Bad On Paper

Today we are joined by our dear friend Katie Sturino, body acceptance advocate and founder of Megababe Beauty. This episode is basically a three-way phone conversation among friends but the big thing is that we talk about her amazing new book, Body Talk , and her journey towards body acceptance. We also use this time to catch up with Katie, covering her summer travel plans, new Megababe launches,...

This month we read The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, one of both of our favorite authors. We were already HUGE Laura Dave fans (she's also the author of Eight Hundred Grapes and Hello Sunshine), and we were so excited to see her branch into totally new territory with a thriller! In the book, Hannah Hall's husband, Owen, disappears after only one year of marriage, leaving behind a note that...

Whenever either one of us do a Q&A we get asked about working with an interior designer, so today we wanted to invite our friends (and interior designers!) Erin Gates & Emma Beryl to chat. Emma and Erin demystify the entire process of working with a designer (yes, even pricing!). They also share their experiences working with us, their favorite places to find great deals on decor items, and their...

Last week we reflected back on quarantine and the positive things that came from it. Now that we are both fully vaccinated we thought it would be fun to look forward. This week, we are looking toward the future and thinking about life post-pandemic. We (unsurprisingly) are excited about travel and actually getting dressed again. Although we have very different ideas of what getting dressed looks l...

Today's episode is a real grab bag! We start out with a topic close to Grace's heart: snacks. We compare our snacking habits, our favorite snacks, and more. We also touch on our favorite chores (and our least favorites too!). You have probably never met two people who feel so strongly about doing laundry. And as we get closer to the end of quarantine and life going back to (almost?) normal, we als...

Today is Book Club, and this month we read Delicious! By Ruth Reichl . The book tells the story of Billie Breslin, who learns at a young age she has an impeccable palate. Years later she drops out of college and moves from California to NYC to work for Delicious!, the country's most prominent food magazine. Her life changes drastically as she forms new relationships with colleagues at the magazine...

In today's episode we are joined by Francesco Clark, the founder of the clean beauty brand Clark's Botanicals. Francesco shares the origin story of Clark's Botanicals: When he suffered a devastating spinal cord injury, he found himself paralyzed. One unexpected side effect of his paralysis was that his body could no longer sweat… and as a result, his skin changed dramatically. Together with his fa...

Grace has made it safe and sound to Charleston and we were due for catch up! We put a call out in the Facebook group for questions, and we tackle them all in today's episode. We share our favorite book podcasts, how we choose what to read next, how we manage our day, and give advice to a listener on a big life decision. We also answer questions about if job hunting is all who you know, how to make...

Today's episode was the last one we recorded together while Grace was living in Brooklyn! As we embark on a new (remote) era of the podcast we thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane and talk about all of our childhood favorite things. As two weird kids (and now, weird adults), there were a lot of fun and silly memories to share. We share the things that we collected, the foods we...

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800-273-8255   Our March Book Club pick is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. The book follows 35-year-old Nora Seed, who is full of regrets over how she lived her life. In between life and death she is given the chance to explore how alternate lives would have played out had she made different choices thanks to the magic of The Midnigh...

Between Grace's upcoming move to Charleston and Becca's immersion in RomComPods Season 3 production, we realized we haven't had much time to catch up! So this week is a little off the rails grab-bag episode where we embrace all of our most unpopular opinions on popular things, and the other way around. It's always fun to unearth more things that we don't know about each other. This includes but is...

Home chef and New York Times bestselling author Julia Turshen joins us to talk about her journey to writing cookbooks, her relationship with her body, and her personal, new cookbook Simply Julia . We also hear the adorable story of how she met her wife, Grace (a true Internet meet-cute!) and discuss her inclusive food database, Equity at the Table.    More Julia: Simply Julia - Cookbook juliatursh...

It has been a year in pandemic purgatory and if you are like us (which we assume you are, because you're here!) then you might be running out of ways to entertain yourself at home. We have both been recently watching and listening to a lot of great content and thought we would share a roundup of our favorite movies, tv shows, podcasts and more. Consider this your to-watch list!   Join us in the Fa...

Today we spoke with Frances Cha, the author of our February book club pick -  If I Had Your Face . Frances is a NYC-based author who splits her time between the US and Seoul. She shares her experiences researching plastic surgery, room salons, and mental health for the book. We discuss the way she developed her characters to each embody a different theme of Korean culture, the journey to finally r...

For this month's book club we read If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha. Just 30 pages into this book, we both knew it had to be our book club pick. Neither of us haven read anything like it before and there is so much to talk about. The story revolves around 4 women who all live in the same apartment building in contemporary Seoul, South Korea. The book explores impossible beauty standards and stric...

One of the things we get asked about most is how to read more. So we tackle that during the first fifteen minutes of this episode. (Spoiler alert: being single and childfree during a pandemic helps!) When we read, the advantages of audiobooks, and how to find books you truly love reading, and more! For the rest of the episode, we dive into our favorite hidden gem books. We each brought our five fa...

Today we are joined by Caroline Owusu-Ansah, the founder of Luv Scrub! If you have been listening for a while you know that Grace is obsessed with her Luv Scrub—and rightfully so. This exfoliating cloth was awarded Allure's Best of Beauty Award, leaves your skin baby soft, and replaces your old loofah or pouf - for good! Caroline shares the journey to build her business and her lessons learned, fr...

With almost a full year of quarantine life under our belts, we're checking in with each other on how we're feeling, what's giving us hope, and how we are staying motivated to do anything more than watching Netflix. Grace shares more about her season of self-improvement and Becca talks about how big projects are giving her quarantine a sense of purpose. We're also talking about the activities that...

Today we are joined by Elizabeth Gilbert the New York Times best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, City of Girls, and (of course!) our January Book Club pick Big Magic. We talk about her decision to write Big Magic and the writing process behind it. She shares her unique perspectives on creativity and how every person can find and grow in that space. She talks about staying actively (and not-so a...

We found it fitting that Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert was our first book club of 2021. Becca reads this book every January to jumpstart her year, and we wanted to include you on her tradition. Reading this book is the creativity pep talk we all need so badly right now. Elizabeth approaches creativity with lightness and joy. Even if you don't consider yourself a creative person, you will take so...

In today's episode we are joined by Azora Zoe Paknad, the founder of Goldune. Before starting Goldune in the middle of the pandemic (in the short span of 5 months!), Azora Zoe worked for Food52 and before that, she was Grace's social media intern at BaubleBar! She has worked in the ecommerce and content space for years and when quarantine started she got to work and started her own e-commerce site...

It's the time of year where we reflect on past resolutions and create new ones for the new year ahead. As we look back on the insanity of 2020 and the way that it affected our goals and ability to achieve them, we found some silver linings! Although we are definitely cautious as we set our 2021 goals, we're also optimistic. We talk about our personal, business, and mental and physical health resol...

We're back with our first episode of a brand new year! To kick off 2021 we are joined by Kelley Knight, author of Spells for the Modern Mystic Ritual Guidebook and Spellcasting Kit. Kelley is bringing mysticism into the mainstream, and we are here for it! We chat about her own psychic awakening, building her business, and her freakiest predictions. She does a mini tarot reading for each horoscope...

For the last book club of 2020, we chose The Cousins by Karen McManus. This is a twisty YA thriller, sans murder - making it kind of the perfect book for both of us! This is the tale of Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah Story: three cousins who barely know each other but are invited to work at their estranged grandmother's resort. All of their parents have been disinherited and the cousins learn more and m...

2020 is coming to a close and we are not going to let this year end on a negative note. There were really some great things about this year (politics and pandemics aside, of course). In this episode we talk about our biggest professional and personal accomplishments this year and all of our favorite purchases. We reminisce about our favorite episodes of the pod this year, our favorite books, cloth...