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Anita reconnects with the woman who changed her thinking on incarceration: her beloved college thesis adviser Ashley Lucas. Ashley reflects on her father's 20-year prison sentence and the untold stories of families navigating incarceration from the outside. Journalist Sylvia A. Harvey also shares how losing her mother to asthma and her father to a life sentence in prison before she was 6 years old led her to investigate the carceral system as a whole.

Anisa Khalifa, a producer on the Me & My Muslim Friends team, also hosts her own podcast called Muslim in Plain Sight. The show focuses on coming of age post-9/11 and how the Muslim community became both “invisible and hypervisible.” In this bonus episode, Khalifa and co-host Khadija Khalil talk to Joshua Salaam, Muslim Chaplain at Duke University, about being Muslim in the military, anti-Black racism in our communities, and Salaam’s musical and professional career.

When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, ending a 20-year war, the abrupt departure of troops triggered a refugee crisis, with more than 76,000 Afghan refugees arriving in the U.S. afterward. Host Yasmin Bendaas meets Mangal Mohmand, who arrived as a refugee from Afghanistan 8 years ago, for more insights on the refugee experience and the process of resettling a family in America. She also speaks with Asma Khan, president of the Triangle Association of Muslim American Mothers (TAMAM), about the nonprofit’s charitable work which includes refugee resettlement.

Anita has not participated in a Dry January, but there are times when she's motivated to pay extra-close attention to her relationship with alcohol. Most recently: during the pandemic. While some of us started drinking more, another group of folks committed to sober curiosity: a movement encouraging introspection about your relationship with alcohol. She meets two people who are years into building sober lives and asks them to reflect on how their sobriety journeys have shaped everything from relationships to thoughts about the future.

Last October Anita got an e-mail that piqued her curiosity: a story pitch about how anti-fat bias affects people seeking gender-affirming surgery. She hands the mic over to audio journalist H Conley, who follows a 26-year-old Black nonbinary food writer as they overcome repeated barriers to getting top surgery due to body size.

Anita learned in the early days of this show that there's no such thing as "normal" sexual behavior. But what *is* worth considering: how your relationship with sex affects your life. She meets two women whose compulsive sexual behaviors led them to seek support, and a sex-positive psychologist shares how she helps folks with sex addiction in their recovery.

Anita met Embodied listeners IRL for the first time earlier this year at the show's first in-person event "Purified." The evening was part late night talk show and part live storytelling. With music DJ-ed by Quilla to set the tone, five people shared their unique experiences with purity culture on stage in front of a live audience. In part one, you'll meet a social worker, preacher and faith leader who take you from church camp to the pews.

Anita has been unpacking intergenerational trauma ... thanks, in part, to Hollywood. Seeing herself in movies like "Turning Red" and "Everything Everywhere All At Once" has helped her make sense of her own family's challenges. She talks with three women who've investigated how events in their own family histories have rippled through the generations to influence their bodies, parenting and culture.

Anita has not lived with her parents since leaving for college. But during the pandemic, many Millennials and Gen Zers returned home. For some of them, especially those with unpartnered parents, this meant new and unexpected insights into their parents' love lives. Anita shares an episode of the podcast “Dating While Gray” that features conversations between parents and their adult kids about the ongoing search for a happily ever after.

The May Primary marked a significant end for two well known conservatives. Meanwhile, strong turnout was seen in several gerrymandered Congressional districts. And the General Assembly returns to Raleigh for its short session. Rob Schofield and Mitch Kokai review the week in state politics.