Out Of The Clouds

In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes Zach Mercurio, Ph.D., author, award-winning researcher and leadership development facilitator specialising in mattering at work, meaningful work, purposeful leadership and positive organisational psychology. Zach is the author of The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance and The Invisible Leader.Zach advises leaders in organisations and governments worldwide on practices for building purposeful and high-performance cultures where people feel seen, heard, valued and needed. He serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Meaning and Purpose at Colorado State University, is one of Simon Sinek’s Optimist Instructors, and is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review.Zach recalls how a cab driver in a Washington, DC parking lot changed everything for him. That encounter, alongside a group of university janitors and an early reading of Viktor Frankl, sent him back to study meaningfulness and find his purpose.Together, they unpick why we are more connected than ever and lonelier than ever, and why the opposite of loneliness isn’t having more people around you. Zach argues that this is not a disengagement crisis, nor really a loneliness epidemic, but a mattering deficit. He traces how, before we search for food, we search to matter, and how that first grasp at birth becomes our unending quest for significance.Zach illuminates the research with a wealth of wonderful stories, because everything in the book is something he observed an actual person doing. He unpacks his NAN framework of noticing, affirming and needing, an antidote to automaticity, from one supervisor’s noticing notebook to the five words that show someone they are needed.To leaders, he offers this: resist the label and seek to understand relentlessly, because a people problem is almost always a systems problem. He makes the case for treating the skills of seeing, hearing and valuing others as technical skills rather than soft ones, since it is almost impossible for anything to sustainably matter to someone if they don’t first believe that they matter. And as AI takes over technical and operational work, he foresees a relational premium: the people who can do these things will be the ones to usher us into the future.And at the heart of it all sits one question: when you most felt that you mattered to someone else, what were they doing?A warm, clear and in-depth conversation, full of hope, with practices that can change the trajectory of a life: our own, and those of the people we come into contact with. Because mattering begets mattering.Selected links from episode:You can connect with Zach:Zach Mercurio’s website - https://www.zachmercurio.comThe Power of Mattering - https://www.matteringbook.comFree mattering resources, including meaningful gratitude templates and a self-assessment - https://www.zachmercurio.com/matteringZach on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachmercurioZach on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zachmercurioFor all the links from the conversation, head over to: https://outoftheclouds.com/podcast/zach-mercurio/Story is The Strategy - Anne's 2h on-demand masterclassWebsite: https://outoftheclouds.com/Subscribe to The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-viewFollow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes Kulsum Shadab Wahab, a Bangalore-based philanthropist and social entrepreneur, Executive Director of the Hothur Foundation and founder of Ara Lumiere. Kulsum has dedicated her life to empowering women who have survived acid attacks. Through Ara Lumiere, she creates sustainable livelihoods through handcrafted garments and accessories that not only foster economic independence but also restore dignity, confidence and purpose.Ara Lumiere champions a new vision of social responsibility within the fashion industry, one that merges artistry with advocacy. This commitment was honoured in 2022, when the brand received the Social Impact Award at the Sustainable Fashion Awards of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI), Italy's national chamber of fashion.Kulsum speaks with Anne from the heart of that work, and about its cost: what it means to witness such trauma day after day, and how she holds feeling strong one hour and breaking the next.Kulsum shares with Anne how as a little girl, she felt deeply affected whenever someone was excluded from a group, and what an influence her grandfather was when it came to giving and sharing resources. She reflects on the gap between feeling for someone and acting for them (she was born with empathy, she says, but action is something she learnt much later). She also explains why, when it comes to her work with Ara Lumiere and the Hothur Foundation's support of those women survivors, survival is only ever the beginning.Later, Anne and Kulsum explore the meaning of healing when someone's lost their identities, the work that lies after the surgeries, and Kulsum explains how her background in psychology shapes the way she listens to each woman, rather than deciding for her what she needs (the foundation, she says, is not rehabilitating a case but a person, a story). The pair also discuss skin banking, a cause close to Kulsum's heart, and why pledging your skin matters (see resources below).Of course, Kulsum also tells Anne how Ara Lumiere came to be, a story of doors opening where no one imagined there was a door. She recalls how a therapeutic workshop at the foundation led her and women survivors all the way to Milan Fashion Week. She also describes what it meant for them, not least to have their creativity seen and celebrated before their pain: a victory over violence, and pain transformed into power.Kulsum shares updates about Ara Pret, where each garment becomes a story of resilience, beauty and renewal. She affirms her refusal to build a brand on sympathy, choosing courage instead, along with timelessness over trends and slow, steady growth. She also offers an exciting glimpse of what's ahead, with an upcoming collaboration with her friend, the artist Raghava KK. And she speaks about The Phoenix Circle, the community she created to uplift survivors of acid attacks and female genital mutilation, striving for a world free from such violence.Along the way, Kulsum's rebel streak shines through. A moving, fierce and warm-hearted conversation about dignity, identity and the courage it takes to rebuild a life. Happy listening!Selected links from episodeYou can connect with Kulsum and Ara Lumiere:Ara Lumiere website: https://aralumiere.com/Kulsum Shadab Wahab on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kulsumshadabwahab/Ara Lumiere on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ara.lumiere/Hothur Foundation on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hothurfoundation/On skin and tissue donation:Swisstransplant - Tissue donation explained in simple language (in French) Donate Life America - Register as an organ, eye and tissue donor in the US - NHS Blood and Transplant - Tissue donation in the UKMOHAN FoundationOther links:Raghava KK - Artist collaborating with the women of Ara Lumiere"Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield - Song that represents KulsumStory is The Strategy - Anne's 2h on-demand masterclassWebsite: https://outoftheclouds.com/Subscribe to The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-viewFollow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes Dr. Paule Valery Joseph: nurse scientist, clinician, entrepreneur, writer and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. Born in Venezuela to Haitian parents and trained at Hostos Community College, Pace University and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Joseph is a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health, where she leads the Section on Sensory Science and Metabolism. She is also the co-founder of the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research, a network spanning more than 70 countries, and the founder and CEO of Anchor Health. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, nutrition, behaviour, and prevention — and her driving question is both simple and radical: what if our senses are not secondary to health, but among the body's earliest and most intelligent warning systems?The conversation starts with Dr Joseph sharing her life story, growing up between Spanish, French and Haitian Creole, in a household shaped by two cultures and a mother who was a community nurse. She describes how her early years in Venezuela planted questions she would spend her career answering. The path from bedside nursing in the Bronx to becoming one of the world's leading chemosensory scientists was not a straight line, but it was guided, she says, by an accumulation of questions she could not accept leaving unanswered.Anne and Paule discuss what it means to be a nurse scientist, a researcher who begins with the patient's experience and considers a discovery unfinished until a nurse in a community clinic or a patient's living room can actually use it. Paule explains how her early observations in long-term care facilities and later work with bariatric surgery patients first drew her attention to taste and smell: patients whose food no longer tasted the same, whose appetite had shifted, whose relationship to flavour had fundamentally changed. These observations led her to the Monell Chemical Senses Center and to a career studying the molecular mechanisms behind chemosensing.The conversation goes deep into what taste and smell can tell us about overall health. Paule describes how smell loss can predate a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's by four to ten years, and shares the story of her mother-in-law, whose subtle changes in cooking first signalled something was wrong and ultimately led to a diagnosis of frontotemporal lobe dementia. It is one of the most striking illustrations in the episode of what she calls the body's sensory early warning system, and of the fact that most clinicians still do not routinely test for it.Other themes include the Ozempic tongue phenomenon and what GLP-1 drugs are revealing about the relationship between the gut, the brain and flavour perception; the emerging field of urban smellscapes and how scent has been used across cultures and centuries as a way of marking place, time and memory; and what it might mean to treat smell and taste as vital signs, as routinely assessed as vision or hearing.Paule speaks with equal warmth about the personal dimensions of her work: the mentorship she received and pays forward, the responsibility she feels as the first nurse scientist in 100 years to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, the joy of her TED Fellowship and the unexpected collaboration it opened with a cacao expert, and the book she is writing at the intersection of smell, health and wellbeing. She closes with the word she might tattoo on herself — ancestor — and with Celia Cruz, whose defiant joy she describes as a Caribbean inheritance she carries everywhere.A memorable conversation with a scientist who studies the senses and a host who has been learning, since their first meeting, to follow her nose.Happy listening!Connect with Paule:Paule Valery Joseph's websitePaule Valery Joseph on LinkedInPaule Valery Joseph on InstagramPaule Valery Joseph on BlueSkyPaule Valery Joseph on YouTubeFor more, head over to https://OutoftheClouds.com/the-PodcastStory is The Strategy - Anne's 2h on-demand masterclassWebsite: https://outoftheclouds.com/Subscribe to The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-viewFollow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Saskia Wheeler is a strategist and researcher working at the intersection of neuroscience and design, translating cognitive and sensory science into frameworks that guide how creative work is felt and experienced. For the past six years, she has worked with designers, agencies and hospitality brands to help them close the gap between the experience they intend to create and the one people actually feel. Saskia studied philosophy at Trinity College Dublin before completing a Master's in Neuroaesthetics at Goldsmiths, University of London.In this episode of Out of the Clouds, Saskia tells Anne about her upbringing in a creative London household (her mother was an art director who often had photographers living in the family home) and how she developed an early sensitivity to the way art and design bring atmosphere and meaning to everyday environments. Drawn to questions of consciousness and perception, she explains what led her from philosophy to neuroaesthetics, and why she felt she could not go further into questions of consciousness without first understanding the brain.Saskia and Anne discuss what neuroaesthetics actually is: the scientific study of how art, design, music and architecture measurably change our brains and bodies. Still a relatively young field, it draws on rigorous research to show that beauty and aesthetic experience are not decorative concerns but deeply embedded in how we evolved. The most surprising thing Saskia has learned in the field: just how deeply wired we are to respond to beauty.She also shares an insight that sits at the crossroads of philosophy and neuroscience and that has stayed with her since her studies: that lived experience is not simply made up of what we perceive in the present moment. It is co-created by our past memories, which don't merely inform the present but actually shape and in part create it. This is why two people can occupy the same space and have entirely different experiences of it, and why, Saskia reflects, understanding this has given her more compassion for herself and others.Saskia and Anne discuss the applications of neuroarchitecture and design, and what the research tells us about what makes spaces feel good to be in. Saskia identifies three things people value most: homeness (warmth and comfort), coherence (how well the space meets expectations and guides movement through it) and fascination (how much it surprises and interests). She also makes the case for touch as the most underestimated sense when it comes to comfort, linked to the neurochemical oxytocin and the experience of trust, and explains why this extends beyond physical contact with other people to the materials we come into contact with in our environments.Creativity is also an emerging area within neuroaesthetics, and Saskia speaks about it as an increasingly recognised fifth pillar of health and wellbeing, alongside exercise, sleep, nutrition and social connection. What she says here is worth sitting with: the benefits of creativity come from the expression and the doing, rather than the output. The inner critic is so often the biggest obstacle, because creativity has long been tied to being good at something rather than simply doing it. Anne and Saskia also share a practice: both are devoted morning pages writers.The conversation also touches on cognitive load and clutter (including research suggesting that disorganisation in our environments creates low-level vigilance even when we are not consciously aware of it), biophilic design, the science of lighting, and Anne's own plans for Le Trente, a social learning studio she is developing in Geneva.A rich exchange with a thinker who is quietly changing how the built world gets made. Happy listening!Selected links Connect with Saskia:Saskia Wheeler on Instagram: @neuro.aestheticWebsite: https://www.saskiawheeler.co.uk/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saskiawheeler/Story is The Strategy - Anne's 2h on-demand masterclassWebsite: https://outoftheclouds.com/Subscribe to The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-viewFollow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes back Caitlin Krause for their second conversation. Caitlin is a globally recognised experience designer, educator, author and founder of MindWise, whose work spans digital wellbeing, immersive design, contemplative practice and creative expression. She holds an MFA in poetry, has taught internationally across Belgium and Switzerland, and built the digital wellbeing program about wellbeing and technology at Stanford University. She teaches at the University of Oregon. She advises organisations including TED, The U.S. Air Force, LinkedIn, Google, Meta, Oracle, Evernote, and the U.S. State Department. Caitlin creates human-centered experiences mediated by technology, fusing creativity, meditation, storytelling, collaboration, and emotional intelligence for full life thriving. She is the author of six books, including her most recent work on digital wellbeing and a forthcoming collection of poetry, Poems of Root and Light. Caitlin and Anne first met at TED 2023, whose theme that year was Possibilities — and the thread of possibility runs through their exchange.Anne and Caitlin discuss her newest book, Digital Wellbeing, A transformative guide to thriving in the digital age. The conversation explores the etymology of the word 'digital' itself — a thread Caitlin traces from the digits of the hand through Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth to the immersive computing she works with today. Caitlin speaks to her motivation behind the book: not to produce a manual of healthy habits, nor to surrender to the idea that the machines have already won, but to offer an entry point for people to approach digital technology with less fear and hopefully less overwhelm that so many leaders and teams experience.The book is designed around the conviction that your body is your testing ground, that you get to have your experience and own it, and that the question of technology is ultimately a question of being.Caitlin's framework for immersive design, seven themes she calls the seven Es, anchored in what she describes as wonder-rich spatial computing design, runs through the conversation as both a professional methodology and a personal philosophy. Anne and Caitlin also discuss Caitlin's Shadow Storytelling experience, in which she guided participants from a Zoom call into a shared metaverse landscape for a meditation and storytelling session built around Jungian themes, winter imagery and candlelit caves. Both women explore the question of technology as a dance partner rather than a destination, and what it means to be the embodied physical human deciding how and whether to layer with it.Caitlin also tells the story of how the spirit of play, cultivated through an itinerant childhood in a foreign service family, has directly informed her pedagogy and her approach to guiding people into transformative experiences through technology. The conversation closes with Caitlin reading two poems from her forthcoming collection — 'The Middle Path' and the title poem 'Root and Light' — bringing the episode to a still and luminous end.Connect with CaitlinCaitlin's website: caitlinkrause.comMindWise — Caitlin's consultancyPoems of Root and Light — forthcoming poetry collectionDigital Satori — Caitlin's 2023 poetry collectionCaitlin’s upcoming course at Kripalu Centre ‘Awakening Awe’: Referenced in the episode:John O'Donohue — Irish poet and philosopherMartha Graham — choreographer and dance pioneer, quoted in the episodeDavid Whyte — poet and author whose work Caitlin referencesJoy Harjo — poet, referenced by CaitlinUrsula K. Le Guin — writer, whose quote about 'there, there' Caitlin sharesEsther Perel — referenced for her TED moment about putting down our phonesWorld Economic Forum — referenced in the context of new wellbeing metricsThe Story of You — Anne's coaching methodologyStory is The Strategy - Anne's 2h on-demand masterclassWebsite: https://outoftheclouds.com/Subscribe to The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-viewFollow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.