At My Kitchen Table

Welcome to today’s delicious episode where Veronica Molitor, Owner & Chief Executive Chocolatier of Umber Chocolates, pulls up a chair at my kitchen table to talk about how she started her own chocolate business, despite being the one member of her family who didn’t really care for chocolate! Veronica also chats about being from Texas but loving the snow and cold, the benefits of having the gi...

Teabags, I’m so excited for this week’s guest because I have so much respect for librarians.  They are, in my opinion, the final level adults in the room.  Today at my kitchen table I'm joined by Suzy Waldo, who is a librarian, among many other things. Suzy is the city kid to my suburban kid, and joins me to talk about the evolution of Pittsburgh neighborhoods, her days a bike messenger, and...

Hey everyone!  I had this fun idea and my guest was game. This week on At My Kitchen Table, I joined Hadley Haas at her kitchen table to have a get-to-know-you discussion with her. Hadley is deeply devoted to her family, she’s a fierce advocate, a friend, a hands-on community builder, and an activist. And, oh yeah, she's running for the PA State House of Representatives for District 44. We ge...

It’s Wednesday, so we're heading to the kitchen!  At my kitchen table this week is Heather Capezio.  I knew Heather in the way back of middle and high school, and while we haven’t seen each other much IRL, we’ve stayed connected through socials. Today, Heather talks about tapping into her creativity, starting her own business, and ultimately leaving her corporate job.  But she chats about a l...

It's another wild Wednesday as I'm joined at my kitchen table by Steven Janofsky. Steven is my former co-worker who became a close friend of the family.  He tends to be relatively private, so when he said he’d come have a yap on the podcast, I thought he'd have some pretty strict guardrails.  He surprised the hell out of me by keeping nothing back.  He talks about things like his AD...

Welcome to At My Kitchen Table where I’m joined this week by my friend and Snap-streak partner in crime, Annette Reitano!  Annette is a creative in her core and she nurtures that part of herself both professionally and personally.  She joins me to talk about the importance of creativity and allowing yourself space to play in managing your body's stress response.  She also chats about how her...

It's been a half a year, you guys!  Week 26 of connecting with people and bringing their stories to you.  So I took a pause to talk about the path to the pod, how we got here to week 26 of a passion project, and what's coming up next for At My Kitchen Table.  I also mention how I loathe the sound of my own voice, my takeaways from a bar meeting with Jason & CJ, and my regular listene...

We’re flying high with Michelle Sedlak at my kitchen table this week!  Michelle is a flight attendant and she joins me to talk about all things air travel.  We dive into a bunch of topics, though, including the many jobs she had before the flight attendant gig, her passenger pet peeves (they mostly involve people who do not listen), how a girls trip with 10 ladies on one catamaran inspired her to...

Amy Becker, the best thing to come from my time at the University of Pittsburgh aside from my husband, sits down at my kitchen table today.  She talks about how our friendship shouldn't have worked, how becoming a parent helped her navigate her own parent-child trauma bonds, learning how to be a duck, and giving herself permission to stop giving a fuck.  We giggle a lot in this episode becaus...

Today I sit down with Heather Papiernik to talk about some of the things she did to find her people after relocating to the Pittsburgh area.  Heather grew up in Youngstown, OH, living in her hometown for about 40 years before she moved away.  Turns out, it can be difficult to get close to people who have known each other for most of their lives.  As she talks about some of the ways she put herself...

Kayla Rennie pulls up a chair at my kitchen table this week, bringing a lot of energy and humor to her story about her son, Samson, and his early diagnosis of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD).  In simplest terms, ALD is caused by a genetic mutation that causes an accumulation of very long chain fatty acids which can then affect the brain, spinal cord, and adrenal cortex. We get into the science of it al...

Hey, hey everyone! I am joined at my kitchen table this week by my bonus son, Ian Stone, and my actual son, Patrick Shaak to chat about loneliness.  When we noodled on topics, this one kept coming back around for me as I think it needs to be discussed with the demographic most typically affected (depending on which definition of "male loneliness" you're using). These two are bffs si...

At my kitchen table this week is my former co-worker, current friend, and fellow GenXer, Tim.  Tim joins me to discuss his journey to an OCD diagnosis. I took AMKT on the road and recorded with Tim in Connecticut during the holidays for our annual "therapy session" with other former co-workers.  We chat about our shared love of music, the imminence of annihilation we experienced as kids...

Welcome to my third episode that features Glen Rock, PA! At my kitchen table this week is Ali Collier, owner of Brabble Hill Farms and owner / proprietor of Main Street Market in Glen Rock. My chat with Ali marks the first time that I sought a guest because of a topic – she and her husband own a micro farm, and I’ve become very interested in learning more about small, sustainable farming. Ali has...

Welcome to 2026, teabags! I’m back at my kitchen table this week with Rollin Apgar!  This is the second episode in what is becoming a short series of episodes that feature Glen Rock, Pennsylvania either as its center or as its backdrop. Local, small-town politics is fascinating to me because it feels like it's often ignored, but is the most impactful politics to our day-to-day lives. Rollin a...

Back at the kitchen table to say good riddance to the dumpster fire that was 2025 is my sister and first ever podcast guest, Angela Myers.  We tried to talk shit about the New Year’s holiday in a kind of minisode.  But we had a lot to cover, so it became a full episode. We send 2025 out with a whimper, yapping about what we think of this past year (it’s askew) and how we feel about things like New...

It’s almost Christmas, and having Adam Wright join me at my kitchen table this week is a gift!  I connected with Adam through our mutual friend (and friend of the pod), Jenn.  He’s the kind of person you feel like you’ve known forever when you’re five minutes into a conversation with him. Adam lost both of his parents to cancer, and we discovered that we have a mutual bond in that we both lost our...

We love a good passion project at the pod because we love it when someone says "fuck it" and tries something new on for size.  Today, I welcome back friend of the pod, Jason Hill, to my kitchen table to talk about his passion project, which is training to become a professional wrestler at the age of 43.  This was a lot of fun to get to be nerdy about particularly 90s Attitdue Era wrestli...

Jenn Rennie pulls up a seat at my kitchen table today, and chatting with her is like having both the tea *and* a sweet treat!  Jenn is a damn delight as she shares the story of how her experiences with cancer treatment and her care team brought the out the closeted writer in her and changed her career path to oncology nursing.  Jenn is one of those people who always tells the real-real of a story,...

Content warning: contains descriptions or mentions of drug use, OD, and suicidal ideations. Get ready for Hayley Reyes to join me at my kitchen table today! I'm really fortunate that Hayley trusted me enough to speak frankly about how she became addicted to drugs, what led to her recovery, and why it's important to challenge our perceptions of people who become addicted.  While her story...

It's Thanksgiving week, teabags!  I decided to do something a little different with the pod this week, so this won’t be a typical episode.  Since I’m not gonna have my three kids together for the holiday, I Zoomed with my family and did a twist on the At My Kitchen Table 3 good things about your week.  You get our bonus hot takes of best and worst Thanksgiving foods, you'll hear a couple...

It pays to be a nepo baby this week, as I welcome my offspring to my kitchen table (which is obviously her kitchen table as well)!  For anyone who follows my blog, you’ll know her as Kid 3; for those who follow my socials, you’ll recognize her as the Toots to my Bub in our #BubandToots.  My frequent travel buddy has been going through it lately and we talk about how she finally got through her doc...

Welcome back to my kitchen table, CJ McDermott!  CJ has a ton of wild stories about his childhood and growing up the middle child of parents who were addicted to drugs.  We barely scratched the surface, but we talk about the feral 80s, the life lessons his parents taught him, and the beautiful and diverse people he's met along the way.  CJ talks about his family with a lot of humor and sarcas...

Today's guest at my kitchen table is a friend of the pod and my friend in real life, Victoria Ribeiro.  Vic is a community builder.  She genuinely likes people and in her own words, just wants her epitaph to read "friend."  She loves to collect and connect friends, build community, and make the world around her better.  We talk about that and more as we cover a pretty fraught chapte...

My friend and former colleague Kristin Estrella joins me at my kitchen table today to take me on a journey through her autoimmune diagnosis of Antisynthetase Syndrome and the ripples of impact it's had along the way.  We chat about how she does NOT give youngest sibling vibes, her ASS disease, and the "yes, and" of women powering through hard things as she tells her story with equal...