Wildly Unplug

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you deliberately try to get rejected 1,000 times? Six months ago, I started the 1,000 Rejection Challenge to stop letting fear of rejection make decisions for me. I committed to making 10 asks every week—submitting my art and writing, pitching ideas, entering competitions, applying for opportunities, and deliberately risking hearing “no.” Now I've made 212 asks and officially received my 100th rejection. But instead of pushing harder, I'm doing something ...

Send us Fan Mail What if some of our greatest teachers aren’t human? In this episode of Wildly Unplug, Lauren Connolly sits down with acclaimed naturalist and bestselling author Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus, How to Be a Good Creature, On Time and Turtles, and dozens of other books exploring the inner lives of animals. After a lifetime spent studying animals around the world, Sy has been chased by a silverback gorilla, searched for pink river dolphins in the Amazon, befriend...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a nightmare follows you for five years—and starts stealing the color from your world? Author Mark Benson returns to Wildly Unplug to talk about his new young adult horror novel, The Scattering, a story inspired by a real nightmare he couldn't forget. The novel follows James, a gifted young painter plagued by the same terrifying dream every night: his family is murdered while he watches helplessly from beneath the floorboards. Even stranger, the nightmare has...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a challenge about rejection turns into a lesson about monarch butterflies, conservation, burnout, and knowing when to say no? In this week’s Wildly Rejected: Becoming the Bison, I’m continuing my journey toward 1,000 rejections—but I’m realizing that making 1,000 asks doesn’t mean chasing every opportunity that crosses my path. After another week of balancing podcast interviews, editing, painting, running Wild Developments Studio, and trying to hit my 10 w...

Send us Fan Mail Seeing the World Through an Octopus’s Eyes with Angelique Allen What does the world look like through an octopus’s eyes? In this fascinating episode, Lauren talks with marine scientist and science communicator Angelique Allen about octopus vision, cephalopod brains, animal perception, and the science behind how octopuses see and interact with their underwater world. Angelique studies how octopuses process visual information and how their brains create a picture of the world a...