Mutha Life

Episode 115. Our monthly solo catch-up starts with an honest vibe check on a rough October, the pressure of a new school full of parents who might become her best friends for life, and the surprise win of her busiest work week since having kids. Then she debriefs a talk by developmental psychologist Dr. Aliza Pressman, author of The Five Principles of Parenting and host of Raising Good Humans: the orchid, dandelion, and tulip framework for kid temperament, how to decide which rules are worth having, why pause-then-decide beats perfect regulation, why you only need to be attuned to your kid 30% of the time, and why hard feelings are not emergencies.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

Episode 114. Today we are hanging out with Ellie Knaus, creator of the much beloved parenting podcast Atomic Moms and writer/producer of new Indie comedy 'Let's Have Kids', for her first recorded conversation since stepping away from the mic back in December 2020. Ellie co-wrote and produced the new film Let's Have Kids with her husband Adam Sztykiel (who directed it), starring Mary Steenburgen in a role Ellie says is loosely inspired by her own mother, plus Karen Gillan, Zoe Chao and Amanda Crew and so many more. We get into Ellie's blended, "two Thanksgivings" childhood in Houston, the uncanny discovery that she has the exact same voice as Mary Steenburgen (confirmed at a callback years before they ever worked together), a health scare in her late 20s, and the scrappy origin story of Atomic Moms: a podcast that led directly to selling a sitcom in a bidding war. And at its core this hang is really about friendships - how they change. Why they matter.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

Episode 113. Nothing more chic or classy than archival Bette Bentley, founder of Skimpies, recorded back when it was Bette's first ever podcast interview. We follow Bette's path from theater kid in Houston to comedy writer and producer working with Will Ferrell's Funny or Die team, through a cross-country move to Minnesota, a double mastectomy, and the moment she decided her next chapter would be a 'strapless' underwear company solving a problem nobody else wanted to touch. Since this episode first aired, Skimpies has grown from Bette hand-delivering product to ten Venmo subscribers into an enterprise, including a deal on this season's Shark Tank premiere and a new product line for women in perimenopause and menopause.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

Episode 112. Kari sits down with Jordana Edelstein, host of The Diet Diaries and a body image coach who spent over a decade deep in disordered eating before turning her own mess into her message. They trace it all: getting bullied over her nose in middle school, a PCOS diagnosis in college that kicked off a cycle of crash diets and binge eating, a mom whose face would tell her she'd gained weight before a word was said, and the slow, hard-won shift into the work she does now helping women (mostly in their 30s through 60s) stop treating food like a moral test. Jordana breaks down her "jobs of food" framework, the one that's reshaped how she talks to her 14-year-old son about eating, and both moms get into the particular tightrope of raising kids to feel good in their bodies when you're still working on your own relationship with yours.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

Episode 111. Kari recaps a wild few weeks: back-to-back kid birthday parties, hosting a big dinner, and finally hitting her limit (cold and all). She unpacks the "plastic plates vs. glass plates" framework she's using to figure out what's actually okay to let drop as a parent, and the lesson she learned throwing an IRL meetup with Dr. Aegean Chan of More Than Nine: hire the help. Then she gets into it: why she loves being a mom and hates "the mom space," the Pete Davidson comments about female creators and what they reveal about how society values women's work on the internet, a BBC piece on parenting-advice overload, and a quick reflection on last week's Luke Cook episode and what positive masculinity sounds like in practice.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

EPISODE 110. Actor Luke Cook (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) sits down to talk about growing up the youngest of five in a Presbyterian family in Sydney, the panic attacks that hit right as his career and his relationship with his now-wife Kara both took off, and why he's packing up his family of five and moving to Australia's Gold Coast (they're already there and loving it). We get into the entrepreneurial side of his life, the conundrum of being both "hot and funny" in Hollywood, and what division of labor (and your sex life) really looks like raising three boys under five. Funny, unfiltered, and surprisingly tender.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

EPISODE 109. It's Archival Erin Lim Rhodes. Erin is the golf and wrestling-loving host of E!'s "The Rundown," and long before that, a broadcast journalism grad who moved to Singapore with $500 and a hunch. We get into growing up the "peacekeeper" middle child of a Filipino father and multi-generational Mexican LA mother, meeting her husband through prolonged eye contact at church (he later baptized her), a pregnancy timed almost too perfectly for her producers' comfort, and the postpartum depression that hit after a rocky breastfeeding wean. Also: how golf became her hobby and her belated Disney adult conversion. More than 2000 episodes - 10 years - in to E!'s The Rundown and she's just getting started BABY!

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Music by: Ronen Landa

EPISODE 108.

Two years ago, Brittany Ishibashi sat in this chair and told me she was only taking jobs close to home, two or three days at most, because she couldn't picture being away from her kids. This week she's back, and she just spent a year in Austin playing Joy, wife to Woody Harrelson's character, in Apple TV's Brothers, opposite Matthew McConaughey and Holland Taylor.

We get into what it actually took to say yes: loosening her grip on the house, letting her husband run things his way, being seen as more than someone's mom, and not missing a single recital across a year of flights. Plus the set stories (fake cake with McConaughey, Woody being Woody), and learning mahjong between takes.

Brothers premieres September 23 on Apple TV.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Instagram: @mutha.life

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

EPISODE 107. It's a solo episode babyyyyy. We're back in the school year swing, and I'm ramping up to my first ever Mutha Life in real life event, plus some incremental facelift changes to the show you may have noticed. Also: a tribute to my favorite ever camp counselor, a rant about skincare ads applied to fruit, a nostalgia detour into the white pages and yellow pages, and a genuine ask for your thoughts on tin can phones and smartwatches. Then, a new segment: Parent Conversations in Pop Culture, covering Michelle Obama's refreshingly honest take on not missing the baby years, and why Emma Grede saying she's a "three hours a day" mom deserves way less backlash than it got.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Instagram: @mutha.life

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Alyssa Tucker built Live From Snack Time into a beloved platform for the brilliant, hilarious things kids say, and along the way went through three miscarriages, years of IVF, and ultimately had one of her children via surrogacy while she carried the other almost simultaneously. We talk about the parts of an infertility story that rarely get airtime once the "happy ending" arrives: the trauma that can live in the body years later, how people process loss completely differently, breastfeeding a baby you didn't carry, and how Alyssa and her husband are explaining surrogacy to her now three-year-old TWIBLINGS.

Full show notes with alll the links: muthalife.substack.com

Instagram: @mutha.life

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa