Tell Me What It's Like

In the Season 2 finale, military spouse Kandi Hart joins the show to discuss what she's learned about building community after decades of moves. She and Stacy talk about what it takes to thrive in every new place, including the mindset you need, the tactics that can work, and how sometimes community starts with just one person. "I will immediately walk up to somebody, and I will ask them about the...

Charles Grimes has spent nearly 30 years as a business psychologist, helping leaders understand themselves so they could lead others well. But he’s also been trying to understand himself, with therapy, courses, and numerous self-assessment tools. But it wasn't until he was 65 — when a friend made a casual, throwaway comment — that the missing piece finally clicked into place. He had Asperger's. Th...

When soccer coach Scott Martin contracted a rare illness that took his hands and parts of his feet, it took the way he coached the game as well as his confidence. What followed was years of depression, discrimination, and self-doubt, until he finally found his way back to the game that he loves. "I was faking it. I was doing a pretty darn good job of faking me being me. But everyone else avoided i...

Dr. Yemi Famuyiwa knew she wanted to be a doctor long before she knew what kind. It was during her third-year rotations at Emory that the answer became obvious. She'd had “a roaring blast” in her OBGYN rotation and couldn't imagine anything else. She went on to specialize in reproductive endocrinology and infertility, and has spent decades helping people navigate one of the most emotional experien...

In 2012, Chelsea Coulston had just moved to a new house in a new city with a newborn while her husband was deployed. She turned her focus to decorating her new rental home, and turned to the internet for help. But she wasn’t finding much to inspire her, since most of what existed was meant for people who could make permanent changes. So she started a blog called Making Home Base to share renter-fr...

Have you ever wondered how the people on reality TV get cast? Dr. Steven Stein is a psychologist who's spent twenty years helping make that call. Working behind the scenes of shows like The Amazing Race Canada and Big Brother Canada, he assesses who belongs, who can handle it, and what might happen when the cameras start rolling. "People want to be the villain. And if you fake it, we try to screen...

When Lisa Skinner was a teenager, she went to visit her grandmother, who began telling her frantic stories about birds living in her mattress and men trying to steal her jewelry. There were no birds, and there were no men, but Lisa would soon find out that her grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease. That experience shaped the course of Lisa’s life and eventually led her into dementia care, where she’...

Julie Melanson always knew she was adopted, but it wasn’t until she was 51 years old that she decided to search for her birth mother. She eventually found her, built a connection with both her mother and her birth siblings, and then lost her mother soon after. Julie reflects on what it was like to grow up as an adoptee, search for her mom, meet her for the first time, and get to know her during th...

Note: This episode includes discussion of crime and the criminal justice system, including violent crime. James Porfido spent years as a prosecutor, working to put accused criminals behind bars—until he made a pivotal shift and began defending them instead. Now, having seen the criminal justice system from both sides, he shares what changed his perspective, what most people misunderstand about fai...

This Earth Day, listen to one of the most earth-friendly guests from Tell Me What It's Like so far: Trash Wolf . While there are lots of people who talk about helping the environment, Florida’s Trash Wolf took a different route. In 2022, Trash Wolf began prowling the streets, putting on a wolf suit to patrol his neighborhood and solve one specific problem: litter . Since this episode first aired,...

When JoAnne Chitwood graduated from nursing school, she wasn't sure what she actually wanted to do—until a hospice volunteer at the bedside of her patient told her, "JoAnne, you are a hospice nurse". She had never even heard the term, but she soon realized she was born for the role. JoAnne has spent the past four decades at the bedside of the dying. In this episode, she shares the profound lessons...

After 30 years of marriage, Victoria Vaughn found herself newly single in her 50s — and back in a dating world that looked nothing like the one she left. She landed many dates, but many of them weren’t what she expected. She calls those dates “frogs.” But through those experiences, she gained a much clearer understanding of what she wanted, what actually matters in a partner, and why finding the r...

Mitch Wu thought he knew exactly what his creative career would look like. But after years in product design, a difficult job, and the loss of his brother, he realized how far he’d drifted from the kind of work he actually wanted to be doing. Then one afternoon he and his nephew went to the park with a couple of action figures and from the first photograph he knew he'd found what he was meant to d...

Toni King was at a Medicare workshop when she realized how easy it is for someone to misunderstand the system—and how difficult it can be to fix those misunderstandings once they happen. She’s spent years helping people navigate Medicare, a process shaped by rules, timelines, and decisions that aren’t always intuitive. She shares what it’s like to guide people through it, how the system works, and...

Cities don’t just develop over time — they’re shaped by decisions about transportation, where we build, and what gets prioritized. Urban planner Jahnavi Kirtane explains how those decisions come together, why so many places in the U.S. are built around cars, and how walkability affects independence, access, and everyday life in ways most people don’t realize. "Walking is really good for you, both...

Suzanne Smith has spent her career working with nonprofits and has witnessed a reality many people outside the field don’t see: solving big social problems requires more than passion and good intentions. It requires organizations strong enough to grow and build long-term sustainability. In this episode, Suzanne shares what it’s like to work in the social impact world, and what she’s learned from w...

When Laurie Jacobson was 43, she found herself in a deeply unhappy marriage and increasingly isolated and depressed. After years of trying conventional therapies and self-help approaches without relief, she made a decision that felt radical at the time: she signed up for a silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery she’d discovered through a pamphlet in a coffee shop. Over the next 22 days of meditati...

As a teenager, Christina King looked like she was doing everything right — she had good grades, played sports, took advanced classes. But when her mom paused during an argument and asked, “Are you happy?” it changed the course of her life. Today, Christina is a therapist specializing in tween and teen girls, and she shares what’s really happening in the teenage brain, why emotional ups and downs a...

Kristen Mardis was 21 years old, fresh out of college, and had just been accepted into graduate school when she found out she was pregnant. With no financial safety net and no health insurance, she had to quickly figure out how she would care for a baby while still pursuing her dream of becoming a speech pathologist. In this episode, Kristen shares what it was like to navigate Medicaid, SNAP benef...

Carol Lin spent her career inside newsrooms built for breaking news. She covered some of the most difficult moments in recent history, including being the first person to report the attacks on September 11. In this conversation, she reflects on her career in journalism and the behind-the-scenes moments that shaped her life. She also discusses what it was like to revisit those experiences while wri...

What’s it like to spend weeks inside a monastery in complete silence? What’s it like to find out you’re pregnant with no idea how you’re going to support yourself? And what’s it like to be the first person to tell the world a plane has just hit the World Trade Center? Season two of Tell Me What It’s Like gives you a window into someone else’s world - the moments that challenge us, scare us, and sh...

As the year comes to a close, guests from Season 1 of Tell Me What It’s Like share the holiday traditions that matter most to them. From longtime family rituals to traditions shaped by loss, life season, culture, and even wildlife, this bonus episode reflects on how traditions evolve and how new ones are created along the way. Season 1 Guests Featured in this Episode: Keri Nelson Morton Barlaz Ale...

When Sarah Teresinski was a single mom, she couldn’t afford the beautiful little dresses she saw in stores for her daughter. So she decided to teach herself how to sew. That simple decision sparked a movement — and eventually, Redeux Style , where Sarah transforms old, unused items into something new and beautiful. Today, she helps people see the potential in what they already have or what they mi...

Susan Polgar’s father believed geniuses weren’t born, they were made. So when his three-year-old daughter found an old chess set in their Budapest apartment, he saw an opportunity to prove it. Susan quickly learned the game, but soon realized the real challenge: convincing the world that girls could play just as well as boys - which she did by becoming the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title...

After decades of chasing success as a tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and even a candidate for Utah governor, Jeff Burningham found himself questioning what it all meant. When the governor’s race ended in 2020, Jeff finally had space to pause—and that pause changed everything. It led him to write The Last Book Written by a Human, a deeply personal reflection on consciousness, connection, an...