Mutha Life

From Slovakia to Canada to your living room, come snuggle down with Barbora Samieian. She's one of the co-founders of the fan favorite Sundays Furniture, the newly launched furniture brand Hetta, and Vancouver's fave lunch spot, Field and Social. Her story as a founder and as a parent to her 4 kids is integrally linked to her own brand of warmth, cultivated over borders, across cultures, and now into our homes.

In this chat, Barbora and I cover everything from what it was like growing up in Czechoslovakia turned Slovakia, emigrating to Canada as a pre-teen, leaving behind a prestigious career in international relations to pursue passion projects, founding companies with her friends and family, making time for herself and her kids, and how hard the post-partum period can be - even when you've got support.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @sundaysfurniture @hettahome @bsamieian

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Welcome to our second ever SOLO POD for the big episode 6-0. We cover a wide sprawl of topics that span my brain and yours - I answer some listener questions and dive into what's been going on around here lately. Specifically, we talk about making 'mom friends' - and where I think we are getting that one a bit wrong in how we think about it. We talk about how a new school transition can take just a big a toll on us as it does our kids (if not more?), recent birthday party wins, why cliches are so annoyingly true, Justin Beiber superfandom and more. Come hang!

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

Instagram: @mutha.life

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Evan Lovett REPS HARD FOR LA. He's LA's biggest cheerleader and is the creator of LA IN A MINUTE - the viral social media sensation sharing snapshots of different LA neighborhoods and points of interest in a way that is truly celebrating the city where he was born and raised - and where he's now raising his son. With his successful pod, IN A MINUTE WITH EVAN LOVETT, Evan has managed to wrangle the most prominent politicians in LA, as well as athletes and artists and everyone in between to both hold those in power accountable for continuing to make LA great, while spotlighting the people who have, in some way or another, put their own brick in the wall of LA's legacy.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @lainaminute

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Today we are hanging out in the closet with Whitney Wagner Hartley of HELLOWHITNEY fame. She is a retired model, a wellness and beauty influencer and….has become a vocal critic of the MAGA and MAHA agendas. Her videos have amassed millions of views where she crushes a skincare or makeup routine WHILE ALSO explaining in very accessible terms how our consumer dollars - and how we decide to use them - can be an act of resistance. This episode has it all. From near run-ins with Joshua Jackson, commentary on Pedro Pascal as our north star for advocacy, armchair psych diagnoses of celebrities, fermented foods and farts and so much more. Come get involved on this first friend date. I think we're going places, people.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @hellowhitney

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Come hang with Billy Mann immediately. Billy is a Grammy Nominated multi-platinum multi-hyphenate. He's a songwriter, producer, artist, executive, podcaster, entrepreneur, philanthropist, Philadelphia-loving husband and father of 4 (Go Birds?). From his longstanding collaboration with PINK to his work with Sting, Celine Dion, Cher, Backstreet Boys, David Guetta, Robyn, Carole King, Hall & Oates, and SO MANY MORE, Billy has been an integral part of shaping so many moments of our lives with his music. His most recent collaborator is Episode 54's Shawn Stockman with their Chosen Family project. Between Chosen Family and his podcast Yeah, I Fucked That Up, we get the best of what Billy has learned over a storied career and parenting journey - from where it all started in Philly, to living in his car while he pursued his dreams, to almost filing for bankruptcy only to find he had a hit on his hands…to losing a great love, to finding love again, raising four children, becoming a needle-moving autism advocate. and more. It just has to be heard to be believed. Enjoy and share. There is so much in this episode that celebrates failure in way that we all need to hear.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @billymann

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Come hang in the closet with celeb makeup powerhouse, Jamie Greenberg of Jamie Makeup. She's the go-to artist for so many of Hollywood's funniest and most talented women - Rashida Jones, Kaley Cuoco, Chelsea Handler, the list goes on and on…but today we get down to the FOUNDATION of the person behind the brush. We focus on taking off the CONCEALER and getting the BAREFACED story of what kind of childhood and life story has given us this wonderful new pal (see what I did there? Moms can make puns too, pffff). A first for the pod, I believe, we've got a Maryland girl with New Jersey roots and a love of Zoloft and laughter like nobody's business.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @jamiemakeup

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Today we get to hang in the closet with Victoria de la Fuente. She's a brand strategist. A tech entrepreneur. A fashion girly. And an absurdly successful substacker with her stack Zillion Trillion. We start with what it was like growing up in Peru, what happens when your mom becomes one of the most famous women in Latin America in your teenage years, navigating the international fashion scene, and how starting a family might be her biggest creative and important venture yet.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @victoriadela_fuente

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

I HOPE YOU ARE SITTING DOWN. Today on the pod we have Shawn Stockman - a 4-time Grammy award winner and a member of the most commercially successful R&B group of all time, BoyzIIMen. We start with Shawn's childhood in southwest Philadelphia - we go from singing in THE Boys Choir at age 8 to attending the prestigious Creative and Performing Arts High School. Then we talk about growing up and into adulthood under the watchful eye of the whole world - Shawn covers so much in a new light. From his partnership with his wife to what it's like to parent a child on the spectrum, and what lessons he took from his own childhood into his approach to parenting, there is so much to dig into here. We answer some listener questions, talk about his new music collab with fellow CAPA alum Billy Mann - Chosen Family - I get a lesson on water ice, and we talk about the fine line between giving your kids what you didn't have while also figuring out how to keep them grounded.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @shawnstockmanofficial

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

Let's go hang with Chana Karna Blugrind - she has been an early childhood educator for 25 years and is the Director of a pre-school in Los Angeles. She's also a mom to four kids and step mom to two more. She's an ultramarathoner. A doctoral candidate. A Danish woman living in America….A woman with many layers, all of which are tied together with her faith. And tattoos. Lots of tattoos.

We follow Chana from growing up in Denmark - a kid with undiagnosed ADHD whose parents never made her feel like an inconvenience. We follow her through her (double) conversion to Judaism, her time spent as a member of an ultra-orthodox community, escaping an abusive relationship and finding new purpose through running. We cover a lot in this episode - from how different it feels to parent when society is set up for families to succeed. How hard it can be to leave a community - even a bad one - if you don't have a community to help you overcome the transition. And how focusing on joy, despite being dealt repeated shitty hands, can make every day worth living.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY FAM! They say for a first anniversary you should get your beloved paper, but I think substack and a podcast is the modern day equivalent, right?

This episode is the product of your requests to get MY story. I couldn't think of anything more cringe than talking about myself at length, but our repeat guest and friend of the pod SOSUPERSAM wasn't going to let me off the hook.

So here we are. A long ass episode where Sam gets in the interview chair while I sit down in the hot seat and we chop it up - all of the standard Mutha Life topics are on the table. From Tampa, Florida to my closet in Los Angeles and the more than fifty countries in between, let's figure out why I am so obsessed with bodily fluids, parenthood and other people's life shit.

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

Instagram: @mutha.life @sosupersam

Produced by: Mutha Life

Music by: Ronen Landa