Hi. I am Zoë Kors and this is my podcast. I don’t really know what I am doing, but I’ve given myself permission to be messy and awkward. It’s always been my style, since I was a little kid, to just jump right into the deep end of the pool and figure out how to swim once I’m in there. 

I launch this podcast on the eve of the publication of my debut book, Radical Intimacy: Cultivate the Deeply Connected Relationships You Desire and Deserve.

In a way, this podcast serves as an extension of the book. It’s an opportunity to explore the idea of intimacy, what it means to feel a sense of deep connection, how we create that in our lives and how we sustain it.

We tend to think of intimacy as something that happens between two people, either physically or emotionally. While that’s certainly a part of it, there’s more. The importance of intimacy doesn’t exist solely in the context of relationship.

We are available to connect with each other only to the extent that we can connect to ourselves. This goes for lovers, friends, relatives, colleagues, and even the barista at the local coffeehouse. In order to share the most tender parts of ourselves, we have to know what it is we are sharing. And to fully see someone else, we have to be able to recognize our own experience in theirs. For all the times you ever wondered if this is all there is, if you’ve longed for something you can’t quite name or grab hold of, it’s ultimately intimacy with yourself that you are craving.

My vision for The Radical Intimacy Podcast is to share with you conversations with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds for the purpose of getting more intimate with ourselves and others. This is a safe space in which to be real and raw, to express the fullness of who we are in all its complexity and contradiction. My hope is that through listening to these episodes, you will feel like it’s okay to be you, exactly as you are, and to know that you are not alone. Also that through this deepening sense of self, you are able to bear witness to the experiences and truths of others, even when…or ESPECIALLY when…they are different from your own. Let these conversations enrich your understanding of where you stop and someone else begins, the hard lines of individuality, and the shared experience of our humanity.

In the interest of full transparency, I’m a white, cisgender, mostly heterosexual woman of Scandinavian and Eastern European Jewish decent. I grew up in suburban New York on the banks of the Hudson River. I have a degree in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania. I’m a cancer survivor, mother of a daughter and a son, and I am unexpectedly and happily married after a decade of flying solo—blissfully single, I used to say.

I’m a credentialed coach, certified by the Co-Active Training Institute. I’ve trained extensively in hatha yoga, bhakti yoga, and meditation in a variety of disciplines. Additionally, I trained and practiced tantra with the late Psalm Isadora and have been initiated in a Sri Vidya lineage. I’ve dabbled in Zen Buddhism since I was 16 years old through my own self-directed study. In the last several years, however, I have formalized that training at Upaya Zen Center, receiving the precepts from Roshi Joan Halifax in a jukai ceremony. Currently, I participate in an ongoing Socially Engaged Buddhist Training with a focus on alleviating suffering before, during, and after death. To that end, I volunteer regularly at a hospice in Los Angeles called Caring House.

I bring everything I am to everything I do. In my work, and in life in general, I often draw from the various disciplines I’ve studied. It is through the lens of my identity, education, and lived experience as a white woman that I host this podcast. When I offer stories, concepts and perspectives from cultures other than my own ancestry, I do so with humility, respect, and the recognition of my filtered perspective.

As you listen to these conversations, I invite you to correct me, call me out, tell me if I’ve said something that denies your own lived experience. We may not come from the same worlds, and we may not always share the same perspective, but I always want to hear how you think, see, feel, and live.

So welcome to the deep end. It’s time to swim.