Today, Yara Shahidi — the award-winning actress best known for her roles in the ABC sitcom “black-ish” and Freeform spinoff series, “grown-ish” — releases the first episode of her new SiriusXM podcast, “The Optimist Project” – and it features special guest Janelle Monáe! Listen to the full episode on the SiriusXM app now.

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In the premiere episode titled “Optimism Through Art and Identity with Janelle Monáe,” Yara and Janelle discuss:

Janelle Monáe on Realizing She Lost Joy for Performing

“There was a point where, I was, again, too inside my head, too unable to just find the joy in performing itself because I was too busy critiquing the performance. That became my job. versus, no, your job is to play.

And so I went through the grieving process and forgiving process. I forgave myself for not having the tools to identify, to crawl back to my happy space. And I told myself, how dare I curate so many experiences for the rest of the world and I not enjoy them.”

Janelle Monáe on Her Weekend with Grace Jones

“Her and I spoke briefly about deciding to evolve, because it is a decision. We can say, no, we don’t want to answer the call. We don’t want to shed skin, right? We want to stay comfortable and safer. And we don’t want to jump. And I could not imagine hearing from a better person than her.”