"Every morning I wake up, I brush my teeth, and I sharpen my tongue."

That's Thea Starr's favorite Dorothy Parker quote—and as the youngest of six, she learned early that piping up was the only way to get noticed. "Nothing's happening for me unless I say something."

In this second episode, Thea reveals her unexpected superpower: parallel parking. Despite not driving off her property for six years (due to an eye condition), she's confident she could still nail it—a skill honed at 13 when her father had her move cars in his auto body shop yard. "I aced my driver's test," she laughs.

Looking ahead, Thea's goal? Finishing the endless painting of her dilapidated homestead rambler. "Approaching 50 is not the era of painting every room in a house," she admits, discovering muscles she didn't know existed.

She spotlights her best friend since 1988—an elementary school teacher in Alaska who became an educator later in life. "Every time she has done something good and hard, I've been proud. I've cried. I felt like I got the teaching degree too."

The episode dives deep into Thea's world of vintage sewing machines (she has 60 in various conditions), Japanese tsumami kanzashi art (hand-folded silk flowers), and YouTube repair tutorials. She explains what to look for when buying vintage machines, why all-metal models outlast plastic ones, and how her Singer 301 can "probably sew concrete to a pair of jeans."

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

"I was a wild girl. A teenage mom. I even went to juvenile detention. You know, bad girl. All the stories."

Then Thea Starr's father died when she was in her mid-20s with four children of her own, and everything changed.

In this episode of Good Life Stories, Thea—a sewist, vintage sewing machine repairess, and designer working from a workshop in the woods at the edge of a bog—shares three powerful life lessons that shaped who she became.

First: life is shorter than you think. Losing her father while caring for young children who watched him struggle taught her to value every moment. "Time moves so fast when the kids are little," she reflects. It completely transformed her parenting, shifting her focus from things to experiences—creating the kind of family memories you can't take away.

Second: no one cares what you're wearing. After years in corporate accounting worrying about client impressions, Thea realized something liberating—they didn't actually care. "Wear the clothes you have. Don't save them for a rainy day. You don't know how life will take you. Do it now."

Third: sharing what you learn is deeply human. Her father ran an auto body shop after retiring from the military, and Thea—the youngest of six and a self-described daddy's girl—learned by holding flashlights while he worked. Those lessons shaped her teaching style, whether fixing vintage sewing machines on YouTube or running Six by Six Art Company with her husband.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

"During COVID, when everyone was cooped up, the only freedom was the opportunity to go outside. And that was safe."

Angela Shen had always loved mushrooms—she was "one of those weird kids that actually liked eating mushrooms." But she'd never foraged for them. Then the pandemic hit, everyone flooded the woods, and Angela had a realization: we live in one of the biggest wild gourmet mushroom regions in the country, yet foraging felt gatekept and inaccessible.

In this episode of Good Life Stories, Angela shares how she begged a friend to teach her, fell down a deep rabbit hole, and emerged with Forage Seattle—immersive wild food experiences that make mushroom foraging approachable and fun. She explains why porcini, matsutake, and morels are worth $80 a pound (humans must physically find them in the woods—you can't grow them in a lab), and why Washington State is the country's biggest exporter of both wild mushrooms and shellfish.

Angela also reveals her superpower: negotiation. Growing up poor with immigrant parents as a first-generation American, she learned to fight for every opportunity and find "option C"—the creative solution nobody saw coming. Her favorite quote from Mandela? "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."

Most powerfully, Angela shares what she'd spotlight right now: reclaiming your time. "Working this hard doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot if you don't have time to spend that money with the people you love doing the things that bring you joy.".

About Angela

Angela Shen is a Seattle entrepreneur best known for creating Forage Seattle and running Savor Seattle food tours in Pike Place Market. Her love of culinary storytelling began during her career in brand management at PepsiCo. A Wharton graduate, she has been celebrated as a PSBJ 40 Under 40, Women of Color Award recipient, and Nellie Cashman Business Owner of the Year finalist. She channels her expertise into helping people experience nature, food, and connection.

Website: www.forageseattle.com

Instagram: @forageseattle

Email: [email protected]

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

A fifteen-year business shut down overnight. Tourism halted. Restaurants closed. What do you do?

For Angela Shen, founder of Savor Seattle food tours, the answer came quickly: "Instead of taking people to the restaurants, why don't we bring the food directly to the people?"

In this episode of Good Life Stories, Angela shares how COVID forced an immediate pivot from her beloved Pike Place Market food tours to something entirely new—curated local food boxes that anchored in the vendors she'd worked with for years. The twist? Every box sold meant a minimum $5 donation to relevant local nonprofits.

In nine months of this dramatic shift, Angela's team donated over $100,000 to local and national organizations while keeping small businesses alive and her team employed. Each themed box—from entirely Black-owned businesses to Latino community highlights—became a weekly mystery that gave families something to look forward to during hopeless times.

Angela, a Wharton graduate and former PepsiCo brand manager, brought her experience in culinary storytelling to bear in a completely unexpected way. The boxes didn't just feed people; they connected them to communities they'd never explored, introduced them to businesses they wanted to support again, and gave them hope when everything felt uncertain.

She also shares her philosophy on customer service in the digital age: treating people better than you'd expect to be treated yourself builds trust and human connection that technology can't replace.

Angela Shen is a Seattle entrepreneur best known for creating Forage Seattle and running Savor Seattle food tours in Pike Place Market. Her love of culinary storytelling began during her career in brand management at PepsiCo. A Wharton graduate, she has been celebrated as a PSBJ 40 Under 40, Women of Color Award recipient, and Nellie Cashman Business Owner of the Year finalist. She channels her expertise into helping people experience nature, food, and connection.

Website: www.forageseattle.com

Instagram: @forageseattle

Email: [email protected]

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

"If you and I were sitting in deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic, and we knew it was our last conversation—what three stories would you tell me?"

That question is the heart of Good Life Stories. Host Tracy Crowley started this podcast during the pandemic, sitting in her dining room sewing, going for walks in the woods, and thinking about all the people she couldn't see. She made a mind map: authors she knew, martial artists, artists, successful entrepreneurs, friends who'd survived challenging experiences and come out the other side.

She wanted to capture their stories—the ones they'd want saved, the ones their families should hear, the ones their friends needed to know. But what to call it?

Tracy researched idioms and landed on "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic"—that expression about futile action in the face of disaster. She considered naming the podcast "Deck Chairs" or "Deck Chairs on the Titanic" before her kids and friends gently pointed out that people might expect her to talk about the actual Titanic.

The metaphor stuck, though. The premise she shares with every guest: imagine we're in those deck chairs, it's our last conversation (but we're not going to die—important caveat), and you get to choose three stories to preserve. What would they be?

Three years later, Tracy's guest list keeps growing. These aren't interviews about achievements or accolades—they're conversations about the stories that define us, the moments that matter, and the lives we've lived.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

"I have 100 movies running in my head nonstop. That being said, I cannot remember what happened 15 minutes ago."

Matt Meyers has an unusual superpower: he can quote obscure movie lines from memory, leaving his twenty-something employees baffled when he references Planes, Trains and Automobiles. But ask him what he said 15 minutes ago? No idea. He had to check his own notes to remember what he'd written about his superpower.

In this final episode of Good Life Stories, Matt reveals what truly drives success at Be Myers and Company: finding people who genuinely care. "Apathy is death," he says. His team are "true believers" in their mission—helping protect those in harm's way with products that must work perfectly every time. "Build it right, save a life" isn't just a motto; it's a mandate when someone's son or daughter depends on your work.

Matt shares the Earl Nightingale recording his father gave him at age 10—"Acres of Diamonds"—and why he returns to it quarterly. The message? "There's no growth without risk. Risks brighten the eye and get the mind cooking." He illustrates this with the story of meeting Evan Hafer before Black Rifle Coffee's $75 million IPO, when Matt politely thought, "I'm a Folgers guy, why would I buy coffee through the mail?"

The episode closes with Matt's philosophy on travel: go now, because places change or disappear. His spontaneous road trip with 12-year-old Jack—through canceled flights and desert highways—created memories that can never be replicated.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

"Don't have to tell me to stay home. Don't have to tell me twice. I haven't been home in years."

Fresh from cancer treatment and nine years of military service, Matt Meyers returned to a family business he barely recognized. The 20-30 person operation he'd left in the late '90s had exploded to 180 employees—only to be gutted back to 55 in one devastating year.

In this episode of Good Life Stories, Matt shares the brutal reality of the post-deployment drawdown: four layoffs in twelve months at a company that had never laid off a single person in 40 years. As a new product manager, he watched the infrastructure collapse. The people who documented everything—those essential 700-page quality control manuals—were gone. The choice? Focus resources only where absolutely necessary and embrace common sense over bureaucracy.

But this story isn't just about survival. Matt reveals the remarkable origin of B.E. Myers and Company, founded by his father—a college dropout who sold encyclopedias, dug graves, worked in a Milwaukee garage band, and taught himself explosives (surviving when most self-taught experts didn't). From underwater salvage diving to accidentally discovering how to clean ship hulls with explosive netting, to selling night vision on kitchen tables, his dad turned odd hobbies into a defense contracting powerhouse.

Matt's journey from soldier to steward of this legacy reveals lessons about pulling the "red string," questioning assumptions, and bringing common sense to uncommon challenges.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

A routine chiropractor appointment. A swollen neck. An unprepared Air Force officer accidentally breaking the news: "They told you you got cancer and everything, right?"

Matt Meyers' cancer diagnosis came at the worst possible time—just home from his third deployment, with a newborn son and a wife he'd barely lived with over three years of marriage. But this is just one chapter in an extraordinary story that begins years earlier, when a decade-long friendship transformed into love during phone calls from Baghdad.

In this episode of Good Life Stories, Matt shares how he and Nicole built their relationship across continents and deployments. Their romance includes spontaneous adventures to Paris and Luxembourg, the near-collapse of their marriage when Nicole struggled with isolation in Germany (saved, Matt insists, by "a GPS and a Jack Russell terrier"), and the realities of military life that kept them apart more than together.

Matt recounts his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, including unexpectedly becoming an intelligence officer for western Afghanistan despite having zero training. Then came that chiropractor visit, the shocking revelation of Hodgkin's lymphoma with two goose egg-sized masses in his neck, and months of devastating treatment.

Through it all, Nicole became a superhero—caring for a returning soldier, a newborn baby, and a cancer patient simultaneously. Matt's raw honesty about the challenges makes this conversation unforgettable.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

In this final episode with David Castillo, Tracy Crowley explores the personal philosophies and causes that drive this dedicated coach and community advocate. David opens up about his favorite quote—"Don't let perfection be the enemy of good"—and how it resonates differently at this stage of his life compared to his younger years.

The conversation touches on the challenge of reading people close to us versus strangers, with Tracy offering the insight that we often know our family members so well that we can tell their mood by their footsteps, while requiring more attention to understand others. David reflects on balancing his pursuit of excellence in coaching with accepting that "good enough" sometimes truly is good enough.

Looking ahead, David discusses his goal of completing his private pilot certificate by year's end, though football season means his training will take a backseat to coaching responsibilities. Most importantly, David shines a spotlight on two causes close to his heart: Compassion International, where he sponsors children in Africa and builds meaningful relationships with them, and the fight against human trafficking—a modern-day slavery issue he became passionate about during COVID. As the brother of three sisters raised by a single mom, protecting vulnerable women and girls holds deep personal significance for David.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.

What drives someone to send 14 letters asking to volunteer coach for free? David Castillo's coaching journey on Good Life Stories reveals how the mentors who filled gaps in his fatherless childhood inspired him to pour into the next generation. After a promising football career ended with a knee injury in his senior year, David found his true calling on the sidelines.

David's path from volunteer equipment manager to head coach spans 17 years and showcases both the rewards and challenges of high school coaching. He shares touching stories of players who still call him "Pops" and reach out years later, demonstrating the lasting impact coaches can have. "Those boys are still in our lives. I mean, they're like sons to us," he reflects about two players he coached from seventh grade through graduation.

The episode takes an honest turn as David contemplates whether this season of coaching is coming to an end. Between COVID's impact on high school sports, external pressures affecting his emotional well-being, and his son now in college, he's questioning if it's time for a new chapter. His superpower of empathy, while allowing him to deeply connect with players and families, also means he carries their pain and struggles as his own. David's candid reflection on recognizing life seasons and the courage to potentially step away offers valuable insights into knowing when it's time to transition from one calling to another.

For more episode info and additional inspiring stories, visit https://www.goodlifestories.com/.