Laura is the author of the bestselling memoir We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life and Push Off From Here: Nine Essential Truths to Get You Through Life (and Everything Else).

Her work explores the intersection of addiction, recovery, emotional sobriety, and the complexities of relationships. She has written for The New York Times and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The TODAY Show, and more.

In 2020, she founded The Luckiest Club, a global sobriety support community, and she writes Love Story, a popular Substack newsletter about sobriety, relationships, recovery, and writing. She is currently working on her third book.

Website: lauramckowen.com
Instagram: @Laura_McKowen
LinkedIn: @lauramckowen

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DREW RAMSEY, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, author, and leading voice in Nutritional Psychiatry and integrative mental health. He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the founder of the Brain Food Clinic and Spruce Mental Health. For twenty years, he served as an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, where he taught and supervised psychotherapy and nutritional psychiatry.

Dr. Ramsey has authored four previous books, including the international bestseller Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety and three e-courses. He is a dynamic speaker, podcast host and educator who has delivered three TEDx talks and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, NPR and other notable outlets. He lives in Jackson, WY with his wife and family.

Learn more at www.DrewRamseyMD.com

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Lindsey Metselaar is a native New Yorker and host of We Met At Acme podcast, which has amassed over 10 million downloads since its creation in 2017. We Met At Acme is a dating podcast that delves into sex, relationships, and vulnerability, with some hilarious anecdotes along the way. Lindsey also has a food blog called Don't Expect Salads (@dontexpectsalads) with over 100,000 followers. Since creating We Met At Acme, Lindsey has expanded to touring over the country and also continues to host mixers and events around NYC.

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Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, MD is a general and addiction psychiatrist in Manhattan, specializing in sexual compulsivity and is the co-editor of the text Behavioral Addictions (2014, Elsevier Press). He is the author of two books for the public, Infidelity: Why Men and Women Cheat (2018, publisher Hachette) and Bedlam (2019, publisher Penguin Random House). Dr. Rosenberg teaches at Weill Cornell Medical Center where he has been a voluntary faculty member for the past 40 years. He is also a filmmaker recognized by Emmy, Columbia duPont and Peabody awards, and one of his films was shortlisted for an Oscar. He is the winner of the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, and the proud recipient of the AAAP Arts and Advocacy Award.

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Jared Gordon is an American mixed martial artist who competes in the UFC’s lightweight division. A New York native, he began wrestling as a child and transitioned to MMA after a standout amateur career. Known for his durability, high pace, and well-rounded skill set, he is widely respected for his work ethic, resilience, and longevity in one of the sport’s deepest weight classes. He is also open about his recovery journey and has become an outspoken advocate for mental health, using his platform to challenge stigma in combat sports.

https://www.instagram.com/jaredflashgordon/?hl=en

https://jaredflashgordon.com/

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Tim Requarth is the author of the newsletter The Third Hemisphere, a neuroscientist’s field notes on how AI is (or isn’t) rewiring our brains. A contributing writer at Slate and a columnist at The Transmitter, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, and Scientific American, among others. He received his PhD in neuroscience from Columbia University, and for nine years he directed NeuWrite, an international network of workshops for scientists and writers. He was a 2018 UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food & Farming Journalism Fellow and is a 2019-2020 Brown Institute for Media Innovation “magic grant” recipient. His essay, The Final Five Percent, won the National Association of Science Writers 2020 Science in Society Journalism Award in the Longform Narratives category, and appeared in Best American Science & Nature Writing 2020. He’s currently a Research Assistant Professor of Neuroscience & Physiology and Director of Graduate Science Writing at the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he studies how AI affects cognition and education.

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Lauren Sisler is an ESPN and SEC Network sideline reporter, host of SEC Nation, and an Emmy-winning sports journalist known as much for her authenticity as her on-air presence. Behind the scenes, Lauren carries a deeply personal story: as a college freshman, she lost both of her parents within hours to prescription drug overdoses. In her 2024 memoir, Shatterproof: How I Overcame the Shame of Losing My Parents to Opioid Addiction (and Found My Sideline Shimmy), Lauren writes candidly about grief, shame, faith, and how telling the truth became a path to healing. Today, she uses her platform to speak openly about addiction, resilience, and what it means to keep showing up—on the sidelines and in life.

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Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative reporter whose books are taught around the country and have been translated around the world, including Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, the bombshell first book about the fentanyl epidemic. He has advised officials at the top levels of government about the opioid crisis, and been interviewed as an expert commentator on CNN, NPR, and CSPAN, and on full, dedicated episodes of Fresh Air and the Joe Rogan Experience. His new documentary, called Antagonist, is about the suppression of the opioid treatment drug naltrexone (best known as Vivitrol) by big-money interests. He publishes a Substack newsletter called Drugs + Hip-Hop, and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and the Guardian.

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