Ducking Realitea

Send us Fan Mail Some friendships change your life. Others change the lives of everyone around you. Karen Beckles returns to Ducking Realitea for her third appearance, this time joined by her longtime friend, collaborator, and "chum," Leia Mitchell. What started as conversations between two roommates during COVID slowly evolved into a partnership built on trust, personal growth, and a sh...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Ducking Reality Presents: Touch of the Tism , Siobhan, Holly, and Danielle take you from sticky bar floors to heavy-hearted truth in under two hours. They start with pure chaos: flip flops in dive bars, near-death toe incidents, and why melty cheese might be the only thing holding us together. Quickly, the tone shifts into something deeper—navigating parents’ de...

Send us Fan Mail This episode starts with Brian photographing 25 bands in 48 hours and somehow ends with swinger hotels, Japanese punk bands, AI, strip club playlists, and one of my favorite conversations we've had about creativity. Brian Paine and Johnny Dismal join me to pull back the curtain on what it's like to document a music scene from both sides of the stage. Brian talks about th...

Send us Fan Mail Well, Touch of the Tism is two weeks late. Before anybody asks... no, none of us are pregnant. 😂 Honestly, we've just been busy being adults, which frankly feels like a design flaw. Between BottleRock, gallery resets, work, chronic pain, family stuff, and trying to remember where we left our keys, this episode took a little longer to make it out into the world. This one star...

Send us Fan Mail Charles was born in Manila, raised in West Oakland, and shaped by a journey that includes skipping grades, rave days, a suicide attempt, paranoid schizophrenia, and two hospitalizations. Today, he’s a therapist serving school-age kids on Medi-Cal, bringing both clinical training and lived experience into the room. In this conversation, we talk about what psychosis actually feels l...

Send us Fan Mail This week I'm joined by Ilona Campbell, the creator behind Campbell Sells the Bay, for a conversation that goes far beyond real estate. Born in Ukraine and raised in San Francisco, Ilona shares her journey through Burning Man culture, opening one of Brooklyn's first vape shops, world travel, motherhood, and eventually becoming one of the Bay Area's favorite local hi...

Send us Fan Mail How the Canvas Became My Church with Jo Anne Yada Jo Anne Yada joined me in the studio to talk about art, creativity, and teaching kids through music and self-expression. What I didn't expect was a conversation that would take us through growing up Mormon, leaving a high-demand religion, questioning long-held beliefs, and learning how to build a life that actually feels like...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Buckley drops into the pond for a conversation about punk rock, rent control, women-led music festivals, labor activism, and the weird ways community forms when life gets hard. Siobhan first met Jason at the She Shreds Music Fest, where he was running stage sound while helping his band Star Strut pull off an ambitious women-in-music festival that almost unraveled from pure c...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a chef and a mixologist start finishing each other’s…flavors? Proof & Pairing happens, cocktail-first creations, wild creativity, and the most joyful culinary chaos you’ve ever heard. In this episode of Ducking Realitea , I sit down with Todd and Chef Lamont of Proof & Pairing, a Bay Area-based cocktail-first food pairing experience that flips traditional...

Send us Fan Mail The tea has been spiltz… and in this case, it’s hot. Like sauna hot . This week I’m sitting down with my friend Chris—one of my favorite humans from Archimedes Banya—and we get into how a shy college kid going to nude beaches in Humboldt somehow turned into a 40+ year love affair with naturism, sauna culture, and one very specific kind of community you don’t really find anywhere e...

Send us Fan Mail This live episode of Ducking Realitea presents: Touch of the Tism drops you right into Fireside in Alameda, where Siobhan , Holly , and Danielle bring their studio to the stage for Episode 7 . What starts as a nerves-and-negronis kind of night quickly turns into a hilarious, heartfelt group therapy session with a bar full of friends, listeners, and a few unsuspecting new fans. The...

Send us Fan Mail A culty childhood. A goat ranch. Face scars. Suspension hooks. And somehow… one of the most grounded people you’ll ever meet. In this episode of Ducking Realitea, Siobhan sits down with Gage for a conversation that starts with first impressions, and quickly turns into something much deeper. Gage shares what it was like growing up in a strict religious environment, navigating famil...

Send us Fan Mail This one goes everywhere, in the best way. Siobhan sits down with Dr. Misha Brodsky: Soviet-born mathematician, UC Berkeley researcher, university administrator… and the man behind one of the most iconic banyas in the U.S. From growing up in the Soviet Union—where travel was restricted and careers were essentially pre-determined—to being told “you can go, but you go forever,” Mish...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is not light… but it’s important. From being coached to lie to CPS at four years old to ending up on a psych ward as a teaching case, Tracy has survived more than most people can imagine, and somehow built a life full of love, art, and zero tolerance for bullshit. Siobhan sits down with Tracy of Black Widow Bottles for a raw, unfiltered conversation about what it actu...

Send us Fan Mail This episode was supposed to be a quick promo. You know… remind you about the live show, keep it tight, move on. Yeah—no. That’s not what happened. This episode of Touch of the Tism is part promo, part group therapy, and fully unfiltered. We’re gearing up for our first live show on April 4—bands, tastings, a fundraiser for Meals on Wheels—and we’re equal parts excited and slightly...

Send us Fan Mail She thought she’d be dancing on tour… instead she found herself producing events at Oprah’s house. In this episode of Ducking Realitea , Siobhan sits down with experiential event producer Kristina Martinez to talk about what it actually takes to build a career behind the scenes of the moments people never forget. From bartending triple shifts in New York to producing large-scale i...

Send us Fan Mail This one gets real. I sat down with Brian Paine a Bay Area punk kid turned tech professional—who watched his life unravel after layoffs, grief, and a slow slide into depression. We talk about what it actually feels like when you lose your identity, your routine, and your sense of self… and how easy it is to quietly disappear. Brian opens up about going from the loud, social “mayor...

Send us Fan Mail Domestic violence doesn’t always look like the movies. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s confusing. And sometimes it slowly erodes your sense of self. This week on Ducking Realitea , Siobhan sits down with Laura MacInnis , managing attorney at the Family Violence Law Center , to talk about the real dynamics of abuse, coercive control, and the long road survivors take to reclaim...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Touch of the Tism begins in classic chaotic fashion, studio mishaps, Seattle dogs, retail exhaustion, but quickly shifts into something deeper. Holly opens up about losing a longtime friend under complicated and painful circumstances. The conversation moves through grief, survivor’s guilt, boundaries, addiction, and the impossible “what ifs” we replay when someone...

Send us Fan Mail This week in The Pond, Siobhan sits down with singer, performer, and emcee Sheena Lokelani for a wildly honest, laugh-through-the-chaos conversation about music, motherhood, dating, and growing into your power. Sheena shares how her journey started in a Filipino family band in her twenties, paused for parenting, and then unexpectedly reignited through open mics (including one glor...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Ducking Realitea , Siobhan sits down with Brianna Devlin, a museum nerd and history lover who turned a lifelong fascination with Alameda’s Pinball Museum into a career, and a path to graduate school. Brianna shares how growing up on the “storybook” island of Alameda shaped her love of community and culture, and how a late-night search for “museums near me” led h...

Send us Fan Mail Siobhan sits down with returning guest Lee Williams, and her very vocal dog, Tiburon, to talk about trauma, healing, and the quiet ways safety gets rebuilt. After experiencing a terrifying home invasion, Lee’s sense of security was shattered. Locks and cameras helped, but fear lingered. Enter Tiburon: a nine-month-old Siberian Husky adopted almost on instinct, whose size offered p...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Ducking Realitea is a chaotic, tender wander through the life of Johnny Dismal: bartender-turned–festival boss, punk rocker, and darkly hilarious visual artist. Johnny and Siobhan trace his journey from a childhood bouncing between Air Force bases in Europe to becoming a self-described “Masshole” obsessed with hardcore shows along the New England coast. Johnny unpa...

Send us Fan Mail Siobhan sits down with artist and entrepreneur Sarah Woodruff to talk about what it really means to live creatively, without apology. Sarah shares her winding journey through thrift-store fashion eras, owning multiple businesses in her twenties, founding a burlesque troupe, singing in bands, and eventually stepping away from a soul-draining corporate job to rebuild her life (and s...

Send us Fan Mail What are the odds an adopted kid is a perfect kidney match for their dad? Jamey Aspel’s story is one in a million—and somehow also painfully human. In this funny and deeply honest conversation, Jamey joins Siobhan to talk about growing up adopted in evangelical Appalachia, coming of age as a gay kid in a world that told him he was wrong, and the jaw-dropping moment he discovered h...