Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid

In this episode, we explore identity in the age of aesthetics, algorithms, personal branding, and late-stage capitalism. From clean girl culture and curated online selves to Socrates, Marx, bell hooks, Kierkegaard, this is a conversation about who we become when we are constantly perceived.  ________________________________________ ✨ Let’s Stay Connected: 📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episo...

Bridgerton, Fifty Shades of Grey, the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights… oof are we getting into it. On the surface, it looks like we’re living in a moment where female desire is more visible than ever.  But are we actually getting closer to understanding it… or have we just found new ways to package it? In this episode, we take a journey through the strange, complicated history of female desire...

A few weeks ago, I got on a boat with a stranger from the internet and somehow ended up living on a sailboat in one of the most remote parts of Indonesia. There were storms, there was a diabetic captain, a near-emergency evacuation, and a stretch of days where we were completely alone on the ocean with no fresh water and no working toilet. Naturally, I wrote about it. What started as a simple Subs...

Breakups are fucking brutal! There's no getting around that. But what makes them even worse is that we don't just lose another person, we are also left with the realisation that we might have abandoned ourselves in the process of trying to keep them. And now they've left, and you have to learn to trust yourself again and reclaim your individual identity outside of an "us" dynamic. This one is abou...

When did “being healthy” become so exhausting? After completing a year-long health coaching diploma and unlearning everything I thought I knew about discipline and dieting, my perspective shifted completely. In this episode, we talk about: – The concept of “crowding out” instead of dieting – How to actually nourish your body (without under-eating) – Moving in ways you genuinely enjoy – What the Bl...

In this episode, we’re asking the biggest question of all: What is the meaning of life? I’ll talk you through how different theories and philosophies have tried to answer it, from evolution, hedonism, religion, existentialism, nihilism and more.  This episode isn’t about giving you a neat answer. It’s about helping you examine the philosophy you’re already living by. Because even if you don’t cons...

In this episode, I’m joined by Leon Harant , a long-term hitchhiker who has spent nearly two years travelling across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia without relying on traditional backpacking routes, flights, or money-driven travel. From hitchhiking through the craziest countries and camping in the desert, to being welcomed into strangers’ homes across Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and beyond, Leon’s jo...

RELATIONSHIPS DON’T NEED TO BE CONSTANT HARD WORK! That’s a myth we tell ourselves to normalise shitty behaviour towards one another. In this episode, we confront the toxic habits that erode trust, intimacy, and self-respect, and keep us stuck in relationship patterns that feel heavy, confusing, and exhausting. This isn’t just a list of red flags or a guide to diagnosing other people. It’s an invi...

+ Free downloadable PDF with reflection prompts You probably have a laundry list of goals for 2026. But how many of those goals are the same ones you had last year, and the year before that? Why haven’t you achieved them yet? And what makes you think this year will be any different? I want to invite you to try something different. Instead of rushing into new goals, habits, and resolutions, what if...

It’s been a wild few months, and this episode is the full catch-up. There was a passport situation that had me low-key committing administrative crimes. Bali, where I hosted my first-ever group trip, learned to scuba dive, and swam with manta rays. Then I hitchhiked through Thailand with a bunch of friends, slept in abandoned hostels and lost resorts, went wild camping on a deserted island, didn’t...

Today I’m sitting down with Eileen Botes, chief cosmetic formulator for Willa Krause Skin Care and DC Laboratories . Eileen has a background in molecular biology and biotechnology, decades of experience in the industry, and a rare ability to talk about skin with both scientific rigour and deep nuance. We get into: Why your skin barrier is the real non-negotiable and how to protect it How climate a...

+ Free episode workbook In a world of hot takes, rage-bait, cancel culture, and instant certainty, thinking slowly has become an act of rebellion. In this episode, we talk about what we lose when we trade nuance for noise, how binary thinking flattens our depth in politics, in love, and even in the way we see ourselves. We’ll talk about how algorithms reward outrage over understanding, and how AI...

Your twenties come with a lot of noise. Everyone has an opinion on who you should be, how you should love, how fast you should grow, and what your life should look like by now. But what if most of that advice… was never actually true? In this episode, we get into some of the biggest lies we’re sold about love, identity, success, healing, and what it means to “get your life together.” If you’ve eve...

My first FAQ episode!  We’re talking everything: solo travel, love, work-life balance, loneliness, heartbreak, creativity, and what “home” even means when you’re constantly leaving it. This one’s honest and a little chaotic. Kind of like my life. If you’ve ever thought about packing your bags and building a life on your own terms, I think you’ll find a piece of yourself somewhere in here. ________...

From angry teenage feminist, scowling at boys who opened doors for me, to my misandry era, to now. In this episode, I trace how my thinking about feminism, and about being a woman, has changed over the past 12 years. We’ll talk about casual misogyny, bad sex ed, double standards, feminist theory, Anaïs Nin, and why I now believe feminism is about the freedom to decide what femininity or masculinit...

One little decision “for the plot” landed me behind the bar of a hostel in Hoi An, Vietnam. In this episode, I’m sharing the real story. From five-hour night shifts and crazy pool parties to found-family friendships, I’ll take you inside the chaos, the laughter, and the hidden curriculum of bartending. I’ll also answer some of the questions I get most often in my DMs: How I landed the job in the f...

What happens when a woman refuses to be likable, palatable, or contained? In this episode of Lost & Found, we sink our teeth into Chelsea G. Summers’s provocative novel A Certain Hunger, a literary thriller about Dorothy Daniels, a glamorous food critic with big appetites: for food, for sex, and for human flesh. Far more than a cannibalistic shocker, this book is a biting commentary on female...

Why do I solo travel? It’s the question I get in my DMs more than any other. The truth is, it isn’t always easy. Yes, it can be lonely, intimidating, and even a little chaotic at times. But it’s also the most liberating, perspective-shifting, and life-affirming thing I’ve ever done for myself. In this episode, I’m making the case for why everyone should take a solo trip, whether it’s a weekend get...

This is the second instalment in our two-part Getting Out of a Rut series. It’s for those moments when you look around at your life and think, How did I end up here? When the spark is gone, the days feel copy–paste, and you’re mourning something you can’t quite name. In this episode, I’m sharing the tools, experiments, and uncomfortable (but freeing) truths that have pulled me out of my own deepes...

This is the episode I needed this week, so I made it for both of us. If you’ve been feeling off… low on energy, creatively flat, stuck in a loop of procrastination and you just need something to shake you out of it, this one’s for you. In part one of this two-part reset, I’m sharing 9 powerful, practical shifts to help pull yourself out of a rut and remind you who the hell you are. We’re talking:...

Our first Lost & Found Book Club episode is here and we’re starting tender. In this deep-dive discussion of Thirst for Salt by Madeleine Lucas, we explore the slow ache of a relationship that never quite breaks, but hollows. We talk love and longing, emotional whiplash, age-gap relationships, unequal power dynamics, aestheticized sadness, and the fantasy of becoming someone through someone els...

What if beauty wasn’t something soft and sweet… but something vast, dangerous, and soul-shaking? In this episode, we dive deep into the Romantic movement - not dating apps or romcoms, but the 19th-century revolution of artists and poets who believed that awe, longing, terror, and wonder were not distractions from life but the very point of it. This isn’t your high school English syllabus. The Roma...

A bottle of whisky, a palm reader, a prophecy. And a night that unfolded like silk around the hips. Slow, hot, dangerous. In this episode, I'm reading you my latest short story, "The Fifth Lover." From rooftops in Northern India to the dark dancefloors where we lose ourselves, this is a story about what we remember and what we rewrite. About possibilities and dead ends. About the high of being you...

In this episode, I’m sharing the mindset shifts I return to when I feel lost, tired, or just trying to ground myself in something deeper than a to-do list. We’ll talk about: The underrated art of trusting detours (and the psychology of hedonic adaptation) What discomfort actually means, and why it’s a good sign How to stop squeezing every moment for meaning Why empathy might actually be selfish an...

At 21, I walked into a philosophy class on Critical Theory, not because I was particularly curious about Marxism, but because the professor radiated something I couldn’t explain. Calm. Clarity. Joy. I didn’t know that one elective would unravel everything I thought I knew about ambition, success, freedom, and identity. Two years later, I was living in a hippie commune in rural Nicaragua, showering...