The Things We Know

What happens when a marriage ends overseas—and coming home with your children isn’t simply your decision? In Part Two, Shannon Vavich shares how telling her own story brought other military and defense contractor spouses forward with disturbingly similar experiences. Through her Stranded Spouses Project, she is documenting stories of financial abandonment, isolation, barriers to legal representati...

Kari first discovered Shannon Vavich in January 2025 through her funny, sharply political videos: a Catholic mother of seven making fabulous meals in full “trad wife” glam, challenging religious hypocrisy and declaring, “But I’m not a fascist.” So much has unfolded since then that two episodes barely scratch the surface—so buckle up! In the first of this two-part conversation, Shannon shares her a...

In this episode, we welcome Daniela Sokolowski, founder of DiCuore Diamonds — a bespoke jewelry brand in the New York area where every piece tells a story that matters. Daniela is not your typical jeweler. A diamond expert, storyteller, breast cancer survivor, and scholar of forensic psychology, she brings a depth of life experience to everything she creates. Her custom pieces are designed to mark...

When life-changing medical news arrives, the facts are only part of the story. In this deeply personal conversation, Lisa shares her recent early-stage breast cancer diagnosis, and Kari and Lisa sit down with Sara Champie, LCSW—a somatically oriented trauma therapist and BRCA1 carrier whose work explores the intersection of hereditary cancer risk, genetic testing, and developmental trauma. Togethe...

In this episode of The Things We Know , Kari and Lisa sit down with Dr. Jill Rosenthal, a Harvard and Stanford educated physician turned cancer and mindset coach, to explore what happens after the crisis is over. While treatment may end, the emotional aftermath often lingers in the form of fear, uncertainty, and an identity shaped by life's hardest experiences. Dr. Rosenthal shares why so many...

What happens when hiding the truth begins to cost more than telling it? Lisa and Kari talk with licensed marriage and family therapist Krissy Johnson about the emotional weight of secrecy, the ways women can lose themselves inside relationships, and the complicated work of rebuilding self-trust. Drawing from her journey from sex worker to therapist, Krissy brings candor, humor, and hard-earned wis...

Ahead of their sixth Best Chapter Yet retreat, Kari and Lisa talk about why time spent in the company of other women can be so powerful. Women in their 20s through their 70s have attended these retreats, finding the rare opportunity to be fully seen, heard, supported and witnessed—without having to take care of anyone else or prove anything about who they are. Some return again and again because t...

At 85, Patricia Morin is proof that it is never too late to begin a whole new chapter. Kari and Lisa sit down with Kari’s mom to talk about the many lives she has lived: growing up as the oldest of six, welcoming her Vietnamese daughter Soi into the family through foster care, building a nearly 50-year marriage, raising four very different children, leading major church and community events, begin...

“In a real sense, if you don’t vote, you don’t exist.” Recording just after the death of Gloria Steinem, Kari and Lisa talk about why voting in the 2026 election matters—and why participating in democracy means more than casting our own ballots. They discuss threats facing election workers, changing voting laws, AI-generated misinformation, the importance of getting election information from trust...

What happens when witnessing injustice is no longer enough? In this episode of The Things We Know, Kari and Lisa welcome back Kristy Morrow, whose advocacy took on new urgency when her son’s soccer teammate, Ricardo Hernandez Navarrete, and his mother, Liliana Navarrete, were detained during a scheduled asylum check-in. Kristy shares what it took to keep their story visible, how community action h...

When Kari and Lisa released a previous episode, The Exhaustion of Staying Safe , many women said they felt seen, heard, and understood, while several men thanked them for helping put words to experiences they had never fully considered. Then video clips from the episode reached an unexpected audience on social media, and a few comments quickly became hundreds. What began as a conversation about th...

What if the key to feeling more confident isn't becoming someone new, but finally giving yourself permission to be fully yourself? In this episode, Kari and Lisa sit down with relationship and confidence coach Lark Ericson to explore the lifelong habit of seeking external validation and what it takes to outgrow it. Together, they discuss people-pleasing, belonging, anger as a catalyst for chan...

How much of life do women miss while watching themselves live? In this episode of The Things We Know, Lisa and Kari examine the exhausting inner and outer conversations women have about their bodies and question why appearance remains such a constant measure of worth. They explore the difference between caring for a body and criticizing it, the hidden cost of treating it as a lifelong renovation p...

What happens when women stop trying to become someone else and start telling the truth about who they already are? In this episode, Lisa and Kari sit down with Megan Dirks, founder of The Girl on the Left , two-time international bestselling author, and brand strategist, for a powerful conversation about visibility, self-worth, and the pressure women feel to package their lives into neat transform...

How did a word that simply means believing women deserve equal rights become one of the most misunderstood labels in our culture? In this episode, Lisa and Kari  unpack the surprisingly complicated history of the word feminism , exploring how a movement rooted in equality, inclusion, and human dignity came to be associated with anger, exclusion, and attacks on men. They examine the decades of bad...

What role are you playing in your own life right now? In this episode, Lisa and Kari explore a simple question that opens up a surprisingly powerful conversation. Intrigued by the term "Main Character Energy," they move beyond the social media trend to examine four roles many of us drift in and out of: the Main Character, the Supporting Character, the Stage Manager, and the Audience Memb...

Somewhere along the way, many women become experts at anticipating everyone else’s needs while losing touch with their own. In this episode, Kari and Lisa explore what happens when desire gets buried beneath responsibility, caregiving, productivity, and people pleasing. They discuss why reconnecting with what you want isn’t selfish; it’s an essential part of living a full and authentic life. Throu...

In this episode, Lisa and Kari sit down with Joanna Shakti to talk about love, intimacy, and what it really takes to feel connected — to ourselves and to each other — in lives that are often overloaded with work, caregiving, and distraction. The conversation doesn't land on easy answers. Instead, it opens up a more honest question: what are we actually missing when we talk about loneliness, an...

Safety is often treated as common sense, but in this episode Lisa and Kari explore the invisible mental load that comes with constantly assessing risk, making calculations, and navigating a world that asks women to stay vigilant while rarely questioning why that vigilance is necessary. In a conversation that moves beyond the obvious, they examine what those unseen habits cost, what they reveal, an...

In this deeply honest and timely conversation, Kari and Lisa sit down with gender diversity therapist, parent coach, and AFFIRM Coaching Program founder Rachel Hulstein-Lowe to talk about allyship, LGBTQ+ advocacy, parenting gender-diverse youth, and the emotional realities families are navigating in today’s polarized climate. Together, they explore what meaningful allyship actually looks like bey...

It's a strange moment to be talking about imposter syndrome when so many of the people running things appear utterly unburdened by self-doubt. In this episode, Kari and Lisa are joined by returning guest Charlotte Callahan — songwriter, actor, performer, and frontwoman of the all-female band The Deffades, back from the Season 2 fan favorite Barbie in the Real World . Together they dig into the res...

In this episode of The Things We Know , Kari Morin and Lisa Callahan make the case that fun isn't something you earn after you've crossed everything off the list — it's a genuine biological need, and the science backs them up. Drawing on the research of Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, and author Cyndie Spiegel's concept of microjoys, Kari and Lisa expl...

In this episode, we sit down with Maureen Cooper — better known as Coach Mo — a healthy lifestyle and weight loss coach who helps professional women get out of survival mode and back in sync with their bodies. Coach Mo's approach is refreshingly simple: when you build habits around nutrition, movement, stress, and sleep that actually work with your natural rhythms, health stops feeling like a batt...

In this episode of The Things We Know , Kari and Lisa unpack a phrase they've both been saying more often lately — "I'm too old for that" — and ask what it actually means. Drawing on Ashton Applewhite's TED Talk on ageism, they explore how much of what women experience as "getting older" is learned cultural conditioning rather than anything inevitable. Then they get specific: naming what they're g...

In this episode of The Things We Know , Kari and Lisa sit down with Angela Burk, author of Real Girls Guide to Midlife , for a conversation that doesn't try to tidy midlife into a transformation story. What they got instead was something more honest — and more useful. Angela writes and speaks about what midlife actually looks like: the identity shifts, the relationship reckonings, the body changes...