. He’s so brave. Like as if we had done anything at that age that would merit that, but, but, but it does speak to like the, you know, the sort of dominant feeling I had in Catholicism was that there’s this superstructure of men who tell you if you’re good or bad.
Like it wasn’t. It wasn’t a hands on religion, it was like a very old school, they’re in charge and you sit when they tell you to sit, you kneel when they tell you to kneel, you beg for forgiveness when they tell you to beg for forgiveness. You don’t question them and, and you don’t disapprove of them. And then that all came through in the, all the horrible abuse of parishioners.
And that really blew it up for me. however. When I go to a Catholic church, I know exactly what to do. It’s like absolutely woven into my fibers.
I would, I went with my mom every time I visited her, visited with her in the last nine years. I mean, I would go to church with her anytime she went to church seven days a week. And I, and there were a couple of times where I felt really cared for by the church. So my husband and I did, we got married in Catholic church and we did pre cana, which is the thing where you go and meet with a priest and try to prepare yourself for church. The rigors of marriage.
Pam King: And, the priests are offering guiding you in
Kelly Corrigan: yes, ironically, people who have never been married and presumably never had sex with anyone are telling you about that kind of relationship and how to keep it alive for 50, 60 years.
So it all seemed kind of dubious from a distance, but it turns out people are people and we just happened to get assigned to this guy. Monsignor John O’Connor, and he gives you this test. It’s called,it’s called like insights or something, and it’s a bubble test, like a SAT. And it has all these statements and you say one through five, you know, whether you’re highly likely or highly unlikely and they’re, they’re, they’re sectioned off.
So there’s one about in laws, there’s one about money, there’s one about sex, and it just says, I would be happy if my in laws came to live with me later in life. Agree, disagree strongly, blah, blah, blah. I, I believe we should have two separate bank accounts agreed to like really pragmatic must have been culled from conversations with actual married people and comprehensive.
I mean, I think there were like 500 statements in this, in this thing. It took us like an hour and a half to do it. And then every single question where Edward and I disagreed, even by one degree, we discussed in these sessions with the Monsignor.
Pam King: Amazing.
Kelly Corrigan: Amazing for free.
Pam King: Yeah.
Kelly Corrigan: And we went nine times for like an hour and a half until we finished all the places.
And, you know, Edward’s a talker, I’m a talker. And then we just had great chemistry with this guy. And at the end, I, I just totally cried when I was hugging him goodbye and we asked him to marry us and he couldn’t do it because of our weekend. And,but I thought, Oh, well, if I had, as my parents did growing up, had priests like coming for dinner all the time and like coming to my ice hockey games and.
Uh, Sister Mary, like, you know, stopped by with biscuits in the morning and my, my mom was ironing the vestments and taking them up through the back door of the cathedral. Like if I had a working daily relationship with other human beings who happen to be associated with this church, I might’ve felt differently about it.
But by the time we were growing up, the Catholic school that we had an option to go to, it had kind of a bad reputation. And so we ended up going to the regular public school, Radnor High School, which is incredible. But we did not have a religious education. And my mom, I think one of her two great regrets in life is that we did not, she did not find the right Catholic schooling for us because I think she thinks, Oh, they really would have been Catholic if they had known people.
Pam King: Hmm. Mm
Kelly Corrigan: I’m not sure. Cause I don’t, not sure that my heart could have withstood the abuse stuff. And, you know, the, the coverup is really what I’m talking about. I mean, the, the coverup is just so sickening and so antithetical to the whole message. so that messed me up.
And now I would say that my religion is wonder.
Pam King: Hmm
Kelly Corrigan: Like it’s a real source of calm for me. It’s a source of getting small. I feel much, much smaller in the frame when I’m looking at water or
flower. I mean, it’s really that simple. Like I, I mean, I can really go crazy on like a leaf, you know, like if I’m walking and there’s like a little red leaf that looks like a pair of lips in the path in front of me, I’ll like stop and pick it up and look at it and think like, God damn, if that’s not the most beautiful red.
And I think part of what enables or facilitates or reinforces my wonder is painting because it’s very hard to do. It’s very hard to make something beautiful on a canvas. It’s very hard to make beautiful colors on a canvas. And then you see them in nature, you see beauty, and you think that is really, we have not gotten very good at replicating that.
Like even the very best blue on a canvas is not as good as that blue. And even the very best red is not as beautiful as that red leaf.
Pam King: Hmm,
Kelly Corrigan: So I think, and, and puzzling, I think is very reinforcing to me because it slows you way down and you have to focus on something so minute. And so when I buy them, I buy something that I think is beautiful.
Like I just finished one that’s fish, like the most incredible fish that are real fish that are alive right now, swimming around unnoticed. And then you’re inside, like, you know, maybe there’s 20 fish in this thousand piece puzzle and you’re going to need. 40 pieces to make this one angelfish or this one sea anemone.
And it’s like amazing to look at it, like the little tubes coming out and the way the light catches inside the tubes and how they all come together at the base and how they swing in the, you know, that’s all very meditative for me and very awe inspiring.
Pam King: an attitude of wonder is sometimes hard to come by. Whether boredom or stubbornness, certainty or a stripping of our sense of agency and curiosity, there are plenty of forces that push us away from the utility, the benefits, and goodness of wonder.
And I find that as I listen to Kelly describe her approach to relational and vulnerable and thriving conversations, I think there’s so much fascinating and insightful perspective that we can savor and glean.
you ever find it, as one who seems to wonder, and be able to behold or savor or delight in the natural world or the uniqueness of a human journey,is it ever hard for you to wonder? are there ever times in your life that, where that’s not coming so naturally?
Kelly Corrigan: Yeah. I mean, you know, we’re, we are bigger and smaller in the frame all the time. I used to be a photographer.
And I really loved my zoom lens, I loved my macro lens where I could take a picture of like a kid’s eyelash, like a closed eye. That would be the whole picture. It almost took you a second to realize what you were looking at.
And then when you,
Pam King: mm
Kelly Corrigan: then when you got it, it was so satisfying to just gaze at something so small.
then if you zoom way out, it You see 8 billion people. So that’s the scale that you, that you’re moving around on at all times. So yes, sometimes I am zoomed all the way in on myself and I am really a sucker for my own problems.
And I can be really flooded. I can be flooded with emotion. I have a one really hard relationship in my life and when it happens, when something happens in there and when there’s an episode, I mean, I am flooded. And I have to really figure out a way to get smaller to like, let it come down.
Pam King: do you have a practice or a go-to skill that you employ in those moments or wish you did?
Kelly Corrigan: I mean, on a good day, I put my phone down immediately
because it’s not a relationship where I’m actually in person with this person very often. So it’s often something that’s happening on my phone.
So then sometimes I play this game with myself like, Oh, it doesn’t exist. I’m just going to turn my phone off
Pam King: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: and then I’m going to go for a walk.
Or then I think, Oh, I’m going to call, I’m going to like scan my. Friend list in my head and call somebody who needs something and, and just get out. Because the, the first step might be to call somebody and tell them, Oh my God, you’re not going to believe what just happened. And me tell them something.
But the better move is for me to call someone and say, Hey, whatever happened with your kid?
Did that work out?
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: And then they tell me their story or how’s your mom doing? And then they tell me their whole story. That’s like such a better place for me to be. And by the time it’s over, I’m smaller again.
Pam King: That’s really helpful.
and, in a moment in the world, where there’s a lot of people who are not thriving, for whether it’s loneliness or depression, anxiety, alienation, polarization, I’m really interested in what enables people to thrive.
And A question I ask everyone on the show is what is thriving to you? But I want to ask you, tell me a story about a time in your life that comes to mind that you were thriving. And I want, I want those beautiful details.
Kelly Corrigan: I probably thrive best when I’m in service to something.
Pam King: Mm, does actually.
Kelly Corrigan: And the way that I fail is that I try to divide my time between too many people and projects.
And so sometimes it has to be really quite a big thing to suck me all the way in so that I’m focused.
Pam King: mm,
Kelly Corrigan: when both my parents were dying,
Pam King: mm,
Kelly Corrigan: clearing event in both cases. And the clarity of it and the singularity of it and the non repeatability of it, the once in a lifetime ness of it. don’t know if I was thriving, but I knew what to do. I knew where I was supposed to be. I knew what the point was and I knew How to help.
And that is so rare. It’s so rare because we’re all multitaskers and it’s so stupid.
In fact, I mean, sometimes I feel like I’m thriving when I’m in an interview because like right now we are holding eye contact and neither one of us is on our phone and my every app on my laptop is closed and it’s like weirdly unusual that that’s the case. So like. When I interviewed Bryan Stevenson, we were in Montgomery, Alabama, and we had six hours one on one together.
Pam King: Six hours. Wow.
Kelly Corrigan: Three hours one day, three hours the next day. It was our, my first interview for PBS. So we were terrified. So we overshot by 10 X cause we were like, if we screw this up, we’re never going to get this Tell Me More show off the ground. And so we, we, and he was lovely and generous with his time. But when we were on set.
Like it, everyone’s, there’s 13 people in the room, the lighting guy and the sound guy and the grip and the
Pam King: mhm,
Kelly Corrigan: PA and the director producer. And then they say, okay, Kelly, we’re ready action. And then it’s just me and this other person
Pam King: mhm,
Kelly Corrigan: and the fullness of our attention to one another is thrilling
by virtue of the fact that it’s so damn rare. And sometimes when I’m finished, I’m like, there’s almost like a romance to it. You know, like where I’m like, I, I love you. I love the experience that we just had.
Pam King: mhm. The
Kelly Corrigan: And I think what I’m loving is that I’m not trying to do two things at once, not even, you know, cause you’re like kind of doing like right before this, this interview, I had the worst call and it was a FaceTime and the person was super distracted and he kept jumping off.
Say, hold on, let me look at this. Let me look at this. Oh my God, here’s my real. I mean, it was just like brutal. And this is. the conditions in which people could thrive. This is the conditions in which we could think of something we haven’t thought of before, that we can make a connection that we haven’t made before, where we’re not just like regurgitating our, you know, greatest hits.
Pam King: Yes. Well, even just reflecting back to what you said when I asked you about your religious upbringing and somewhat immediately you went to this very intimate interaction with your priest and your husband in the premarital work of the just being together
Kelly Corrigan: Yes. and nobody would have taken their phone out. Nobody would have been open to the laptop. Nobody knocked on the door. I mean, it was 90 minutes of pure connection.
Pam King: Absolutely. That’s, that’s probably why people pay to go to therapy now, because it’s a one uninterrupted space.
Kelly Corrigan: only place you can go to get it.
Pam King: yeah. Right. Right.
Kelly Corrigan: I mean, I sometimes think about it in like Margaret Atwood terms.
Like, if you were to write this as a novel, it would be like, and then the people started paying other people just to listen to them because it was so rare that they suddenly had to pay for it.
But it’s like not that far off from the hmm.
majority of people in therapy today not, you know, extremely mentally ill.
They’re just looking to thrive. They’re just looking for. to someone to help them untie their knots
and that takes listening and they can’t find it in their regular life,
which is amazing.
Pam King: It is amazing. Well, I want to give one antidote if you don’t mind me sharing. my daughter this year recently was hospitalized for a, really rare and really lethal infection that took a long time to figure out because it was just didn’t even know what was happening to her little body.
and we were two weeks at UCLA and,
Kelly Corrigan: God, he must’ve been freaking out.
Pam King: Oh, freaking out. Terrified. I mean, literally like two times when close to death and I came away from that experience I realized like it was oddly such a joyful time and I feel horrible for saying that because she was in so much pain and, it was so scary.
But the singular focus, the absolute attunement, the connection with my 16 year old, who doesn’t always have as much, you know, paint time or patience for her mom. It was such a beautiful experience to just be together in this crucible of a hospital room. Extremely painful and terrifying, but just the connection in the singular of focus.
I realized how rare that is in my life. I am a multitasker. I’m energized by doing different things. But it’s very easy to go too far in that.
Kelly Corrigan: You know, I felt like I had cancer in my thirties and my mom came a lot, while I was in chemo and I had these kids, I had a one year old and a two year old. And,I remember thinking like, not that far into it. This is what she lives for. She’s like a soldier who’s been in training. Like as am I, that’s what I’m doing.
I’m, I’m just almost like off duty between periods of extreme service. Like, I’m just kind of learning things and padding my resources for the next time that something goes terribly wrong or somebody needs my full focus. And. the full arsenal of everything that I know and have learned.
Pam King: Well,
For those out there who might want a little more intentional training in their lives of like how to thrive, what advice would you give people? Like if you want to thrive, really have full life,what, what do people need?
Kelly Corrigan: Well, you know, junk in, junk out. I would say that first. So like, you know, watch, watch what you’re ingesting in terms of media.
Pam King: Mm, huh, mm,
Kelly Corrigan: It’s just, it’s just never been an easier time. to self educate but that gives you all the choices. So you can listen to vitriol or you can listen to nuance,
Pam King: huh.
Kelly Corrigan: for instance.
Pam King: huh. huh.
Kelly Corrigan: huh. huh. like I read poetry.
I think people should read poetry. I think they should read it out loud to themselves. I think they should hear the words.
I think people should have hobbies
Pam King: huh. huh.
Kelly Corrigan: that,and preferably hobbies that you can’t use your phone during,
huh. and I guess one of the reasons why I like painting is because your hands get paint all over them and you can’t touch anything but your paintbrushes for until you wash up and cooking.
I don’t know, something simple to slow yourself down and, and release. Like I, I think there’s also tons of research about the shower effect where you’re like doing something that’s remotely occupying some part of you such that you’re not using It’s not glaring at the problem you’re trying to solve, but rather it’s sort of in your peripheral vision.
And I feel that way when I’m hobbying, if you will. So if I’m hiking or painting or doing a puzzle or even cleaning, I think that’s kind of averting my gaze a little bit so that I’m not like drilling down on some problem, but rather it’s just sort of operating in my subconscious. And potentially might reveal some next step that could be productive. So I, and then I think, you know, you better keep your sense of humor. It’s not that big a deal for most people. I mean, you know, I mean the, the biggest thing people need for thriving is material resources. Like, you know, like it’s, it’s kind of hard to thrive if you’re starving and, or if you’re under, you know, if you’re at physical risk, I mean, if somebody, if, if you’re, if somebody could beat you up any day of the week, either in your house or outside of your house. You know, you’re just in overdrive, you’re just in adrenaline, cortisol overdrive and, and that then if you’re an addict, like, you know, there’s just certain things that are just game changers that are, that block everything else. They’re just prerequisites for thriving. So just to flag that, that it’s, a little bit of a privilege to even worry about thriving in the way that we’re talking about it, because it means that some set of more material concerns have been. And in terms of junk in, junk out, like I would just, I think it’d be fun and interesting just to do a whole inventory of like, like I always have this burning question with people. What’s your source?
Which is like, is your source
Pam King: Mm
Kelly Corrigan: Mary Oliver poems? Is your source your three best friends? Is your source Fox news?
Is your source the New York times? Is your source your preacher?
Like what do you believe in? Like what, who is guiding your thinking? And then really interrogate that,
you know, my mom had, for a long time and, and then she stopped years before she died, but for like a long time, she had the news, a cable news on in her house for many, many hours a day.
And I don’t care which station you watch, they’re all kind of superior and, and intellectually arrogant and oversimplifiers.
So, you know, you pass through the kitchen and somebody’s saying, I’ll tell you what you need to do to fix public education. And it’s like, what are you talking about?
That nothing could be more complicated than public education.
There isn’t one fix for public education. I know people who have given 35 years to public education at all different levels. Like it is hard to move the needle in public education. So don’t go on TV and act like it’s easy. But so that’s like junk in junk out.
And so you should evaluate your diet. You should be really careful what you let in your head.
Pam King: Absolutely. And I think not just the content, but the form or method is shaping how you, not just what you think about, but how you think. So if you’re getting two minute reels or one minute reels, you create an appetite. or an attention span for nanoseconds of content.
Kelly Corrigan: Isn’t that the word? I mean, I am so worried about that.
Pam King: so brave. I mean, for our kids like that are just raised on,
Kelly Corrigan: I, it is the most disturbing thing I see my kids do is thumb.
Pam King: yes, I
Kelly Corrigan: Because you can see, you can actually see how fast it is. And you’re like, wow, man, your attention span is like one or two seconds.
Pam King: I’d be interested to hear in your own life, like, how does that sense of spirituality, awe driven wonder driven, how does that impact your experience or ability to thrive?
Kelly Corrigan: mean, it calms me down. You know, it can keep me really calm.
Pam King: Mm
Kelly Corrigan: can return me to a sense of calm.
Pam King: hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: And it can keep me loose.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm. if you’re small in the frame, you’re just going to move more freely.
Mm-Hmm?
Kelly Corrigan: And if you’re big in the frame, if you’re the most important thing in your whole life, God help you. I mean, you, you’re just so tight, you know, it’s just, everything’s so important because it’s you because the stakes are you and it’s like, but you could change the frame. You could decide those aren’t the stakes.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. .
Kelly Corrigan: it comes up right now because there’s this terrific assumption, an unchallenged assumption that people vote in their own interest.
And I just don’t know that that’s the case a majority of the time.
I think there are Democrats who would benefit financially from tax cuts that they’re not voting for.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm. .
Kelly Corrigan: And I think there are Republican voters who would benefit substantially from public services that they’re not voting for. And I, I think that’s a way of saying maybe we aren’t all thinking about ourselves at every moment. Maybe we are able to think on multiple levels, sometimes only about ourselves.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: about the greater good. Sometimes about what kind of neighborhood you want to live in, what kind of society. We just had this funny thing.
So we live in Bozeman, Montana, half the year. Bozeman, Montana is like one of the nicest places. Everyone says hi on the streets. Just pass somebody randomly on a street and you say hi. You could, we went to this thing where it was like a 15 people were cooking food and then you had these big, huge picnic tables in the middle of a field and in the valley of these mountains.
And you went around and filled your plate and then you went and sat down. You could sit down with anyone and you just have a conversation with them all night long. So I just, we sat with this young couple, a teacher and a nurse, talked to them all night. Fantastic. And we never talked about politics.
Pam King: Hmm. And I don’t know to this day what their vision was, which way they were going to vote, but We were totally aligned.
Kelly Corrigan: On everything that matters.
Pam King: That’s really amazing.
Kelly Corrigan: Mm-Hmm.
Pam King: You know, I think,the way I perceive you to be in this world is so able to connect with the humanness of what we are. And in your work, in your interviews, you are always elevating what is human, most human about us.
Kelly Corrigan: yes. But, you in, I have to say this. I’m cheating
because I don’t often interview people with whom I violently disagree on some policy.
Pam King: Mm.
Kelly Corrigan: So I, one time this spring I interviewed this woman named April Lawson and she is, totally pro-life and I’m totally pro-choice. And we had this very tender,
Pam King: Mm.
Kelly Corrigan: tentative.
Pam King: Mm
Kelly Corrigan: productive conversation about why we believe what we believe, how we came to
those beliefs, what we worry
about,
Pam King: about the other person’s beliefs. And it was
Kelly Corrigan: Uh,totally fascinating. Like if people want to listen to it, just Google Kelly Corrigan, April Lawson. And it was the most unusual kind of conversation for me.
And I thought it was so impactful for me. That I thought oh my god, we’re gonna change the whole podcast. This is all we’re gonna do I’m just gonna invite people on who have a completely different point of view on 25 different policy positions and we don’t you know, we nobody ever talks about policy.
Everybody just talks about the people. He’s a jerk He’s too old. He’s a liar, but it’s like right. Okay, but like what do you want to talk about tax policy? Do you want to talk about education policy? You want to talk about environmental policy? so anyway, the idea, so the way that I cheat is that I, I don’t often have people on that throw me, like I’m already deeply interested in them and I’m already deeply bought into the work that they do.
Pam King: Okay. But you are able to connect and you hold up those human qualities of seeing that we’re all unique. We have Dignity. we all have moms.
Kelly Corrigan: Yes.
Pam King: You know, we all probably had hard moments with our moms and we’ve had delightful moments. And when you bring out those, the humanness of people, it makes them. Their opinions matter less because I see them as a human being, Not that their opinions don’t matter, but I appreciate your ability to find common ground in being human.
Kelly Corrigan: We did this, five part series with Christy Turlington, the supermodel, Where we interviewed five different people, big names like Bono and Spike Lee and Amy Schumer, Jen Garner, and Cindy Crawford about their moms. And it was a fundraiser for Every Mother Counts, which is Christie’s non profit that is working to reduce maternal mortality.
And we It was so interesting. That was another one where I was like, forget it. This is all we’re doing on the pod forever. Like, this is so interesting. This is why every therapist starts with, tell me about your mother, it’s fascinating. It’s endearing. It’s so complicated.
And it’s this incredible treasure trove
Pam King: mm,
Kelly Corrigan: values and pain and longing.
Pam King: Mm hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: And love, love, love, love, love.
Pam King: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And that is so much of the human experience. And, and I want to call that out because in my world of positive psychology, the pursuit of happiness is so elevated. And, My experience, my research of people living in poverty around the world, even they may be thriving because they’re finding love and meaning and connection, even in the most dire of circumstances, and to hold up these rich lives. that are full of values, can hold the pain, find meaning in that, and celebrate the goodness. I just think that’s so important. We often are looking for life hacks, like what is the simplest way from here to here? And, your work really reflects, it’s the tapestry of life that When we take all the threads, the dark threads, the bright threads, when those are woven together, is when we really get a full picture of a full life.
And, and that’s not easy and it takes time, but it’s really important.
Kelly Corrigan: Well, that really goes to the TED talk, which was, you know, the first part of it was just really under redefining bravery.
and then it got kind of grim and I thought, Oh my God, this is going to be, this is going to be too heavy for people. And it’s almost too heavy for me. And then, then I felt like I should think like, what is the reward of all this?
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: And the reward is a full human experience.
Pam King: Yeah. right. includes all the emotions at full maximum dosage.
Absolutely.
Kelly Corrigan: And that’s a reframe that has been helpful even to me. Like since I wrote it, a couple of things have happened. And Georgia, my oldest, said to me recently, this is a full human experience I was like, you’re right, because I am as scared right now as I have ever been. And that’s part of what I’m here to get, is to know that emotion. And I’m having a deep Interaction with fear right now, and I can check that one off my list.
Pam King: and welcoming emotional vocabulary, but beyond the words and concepts is a spaciousness to hold the fullness of the human experience. There’s a hospitality and sense of home here. talks about her own family experience in the emotional container of home as the close knit space where all the most wonderful elements And drama, and purpose, and meaning can come through.
Kelly Corrigan: the family structure, units, these are the set of dynamics. So I grew up with two older brothers and two parents in a house that my parents owned for 55 years to the day,
bizarrely. They bought it on July 7th, and it sold on July 7th, 2024.
they were the first and only owners of this house. It was this house built in Villanova, Pennsylvania at the end of a cul de sac and it, it just loomed so large in all of our lives. And we were the 168 club because it’s 168 Wooded Lane. then my dad died in 2015. So now the, the, the whole dynamic is different because he’s, as my mom said, your father’s the glitter, but I’m the glue.
It takes both, Kelly. And so he was the glitter, like, you know, all three of us wanted to be around my dad as much as we could. uh, The gravitational pull was so strong and then he died. And so then it changes into a new thing. And then our children are getting older and things are happening in each of our maid families.
And, you know, my one brother moved to Florida and so, you know, things are getting stretched out. I’d already been in California for decades. And now my mom died. And so now it’s just these three adult kids that are like getting close to 60
and you just wonder like, what will happen to us? Like will it hold?
And at the same time that you’re wondering about that, you’re looking at your maid family and thinking, I only have these two kids. I wanted to have four. I got cancer. They took my ovaries and not that I necessarily would have been able to have number three and number four, but that was what I went into the whole enterprise dreaming of was a big family with lots of.
In laws and babies. And what I got was just these little tiny family of four. And so at the same time that you’re wondering like, what, how will we relate now? How, what, what is the one 68 club without my parents and without the actual house that’s sold? Then you’re looking at your maid family and thinking, are we going to hold, is this thing that the most important thing I ever built?
Is it durable? Well, Is it a place where people are bringing each other comfort and perspective?
Pam King: mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: safest place any one of us could ever be?
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: is it a place of tension? Like it’s, it’s kind of incredible to think from a parent’s perspective that I think most parents would say
the biggest project they’ve ever undertaken was to try to build a family. family that has like an ethos and a culture and. These many points of connection, a family that’s durable and a place of comfort. And you would know better than I that when people come to therapy, often the most painful experiences of their lives are at the hands of people inside that tiny https: otter.
ai
Pam King: Mm hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: We get married. Yay. Oh my god. We’re so lucky. We got pregnant. Oh my god. We got a healthy kid Oh my god, we got pregnant again. Oh my god. We got another one. And this is what we’re doing This is Edward Lichte like this is what we’re doing, baby We are gonna make a family and it’s like I hope it hope it works.
I hope they stick together I hope they love each other. I hope that they or at a minimum that it’s kind of neutral But they don’t like cause each other pain. I mean look at this thing. I made causes them pain
Pam King: Yes,
Kelly Corrigan: That’s
like insanely off target. I really would have missed the target.
So that’s what I was thinking about when I was thinking about fear.
Pam King: That’s really very real to me. My oldest just turned 21 and I have two younger than him. And it is a precarious time of life. Our second is launching to college next year
as a freshman. And,you just offered this powerful image of this 55 year old family home.
What a tenure in a physical space,
a place to return to for your family, for your siblings, for your own children. that’s gone.
Kelly Corrigan: You need to make all new patterns. And the people are gone. I mean, it’s not this, it’s three people is not the same as five people and three people of the same generation isn’t the same as five people of two different generations, much less 20 people of three different generations.
Pam King: And then you shared this exquisite description of the emotional container of home, of being a safe, close knit space.
Kelly, you, you are amazing with emotions like to listen to you read you over the years, you have a very expansive emotional vocabulary. And in light of this conversation around our growing kids. Noting that the physical gathering, the physical container or the actual brick and mortar home is perhaps less relevant, especially as our kids are moving.
How do you create that emotional home or the emotional container for your kids?
Kelly Corrigan: More questions, fewer statements.
when I feel it going wrong, which, you know, sometimes you learn the most when you can see that something’s going sideways
and then you do a little postmortem in your mind. when I see it going wrong, it’s because Edward’s advising them
or I’m advising them.
I’m really like taking center stage and I’m laying out some big idea that I really want them to internalize.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: I think the trick is to go all the way back to the very beginning of this conversation about what makes people able to be curious in the world is that they feel That they’ve been heard at some basic level.
And so they’re not urgently trying to be heard anymore
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: is then if you backwards design that for your kids, it means you better be hearing them.
So to the extent that, that I can send my children out into the adult world,
feeling heard and known and seen by me
means I’ll have more energy for everybody else.
And that’s the flywheel is I, all I say to them all the time is just ask. Ask questions.
Tell me more. What else? Go on. And then when they’re out there, I say, just ask questions. Nobody’s listening. It’s like a whole world of talkers, like 98 percent of the world is just talking.
Nobody’s listening. So just be the person who listens. It’s like the lowest bar and it never fails. Just ask like five questions. Ask the question, then ask the next question, then ask the next question. In the job interview, when you’re meeting with your manager on the first date, when you meet your roommate.
When you’re getting to know your sorority sisters, just ask questions all day long. It will work everywhere, every time, but they only can do that if they feel like they had a turn where someone was asking them questions. And so maybe that’s the piece that I can provide that will enable them to get over themselves and take an interest in who’s in front of them.
And that’s the life giving Like, super generative space to be in. It’s not telling your same dumb stories over and over again, but finding out who’s in front of you.
Pam King: mm hmm, absolutely. Well I want to say thank you because last night my 16 year old had a devastating text interaction with a friend, and I wanted to problem solve. That’s my immediate go to. And having you on my mind, having your book by my bedside, having read it, I just took a deep breath and was like, tell me more. And I just wanna say thank you for equipping me, , to create that space, And I think with our kids, we so wanna help and we think we need to be proactive and problem solve and just be able to create space for them to unfold. Unwind, fall apart is so important.
Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: a corrective to misunderstanding.
Pam King: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Corrigan: Because it’s really the most arrogant thing that happens between people is I give you like one sentence and you’re like, yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And it’s like, no you don’t. I haven’t even told you yet. I’m just like warming up. I, that’s like the first of 18 sentences I need to tell you before you can give me advice. So sometimes, I’ve done this new thing. I’ve give this to everyone who’s in relationship and sometimes I’ll say to Edward, I have a work problem and I want to tell you about it and I want you to ask me five questions that might help me figure out what to do next. I do not want you to To like pop off after I give you like two pieces of information out of twenty that you would actually need to give me like Really sound advice with your big advice because it’s humiliating.
It makes it seem like either I’m boring you or this problem is so simple Why didn’t you see this just do this and that’s how our kids feel is it’s like we I told you one thing I didn’t tell you that Emily and Lucy were over there with Grace and then this happened and then we’ll also last year with lacrosse and Like there’s a lot of context that we would need to even be giving valuable advice.
So embrace intellectual humility and just assume that you do not have any relevant information to give them and that your only work is to keep saying, tell me more, what else go on? And they’ll talk their way into a solution.,
Pam King: Related to the sense of the mundane, boring, and ordinary, Kelly shared one of her daily practices and habits that helps to center her emotionally, intellectually, and existentially
with a simple and slow pause.
of washing the dishes. Thanks.
Pam King: But she’s actually not the first.
Monks and spiritual seekers going back to ancient Christian monastics in the desert, to Brother Lawrence’s spiritual classic, The Practice of the Presence of God, to contemporary Buddhist monasteries. They have all viewed even the most simple work, chores, and tasks as one of the most effective spiritual practices to stay attuned and connected to our vocation, to fight against despair and depression, and to live a life of constant prayer.
Kelly Corrigan: This is so pedestrian, but I find it really works for me. is when I’m stuck interpersonally or professionally, I go wash the dishes with this lavender soap. And I don’t put them in the dishwasher, I wash them by hand. And there’s something about the water, the warm water, like on my hands and wrists that I think is, might be doing something physically.
I think there’s the smell of lavender, which is known to be calming. I think there’s the tiny sense of progress that you’re making where you’re taking something messy and making it better. I think there’s, the separation from your phone that’s required to work with water and soap that’s helpful.
And I think that it is, uh, just an ounce of distraction such that your subconscious might be set free to work on the problem in a more intuitive way. And I, I find I really linger and my husband, I didn’t realize I was doing it consciously, but my husband said. You could just put those in the dishwasher.
I read that it’s like better for the environment to wash your dishes in the dishwasher than in the sink. And I said, Oh, that’s not like exactly what I’m doing. I’m not actually washing the dishes. I’m calming down. I’m like, it’s like chop wood carry water for me. It’s like a simple act of household progress that now I have imbued with this, with this and I always like straighten my spine when I’m doing it.
Like I’ll feel myself hunching at terrible posture and then I’ll realize like, Oh, we’re here at the sink and we’re doing the thing with the lavender and the warm water and a little bit of progress. And then I’ll just straighten out my spine, which I’ve become way more aware of since collaborating with Christy Turlington, because I must say she has outstanding posture.
Out.
standing. she is so she is so Swan like. And so anyway, and, and then I, I open up my spine and I open up my chest. And so it’s a little bit of like physiological adjustment. And then it’s also this intellectual pause. And it’s also a big emotional pause. So like, do your dishes slowly with a, with a scent that you like.
It’s like aromatherapy. It’s
Pam King: massage.
Kelly Corrigan: like, I love afterwards when my fingernails are all clean and my fingernails are soft didn’t. Then I put on my, lavender lotion afterwards and it’s just like a tiny reset. It takes like five minutes.
Pam King: It’s amazing. I can’t wait to go home and do the dishes.
Kelly Corrigan: know everybody’s dishes are going to be clean tonight. Kelly, I love how you wrap up your show with the
Pam King: takeaways. And any chance you and I could work out some live takeaways from this conversation. I just love how you do that.
Kelly Corrigan: Okay. So let me, let me say that we, at the end of every long episode, we do, we do three episodes a week on Kelly Corrigan wonders, but on Tuesdays it’s a long one cause it goes on some NPR stations. So it has to be an hour. And at the end of it, we do these takeaways and then every Wednesday we send those takeaways to our listeners.
So if you want them. Just go to hello at kelly Corrigan dot com and we’ll send them to you.
here’s one that I think we touched on today, which is,wonder is cheap and accessible and effective. It’s like free,
it’s free and it’s just littered everywhere. Like I, I mean my feed, my social media feed is all wonder.
So it’s like the ballerina doing her thing and then it’s some whale like eating 900 fish in the one gulp And then it’s this beautiful bird and it’s nest like feeding a worm to a baby and you know, then it’s this Incredible sculpture and then it’s a piece of architecture that I’ve never seen before and so There’s just the world is dripping with wonder And you’d be a fool not to use it to your advantage.
Pam King: Absolutely. A takeaway I have is, you then embody that wonder into listening. Because you’re so filled up, you have that space to wonder about people. And you really are able to Be in awe of these little things in them, and I so appreciate the power of listening and
Kelly Corrigan: so that we can, more of us can be in that, in the interviewer space rather than waiting to be interviewed.
Um, Number three is,part of the reason why Christy Turlington is so beautiful is her posture. So sit up straight. That is my third takeaway for everyone listening today.
Pam King: Love this a fourth takeaway is 500 questions Before you marry someone and commit your life to them is not a bad idea.
Kelly Corrigan: hmm, person who can accompany you in asking and answering those questions.
yeah, that’s good. My fifth is junk in, junk out. Like be careful what you put in your head. Your head is a sacred space. Do not put junk in there. Don’t listen to junk. Don’t watch junk. Don’t read junk. Like it’s sacred. Think of it as like a cathedral. You wouldn’t take like a shitty meatball sub and eat it in the backseat of a cathedral.
You know what I mean?
Pam King: Yeah.
Kelly Corrigan: Like, it’s a, it’s a special place.
Pam King: Yeah. Yup. makes number five.
Kelly Corrigan: That makes number five. You’re up, girl.
Pam King: Okay, so number six, An image that came to mind while we were talking about the fullness of life is actually a biblical image, and that would be something I would think of, is the cup of life. Jesus talks about the cup of life being full of joys and sorrows.
And just as we describe that tapestry of the dark threads and the bright threads, The fullness of life involves this full cup that is full of joys and sorrows. And one of my favorite writers, Henry Nowen, reminds his readers that we don’t drink alone and that we can hold that cup of life. We lift it and toast it with others.
And thanks for lifting the cup of life with me today and holding the joys and sorrows and fullness of life together.
Kelly Corrigan: My pleasure. It was really a joy.
So that gives me number seven. Am I on number
Pam King: hmm. Thank you.
Kelly Corrigan: It only takes one person. It only takes one person to correct for a lot of absence. Doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect. It doesn’t mean it’s going to wipe away every ounce of pain, but one person investing can compensate for a lot that’s been missing.
Pam King: Yeah, I’m going to leave this conversation going. Who do I need to be that person
Kelly Corrigan: Yes, be the person. Start handing out big fat bucks.
Pam King: got a lot of those as a professor. Or maybe this smaller book. This
Kelly Corrigan: That’s right, Tell Me More is
not a bad one.
Pam King: It’s a beauty. I love it. Kelly, anything you want to say or that we can promote or offer
Kelly Corrigan: we work really hard on our podcast, and so I would love for people to come over and give it a listen.
And it’s called Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
Pam King: And it’s beautiful. We will direct people there.
Kelly Corrigan: Right on, people.
Pam King: Kelly Corrigan is inviting us to a life of wonder and human connection. This capacity to be a curious student of the world is in all of us.
And we can find the bravery inside of us through vulnerable conversations a constant openness to surprise and a willingness to wonder
With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our senior director and producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our social media graphic designer. Evan Rosa is our consulting producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Kelly Corrian
Kelly Corrigan is a journalist of wonder. Through hundreds and hundreds of conversations with some of the world’s most interesting people, she approaches both timeless questions and contemporary problems … through focused and generous listening, an attitude of awe, and a joyful expectation to be surprised and delighted, even in life’s most challenging and painful circumstances. She’s the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs: "Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, and Lift." Her most recent offering is a children’s book, Hello World, which celebrates the people in our lives and explores the meaningful connections that come from asking each other questions. Her podcast, "Kelly Corrigan Wonders", is a library of conversational wisdom ranging from current events, to arts and entertainment, to psychology and philosophy, and an approach to spirituality and transcendence through the gift of everyday, ordinary life. A master of conversational hospitality, downright funny storytelling, and journalistic listening, she’s also the PBS television host of "Tell Me More", and recently spoke on Bravery at the 40th annual TED Conference. You can find her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you listen to podcasts and her full library of resources at kellycorrigan.com.
Episode Summary
In our world of urgency, certitudes, and immediate access to a flood of information, could it be that a humble curiosity, inspired awe, and delightful wonder might give us the strength to heal and thrive?
Using an expansive emotional vocabulary matched with wit and care, TV host, podcaster, and author Kelly Corrigan is inviting the world to relational vulnerability, compassionate curiosity, and stalwart bravery to face our biggest problems through listening and loving wonder.
In this conversation with Kelly Corrigan, we discuss:
– Her approach to having conversations that feel transformative—the kind that unlock and open us up
– How wonder grounds her spirituality and personal vocation
– The profound lessons she learned from her mother and father, and how each showed up for her when she was at her lowest
– How to learn wisdom and leadership through coaching and mentoring
– How to build the emotional container of home for a family
– What it means to be brave in our world today
– And how to communicate love through the simple act of listening through three simple invitations: “Tell me more!, What else?, and Go on.”
About Kelly Corrigan
Kelly Corrigan is a journalist of wonder. Through hundreds and hundreds of conversations with some of the world’s most interesting people, she approaches both timeless questions and contemporary problems … through focused and generous listening, an attitude of awe, and a joyful expectation to be surprised and delighted, even in life’s most challenging and painful circumstances.
She’s the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs: Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, and Lift. Her most recent offering is a children’s book, Hello World, which celebrates the people in our lives and explores the meaningful connections that come from asking each other questions.
Her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, is a library of conversational wisdom ranging from current events, to arts and entertainment, to psychology and philosophy, and an approach to spirituality and transcendence through the gift of everyday, ordinary life.
A master of conversational hospitality, downright funny storytelling, and journalistic listening, she’s also the PBS television host of Tell Me More, and recently spoke on Bravery at the 40th annual TED Conference.
You can find her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you listen to podcasts and her full library of resources at kellycorrigan.com.
Show Notes
Books and Media by Kelly Corrigan
- Listen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders
- Visit KellyCorrigan.com
- Watch Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan (PBS)
- Read Kelly’s books, such as Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, Hello World!, and Lift
- Kelly Corrigan’s storytelling and journalism
- Kelly’s interviews with famous figures like Bono, Bryan Stevenson, David Byrne, and Melinda Gates.
- Celebrities are just people.
- “What happens almost instantly… is that they become people.”
- “You are a never-to-be-repeated miracle.”
- Core questions to know a person: ”Who raised you, and where, and what happened that you still remember vividly.”
- Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary
- ”All the quotidian facts of their life that make us equals in some weird way, it puts you at ease.”
- “There's this story about how being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one of billions And holding in the other pocket that you are a never to be repeated miracle. And that adulthood is knowing when to pull out which piece of paper.”
- Childhood and parental influence reveal deep insights into a person’s adult self.
- Vivid childhood memories help shape storytelling and personal understanding.
- “A strong, detailed memory of an experience is an indicator that there’s a lot there for you.”
- Famous people also deal with everyday concerns, which makes them relatable.
- “They’re just looking for a sandwich at lunchtime.”
- Perspective shifts with age, realizing that many things once thought important aren’t.
- “There’s 8 billion people here. It doesn’t matter what I say and do.”
- Embracing the paradox of being both insignificant and uniquely valuable.
- “Being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust… and in the other pocket that you are a never-to-be-repeated miracle.”
- Kelly’s father, George Corrigan, was an enthusiastic listener and deeply engaging with others.
- “The thing you need to know about me is I’m George Corrigan’s daughter.”
- Her father’s ability to find something lovable in everyone influenced her deeply.
- “He wasn’t looking for people just like him… he could become engaged in something he knew nothing about.”
- Her mother, Mary Corrigan, was structured, disciplined, and devoted to family. “She went to church every single day.”
- Passed away six weeks before the interview, leaving a strong legacy.
- ”I felt like I had been loved and people cared about me. Not excessively, not obsessively, but you know, like I was safe in the world.”
- Getting the love you need
- Recognizing bravery in everyday family life and personal struggles.
- Nick Hornby’s experience of receiving a book—that filled him with a sense of pride and recognition
- Coaching JV Lacrosse in Piedmont, CA—and seeing the impact of “seeing people” and offering loving recognition—the power of making young girls feel seen
- Parents handling difficult conversations with children require immense courage.
- “There’s so much happening inside every house that’s deeply brave and very complex.”
- Kelly Corrigan’s spiritual upbringing—raised Catholic and participated in church traditions but felt distanced from the institution because of patriarchy and abuse scandals
- “The dominant feeling I had in Catholicism was that there’s this superstructure of men who tell you if you’re good or bad.”
- Disillusionment with the Catholic Church following abuse scandals.
- “My religion is wonder.”
- Finds spiritual connection through nature, puzzles, painting, and observing small details.
- “I mean, I can really go crazy on a leaf.”
- Painting as a practice of attention: “ it slows you way down and you have to focus on something so minute.”
- How to deal with emotional flooding through physical practices like walking
- Kelly Corrigan on Thriving—deeply connected to being in service to others.
- “I probably thrive best when I’m in service to something.”
- “And then they say, ‘Okay, Kelly, we're ready. Action.’ And then it's just me and this other person and the fullness of our attention to one another is thrilling by virtue of the fact that it's so damn rare. And sometimes when I'm finished, I'm like, there's almost like a romance to it. You know, like where I'm like, I, I love you. I love the experience that we just had.”
- Clarity and purpose often come in caregiving moments, like her parents’ passing.
- “90 minutes of pure connection.”
- Pam King’s experience of her daughter’s hospitalization after a rare infection
- Kelly describes her experience of cancer in her thirties.
- Be mindful of what you consume—both media and information.
- “Junk in, junk out.”
- Engage in hobbies that disconnect from screens, such as painting and cooking.
- “Read poetry. Read it out loud.”
- You should be really careful what you let in your head.
- “If you're small in the frame, you're just going to move more freely. And if you're big in the frame, if you're the most important thing in your whole life, God help you.”
- Politics and voting or acting against your own self-interests
- Kelly Corrigan’s conversation with April Lawson on abortion
- Redefining bravery
- “And the reward is a full human experience.”
- The meaning of family
- The experience of selling her childhood home after 55 years and how that raised questions about the meaning of family and connection—“We bought it on July 7, 1969, and it sold on July 7, 2024.”
- “Will it hold? … Is it durable? … A place of comfort?”
- “I think most parents would say the biggest project they've ever undertaken was to try to build a family.”
- “Is this thing that was the most important thing I ever built durable?”
- The emotional container of home
- An expansive emotional vocabulary
- “More questions, fewer statements.”
- Encouraging curiosity in her children as a lifelong tool
- “Ask questions. Tell me more. What else? Go on.”
- “Just ask questions. Nobody’s listening. So just be the person who listens. It’s like the lowest bar.”
- Enabling someone to get over themselves
- Creating space for another person’s life, story, and emotions to unfold
- “So embrace intellectual humility and just assume that you do not have any relevant information to give them and that your only work is to keep saying, tell me more, what else go on? And they'll talk their way into a solution.”
- “And so it's a little bit of like physiological adjustment. And then it's also this intellectual pause. And it's also a big emotional pause. So like, do your dishes slowly with a scent that you like. … It’s like a tiny reset.”
- Live takeaways from Pam and Kelly
- “Wonder is cheap and accessible and effective. It’s like, free!”
- Embody wonder into the power of listening.
- “Part of the reason why Christy Turlington is so beautiful is her posture. So sit up straight.”
- “500 questions before you marry someone and commit your life to them is not a bad idea.”
- “Junk in, junk out. Like be careful what you put in your head. Your head is a sacred space. Do not put junk in there. Don't listen to junk. Don't watch junk. Don't read junk. Like, it's sacred. Think of it as like a cathedral. You wouldn't take like a shitty meatball sub and eat it in the backseat of a cathedral. You know what I mean?”
- “ The fullness of life involves this full cup that is full of joys and sorrows.”
- “ It only takes one person. It only takes one person to correct for a lot of absence. Doesn't mean it's going to be perfect. It doesn't mean it's going to wipe away every ounce of pain, but one person investing can compensate for a lot that's been missing.”
- Deep interviews as rare opportunities for pure connection
- “It’s weirdly unusual to have a full hour of pure connection.”
- Facing fear and hardship as part of the full human experience
- “A full human experience includes all the emotions at full maximum dosage.”
- Finding purpose in slowing down and being intentional with habits
- “Evaluate your diet—not just food, but content, relationships, and daily habits.”
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
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