In Spain, there’s a ritual called La Hora del Vermut — a pause in the middle of the day that isn’t about winding down or earning rest. It’s a celebration of the day itself.

This conversation starts there — with vermut, salty snacks, and a toast.

My guest is David Neimanis, a maker I grew up down the street from, whose life has moved through music, writing, food, and now building a Spanish vermouth brand called Cueva Nueva while living in Valencia.

What I loved about this conversation is that it isn’t a tidy story about one big pivot. It’s about a quieter shift — learning not to defer living to some future moment.

We talk about:

• what La Hora del Vermut reveals about pleasure, community, and pace — and what it feels like to live inside a different relationship to time
• the difference between freedom and autonomy, and how Dave came to understand both through life on the road
• redefining success — not as exits or endless scale, but as something livable, human, and sustainable
• how different environments shape attention, pace, and conversation
• what it takes to stay grounded in your “why,” especially when the culture around you keeps moving the goalposts

This isn’t an episode about slowing down to get more done.
It’s about learning how to enjoy the day without waiting for permission — and telling the truth when what you wanted stops fitting.

Find where you can drink and purchase a bottle of Cueva Nueva near you:
https://www.cuevanueva.com/find-us

Follow Cueva Nueva:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cuevanueva/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cueva_nueva

Follow David Neimanis:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidneimanis/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetruthis_podcast/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetruthis_pod

Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner
Video Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume
Edited by Dan Kroll
Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com
Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush
Advised by Natalie Tulloch

In this conversation, I sit down with Samantha Abrams to explore how that distinction quietly shapes our work, our relationships, and the lives we build—and why it takes real courage to live it.

Samantha is a transformational guide and entrepreneur whose work centers on embodiment, self-trust, and aliveness. Many people first come to know her as the co-founder of Emmy’s Organics, a nationally beloved natural foods brand she built in her early twenties and grew for over a decade. What makes her story compelling isn’t reinvention, but continuity. The same intuition and devotion that built a successful company continue to guide her life and work today.

We talk about the subtle ways we abandon ourselves to be chosen or to feel worthy. About why it can be tempting to rewrite the past as “misaligned” instead of honoring that it once fit. And about the courage it takes to leave a life that is beautiful—not because it was wrong, but because you’ve changed.

At the heart of this conversation is a simple but clarifying idea: when we act for love, we contort ourselves to earn it. When we act from love, we move from fullness. Not urgency. Not performance. But aliveness.

This is not a conversation about reinvention or arrival. It’s about staying in relationship with yourself as life unfolds—letting discomfort inform you, letting trust build slowly, and allowing what feels alive to lead.

• The difference between doing things from love and for love
• Why leaving something good can be harder than leaving something bad
• “It was aligned—until it wasn’t” as a truer way to name change
• The quiet ways we abandon ourselves in relationships and work
• Following aliveness instead of certainty as a compass forward
• Why moving on doesn’t mean you didn’t love what came before

Samantha Abrams is a transformational guide and entrepreneur whose work focuses on embodiment, self-trust, and aliveness. She is the co-founder of Emmy’s Organics and now supports people through deep listening, embodied practice, and honest inquiry.

• Website: https://www.samanthaabrams.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samanthaabrams/
• Substack: https://samanthaabrams.substack.com/
• Podcast — I’m Just Listening: https://open.spotify.com/show/3FffNb8xRXYi6xZqW9UL0s?si=b0e384c850424ccf

• Follow The Truth Is on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetruthis_podcast/
• Watch The Truth Is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetruthis_pod

• Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner
• Video Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume
• Edited by Dan Kroll
• Music by Will Savino → wsavino.com
• Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush
• Advised by Natalie Tulloch

A year-end solo reflection drawing three throughlines from the season: telling yourself the truth, loosening the grip of identity, and orienting toward curiosity. Featuring moments from conversations with Joanne Molinaro, John Markland, and Jedidiah Jenkins. This episode gathers what emerged, without conclusions, as the show steps into a new year.

We Revisit: 

• Telling yourself the truth as a daily practice, not a single reveal
• Identity as protection, and what becomes possible when it loosens
• Curiosity as an orientation, trusting the authority of your own questions

Referenced Episodes & Video

• Joanne Molinaro — Listen to the full episode
• John Markland — Listen to the full episode
• Jedidiah Jenkins — Listen to the full episode
• Watch this episode on YouTube

Connect with The Truth Is on Instagram @thetruthis_podcast

What happens when achievement delivers everything it promised, except fulfillment?

In this episode, Kathryn sits down with Megan Hellerer to examine the quiet crisis many high-achieving people experience: success on paper, disconnection inside.

Megan shares the moment when the old rules stopped working — and how that reckoning led her to develop a different way of living and working she calls Directional Living. Together, they unpack why hustle culture’s central promise falls apart, why ambition itself isn’t the problem, and what it looks like to rebuild a life from alignment rather than external expectations.

This conversation stays with the deeper questions beneath burnout and reinvention: how clarity actually forms, why curiosity matters more than certainty, and what becomes possible when we stop organizing our lives around destinations.

• Why success and fulfillment are not the same
• The limits of achievement as a life strategy
• Ambition vs. aligned ambition
• How clarity emerges through action, not planning
• Why not knowing can reduce anxiety rather than increase it
• The cultural reckoning beneath hustle culture
• How truth-telling creates collective permission
• What it means to live directionally in an unpredictable world

About Megan

Megan Hellerer is a coach, speaker, and author whose work centers on helping people unlearn inherited definitions of success and build lives rooted in alignment rather than expectation. She is the creator of the Directional Living framework and works with individuals navigating burnout, career transitions, and reinvention.

Megan’s book
Directional Living: A Transformational Guide to Fulfillment in Work and Life

Amazon

Bookshop.org

Learn more on her website

Follow Megan
Instagram: @meganhellerer
Website: meganhellerer.com

Connect with The Truth Is

Watch full episodes on YouTube:
youtube.com/@thetruthispodcast

Follow along on Instagram for clips, reflections, and episode highlights:
instagram.com/thetruthis.podcast

This week’s conversation widens the frame. The Truth Is has always centered the internal work—alignment, reckoning, truth-telling, and the quiet process of returning to ourselves. But for many of us, the tension isn’t only personal. It’s structural. The friction we feel inside is often a response to the systems, workplaces, and expectations we’ve been moving through.

My guest today, Jen Randle, co-founder of SGNL, names that intersection with clarity. Her work maps trust across three levels: the micro (self), the meso (teams and relationships), and the macro (organizations and institutions). Through that lens, our personal misalignment becomes inseparable from the collective dynamics shaping our lived experience.

We talk about the “season of sitting in it”—the pause, the discomfort, the in-between so many of us find ourselves in. We explore why hustle culture is losing its hold, why mistrust is surfacing everywhere, and what it takes to rebuild environments where trust isn’t performative, but practiced. Jen’s framework gives language to what so many are sensing: the world as it was built no longer fits, and the work now is to reimagine, not just endure.

We talk through:

• How post-2020 life reshaped our relationship to time, work, and what we’re willing to sacrifice
• Why so many high performers hit the wall at the same moment
• The micro: aligning head, heart, and gut—and why most of us have been over-relying on the head
• Turning everyday habits into rituals that reopen intuitive and emotional access
• Shifting from “purpose” as a pressure-filled destination to “contribution” as a grounded way of moving
• The truths we inherited or internalized about success—and how to begin unwinding them
• The meso: the relational tissue between teams and why most friction stems from fractures in trust
• The macro: what happens to an organization when its outsides stop matching its insides
• Congruency, stewardship, and why accountability—not branding—determines real culture
• The coming wealth transfer to women and what becomes possible when new worlds are built with intention
• Why we may need to stop fighting for a seat at old tables and imagine entirely new ones

If you’re in a pivot, a pause, a burnout, or a quiet questioning, this conversation offers perspective and orientation. A reminder that the season you’re in isn’t regression—it’s data. It’s part of the process of getting clear about who you are, what you value, and what no longer fits.

More from Jen Randle
• Website — www.sgnladvisory.com
• Jen on LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/jenrandle
• Jen’s Substack — thetrustsgnl.substack.com

Connect with The Truth Is
Full conversation on YouTube → @thetruthis_pod
Follow on Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

Credits
Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner
Edited by Dan Kroll
Music by Will Savino → wsavino.com
Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush
Advised by Natalie Tulloch

What if the clarity you’re looking for isn’t “out there” at all, but already inside you — waiting for the moment it comes into view?

In this conversation, NYT bestselling author and adventurer Jedidiah Jenkins sits down with us to talk about revelation, habituation, aging, and what it means to build a life you’re actually comfortable being yourself in.

Jed talks about how his books — from To Shake the Sleeping Self through Mother, Nature and now his upcoming fourth — trace the long arc of becoming, moving through the mother wound, his religious upbringing, and the early experiences that sharpened his curiosity. He shares why he sees revelation as the moment when previously collected pieces finally organize into clarity, and how trusting the authority of his own questions has guided his life and work.

We talk through:

• Revelation vs. information — why most “aha” moments are old truths finally landing in the right order
• Habituation and the hedonic treadmill — how we get used to everything, even the life we once wanted, and how Jed disrupts that pattern
• How he now makes sense of the 30-year-old who biked from Oregon to Patagonia — and the life that opened because of it
• How his first three books became a trilogy of healing the mother wound
• Why living fully as yourself quietly liberates other people to do the same
• His eight-week, no-phone sabbatical in rural Colorado during the election — and what surfaced when the noise stopped
• Why he believes many of us are one sabbatical away from a breakthrough
• Entering the “youngest old person” season of life and finding a beginner’s mindset again in midlife

We also talk about the truth of the moment — how naming what’s real as it arises becomes its own form of presence — and how Jed has had to rebuild his sense of truth from the inside out after growing up inside a religious system that defined it for him. He reflects on learning to trust the authority of his own questions, and why that practice continues to shape his life and his work.

And yes — we talk about the leaf.
The one Kathryn caught during a silent walk at Jed’s retreat, the one that never touched the ground. Jed wrote on it: What falls will feed the new. It becomes a quiet throughline for this conversation about clarity, courage, and letting what’s no longer true fall away so something more honest can grow.

More from Jedidiah Jenkins:
• Website — www.jedidiahjenkins.com
• Instagram — @jedidiahjenkins
• Substack — jedidiahjenkins.substack.com
• Forthcoming fourth book — out fall 2026 (fun sneak peek at the process mentioned in the episode)

Connect with The Truth Is:
🎥 Watch the full conversation on YouTube → @thetruthis_pod
📸 Follow on Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

Credits
Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner
Edited by Dan Croll
Music by Will Savino
Visual Identity by Sarah Gainer & Jonathan Bush
Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Blair Milam is the co-founder of Sound Garden in Mill Valley, CA, a new space for sound healing, restoration, and deeper connection. Over the years, Blair has moved through many environments — from high-performing corporate settings to yoga studios, teacher trainings, and sound school — letting different parts of herself grow at different times. What once felt like separate identities began to inform one another, and eventually, she allowed and embraced their coexistence.

In this conversation, we return to the beginning: the horse girl from the South shaped by kindness, service, and a belief that she could do anything; the young woman who followed intuition across the world; the executive who knew how to lead inside high-pressure rooms; and the healer who was slowly forming in the background. All of those selves lived inside her, even when they didn’t feel like they belonged together.

We talk about the moment she ran out of “oomph,” the body-level signals that told her something needed to shift, and the season of surrender that unfolded when she stopped gripping as tightly. Blair shares how her mother’s cancer diagnosis changed her relationship to healing, how timing aligned only after she released her grip on it, and how community, love, and readiness shaped the birth of Sound Garden.

This is a conversation about truth, alignment, and what becomes possible when we allow — instead of effort.

We talk about:

• How dual identities — the corporate self and the healer — can live in the same room
• Trust as a body sensation, not an idea
• What surrender actually looks like in practice
• How her mother’s diagnosis opened the path to sound
• The role of community, love, and timing in this next chapter
• The stillness that teaches us what striving never could
• Why letting things change you is part of living in truth

If this episode meets you in a season of transition or new beginnings, share it with someone who might need it — or leave a review so others can find the show.

Visit Sound Garden ✨:
Instagram → @soundgarden.co

Website → www.soundgarden.co

Check out Blair's favorite book!: Hidden Messages in Water

Connect with The Truth Is:
🎥 Watch the full conversation on YouTube → @thetruthis_pod
📸 Follow on Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

Credits
Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner
Edited by Dan Croll
Music by Will Savino
Visual Identity by Sarah Gainer & Jonathan Bush
Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Jakob Wandel is a filmmaker and photographer whose path has carried him from the Navy to years on tour with musicians — and now into a new chapter of storytelling through his documentary series, Craft.

In this episode, we talk about how his journey has been one long act of starting again: leaving behind identities that no longer fit, saying no to what’s safe, and following the pull to create something of his own. Jakob shares how witnessing other makers has reconnected him to patience, process, and presence, and what he’s learning about embracing failure as part of the creative path.

It’s a reminder that the process itself is the point — and that meaning often lives in the making.

• The moment of clarity that led Jakob to walk away from touring
• What Craft is teaching him about patience, attention, and integrity
• The connection between grief, truth, and creative courage
• How slowing down and making with our hands reconnects us to meaning
• Why so much of the work we do bears no immediate reward — and why that’s okay

If this conversation reminds you of your own season of starting again, share it with someone creative in your life — or leave a review so others can find the show.

Connect with Jakob:
Instagram → @jakobwandel

Visit his website → www.jakobwandel.com

Connect with The Truth Is:
🎥 Watch the full conversation on YouTube → @thetruthis_pod
📸 Follow on Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

John Markland is a highly respected director, screenwriter, producer, and acting teacher, and the founder of The Markland Studio, whose work has guided countless artists and performers toward deeper, more authentic expression.

In this conversation, we talk about what happens when the identity you’ve built to feel safe or successful starts to feel out of alignment. John shares how a lifetime of adapting shaped his work with artists, and why he believes honesty matters more than approval — on stage and in life. We explore the unexpressed parts of ourselves we learn to hide, how reconnecting to instinct and curiosity can bring us closer to what’s real, and why taking the time to understand the moments that shaped you can open more freedom in how you move forward.

It’s a conversation about truth, creativity, and what becomes possible when we stop performing and start allowing.

We talk about:

• Why so many of us live inside identities built for safety, not truth
• What it looks like to start expressing the parts of yourself you’ve been taught to hide
• How honesty — not effort or perfection — creates real presence
• The role of play in loosening control and reconnecting to what’s real
• Why understanding your own story changes how you move through the world
• How letting go of control opens the door to something truer

If this episode leaves you thinking about the self beneath your own identity, share it with someone who might need it — or leave a review so others can find the show.

Connect with John & The Markland Studio:
Instagram → @themarklandstudio

Website → www.marklandstudio.com

Connect with The Truth Is:
🎥 Watch the full conversation on YouTube
📸 Follow on Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

Debut romance author Joss Richard joins us this week to talk about what happens when something that’s lived quietly inside you for years finally asks to be shared.

We talk about the leap from corporate to a creative life, how writing fan fiction became her quiet training ground, and the months of 5 a.m. mornings that led to It’s Different This Time — a story that began in the Notes app on her phone and turned into a USA Today bestselling debut.

It’s a conversation about creative permission, evolving dreams, and what it looks like to follow the thing that feels most true to you, even when it asks you to let go of the plan you thought you had.

Her debut novel, It’s Different This Time — a New York-in-the-fall, Nora Ephron–style second-chance romance — is out now wherever books are sold.

We talk about:

• Our cross-country drive with our rescue dogs (and how friendship sometimes sneaks up on you)
• Fan fiction 101, “shipping,” and why writing for yourself changes everything
• The moment she realized she wanted to create her own characters
• Starting It’s Different This Time in her phone’s Notes app, then writing the rest before work each morning
• The practical and emotional side of leaving a full-time job
• Redefining success when the goalpost keeps moving
• Why romance is serious storytelling — about love, loss, and everything in between
• The truth that what’s meant for you might just be what you never thought was possible

If this episode leaves you thinking about the part of yourself that’s been waiting to be seen — share it with someone who might need to hear it, or leave a review so others can find it too.

Connect with Joss Richard:

📚 Order It’s Different This Time
✨ On Instagram → @joss.richard
🌐 On her website→ https://www.jossrichard.com/

Connect with The Truth Is:
🎥 Watch the full conversation on YouTube
📸 Follow on Instagram → @thetruthispodcast

Credits
Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner
Edited by Dan Croll
Music by Will Savino
Visual Identity by Sarah Gainer & Jonathan Bush
Advised by Natalie Tulloch