Grief Begins With Love With Julia Samuel

Psychotherapist and bestselling author Julia Samuel invites us into a profound exploration of the twin forces of love and loss. With warmth and wisdom, she examines how grief reshapes us, how love anchors us, and how the interplay between the two defines the human experience. In a culture that often avoids pain and over-romanticizes connection, she offers a more honest, more tender path: one that honors vulnerability, embraces emotional truth, and helps us find meaning in both sorrow and joy. For more from Julia Samuel go to https://www.juliasamuel.co.uk/ Her books are Grief Works, This Too Shall Pass, and Every Family Has a Story. Julia’s Sub Stack Community is her personal space for meditations, weekly reflections, resources and videos on mental health and emotional well-being, including exclusive community webinars for paid subscribers: https://juliasamuel.substack.com/ Her podcast,Therapy Works, is available at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/therapy-works/id1646616622 and her instagram is @juliasamuelmbe. This panel was recorded at Esther Perel’s Annual Sessions Live event, entitled Mating in the Metacrisis: Connection, Polarization, and Eroticism in a World on Edge. For more information on the event and how you can watch it now, please go to www.estherperel.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Esther Perel?

  This week, I want to bring something different to you. We talk about grief in the sessions with couples. We talk about grief and aliveness in the sessions with the individuals in the Esther Callings. But I wanted to actually have a conversation about grief itself, about this most complex emotion that can regulate an entire relationship, especially when it is acute or completely repressed. And I thought about it because I was hosting a clinical conference, actually, called Sessions Live on mating in the metacrisis.

• 0:44Esther Perel?

  So in this conference, I wanted to go back to the origins of my thinking about the erotic and something that is not always so obvious is that so much of my work on eroticism actually mines itself in my work on grief and loss and trauma. And to have even a more developed thinking and approach to the subject of grief, I wanted to invite one of the people that I've learned from the most in this area, and that's Julia Samuel, who is a British psychologist, who has written a seminal work, actually, called "Grief Works", in which she really developed an entire approach of dealing with grief,

• 1:27Esther Perel?

  acknowledging the grief, expressing the grief, putting the grief aside, if possible at all, to re-engage with life, to experience this yin yang between loss and new birth or new experiences. So you'll hear me present some of the origins of my thinking in this conference and then I invite Julia Samuel to really bring in that complementary piece. It's wanting to know that we need to be able to reconnect with creativity, with playfulness, with imagination, the essential ingredients of the erotic that help us stay connected to life. But what Julia is highlighting is that if you don't grieve,

• 2:11Esther Perel?

  you actually cut the lifeline to anything that will then enable you to feel alive again.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I'm Josh Muccio, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't. Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands, deep tech that changes the weather.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  We've got hardware that helps blind people see, and dairy?

• 3:32Speaker 04

  I never imagined my life journey would be milk.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine.

• 3:57Esther Perel?

  I define the erotic way beyond a repertoire of sexual technique, or sexual urges, or toys and accoutrements. I look at eroticism as the qualities of vitality and vibrancy that make us feel alive.

• 4:16Esther Perel?

  And I came to thinking about the importance of the erotic when I was working on "Mating in Captivity", which is about 20 years ago. Next year is the 20th anniversary. And it was a very specific moment. I was talking with my husband, Jack Sol, who at the time had co-founded a center for treatment for victims of torture and political violence. And I said to him, "How do you know when people who have suffered like that are once again going back to living, enter the world again?" And we started talking about three aspects.

• 5:00Esther Perel?

  You know that you are getting back into living when you are once again able to take risks. Because if you take risks, it means that you're not trapped in a constant state of contraction and vigilance. Risks is an active engagement with the unknown.

• 5:21Esther Perel?

  And you know that you are once again leaping into the world when you are able to play again. Because play is a state of unselfconsciousness and freedom.

• 5:36Esther Perel?

  And you know that you are entering in the world again when you are able to be creative. Because creativity starts from a place of safety, but then projects you into a place of mystery.

• 5:53Esther Perel?

  And I thought, "This actually fits my story very well." My parents, maybe many of you may have heard me talk about them, but they are at the root of a lot of the work that I do, where both of them, the sole survivors of their entire family that was decimated in the Holocaust, the Jewish Holocaust. They both had spent five years working in slave labor camps and concentration camps, and then at one point met on the Day of Liberation, walking on the street together. And when they came out of the world, they were in their early twenties. But something happened

• 6:37Esther Perel?

  which made them come out with a fierce determination, not just to survive, but to live.

• 6:45Esther Perel?

  And so they carried the weight of unspeakable loss, but they clung to joy and beauty and sensuality, and especially humor, dark humor, I have to add, as if their lives depended on it. Because I spent years asking to them, "How did you wake up, day after day? What made you want to continue living?" It was kind of, you know, a breakfast conversation in my house.

• 7:14Esther Perel?

  But it also meant that there were stories of, amazing stories of resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity. You know, when you live with it, it's not, you don't think of it as weird. It's only when you go to your friends' houses that you realize this is not everybody else's breakfast conversation. You know, in my community, I often noticed that there were two groups. It was in Antwerp, in Belgium. And I often thought that there was those who did not die. The whole community was a community of Jewish Holocaust survivors. So you could really do a kind of an ethnographic study.

• 7:56Esther Perel?

  Those who did not die and those who came back to life. I think you can apply this to all trauma for every group on this planet. This is, it is my origin story, but it is not at all exclusive to my story. And those who did not die were people who often lived very tethered to the ground. They couldn't really trust. The world was a dangerous place. God forbid you would be playing, because if you're playing, you're not being vigilant, you're not on guard, you're not watchful, so you don't. And you couldn't take any risks, and therefore even every couch was covered in plastic.

• 8:35Esther Perel?

  And those who came back to life had kind of understood erotic as an antidote to death. And this is the conversation in the trauma field at this moment as well. It's the place, you know, you need both. You need to deal with the trauma, but you need to actively engage with life. If you think that you're going to deal with trauma and at the end you'll be ready to start engaging with life again, you don't really understand erotic. That's what I learned from them. It's like these people fell in love in the camps, wrote love stories, had sex. All of that continued because it was a way to know that they were still sovereign and human.

• 9:20Esther Perel?

  And I have to say that in my house, it was taken to such an extreme that sadness was basically reserved for commemorations and for religious rituals. I mean, it was very clearly understood that the vulnerable die. So you have to be strong. And outside of the religious rituals and the commemorations, it was almost forbidden, I have to say, to be sad, smothered by this insistence on strength, on rebuilding, on celebrating and on moving forward. I think my parents were probably terrified

• 10:02Esther Perel?

  that if they allowed themselves to experience the beginning of their sadness, they would be drowning in a puddle of so much pain that they could never lift themselves back up. I don't think this is unique to them either. So I definitely wanted the permission to feel the full spectrum of emotion and to hold the joy and the grief and the desire and the despair. And that's when I began to study eroticism.

• 10:29Esther Perel?

  And so if we contextualize eroticism for today, from the pandemic to climate crisis to crimes against humanity, to severe burnout and more, I think it's fair to say that many of us are living in a state of collective trauma.

• 10:46Esther Perel?

  And our impulse may be to shut down or to numb ourselves with substances, to disconnect, to sleep forever, to wallow in 24-hour news cycles, or stuff every free moment with social media to avoid any difficult thoughts or feelings. But today, I will invite you to try something different and in a way to embrace your erotic self. And you may think that talking about eroticism at this moment is hubris, but I tell you, it is actually essential.

• 11:26Esther Perel?

  Eroticism, as the Mexican essayist Octavio Paz tells us, reveals us to another world inside this world. The senses become servants to our imagination, letting us see the invisible and hear the inaudible.

• 11:45Esther Perel?

  Eroticism is an elixir of vibrancy, curiosity and spontaneity that makes us feel alive. So when people say, "I'm feeling guilty, I feel like it's almost awkward that I feel good", don't. It's actually essential, because that's what will give you the energy to address the other things. It's the counterforce of deadness, the radiance that reminds us that despite any darkness that we may endure, we are here on this planet right now. And at all times, we are on the edge of all that is possible, straddling hope and anxiety.

• 12:27Esther Perel?

  Eroticism isn't just the life force that makes sex great. Eroticism is what makes life itself worth living.

• 12:38Esther Perel?

  And when times are good, eroticism is what converts the mundane into magic. And when times are tough, eroticism is what inspires us to survive despite all odds. It's why we make art and music, but it's also what makes us go into nature when we are in pain. Eroticism is... It's the orchestras in the concentration camps. It's the choirs in the cotton fields. It's the dark humour that is shared by refugees all over the globe. It's the blues. It's both the letters of longing and the poetry of heartbreak. It's the playlist that you make for a friend

• 13:22Esther Perel?

  that's going through unimaginable loss. It's every pandemic baby that is conceived in the height of prolonged uncertainty, isolation and grief. And it is the spirit that creates new life when death is ever-present. Eroticism is having faith that the world will exist for our grandchildren and finding real ways to contribute to that outcome, even as apocalyptic scenarios seem to play out around us. So, do not think of eroticism as a hedonistic distraction from the state of the world. It is the life force that keeps us connected to our humanity,

• 14:07Esther Perel?

  hope and pleasure, especially when we are in pain. It confirms I exist. I am alive. I have dignity. I have a family. I have a name. Someone knows me. I have a capacity to create, to entertain, to help and to connect with others. And this too is the reality of our world.

• 14:51Esther Perel?

  We have to take a brief break. Stay with us.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs. TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  I'm Josh Mucio, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about like middleware AI wrappers.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands. We're building Eight Sleep for daytime. Hardware that helps blind people see. They kept asking for middle finger. Next thing we knew, we had like 10 students running around flipping each other off. We've got deep tech to change the weather.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand.

• 16:22Speaker 06

  What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else? Like one day, we're just like, screw Arizona.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  And dairy?

• 16:31Speaker 04

  I never imagined my life journey would be milk.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine.

• 16:43Speaker 07

  Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo.com/vox. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash vox.

• 17:33Esther Perel?

  So I want to introduce our next speaker,

• 17:38Esther Perel?

  Julia Samuel. Her talk is entitled "Eros and Thanatos: Love, Grief, and the Forces That Shape Us."

• 17:49Esther Perel?

  We met at a conference that I did with Alain de Botton about eight, nine years back in London, and it was instant. She's a leading UK psychotherapist, and the primary book that Julia is known for is Grief Works, followed by This Too Shall Pass. And her latest book, that I think is fantastic, is that every family has a story.

• 18:15Esther Perel?

  She has a podcast, Therapy Works. Please help me welcome Julia Samuel.

• 18:27Speaker 08

  Morning, everyone. What a privilege and joy to be here. And thank you so much, Esther. You are also quite a tough act to follow, I have to say.

• 18:40Speaker 08

  So, as Esther said, I've been a psychotherapist specializing in grief for thirty-five years. And as Esther illustrated today, we all carry the stories that led us to become the therapists that we are today. And my story was that, as a child, I was surrounded by these black and white photographs.

• 19:09Speaker 08

  I didn't know who these people were until I was a teenager, where I learned that my grandfather had died of cancer, that my mother's mother had died of liver disease, that the man here was my uncle who was killed in Arnhem in the war, and that the woman here was my aunt Aileen, who died of an asthma attack. My mother's entire family had died by the time she was twenty-five. And my father, his father died of a heart attack on the Queen Mary, and his brother died in a dentist's chair by the time my father was twenty-seven.

• 19:56Speaker 08

  But in such significant losses, so traumatic. But in my family, we didn't talk about them, not a word. And if we did talk about them, they were minimized. There's a classic from my mother, who was talking about one of her few beloved relations, Martin, who had died. And she rang me and she said, "Darling, I planted Martin today."

• 20:33Speaker 08

  And that was her code that she's been to his funeral.

• 20:39Speaker 08

  So, as you can imagine, I inherited the emotional work my parents actually couldn't do. It wasn't, they didn't have that capacity. And understanding what I'd inherited, how it had shaped me, has taken many years and it's an ongoing process. But it is certainly no surprise that professionally I have dedicated my practice to supporting those in grief, thinking about grief, and understanding the grief process.

• 21:16Speaker 08

  So what have I learned?

• 21:20Speaker 08

  Love and loss, life and death. We can't have one without the other. That is the deal. It is the contract we are all born into. And yet, as a culture, we try to fix death, as if it's a problem to solve, rather than a reality to face. Many of us speak of it in the abstract, like it happens to people over there who pass away or get lost. And we very rarely confront our own personal reality,

• 22:06Speaker 08

  that we will die, or think about our own extinction. Saying that word and looking at your faces, I feel like I'm the party pooper, like saying the thing that no one wants to hear. But hear me out.

• 22:27Speaker 08

  We tend to think that grief begins with death.

• 22:35Speaker 08

  But really, grief begins the moment we sense something precious slipping away. Grief begins with love.

• 22:49Speaker 08

  When a person, a pet, a dream, a way of life is ending, knowing this won't last is where grief takes root.

• 23:07Speaker 08

  And here Thanatos and Eros come into view. Two forces inextricably linked. Eros, the god of love. Thanatos, the Greek spirit of death. In Freud's terms, the life instinct and the death instinct.

• 23:30Speaker 08

  And the two are totally two sides of the same coin.

• 23:37Speaker 08

  Thanatos enters the moment something ends.

• 23:44Speaker 08

  Sometimes he slips in quietly and closes the door. Sometimes he storms in and breaks everything that has come before. Sometimes he is welcome, a relief from the suffering. Thanatos is in our therapy rooms and in ourselves. He's in the person that cannot cry. He's the one that sabotages their own joy. He's not just Freud's death drive. He's every instinct we have to withdraw from hope, from change, and from the unknown.

• 24:29Speaker 08

  It's when we stick to the familiar pain, having that attachment to suffering, and not let it change us, that we get locked in it. I remember, very recently, I had a client who told me, "I've been running from the death of my parents for seven years", and then burst into tears, because it was a relief. She realised that, in running from it, she was locked in it. Because we all have this emotional bandwidth. We have pain one end, and joy the other end. When we block the pain, we incrementally block the joy.

• 25:11Speaker 08

  And then we live in this very narrow bandwidth, scrolling on our texts, numbing. But we can't access the joy, because we have blocked the pain. Because pain is crucially a portal. Paradoxically, it is by allowing ourselves to feel the pain that we heal, not blocking it. Pain is the agent of change. If you only take one thing from what I'm saying, I want you to take that. To allow our pain through our systems,

• 25:55Speaker 08

  grief is embodied. And sometimes it is unbearable, and it takes longer than we want. But our task is not to banish Thanatos, for when we are supported to face the reality as it is, and allow the pain, we may, over time, find our way back to Eros. At the heart of the paradox, where Thanatos is, Eros is nearby.

• 26:34Speaker 08

  Eros, como Esther habló tan poderosamente, la fuerza de la vida, el deseo, la conexión y el ser. Porque cuando el dolor se deshace, podemos encontrarnos instintivamente preguntándonos: ¿Qué se va a nacer? Cuando deshacemos el dolor, podemos audir que nos invitamos a encontrar nuevas formas de amar, de conectarse, de construir y de imaginar. Eros nos conecta con las partes que dicen:

• 27:15Speaker 08

  "Quiero vivir, quiero importar, quiero amar". Thanatos y Eros trabajan juntos en paralelismo, no en oposición. No podemos hacer esto solo. Cuando algo o alguien significativo muere, solo a través del amor de los demás podemos sobrevivir.

• 27:48Esther Perel?

  Todavía hay mucho por hablar. Necesitamos tomar una breve pausa, así que permanezca con nosotros.

• 28:00Speaker 09

  ¿Cuándo es el final del día y tú estás sentado en la silla mirando tu reloj de noche? No estás buscando "Homa de trabajo", el película. Estás buscando confort, emoción o algo en medio. Ya sea que estés deseando algo familiar o en la mentalidad de descubrir algo nuevo, Amazon Prime tiene lo que necesitas, desde la pantalla hasta la puerta. Porque no se trata solo de géneros o contenido infinito. Se trata de encontrar la cosa que se encaja con la forma en que te sientes, sin importar la mentalidad. Desde el streaming hasta el envío rápido, está en Amazon.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Stonefire Knan is baked in blazing high heat to give you buttery, charred flatbread for any meal.

• 28:38Speaker 10

  I love it with tzatziki and barbecue chicken.

• 28:40Speaker 11

  Stonefire Knan is great when you're lost in the woods with your leg in a bear trap.

• 28:44Speaker 09

  I love making Knan grilled cheese. Is that guy OK?

• 28:48Speaker 11

  I'm in shock by that buttermilk taste.

• 28:50Speaker 10

  Works great for pizza. Can we get him some help?

• 28:54Speaker 11

  You can share Stonefire Knan with your friends, like this friendly Wolverine.

• 28:58Speaker 09

  Doesn't sound friendly.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  From our tradition to yours, Stonefire, together we Knan.

• 29:04Speaker 12

  Say hello to smooth, sugar-like sweetness with Truvia Alulose Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. This blend delivers balanced sweetness that minimizes aftertaste with zero calories per serving. Designed to fit everyday moments, Truvia Alulose Blend measures cup for cup like sugar, making it effortless to swap into beverages, baking, and even savory dishes. Find Truvia Alulose Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer.

• 29:46Speaker 08

  So now, turning to you, to ourselves, can you think for just a moment, what are the losses that you have been experiencing?

• 29:57Speaker 08

  I call this new layer of suffering "living losses." These griefs accumulate and shape our psyche. How do we manage when we are saturated? The answer is simple and challenging. We must do our own grieving. We need to do it individually, and we need to do it collectively. If we don't, we become unavailable to ourselves, to our families, to our communities, to our clients, and to the life waiting for us in the future.

• 30:41Speaker 08

  So here is the paradox again. By feeling our pain, we heal. And we resist. And I think the key thing is that needing to numb and resist the discomfort is what holds us in the discomfort. But pain is the messenger. It tells us something has changed, and we must change too. Grief is not just a feeling. Grief is a form of learning. We are wired to adapt. We are wired to change.

• 31:25Speaker 08

  Our mind is a learning machine. If we let it take in the data, grief updates our map. It tells us the world has altered. Our life before is gone, and we must change too. Mental health is living in the reality as it is, not as we wish it to be, not as it was. Over time, the avoidance we do to not feel the pain does us harm individually. It does harm to our families transgenerationally,

• 32:10Speaker 08

  and I think really globally and collectively. So how do we grieve? The model that I find most helpful is the dual process. It's from Strawberry and Shoot. And what that talks about is it's the movement between loss orientation, that you can think of as Thanatos, and restoration orientation, that you can think of as Eros. And then we oscillate between the two and allow the two. Over time, we incrementally adjust. And it isn't an immersion process. So it's really intentionally going to loss, giving it some time to feel the pain,

• 32:53Speaker 08

  and then intentionally giving ourselves a break from the pain and moving towards being restorative.

• 33:03Speaker 08

  And also to recognize, we don't forget and move on. We don't get over grief. We accommodate it. We build our life around it. And I've developed these eight pillars of strength. And they're not like in the newspapers, like, "These eight things and you're gonna get sorted." These are more like attitudes, habits and beliefs, that when we feel like we've got this black hole that is sucking us into the ground, developing your own toolbox from these pillars of strength can help you process your grief. So I'm gonna say it very quickly. The first one is relationship with the person

• 33:48Speaker 08

  or the life that has died. And the main thing about that is to recognize we have to face the reality of their death, but the love never dies. That the continuing love through bonds to that connection, through memory, stays with us and influences us as we move forward with our life. And our relationship with ourselves. People who grieve, I think, have what I call a shitty committee. You have this horrible, critical voice that says to you, "You're not doing it right. Get over it. Don't make a fuss." Or hates everybody and then now you're a bad person,

• 34:31Speaker 08

  the version of yourself you don't want to be. So being kind to yourself, in that Kristin Neff term of being self-compassionate, is absolutely key. And time, time warps when we're grieving. We have a longing for the past and a fear of the future. I think the Greek term of Kairos time, felt time, rather than chronological time, so Kairos time is what feels right, is the clock we need to be following. And as we've talked about a lot, the mind-body connection and emotional regulation, I put them together.

• 35:12Speaker 08

  We are bodies, beings, and whatever we put into our system affects our system. So what we watch, who we see, whether we move, what we eat, what we drink, all of that will affect our system. And I want you to choose things that soothe you, engage you, help you, not things that agitate you and distress you. But also, within that, remember the embodiment. We are wired to move. When we move our body, we move our mind. When we flex our body, we flex our mind.

• 35:54Speaker 08

  Structure helps, not like a police state, but having a plan, putting time in for loss orientation, for restoration orientation, and having limits. That we have a good no is vital. I say to everybody, "What is your yes worth if you never say no?" And finally, the thing that I think is really helpful is Gendlin's felt sense. We find too many words. The felt sense gets us into the wisdom of our bodies that can speak for us. So my final thought is, if we stay with this work, we grow.

• 36:37Speaker 08

  Not despite the loss, but because of it. The very thing we feared would destroy us is the very thing that heals us. It is a catalyst for gratitude and deeper spiritual connection. Hope reemerges, not just as a feeling, but a direction and a belief that we can make it happen. So how do we heal? We learn that the people and life we love will die. But love does not.

• 37:19Speaker 08

  We grow through loss. We expand capacity to live, to love, and to be fully present. Thank you. Thank you very much.

• 37:50Speaker 13

  Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destri Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristin Muller, and Julianne. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I'm Josh Mucio, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about like middleware AI wrappers.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands. We're building Eight Sleep for daytime. Hardware that helps blind people see. They kept asking for middle finger. Next thing we knew, we had like 10 students running around flipping each other off. We've got deep tech to change the weather.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand.

• 39:48Speaker 06

  What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else? Like one day, we're just like, screw Arizona.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  And dairy?

• 39:58Speaker 04

  I never imagined my life journey would be milk.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine.