Deep Dive with Alexa Arnold & Kate Cockrill on Working & Parenting

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A text arrives: want to help build a movement around Jonathan Haidt's new book? Within a week, Alexa Arnold is sitting in his NYU office discussing how to change the world—and then she's in a hot tub with friends having a panic attack because she can't figure out how to do this massive job and raise an 18-month-old at the same time. In this final episode of The Tryhards—a three-part series for ambitious parents trying to be the best version of themselves day by day—Kelly talks with Alexa Arnold and Kate Cockrell about intensive parenting, impossible standards, and what it means to choose work you love while raising humans who need you. Through conversations about performing motherhood online, the merge of adult world and kid world, and why competence plus joy might be the actual goal, they explore how modern parenting became unsustainably intense and whether caring for your own purpose is actually one of the best things you can do for your kids. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering whether we can do everything we want professionally and everything we want as parents and at what cost.
0:17.2	I'm joined one last time by my fellow tryhards, Alexa Arnold, a social impact entrepreneur,
0:23.2	currently working with Jonathan Haidt, on The Anxious Generation, and Kate Cockrell,
0:27.9	a leadership coach and improv comedian.
0:30.6	In this final installment of our three-part series, Alexa shares the story of a panic attack,
0:36.8	triggered by being offered her dream job.
0:39.7	We'll talk about performing motherhood online, why being unreachable might be a gift,
0:45.3	and how spending a little time focusing on our own purpose might be the best thing we can do
0:51.3	for the next generation. Here's my conversation with TriHards, Alexa Arnold, and Kate Cockrell.
1:01.5	I've got a story for you.
1:03.2	This was a couple of years ago.
1:05.3	My son was about 18 months old, his little baby.
1:08.9	And I had just left my full-time job and I was doing consulting
1:13.2	and executive coaching. I had this whole idea of building a portfolio career, you know, enough to
1:18.8	keep me busy, enough to keep me fulfilled, but still feel like I was really balancing work and
1:23.5	balancing motherhood. And one day, this is April 2024, a friend texted me and she said,
1:30.8	do you want to help Jonathan Haidt build a movement around his new book The Anxious Generation?
1:35.9	Can I just insert that I've been a Jonathan Haidt fan for a very long time?
1:40.6	Yeah, this is like one of the coolest texts that I've received in my life. Just to be clear?
1:43.8	Do people know who he is? Yeah, coddling of the American mind. Yeah, righteous mind and the
1:49.6	happiness hypothesis. Yes. And he is like extraordinary TED talks and he's one of the most important,
1:56.4	like I think American scholars today. Yeah, you know, as I've gotten to know him preview about where the story is
	...

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