We're revisiting this conversation from October 2025 because it's stayed with us — and we think it will with you too.

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:

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:

Website → www.marklandstudio.com

Connect with The Truth Is on Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

Credits

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.

A quick update: since we first aired this episode, Joss's debut has continued to be beloved by many, and Let's Kiss and Tell — her follow-up — releases this August, with a book tour to follow. We're bringing this conversation back as a reminder of where it all started.

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:

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:

Connect with The Truth Is:

Credits

If you missed this one when it first aired in October 2025, here's your moment.

Kathryn sits down with her sister, Alyssa Flaschner, for a conversation about paying attention to what makes us feel alive, and how change really happens: not all at once, but through tiny degree shifts that slowly realign our lives toward what feels true.

In the stillness of COVID, Alyssa began to notice a quiet pull toward something else. What started as weeknights with her cookbook collection soon turned into a decision to take herself—and her curiosity—seriously. That choice led to nine months of commuting to New York City for culinary school—twenty-seven weekends in a row—couch surfing with friends and family and rolling a little suitcase full of knives through the city. Nine months later, that curiosity had become a craft—and eventually, a full-time role on the team at Philadelphia’s acclaimed restaurant My Loup.

Together, we talk about what it means to find the thing that makes you come alive—and to keep following it, even when it asks you to rewrite the life you thought you were building.

In this episode, we talk about: 

It’s an intimate, sister-to-sister conversation about curiosity, courage, and learning to trust the pull toward what makes you come alive.

Visit My Loup, where Alyssa is part of the culinary team

Instagram → @thetruthis_podcast

Video production and editing by Anton LaPlume

This episode first aired in December 2025. We're bringing it back because it's one that stays with you.

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:

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.

More from Jedidiah Jenkins:

Connect with The Truth Is:

Credits

Kate Boyer is a Los Angeles-based stunt woman and actor who has built her career one leap at a time — literally. She grew up in Philadelphia with an explorer's mindset, found her way to martial arts young, and eventually packed everything into a Honda Civic and drove cross-country with a vision. What she found on the other side of that move became the foundation of a decade-plus career in film and television, doubling for actors and executing the kind of work that demands total trust in yourself and the people around you.

Kathryn has known Kate through their shared world as actors, and has watched up close what it looks like to build a self-led life in one of the most uncertain industries there is. This conversation is about the posture you have to take to do that — not waiting for the golden ticket, but deciding what the next move is and going. Kate is beginning to bring that practice to other artists, helping them find the clarity to do the same.

In this conversation:

Follow Kate: Instagram The Truth Is: Instagram | Video production and editing by Anton LaPlume. Music by Will Savino. Visual identity by Sarah Gainor and Jonathan Bush. Guidance and advising by Natalie Tulloch.

Wilfredo Perdomo is the founder of DESTINO, a wellness-focused hospitality and lifestyle concept he's building in the Catskills. As a Cuban-American raised by immigrant parents, his foundation is rooted in working hard, creating beauty with what you have, and making people feel genuinely welcomed. He spent eight years working with Drew Barrymore, most recently as president of Barrymore Brands — building products with heart and creating things people truly connect with. Now he's bringing all of that into something entirely his own: a micro-resort and retreat space centered around wellness, design, nature, and emotional reset. His mission is to make wellness feel accessible and less performative — to give people permission to pause.

Kathryn met Wilfredo during those brand-building years. This conversation is about what it looks like when you take everything you've learned and take a faithful leap into yourself — and what it costs, demands, and opens up when you do.

In this conversation:

Mentioned in this episode: The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

Follow Wilfredo: Instagram DESTINO: Instagram Website

The Truth Is: Instagram YouTube

Video production and editing by Anton LaPlume. Music by Will Savino. Visual identity by Sarah Gainor and Jonathan Bush. Guidance and advising by Natalie Tulloch.

Charlotte Jackson is a private chef, cofounder of CANDID, writer, coach, and host focused on helping people have better conversations with themselves and each other. She's also one of the original minds behind Reading Rhythms, the silent reading community that started on a rooftop in Williamsburg and caught the attention of the New York Times and the Today Show.

Charlotte is one of those people who wants to do all of it — and rather than questioning what to eliminate, she's letting it all coexist. A lot of us feel the limitations, and even the slow death, of the linear career path, and Charlotte is a living example of what's possible when you loosen your grip on that model we inherited. When you give yourself permission to experiment rather than arrive.

In this conversation: running two experiments at once, Internal Family Systems and the warring parts within us, why she's allergic to the word strategy, how to embrace your vague dreams and follow your Fun-tuition.

Mentioned in this episode: Run Two Experiments — the framework Charlotte references for navigating a career transition: one experiment for the thing you can't stop thinking about, one for the skill you can offer tomorrow.

Follow Charlotte: Instagram Substack

CANDID: Website Instagram

Reading Rhythms: Instagram

The Truth Is: Instagram YouTube Substack

Editing and video production by Anton La Plume. Music by Will Savino. Visual identity by Sarah Gainor and Jonathan Bush. Guidance and advising by Natalie Tulloch.

"I'm the last to know why I do things," Kate Mueller said to me during this interview. What an enticing revelation, especially as Kate and I looked back on the creative projects that have come through her, starting with a coffin she began building when she was 19, that sits in the middle of her living room at 35. She told me it is a good way to not watch too much Netflix. Not only has her coffin been with her as a reminder of our shared truth, but she's made friends through it, hosting coffin parties in LA where people gather to explore mortality over a glass of wine. Great way to skip some small talk!

In my experience, the exploration or the contemplation of our own mortality has a helpful side effect — it orients us back to our life. The nowness (whether you like it or not!) of it all. And her work also takes us there. Kate's large scale installations, including String of Light That Connects All Things, a series of steel sculptural forms placed along the Southern California shoreline at sunset, are designed not to be looked at but to draw your awareness to what's already there. We talk about her orientation towards the awe of the natural world, how she gathered her friends and family across political differences following the 2024 election for an installation on the beach, and what that experience opened up for her.

Kate's journey has been true to her from the beginning, and her life as an artist has been informed by her own pilgrimage for truth. From growing up homeschooled in a conservative and religious household, to being met by a nun at the train station in Romania to live in a monastery — where she hoped to find the clarity and courage to be honest with her family about her faith — to walking the Camino de Santiago alone in her early 20s, she found her foundational truth. A belief that people are good, that we are here to care for one another, and that anyone can mirror back to you a spark of the divine. And that nature has a way of holding us all.

This conversation will invite you to step into the awe that exists right here in this lifetime.

In this episode we talk about:

Links to Kate's Work:

Kate's Coffin (Feature in LA Times)

String of Light That Connects All Things

Upcoming Installation May 23rd Oxnard,CA

About Kate Mueller

Kate Mueller is a Los Angeles–based installation artist whose work feels like an invitation to step into another astral plane. Her large-scale sculptural forms shift perception, drawing viewers into a heightened state of awareness. Merging welding with transdisciplinary techniques, Mueller constructs immersive works that engage movement, scale, and presence, making participation central to the experience. Her sculptures are designed to be entered, circled, and encountered physically, drawing attention to the immediacy of the moment, the awe of the natural world, and the interconnectedness of all things.

CONNECT WITH KATE

KATE'S WEBSITE

KATE'S INSTAGRAM

CONNECT WITH THE TRUTH IS

Instagram: @thetruthispodcast

YouTube: @thetruthis_pod

Substack: Kathryn Flaschner

CREDITS

Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner

Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume

 Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com

 Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush

 Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Tazin Khan is a cyber risk strategist, digital rights advocate, and the founder and CEO of Cyber Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to making digital safety education accessible, human, and community rooted. Her work is driven by a simple but urgent belief: everybody deserves to experience the internet without harm.

That belief didn't come from a boardroom. It came from growing up Bengali in post-9/11 Virginia as one of the only Muslim families for miles. From translating immigration documents in fourth grade. From living in and out of her car at nineteen while working three jobs and meeting a stranger who she emailed every month until she got hired. From watching her father get scammed on Facebook and realizing the gap between what the industry knows and what the people most at risk are ever taught.

Tazin has spent over 13 years in cybersecurity — across Fortune 10 companies, government agencies, and grassroots organizing — and what she's built with Cyber Collective is something the industry was never going to build for itself. A community-rooted, feminine-designed organization that meets people where they are and asks the questions the sector would rather not answer.

This conversation goes deep into all of it.

We talk about:

What stayed with me after this conversation is that Tazin is doing exactly what this show believes is possible: taking the most personal work and turning it outward. Her story is her methodology. And her methodology is changing what the internet is allowed to do to the people it was never designed to protect.

ABOUT TAZIN KHAN 

Tazin Khan is the founder and CEO of Cyber Collective, a nonprofit making digital safety education accessible, human, and community rooted. With over 13 years of experience spanning Fortune 10 companies, government agencies, and grassroots organizing, her work has reached more than 5.5 million people globally. She holds a master's from NYU and has been featured in Forbes, Harper's Bazaar, People Magazine, and on CNN.

Tazin on Instagram | Cyber Collective

CONNECT WITH THE TRUTH IS

Instagram: @thetruthispodcast 

YouTube: @thetruthis_pod 

Substack: Kathryn Flaschner

CREDITS

Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner

Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume

 Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com

 Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush

 Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Corey Thibodeau is the co-founder of West Side Yoga — three studios in Providence, Rhode Island that have become something rarer than a successful small business. A place where people find each other, and sometimes, finally find themselves.

She will not dress it up for you. What it actually takes to build something real while straddling a corporate career. What it feels like to give a decade of yourself to a company and have it end the way it ended. What patience and trust — not hustle, not forcing — actually produce when you finally give them room. And what it means to build something so rooted in a community that the community starts to heal because of it.

That is what this conversation is. The honest version of a story a lot of people are living but not saying out loud.

We talk about:

ABOUT COREY THIBODEAU

Corey Thibodeau is the co-founder of West Side Yoga, a studio community with three locations in Providence, Rhode Island, which she runs alongside her husband Joe Thibodeau. She has been teaching yoga since 2015.

Corey on Instagram

West Side Yoga on Instagram

West Side Yoga Website

CONNECT WITH THE TRUTH IS

Instagram: @thetruthispodcast 

YouTube: @thetruthis_pod 

Substack: Kathryn Flaschner

CREDITS

Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner

Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume

 Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com

 Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush

 Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Topics: women and work, reinvention, building a business, yoga, community, corporate to entrepreneurship, trusting yourself, identity, truth