You'll love this conversation if you've ever wrestled with the fact that achieving your dreams can look and feel different than you expected.

Annie B Jones is most well known for owning The Bookshelf bookstore and for her book-focused podcast From the Front Porch, but now she's on the other side of publishing industry as she releases her debut book of essays Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put.

In this conversation, Annie and I talk about how dreams don't always look the way you planned, like living near your hometown, owning a bookstore, even (especially?) writing a book! Our lives look so different from one another, but we found so many parallels.

Follow Annie B Jones on Instagram

Buy Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put

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I have been waiting for the right moment to feature this conversation with interior designer Michelle Fahmy, founder of Haus of Meeshie, about bringing bold color and unique style to your home and life. For the past two years, Meeshie has helped bring fresh life to our family's home in Los Angeles, bringing a whole new vibe to our living spaces.

Since I've long preached the power of our spaces on this show, I knew Meeshie (with her very bold style) would be the perfect person to talk us through this topic. But this conversation ended up being about way more than just paint and wallpaper. Meeshie's own career trajectory and leaps of faith make this an inspiring message for how to create the colorful life you want.

Follow Haus of Meeshie on Instagram

Follow @laura.tremaine on IG for peeks of my personal home

Check out the EXTRA THINGS conversation with Meeshie on Laura Tremaine's Secret Stuff

Episodes that pair well with this one:

Ep 236: Discovering what was always there

BONUS: 5 Rules To Create A House You Love

FULL SHOW NOTES ARE HERE

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Over the last few years I’ve watched my friend, Jessica Turner, privately and publicly walk through her husband’s coming out and their subsequent divorce as well as her efforts to find her equilibrium in this new family dynamic. Jessica has done it all with grace and kindness and honesty, sharing her story with incredible strength and vulnerability. Her newest book, I Thought It Would Be Better Than This, chronicles this journey and the lessons she’s learned from it.

In this conversation, Jessica shares what it was like to navigate her own grief about the end of her marriage while also remaining a friend and ally to her ex-husband as he navigated coming out as gay. She shares how she was helped by journaling and therapy (two drums I will continue to bang all my days) and the rules she has for herself when it comes to sharing difficult and vulnerable things online. Jessica’s hard won wisdom is applicable to anyone dealing with disappointment. or who thought to themselves about their love life, career, parenting, or just adulthood...I thought it would be better than this.

Learn more about Jessica Turner

Follow Jessica Turner on IG

Buy her book (out now!) I Thought It Would Be Better Than This

Jessica's other books:

The Fringe Hours

Stretched Too Thin

Jessica's other appearance on 10 Things To Tell You:

Ep. 54: Best Books Lately with Jessica Turner

BONUS: How Influencers are making money off you. (a conversation with Jessica Turner)

JOIN LAURA TREMAINE'S SECRET STUFF

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BUY THE BOOK: Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First. by Laura Tremaine

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This episode is for anyone who has gone through a friendship breakup, or who desires finding a best friend as an adult. 

Every week on this show I encourage you to take the prompts and topics to a best friend in order to have a deeper conversation and better connection. But what if you don't have a best friend? What if you used to have a best friend but now you don't and that pain still lingers? What if you want a best friend, but have no idea how to find that person?

In honor of my book The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs celebrating its book birthday this week, I wanted to rerun this episode from January 2021 with Heather Adams. Even though we recorded this years before The Life Council came out, you can see how I was already threading together the ideas that would eventually become the book.

Buy The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs on amazon or on bookshop

Follow my guest Heather Adams, founder of Choice Media Communications

Read my free Secret Posts or become a SECRET STUFF member on Laura Tremaine's Secret Substack

FULL SHOW NOTES ARE HERE

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I'm sharing my current favorite beauty products, apps, books, charities, and experiences of the last few months.

JOIN SECRET STUFF to hear me share a few extra goodies like the current podcasts I'm bingeing, as well as a few not Favorite Things.

What are YOUR favorite things in this season? Winter 2025 has been a doozy, so making a list of the things we love right now can give you such a boost of gratitude. I also really like how these lists mark a moment in time.

FULL SHOW NOTES ARE HERE

MENTIONED in this episode:

Opal phone blocking app

Money Hair Mask: Deep Hydrating and Strengthening Treatment

MdrnDock Travel Charger

Travel Hanging Organizer for Makeup & Skincare Products

Travel Organizer for Sunglasses & Jewelry

The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer

Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy

Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation

Direct Relief

Altadena Girls

Grady Hendrix Author Event

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Laura Tremaine's Secret Substack

Substack TUTORIAL

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BOOK: Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First. by Laura Tremaine

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Professional photo organizer Casey von Stein (aka Miss Freddy) is BACK and this time she's helping us handle all those old, sentimental photos we all have stuffed in boxes in a closet somewhere.

Miss Freddy is answering my questions on how to make the physical photos into digital files and then how to organize and back them up online so we never have to worry they'll be lost or damaged in the future. She also says something to me about the 30,000 photos I have stored on my phone that might have just changed my life.

Follow Miss Freddy on IG

Learn more about Miss Freddy's BACKUP BOOTCAMP

Listen to past episodes with Miss Freddy:

Ep. 41: 10 Tips to Organize Your Photos with Miss Freddy

Ep. 82: Create a Family Yearbook (10 Tips from Miss Freddy)

MENTIONED in this episode:

Epson FastFoto Scanner

ScanSnap portable scanner

Aura digital photo frame

Miss Freddy’s blog post: How to Convert DVDs to Digital Files

FULL SHOW NOTES HERE

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This month marks 5 years still the Covid-19 pandemic turned our lives upside down.

In this episode, I'm sharing 10 questions that can be used as journal prompts or conversation starters on the anniversary of any big event.

I'm focusing my answers to these prompts on the five-year mark of the pandemic, but each question is crafted to be universal for any big event in your past.

JOIN ME ON SUBSTACK for a JOURNAL PARTY on this topic with the members of Secret Stuff

I'll also be posting all of the prompts on social media and in the show notes

Follow me on IG @laura.tremaine

FULL SHOW NOTES HERE

RELATED EPISODES:

10 Questions for Starting Over

10 Questions To Ask Yourself in the Middle of Anything

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This is a very special episode of Best Books Lately. Special because it's been awhile since we've had one, special because it's with my longtime internet friend and book twin Liz Hein, and special because we're weaving together some of the most important themes of 10 Things To Tell You: sharing your stuff, connection, and, of course, BOOKS.

In this conversation, Liz and I are not only talking about the best books we've read lately (and we've both read some great things!), Liz is also sharing about the life of her father, legendary Chicago photographer Rich Hein, who passed away unexpectedly last month. Liz's book selections are inspired by her dad, and I love that we could honor his memory in this way.

Follow Liz Hein @lizisreading_ on Instagram

Rich Hein's obituary was on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times

FULL SHOW NOTES HERE

Join the SECRET STUFF BOOK CLUB

Beautyland by Marie Helene Bertino

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Cue the Sun! by Emily Nussbaum

Liars by Sarah Manguso

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib

Bob Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

All Fours by Miranda July

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

Ep. 250 Best Books of the Year 2024

Ep. 252 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 with Traci Thomas of The Stacks podcast

Ep. 195 Why do smart people love dumb tv?

Ep 239 Horror for Beginners with Meredith Monday Schwartz

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As the headlines get harder, the politics more divisive, and the platforms themselves more corrupt, many of us are rethinking our social media usage in 2025.

Yeah, sure, we've all said this before in the past. So we take breaks, or delete the apps off our phones, but we always come crawling back. Social media is just an ingrained part of our lives now. It's where we get our news, it's how we connect with others, it's a source of entertainment and expression.

And yet...there is something different about this moment in internet history. People really are fed up, but it also seems impossible to quit cold turkey. There has to be a middle ground between spending large chunks of our day scrolling and walking away from social media completely. In this episode I'm walking through my own personal process of changing my relationship with my phone.

FULL SHOW NOTES HERE

MENTIONED in this episode:

Opal app

RELATED episodes:

Ep 253: Regrets and Reflections After 15 Years of Working on the Internet

Ep 246: A Funeral for Twitter

Ep 211: The Cell Phone Contract (A conversation with my kids)

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Sometimes you read a friend's book and you're jealous they wrote something this good. This is how I felt when I read writer and podcast Melanie Shankle's latest Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma.

This book is about Melanie's very complicated relationship with her mom, woven together with her own Big Feelings about the mean girls that took over her daughter's high school experience. As someone who regularly preaches that all of us should be sharing our stuff, my jaw dropped at some of the stories that Melanie is able to share so well.

In this conversation, Melanie and I talk about all of those things. It's a tender topic, but Melanie is, as always, full of humor and wisdom in the face of it all.

Follow Melanie Shankle on IG

Buy Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma

Listen to The Big Boo Cast

FULL SHOW NOTES ARE HERE

MENTIONED in this episode:

The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs

Ep 243: Best Books Lately with Sophie Hudson

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