The Balanced Voice with Rania Mankarious

Concluding season 3 with a very special sit down with our host Rania Mankarious and our Executive Producer Sydney Zuiker!! ☎️🎙✨ In this episode, Rania and Sydney reflect on the critical conversations we had with parents from across the nation who joined us on the podcast to share their personal stories involving hardships with their children. Every story was important and offered solutions and re...

On June 26, 2014, the life of Bree Moore, a 20-year old young woman with a bright future, was cut short with an act of violence. She was shot to death by her boyfriend in a fit of dating violence. ​ The murder of Bree Moore was more than tragedy. It was yet another sad moment in an ongoing American tragedy. Dating violence is one of the unreported issues in America. The story of Bree's life, the i...

In 2019 Crime Stoppers of Houston began sounding the alarm on the rotating door at the courthouse via a press conference with Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg and former Houston Chief of Police Art Acevedo. Since then, we have been connected with victim after victim whose lives have been affected by violent crime in our city. To date, there have been at least 149+ people in Harris County wh...

Today on the Balanced Voice Rania welcomes Deborah Berry, mother, advocate, and author of “TechTrap.” Deborah started her journey to write TechTrap as a personal effort to absorb what had happened to her daughter and later decided to share her knowledge in hopes of helping other parents. #TheBalancedVoice #Podcast #CrimeStoppers #Houston #Internet #Technology #Tech #Online #Safety #DeborahBerry #R...

With 2.5 billion pages of pornography available online, it’s the uncomfortable conversation we have to have: kids are exposed to pornography as young as 8 or 9 years old and it has a profound impact on their health. Joe Madison, Executive Director at Demand Disruption, joins host, Rania Mankarious for a deep dive into the world of pornography and its direct relationship with sex trafficking. From...

Threats, predators, and violent pornographic content lurk behind our children’s screens. How can we protect their eyes? As seen in Childhood 2.0, this week Rania Mankarious sits down with Chris McKenna, Founder and CEO of Protect Young Eyes, an organization on a mission to create safer digital spaces in partnership with parents and community members. In their powerful sit-down, Chris and Rania tac...

This week on The Balanced Voice Podcast, host Rania Mankarious takes a look at the effect of violence in our homes and in our schools with two incredible guests: Tamron Hall and Jenna Fondren. First, Rania sits down with the one and only Tamron Hall who has spent much time raising awareness about Domestic Violence, helping survivors speak out, and advocating for Purina's #purpleleash project. We h...

This week on The Balanced Voice Podcast, host Rania Mankarious welcomes Tina Stanley, a San Antonio parent who was forced to turn into a fierce advocate after learning her middle school child was in a serious inappropriate relationship with a teacher. Tina walks us through the severe trauma her child experienced and what she learned to demand from the district in order to make meaningful change. N...

Season 3 of @thebalancedvoicepodcast premieres this Wednesday, September 29th at 10am with Episode 36: ‘An Unlikely Alliance with David Berkowitz’. ☎️🎙✨ Join Rania, Sydney, and Andy, as they take you on a field trip to Shawangunk Correctional Facility in New York for an exclusive visit and interview with David Berkowitz, an American Serial Killer better known as the Son of Sam. In this conversati...

This week on #TheBalancedVoicePodcast, our host Rania Mankarious and our executive producer, Sydney Zuiker sit down to review season two! We discuss some of #realsolutions that came from the #balancedconversations we had with local and national leaders on the podcast this season and reflect on the surprising things we have learned so far. Thank you for all of our wonderful guests and sponsors who...

We are honored to have Fran Drescher, beloved and best known as “The Nanny” on the podcast today! As a survivor of both sexual assault and uterine cancer, we were thrilled for the opportunity to sit down and hear about how she has transformed her trauma and illness into a national movement, Cancer Schmancer. Fran founded Cancer Schmancer with a mission to empower women to advocate for their health...

We have received a drastic increase in phone calls from parents and family members about tragic loss due to fentanyl overdose death. After our conversation on Ep. 24 with Dr. Laura Berman, whose son Samuel lost his life to a pill he purchased on snapchat, we were left heartbroken and passionate about finding, or creating, a real solution to this problem. We connected Dr. Berman with our Ep. 9 Gues...

Swimming, sports, time with friends, and making memories; summer camps should be filled with worry-free joy. Abuse, death, and drowning should NEVER be on the list of activities at camp. This week on #thebalancedvoicepodcast we sit down with Doug Forbes and Elena Matyas whose six-year old, Roxie Forbes, tragically drowned at a camp in California in the summer of 2019. The California Department of...

How do you think we should hold sex offenders accountable in our community? Does our current system truly keep our community safe? This week, we sit down with Judy O’Brien, a Licensed Professional Counselor and Sex Offender Treatment Provider here in Houston. In this balanced conversation we discuss recent changes in predatory behaviors, the role of power and control for offenders, and the false s...

Did you know that animal abuse is often the first sign of family abuse such as domestic violence in the home? Today on The Balanced Voice we are grateful to sit down with THREE incredible women bringing awareness to the intersection between animal abuse and domestic violence. First, we sit down with the one and only Tamron Hall. She created the Tamron Heart Renate Fund in memory of her sister, Ran...

Do you believe juvenile offenders should be treated as adults? What if you knew the part of their brain that regulates impulses does not fully develop until roughly 25? Does that change things? This week on The Balanced Voice Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Elizabeth Cauffman, Professor at the University of California Irvine, whose research is vital to the conversation surrounding the rights and tre...

This week on The Balanced Voice Podcast, we sit down with someone who has proven to be a truth teller in the face of adversity for the entirety of her journalism career. Diane Dimond gained national attention after breaking the story of child molestation allegations against Michael Jackson in 1993. She has worked as a correspondent for Hard Copy, Extra, NBC, Entertainment Tonight, Court TV, and In...

On and off air, this week’s guest is on a mission “to seek the truth, find the truth, and tell the truth”. Shepard Smith is broadcast journalist best known for his 23-year career at Fox News Channel, which he joined at its 1996 inception and where he served as chief anchor and managing editor of the breaking news division. He returned to the news desk this past fall with NBC News and CNBC, where h...

What does it mean for women to invest in each other? How do we not only push ourselves towards success, but also empower others to succeed as well? 🤔 On episode 26 of #TheBalancedVoice #Podcast we discuss the role of women in entrepreneurship and the challenges women face in this space with the one and only, Carrie Colbert! Carrie is the Founding and General Partner at Curate Capital and a local...

This week on #TheBalancedVoicePodcast, we are thrilled to welcome our long-time friend and partner Dominique Sachse! ❤️🥰🎙 Dominique has been an evening news anchor at Houston’s KPRC Channel 2 for 25 years, she’s a wife, a mother, a well-respected influencer, and she embodies all things good and empowering about Houston. 👏 In our conversation Dominique shares her journey through her life’s most f...

On this episode of The Balanced Voice Podcast, we welcome Dr. Laura Berman, who you may know as a love & relationship expert, often seen on the Oprah channel, Dr. Oz, and the Today Show, as well as being an 8-time New York Times bestselling author. However, we have recently come to know her in a whole new light as she navigates the unimaginable: losing her 16-year old son to a fentanyl laced pill....

This week on #TheBalancedVoicePodcast we are thrilled to welcome Texas’s very own Matthew McConaughey! In his debut book ‘Greenlights’, Matthew bares it all as he walks the reader throughout his unique journey thus far. Personal photos and journal writing are shared along with lessons learned from his real experiences with family, love, fatherhood and faith. In our conversation, we unpack how his...

Anxiety, depression, and mental illness affects a large percentage of our population. Is our society's addiction to social media to blame? In Episode 22, we sit down with model and wellness expert Nikki Sharp to discuss her journey to wellness, why she thinks mental health struggles are on the rise and how we can raise a generation that knows their self-worth is more than their social media brand....

In season two of #TheBalancedVoice #Podcast we have spent a lot of time talking to experts about how our culture not only shapes us, but our children. In Episode 21, we sit down with Dawn Hawkins, the Senior Vice President & Executive Director at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) to uncover another piece of the puzzle: How your is being affected by our hypersexualized culture and...

We all want our children to be healthy. That is why we teach them about nutritious foods and encourage them to exercise. It's why we don’t allow them to survive on ice cream and candy alone. But what about their mental, emotional, and social health? How do we teach them healthy habits in a modern world full of technology? In today’s balanced conversation with Dr. Jonathan Stevens, who is the Chief...