The change we need is human change, and it can start with you.

What does it take to stay soft while doing hard things? In this episode, we meet Bärbel Weiligmann, a global nutrition leader whose work touches millions, and whose leadership is grounded in something rarely celebrated at scale: compassion. Not just for others, but also for herself. We follow Bärbel through three defining moments: a quiet connection on a tea estate in Assam, a coffee date shared between grief and joy, and a breakdown after a funding call that ends with three scoops of ice cream and an unexpected act of self-kindness. Along the way, we explore what compassion really asks of us, especially when systems are slow, and we’re expected to keep showing up. In the second half of the episode, Buddhist teacher, author and translator Chandra Easton guides us through a compassion practice, a chance to move from hearing the story to living the feeling. This is a story about presence, permission, and the kind of care that keeps change work going.

What happens when the world asks too much, and you say yes to all of it? In this episode of Emotions of Change, we meet Shomy Hassan Choudhury, a global sanitation activist whose life looks dazzling from the outside: TED talks, White House invitations, Instagram spotlights, photos with royalty. But when political violence erupts back home in Bangladesh, and she finds herself helpless from afar, anxiety begins to wrap around her like a red snake. As she tries to hold it all: work, family, duty, and image, Shomy shares what it costs to keep showing up for others while ignoring your own needs. This is a story about guilt in moments of joy, people-pleasing in the face of burnout, and the slow realization that anxiety isn’t something to fight, but something to listen to. In the second half of the episode, Michelle and our producer Katarina decides to watch Inside Out 2, letting a Pixar movie help unpack what anxiety is really trying to tell us, and what changes when we meet it with compassion instead of control.

What if grief isn’t just about losing someone you love, but also about stepping away from work you once loved? In this episode we sit with Jess, a South African change-maker who, for a time, led an innovative sustainability initiative in her country. Until she realized it was time to let go. Her grief wasn’t just professional. It was ecological, political, and deeply personal - grief for the oceans she once loved, the promise of post-apartheid South Africa, and a role that had shaped her for decades. We’re also joined by philosopher and psychologist Bayo Akomolafe, who helps us explore grief not as something to fix, but something to feel through. He calls it a wild god, one that arrives not to break us, but to make us different.

This episode is for anyone navigating a liminal space, wondering how to let go of what no longer fits and how to stay open to what might come next.