Podcast
Anatomy of Conflict
Deep dives into the science of conflict, human behavior, and how we navigate difficult relationships.
26 episodes
All Episodes
I Use Tarot Cards in Mediations. I Can't Tell You Anything Spiritual Is Happening.
I bought an Oracle deck and I've started pulling cards in mediations. I can't tell you anything spiritual is happening. That's not why I use them.When two people are stuck — really stuck, the kind where they've said the same sentence to each other four times — a card puts an image in front of both of them that neither one owns. Nobody has to defend it. Your brain goes from one groove to another groove, and sometimes that jump is the spark you needed.I've been careful about it. I don't want to be seen as a freak. I want to be taken seriously. So I've done it lightly, and I wanted to talk to somebody who does it all the way.Brennan O'Connor — Soul Coach OC — has been meditating since his early twenties and picked up tarot a few months ago. He's certified in several energy-healing modalities. He also says this: "the biggest thing I know is that I don't really know anything." He's watched people in his own field decide everything is true, and he won't do it.We get into where "spiritual" starts and where it stops. Priming versus synchronicity — my mom died on October 27, so my sisters and I clock 1027 everywhere, and I still can't tell you whether that's meaning or manufacturing. Say "red motorcycle" three times and you'll see red motorcycles tonight. He tells me about waking up and seeing the spirit of a baby lying between him and his wife, and finding out a week later she was pregnant.Then he pulls a live reading for me, on a week I wouldn't describe on tape. Justice. Card 11.The part I keep chewing on: it didn't give me an answer. It gave me a question. Before that I didn't have a question — I had "how do I get through this week."Brennan O'Connor — Soul Coach OC Email: Brennan.OC@gmail.com Instagram: @soulcoach.oc Web: soulcoachoc.com Tarot readings, past-life regression, energy healing, 1:1 soul coaching.Ryan McLaughlin — Flannel People Mediation Divorce and family mediation in Minnesota. 250+ five-star Google reviews. Web: flannelpeoplemediation.com Email: flannelpeoplemediation@gmail.com Phone: 763-316-8323 Free 15-minute consult: calendly.com/flannelpeoplemediation/free15consult
Nobody Leaves Because of the Fighting
Steph Paquin is an LMFT in Minneapolis who mostly sees couples. Her claim: the marriages that end aren't always the loud ones.Not explosive, not infidelity, not one event — but emotionally quiet. Her description of the evening: manage the kids, make dinner, sit on the couch, scroll. No micro-connections, no greetings, not a lot of curiosity. Her line is that it's the absence of connection, not the presence of fighting, that predicts who initiates.Women are usually the ones who call. Men call when there's been an ultimatum. And women's tolerance for inequity, she says, has changed a lot faster than the marriages have.I floated a $30,000 two-week couples intensive at her. She said "yes, and" — then said two weeks of tools is close to oversaturation, because humans need repetition and application is the part that decides it.Steph Paquin, MA, LMFT — thetissueclinic.com. The research she's drawing on is nearly all heterosexual couples; she names that early, and part two is our next convo.
We Got Divorced, Then Started a Company Together
Chris Koepsel and Rebecca Tierney met in law school, got married, had two kids, and got divorced. They now run a company together, with the mission of helping families waddle and wiggle through some of the edgiest hard stuff humans navigate: divorce. I went in wanting the secret sauce. How are y'all managing to work together post-divorce? What I got was a diagnosis. When you split up, everyone tells you to just be good co-parents — but the only relationship you've ever had with that person is the one that was unhealthy enough to end. You're being asked to run a functional partnership on a foundation that already failed.What they describe instead is a conversion: from a relationship built for intimacy to one built for boundaries. Ally is where they like to land. Not friends. Not family. Ally.We also get into why litigation land teaches you the exact behavior you're trying to unlearn, why men white-knuckle a divorce while women project-manage it, and whether any of this work survives AI.Chris and Rebecca run Redefining Family — divorce coaching, co-parenting coaching, and mediation, entirely out of court. redefiningfamily.comFollow Ryan and check out Flannel People Mediation at flannelpeoplemediation.com for future collabs in and around divorce mediation.
Women Have an Invisible Line in Their Marriage. Most Men Don't Find Out Until It's Too Late.
Women have an invisible line in their marriages — and most of them don't even know exactly where it is. But once they cross it, it's over. Dr. Sonja Benson has spent nearly 30 years watching the same pattern play out: she's been saying something's wrong for years, he hasn't moved, and one day she stops pursuing. Ryan McLaughlin and Dr. Benson break down why women initiate roughly two-thirds of all divorces, what "burned-out pursuer" actually means, and what discernment counseling is — the decision-making process designed for couples where at least one person isn't sure they want to stay.
Can Astrology Make You a Better Mediator?
Your sun sign is the least interesting thing about you. Your moon sign is how you actually feel. Your Mars sign is how you conflict. Emmy Jane Carden — mediator in Minnesota and Texas, astrology student for two decades — shows us live how to read a natal chart and what it tells you about a person before they say a word. This one changes how you think about intake.
Why the Next Generation of Experts Won't Stay in Their Lane
Think doubling down on a single niche is the only way to perfect your craft? In this episode of Anatomy of Conflict, we completely flip the script on traditional professional advice for mediators, therapists, and facilitators. We dive into the massive competitive edge of becoming intentionally "poly-skilled"—proving that adjacent obsessions, from building custom AI tools to studying neuropsychology, are actually the secret weapon for sharpening your core practice. By breaking out of rigid professional silos, we expose how a broad, interdisciplinary surface area of knowledge gives you a compounding advantage in empathy, pattern recognition, and high-stakes problem-solving. Stop letting conventional wisdom keep your expertise in a box, and discover why expanding your world is exactly what makes you the most valuable person in the room.
The Question That Ends Most Founder Fights
Attorney Cody Blades has one question she asks every client before any negotiation starts: if there were no restrictions, no court, no opposing party — what would you actually want to happen? It sounds simple. It isn't — most people answer it once, then spend the next three conversations contradicting themselves, and catching that contradiction becomes her actual job. Ryan and Cody dig into why that's the real product, not the asset purchase agreement, not the negotiation math — the part where a client says "I don't care about owning the business" and two weeks later won't let go of it. It's the same move a good therapist pulls, naming your own inconsistency back to you, which is exactly why a calculator that does 150%-down-to-the-middle math was never going to be the whole job. Cody Blades represents founders and business owners in Minnesota at blades.law.
Why Being Human Has Never Mattered More
AI can replicate Sam Ardery's five-finger risk framework. It can summarize his talks better than he can. So what does a mediator actually do that a language model can't? Ryan and Sam explore the irreducible human work at the center of conflict resolution — and why, in 2026, emotional intelligence isn't competing with AI. It's the only thing AI can't (yet) replace.
The Hybrid Wins: What the Data Says About AI and Human Problem-Solving
What happens when you inject AI into a therapy session? Researchers tried it. They compared human-only, AI-only, and hybrid approaches — and the hybrid won. It outperformed both. Ryan McLaughlin sits with what that means for mediators, therapists, lawyers, and anyone working with humans in conflict.In this episode: the specific study and what it actually found, the two arenas where AI outperforms humans (pattern recognition, intake, diagnosis), the arenas where humans still win (emotional presence, being heard), and Ryan's developing framework for bringing AI into live mediation sessions — not as a replacement, but as a co-pilot.This isn't a thought experiment. Ryan is building it in real time and asking you to think about where you stand.
Would Esther Perel Beat a Judge in Mediation?
A litigator with 15+ years of Big Law experience sits down with Ryan to settle a real disagreement: does a great mediator need to know the law — or just know people?Dani Audette has seen mediations fail because the mediator didn't do their homework. Ryan thinks a master therapist beats a subject matter expert every time. They don't fully agree. And when AI enters the argument, it gets messier.Also: why most lawsuits should never be filed, what happens to a conflict once a judge owns your schedule, and the medical term for when the cure makes you sicker than the disease.
Bonus Episode: Why I'm Doing This Podcast
In this bonus mini-episode, Ryan goes off-script — who he is, why he started this show, and what drives his obsession with conflict. If you're new here, start here.Ryan started this podcast for the same reason he spent 12 hours a day writing during grad school while his wife worked a coffee shop to keep them afloat — because there's something there he has to get to the bottom of.The honest answer: he wants to get better at this. At mediation. At conflict. At being a partner and a father and a person. And there's almost no gap between what he's personally wrestling with and what he covers on this show. The money stuff with his wife. The imagery/projective/associative cards in his mediation sessions. The Gottman research. He's not presenting these as a detached expert — he has skin in the game.Flannel People Mediation: flannelpeoplemediation.comText Ryan directly: 763-316-8323
The Psychology of Money Fights (And What's Really Underneath)
Money is the #2 cause of divorce — behind only infidelity — but unlike infidelity, it's quiet, chronic, and invisible until the damage is done. In this episode, Ryan gets personally real about his own tightwad tendencies, his marriage, and what a decade of financial conflict has taught him about what's actually underneath money fights. Drawing on peer-reviewed research, the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the neuroscience of emotional flooding, this episode builds a framework for turning your most corrosive financial arguments into a source of genuine intimacy and connection. Because the fight was never really about the granola.In this episode:Why couples who argue about money once a week are 30% more likely to divorce — and what the frequency tells youThe tightwad/spendthrift pairing: why opposites attract and why it eventually costs youPositions vs. interests — the one distinction that unlocks every deadlocked financial argumentWhy compromise is structurally flawed (and what collaboration actually looks like)The neuroscience of emotional flooding and why you literally cannot win a money fight in the heat of the momentRyan's own money story: the $30 coat, the carrots and peanut butter, and a relationship with spending that runs him more than he runs itIf money conflict is showing up in your relationship and you're ready to have a different kind of conversation, Ryan works with couples at Flannel People Mediation — a virtual mediation practice built for exactly this. Learn more at flannelpeoplemediation.com.
Tarot, Part 3: Claude Kills the Woo Woo and Makes the Science Case
Claude is back for round three, and this time we're settling the debate. Projection cards, oracle decks, tarot — call them whatever you want, but the mechanism is pure neuroscience. In this episode, Claude breaks down the research on affect labeling, somatic priming, and nervous system regulation, and shows exactly why these tools belong in the mediation room. We also get into spousal support impasse, why fairness is a feeling not a number, and the one reframe that makes skeptical clients stop rolling their eyes. If you've been curious about these tools, but afraid of the woo woo label, this is your episode.
Tarot, Part 2: The Professional Tool That Gets You Out of Your Head
You can't think your way to a new solution using the same thinking that got you stuck. Suzanne Grandchamp, a divorce attorney with 30 years of experience, breaks down how tarot and oracle cards create embodied space — helping professionals access intuition, name what's unacknowledged, and find the move that logic alone can't reach.
What the Hell Is a Narcissist?
Everyone's ex is one. Every difficult boss is one. Every impossible co-parent is one. Lets cut the word open — trace it from a Greek myth through the DSM-5, through contested prevalence data, through TikTok — and land on the question that actually matters in conflict: what is the label doing for you, and is it helping?
Every Fight You've Ever Had Is About Sex. Even the Ones That Aren't.
You're not fighting about what you think you're fighting about — you're caught between two biological drives, novelty and stability, that evolution built into the same body and never resolved.
Why Therapists Get Divorced More Than the Rest of Us
Therapists know more about communication than anyone. They study attachment theory, practice empathy for a living, and teach couples how to fight fair. So why do counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists divorce at rates above the national average? In this episode, Ryan digs into the research on whether knowledge actually transfers to skill — in conflict, in relationships, and in life. He explores what Carstensen's socioemotional selectivity theory reveals about why older couples fight differently, what Ericsson's deliberate practice framework says about why experience alone doesn't create expertise, and what Gottman's research tells us about what "getting better at conflict" actually means.
What If the Impasse Isn't in Your Head?
Conflict isn't a logic problem. It's a biology problem. In this episode: three tiers of neuroscience-backed tools — from somatic resets to paradoxical interventions — that work at the kitchen table, the conference table, and the mediation table.
How Tarot Actually Fixes Impasse: Stop Talking, Start Shuffling
Conflict is a single-matrix trap; tarot can be the bisociative hammer that breaks it open. We’re stripping the occult away to show you why a well-timed card is the most effective psychological de-escalator in a high-conflict room.
"I Feel Like You Don't Listen" Is Not a Feeling
Everyone told you to start with "I feel." Nobody mentioned that what comes next is almost never a feeling — it's a prosecution. Five studies, one fMRI machine, and a live tarantula prove your brain knows the difference even when you don't.
Why Your Apology Made Everything Worse
You said you were sorry. Their face went flat. Sound familiar? Research shows that the apology most of us default to — the partial, hedge-your-words, "I'm sorry you feel that way" version — actually drops resolution rates below what happens when you say nothing at all. This episode walks through the neuroscience and the data on what a real apology requires, and why it's the hardest easy thing you'll ever do.
I'm Bringing Tarot Cards to My Next Mediation
Cookies. Tarot cards. A jousting pillow. Why a 3rd object between two people changes the neuroscience of the room. Three episodes of expert interviews distilled.
Every Fight Is a Disguised Bible Story
40 years of high-stakes mediation. The lesson? The fight is never about what people say it's about. Arthur Pressman on why the best lawyers have nothing left to prove, why people only hear what supports their position, and why he writes the deal on one page before anyone leaves the room.
Claude AI Exposes Why Most Mediators Fail (And What the Best Ones Do)
I asked Claude AI what separates average mediators from the legends—from couples blowouts to high-stakes business fights. It revealed the exact mindsets and skills that win every conflict. If your fights never end, this will change everything.
5,000 Mediations and No Secret Sauce
Sam Ardery has mediated 5,000 cases. He still doesn't have the secret sauce — and that might be the most useful thing a beginner can hear.We talk about the 5% rule, why "it's the principle" is almost never true, why he refuses to call himself neutral, and what 5,000 reps actually teaches you about yourself.
86 vs 33: The Number That Predicts Your Relationship
The number that predicts divorce. The six-second window that saves arguments. The FBI model that works at your kitchen table. Three tools in 18 minutes.