Shows / Outside Issues
Outside Issues
A Seattle-based social worker and an LA-based creative navigate their personal recoveries from drugs and alcohol, domestic violence and mental disorders amidst encroaching political turmoil and social decay. Hosts Audrey Comber and Patrick Newman attempt to bridge the divide between recovery and world events, recognizing that we live in a society and these dynamics feed each other. Guests from the world of politics and organizing, psychology and 12-step recovery, disability activism and more…
Episodes
Outside IssuesHouse of the Peace Makers
Musician, poet, and water protector Sunni (Sunni’i) Leilani joins us to talk about flowing her way into “love activism” which found its roots in early recovery…
Outside IssuesBlood and Soil, Bread and Roses
This month we talk about Israel and the language surrounding Zionism, holding fast to our belief in equal dignity and rights for all people. Audrey visits a…
Outside Issues¡Viva la Raza!
This month we sit down with mother, wife, addiction counselor, and former dockworker Lorie E. Garcia, who decades in recovery still speaks at meetings…
Outside IssuesFeel to Heal
Audrey welcomes friend and colleague Katherine “Wren” Hamilton, a Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT)-focused social worker. Wren began her journey towards…
Outside IssuesPrisoners of Hope
After touching on Pride Month and trans dignity, Audrey talks about her joy, pressures, and long term goals in helping others heal, while Patrick discusses…
Outside IssuesMarxist-Verhoevenists
Audrey and Patrick welcome Melanie C. to talk about second chances, disillusionment with electoral politics, and Michael Clayton. Covid lockdown, parental…
Outside IssuesHigh Vibrational Individuals
Nick Casaccio joins us to talk about Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine and its twin dynamics of alcoholism and codependency, relating Mark Kerr’s struggles…
Outside IssuesHighest & Best Good
Audrey welcomes another wounded healer to Outside Issues: spiritual advisor Matthew Blankinship, who helps professionals and peers get stronger in their 11th…
Outside IssuesA New Romanticism
Filmmaker and humanist Anna K. Scanlon joins the pod to talk about her recovery from hopelessness, which has led to a great period of creative synthesis…
Outside IssuesHold the Land, Protect the Village
Audrey and Patrick welcome Minneapolis native and clinician Brian Dyke to talk about community responses to state violence. The joy in working with recovering…
Outside IssuesUnmitigated Caucacity
Every member of the Trump administration is an abuser. Audrey and Patrick discuss Trump’s execution of Stephen Miller’s vision in American cities but most…
Outside IssuesNew Year's Eve
We share our gratitudes and resentments for the 2025 that was, preparing for the devastation of HR-1/Trump’s Fuckity Fuck Fuck (see episode 2) that is sure to…
Outside IssuesGod, Give Them What They Need
Dr. Jamie Marich - clinical trauma specialist, LGBTQIA+ advocate and author of Trauma and the 12 Steps - joins us as we return again to the intersection…
Outside IssuesA Vision for You
Before getting into news (Israel Eurovision controversy, continued Trump ICE-fronted bigotry, war crimes) Audrey talks about her 20 year high school reunion…
Outside IssuesThe Greatest ChatGPT Romance Ever Told
Deep thoughts on favorite serial killers from Wisconsin, ghost roommates, and the blue stuff RFK ingests in an attempt to extend his horrible life…
Outside Issues36 Cents and a Pair of Sunglasses
For domestic violence awareness month, Audrey shares her experience strength and hope, both from a clinical perspective and from once living in the 90th…
Outside IssuesBedford Forrest Medals of Honor
Audrey and Patrick discuss Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s address to top military brass. The continued deployment of U.S. troops to cities…
Outside IssuesLiving in Eddington
In light of Charlie Kirk’s murder, this week we talk about political violence and review “Eddington,” Ari Aster’s recent film that explores America's culture…
Outside IssuesParadox of Tolerance
Our friend Jake shares his experience of being trans, queer and disabled, working overtime to survive a political climate that terrorizes marginalized groups…
Outside IssuesProgress Inevitable
In recognition of International Overdose Awareness Day, Audrey remembers loved one Adam Popp, who passed away far too young from a drug overdose. We talk about…
Outside IssuesCruel Summer
"Quiet isn't always peace, and the norms and notions of what is just isn't always justice" -Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate Audrey and Patrick…
Outside IssuesShiva & Shakti
Audrey and Patrick briefly touch on new Trump authoritarianism and Israel’s assassination of journalists, before returning to their own histories of addiction…
Outside IssuesAs the Citizen Among You
Attorney and law professor H. Marissa Montes joins us to talk about the plight of immigrants during this period of fascism and white nationalism driven by…
Outside IssuesOur Right to Dignity
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically…
Outside IssuesFeed the Children, From the River to the Sea
“Please God give everyone the strength to say something.” -Ms. Rachel Following seventy-five years of apartheid and Hamas’ attack on October 7th, Israel’s…
- Outside Issues
Only the Wounded Healer Heals
In our ongoing series recognizing disability pride month, we talk to social worker Ryan Padilla, SWAICL, about how an accident which led to his paraplegia…
- Outside Issues
Trump’s “FFF”: Austerity and Trauma
Patrick and Audrey break down the “Big Beautiful Bill” (hereby called the Fuckity Fuck Fuck) that was recently made the law of the land by a heartless…
- Outside Issues
Tenuous Sobriety, Sanity, and ICE Crackdown
Audrey and Patrick talk social justice, Quaker ancestral truths, and formative romantic relationships before pivoting to the event that sparked this show: the…