What's Kraken with Jo Szewczyk

Dr. Linda Plunkett was a practicing clinical psychologist with a counseling practice, a ballroom dancing habit, and no idea anything was wrong — until the people around her noticed she wasn't acting like herself and an MRI found a tennis-ball-sized tumor in her frontal lobe. She talks with Jo about interviewing brain surgeons, the eight-hour surgery, the years of fibromyalgia that followed, and the moment ten days into recovery when she says a hand pulled her back — witnessed, she says, by her husband from the top of the stairs. Two books came out of it, both because people kept asking her to write it down. The third is about the storms you don't see coming.

Key Moments

• 00:58 — End of 2012: a tennis-ball-sized meningioma in the frontal lobe
• 01:08 — She didn't notice anything was wrong. Everyone around her did
• 02:39 — Interviewing brain surgeons, including the one who offered to go through her nose
• 03:02 — Choosing the surgeon on the grounds that he hadn't lost anybody yet
• 04:37 — Coming out of an eight-hour surgery feeling like an empty vessel
• 04:47 — Told three separate times in thirteen years that nothing more could be done
• 06:02 — Why she says you don't stop at one or two opinions
• 08:12 — Fibromyalgia, sleep loss, and a brain rewiring itself
• 08:20 — The journal that became Supernatural Rescue
• 13:28 — Ten days in, at the front door, at her lowest — and the hand she says pulled her back
• 17:42 — Asking "why me," and the answer that showed up six months later
• 21:21 — Still competing in ballroom dancing in her 60s, through all of it
• 24:00 — A hurricane, no word from her husband, and the seed of book three

Takeaway

Three times she was told there was nothing left to try, and three times she went looking anyway. Her point isn't that the doctors were villains — it's that a specialist who runs out of tools tends to stop at the edge of their own toolbox, and nobody is going to walk past that edge on your behalf.

Find Dr. Linda Plunkett

• Website: http://lindasplunkett.com
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@authorlindaplunkett
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindaplunkett/

Linda's Books

• Supernatural Rescue: From Broken to Beautiful — [AMZN.TO LINK 1]
• Living a Positive Life in a Negative World: My Uphill Journey (Gatekeeper Press) — [AMZN.TO LINK 2]
• Book three, on weathering the unexpected, is in progress

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This episode covers serious illness, chronic pain, and a period of despair during recovery. Nothing here is medical advice.

M.K. McDaniel went into a drug-induced coma in 1999 with a 38% chance of coming out of it. She woke up 18 days later remembering every single minute of a place she is fairly certain was hell — bombed-out cities, demons, and a shack full of women waiting on customers. Jo, who had his own near-death experience at eight years old, gets her to walk through all of it: the black void, the Christmas carol she sang out of pure spite, the dead fiance who told her she had too much left to do, and the roughly 20% of near-death experiences that nobody in the room wants to talk about.

THE TAKEAWAY: "Skip the trip. You don't need to go there. It's an option — don't take that ride."

Content note: this episode discusses medical trauma, sexual assault, and death.

KEY MOMENTS

• 01:04 — The title, explained. Why "misfit," and why "expat."
• 02:29 — Two NDEs compared. Jo's was a white void and a fight for his sanity. Hers was black and silent.
• 03:28 — "We're taking your brain offline and you won't remember a thing." She remembered everything.
• 04:08 — ARDS, lung failure, a 38% survival estimate, and an 18-day induced coma at 52 years old.
• 07:35 — The bombed-out city, the swirling fog, and the voice that asked if she knew where she was.
• 09:19 — "It's Christmas on earth. That's always the worst day in hell."
• 09:42 — She sings "Away in a Manger" to spite a demon. It works better than expected.
• 10:40 — Her fiance, dead a month, looking 35 again: "Now Mary Kay, you've got too much left to do."
• 13:31 — Nobody believed her. It took ten years to find IANDS in Seattle and people who did.
• 14:41 — About 20% of NDEs are distressing. Almost nobody talks about them.
• 17:04 — Her theory: distressing NDEs are religiously induced, and most people she meets were raised Catholic.
• 18:16 — Every "segment" of her hell traces back to real trauma in her actual life.
• 19:53 — The life review: you watch the movie, then you feel it from everyone else's side.
• 30:37 — What's next — ICU delirium, awake-and-walking ICU protocols, and getting people off induced comas.
• 34:12 — The instruction she came back with: loving, kind, merciful, forgiving, encouraging, grateful, nonjudgmental, useful.

FIND M.K. McDANIEL

• Book — Misfit in Hell to Heaven Expat:
• Website — https://misfitinhelltoheavenexpat.com

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Everything Empty Hell: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Lee Hatfield rebranded his podcast a week before we recorded this. SIPA Paranormal Chronicles is now The Paranormal Prism, he's stepping back as co-lead of the SIPA investigation team, and he's launched a second show with two UK podcasters. He's also eighteen months into a weekly release schedule I specifically told him not to attempt. We get into the medium whose money kept walking off in two different provinces, why the stick-figure cameras don't impress him, and the one question underneath his entire method: can you make it happen again?

Key Moments

• The rebrand. Paranormal Chronicles becomes The Paranormal Prism. One beam of light in, a spread of colours out. One question, six or eight possible answers.
• Paranormal Summat or Other. The new monthly show with Andy Booth (Alien8UK) and Tommy Cullum (Let's Get Freaky). Premiere was two hours of banter in England shirts.
• Weekly vs. bi-weekly. I said bi-weekly so he wouldn't burn out. He went weekly anyway and is booked solid to September. Six guests batched into two weeks, then a month off recording.
• Make it easy and they come. The one-sheet, the TidyCal link, and guests who now book themselves back onto the show without being asked.
• Ruling out the not-normal. Faulty wiring and EMF, the alarm clock beside your bed, carbon monoxide, black mould. All of it hands you hallucinations before a ghost gets a look in.
• Starting out. A logical mind, an audio recorder, a camera, a notebook and a pen. Not your phone. And have manners.

The takeaway
Rule out the obvious before you go looking for the not normal — then ask it to happen again. Belief is cheap. Repeatable is expensive.

Find Lee

• The Paranormal Prism on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-zyT7fZF-Y-15XJfpBJgUQ
• The Paranormal Prism on TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@paranormalpodcasthost
• The Paranormal Prism on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61592066402942
• Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sipa-paranormal-chronicles/id1799596747
• Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/4mtVyd1Z3xbu7cEzfpZVDZ
• New Paranormal Prism episodes Fridays at 5pm Eastern. Paranormal Summat or Other drops monthly.

Gear mentioned

• Digital voice recorder — https://amzn.to/3ROZTeE
• Mel Meter — https://amzn.to/4wu2eL5

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Stephanie Roy joins What's Kraken to talk about her book Chemotherapy and Tequila: The Last Road Trip — part memoir, part her late sister's actual journal from the road trip she took to say goodbye to everyone she loved. Stephanie traces the road from shy straight-A dropout to the woman whose daily life is orphan Thanksgiving: married at 17, an aortic aneurysm at 23 that broke her open, a trailer park tragedy, and two deathbed promises she kept. Jo and Stephanie also go back to where it all started — ghost hunting meetups in Montreal — and ahead to the TV series she's writing now.

Take Away: Life doesn't get easier — the way you deal with it does. You can't order the tools on Amazon. You build them by living through it.

Key Moments

• Ghost hunters at the mall — mostly there to weed out the weirdos (01:03)
• Why Stephanie writes longhand: road trips, the Metro, and the lost art of being bored (04:56)
• The book that's written by two sisters — her sister's journal is right there in the middle (08:32)
• The extrovert and the introvert: a tracheotomy at three vs. quitting high school over social anxiety (10:29)
• Married at 17 — "I knew everything" (14:44)
• An aortic aneurysm at 23: "Call your friends. You're not going to make it." (16:03)
• Waking up from the coma a different person — broken open, not broken (17:33)
• Trailer park tragedy, fireworks, and never blowing up your own supply (20:41)
• Her sister's last road trip — smiling for the kids the whole way (34:12)
• Two promises: be there for her kids, and finish the book (36:21)
• The memoir is becoming a TV series (41:10)
• Advice to her younger self: hang in there — the tools are coming (44:20)

Chemotherapy and Tequila: The Last Road Trip by Stephanie Roy: Here

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In this episode of What's Kraken, Jo sits down with Mad Ange — artist, writer, publisher, burlesque performer, and lifelong Vegas weirdo — for two hours on sobriety, grief, the old internet, and the long crawl back to yourself. Funny, filthy, and a lot more personal than either of them planned.

Support Mad Ange's work at Crafty Bat: - Grab the Ephemeronomicon here:

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Key Moments

• Opening riff – A virgin strawberry daiquiri so vile it deserved to die in a fire. Jo wanted to chuck it at an Uber driver; a red light killed the plan. Mid-interview, he asks if Mad Ange would've run the light for him — no hesitation: "Fuck yes."
• Getting sober – Both came up the hard way. Mad Ange quit during shutdown — 14.5 months, six drinks since — after trying to get an abusive boyfriend to quit with her. He lasted 14 hours.
• The feral early internet – Usenet, AOL, Lycos, and the Vegas chat rooms they were both haunting in the 90s without ever crossing paths.
• A career with no single lane – Award-winning non-nude fetish model, ten years of burlesque, painting, sewing, stage managing, and a film-school noir parody shot in an escape room in under two hours.
• Crafty Bat – 12 years running. She built the occult day-planner Ephemeronomicon in 10 days with YouTuber Billy Brujo.
• The family grammar book – Reissuing an Urdu-English grammar written by her great-great-grandfather, printed out of the family home in Pakistan, with her dad on the foreword.
• The heart of it: loss – Losing her mother, a young friend, and fellow Vegas artist Masuimi Max within weeks of each other. Grief as waves, the year after as a chrysalis, and the slow rebuild.
• Advice to her younger self – Ignore everyone who says art isn't a real job. Keep being weird, keep being creative, keep falling in love.

In this episode of What’s Kraken, Jo talks with Georgie Ray about RIP Man 2, indie horror, acting, and building characters from the inside out. From self-doubt on set to the joy of making art on a budget, this one gets personal, funny, and inspiring. Support the work at https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Support the new movie here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/z12/the-rip-man-2-rest-in-pain-again

Watch the original The RIP Man: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/the-r-i-p-man

Key Moments
Opening riff – Jo and Georgie jump right into RIP Man 2, indie filmmaking, and the fun of discovering new actors on the rise.

The Ostrich breakdown – Georgie explains her short film The Ostrich as a mix of Fleabag and Black Swan, built around the “ostrich effect” and a darker, more gruesome edge than the trailer reveals.

Female rage as a creative lane – Georgie talks about loving horror, writing female-rage characters, and how that energy keeps showing up in both her films and the roles she gets cast in.

Stage vs. screen – From playing Feste in Twelfth Night to working on film sets, Georgie shares how theatre demands instant recovery while film becomes a long game of waiting, bonding, and trying to stay present.

Actor self-doubt is real – One of the most honest parts of the episode is Georgie opening up about the inner critic, overthinking movement and performance, and how she physically shakes it off to get back in the scene.

The character bible – Georgie reveals her detailed actor process: building a full notebook for each character, down to how they wake up and what their routine looks like, so the performance feels lived-in.

Personal heart of the episode – Georgie reflects on how supportive her parents have been, and shares the advice she’d give her younger self: good things will come, love yourself, and love the people who love you.

In this episode of What’s Kraken, Jo sits down with filmmakers Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli about their chilling new Shudder premiere, Honey Bunch—a psychological thriller exploring lost memories, experimental trauma treatments, and the dark underbelly of a marriage tested to its limits. They open up about their collaborative writing-directing process, the challenges of indie horror, and how personal dynamics shape their storytelling. No spoilers, just raw insight into crafting tense, hallucinatory cinema. Catch Honey Bunch now on Shudder! 

Check out more at https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell. 

We are Amazon Affiliates—if you use any Amazon links we share and make a purchase, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Opening riff – Jo kicks off with wild energy, setting the stage for a candid chat with the Honey Bunch creators 

Insights– Madeleine and Dusty reveal how their real-life partnership influences the film's twisted relationship dynamics 

Personal story – The duo shares how their writing process evolves when directing together—collaboration, clashes, and creative breakthroughs 

Why it matters – From shorts to features--these two have resurrected the art of writing plots that twist as much as they matter.

In this episode of What’s Kraken, Jo surprises co-host Amelie with a deep dive into her fascinating life – from growing up in a historic French bed and breakfast to working hotels across Europe, Asia, and beyond. Amelie shares heartfelt stories of family work ethic, saving fiercely for independence, falling in love with Asia's community spirit, and her burning dream of owning a B&B that empowers others. From childhood hustles earning Toys R Us gift cards to navigating young adult struggles, this raw chat inspires dreaming big and grinding smart. Check out more at https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell. We're Amazon Affiliates – if you buy through our links, we earn a commission!

KEY MOMENTS

• Surprise trap – Jo ambushes Amelie mid-movie hangout for an unplanned What's Kraken takeover
• Childhood hustle spark – Amelie greets guests at age 5, racks up Toys R Us gift cards from impressed English visitors
• Family work ethic insight – Growing up in a public bed and breakfast teaches discipline, politeness, and helping out from day one
• Young adult grind story – Saving fiercely at McDonald's, dishwashing gigs, and hostels to gain independence without burdening parents
• Asia love revelation – Why family-run businesses, friendliness, and community in Asia stole her heart and mirrored her upbringing

Jo goes FULL chaotic energy with Lee Hatfield (S.I.P.A. Paranormal Chronicles) as they unpack how Lee launched a paranormal podcast that exploded in 2025, booked guests until mid-January, and still finds time to get stroked by ghosts in creepy jails. From EVPs that make jaws drop to seeing a full apparition walk past his bed in New York, Lee spills the real tea on scientific investigating, time slips, and why patience + spreadsheets = paranormal gold. Jo admits he’s jealous Lee got ghost-touched and they both roast flashy ghost-hunting gadgets. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, this episode will make you think and laugh.

Check out our other shows→ https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell (we’re Amazon Affiliates — if you click our links and buy stuff, we get a little kickback, thank you legends!)

KEY MOMENTS

• Opening chaos – Jo can’t read Lee’s name, blames laundry list, instant friendship roast
• Lee’s origin spark – From one nervous episode with Jo to 47+ bangers and guests booked into 2026
• Behind-the-scenes hustle – Spreadsheets, TidyCal, and the art of never ghosting your own guests
• Personal goosebump story – Lee gets gently stroked by a ghost...no, not that way! + full apparition in NY
• Why it matters – Real investigating means debunking first, wonder second — and that’s how you earn respect

Jo gets local—and real—with author Robert Howell in this surprising and heartfelt episode of What’s Kraken. From childhood storytelling to publishing paranormal thrillers, Robert shares how a single rejection letter helped shape his 50-year writing journey. They dive into the origin stories behind Blood Mansion and Blood Castle, the quirks of self-publishing, and the minefield of indie publishing contracts. Robert talks candidly about staying grounded through the highs and lows of book launches, the importance of research in fiction, and how his kids helped him re-enter the writing world. Plus, how a haunted-feeling property and a real-life “wind phone” inspired his creepiest books yet.

KEY MOMENTS:

• Opening riff – Jo’s playful intro: “Today… I could just touch your house if I want to, Robert!”
• Guest’s big insight – Robert on keeping his first rejection letter for 50 years to remember the next step will be better.
• Behind‑the‑scenes moment – How Robert’s idea for Blood Mansion came from visiting a creeped‑out empty property during his job in property‑management.
• Personal story – Transitioning from sci‑fi short stories as a teen to a young‑adult urban fantasy novel and then into self‑publishing.
• Why it matters – The broader takeaway: writing is a long game, publishing contracts matter, owning your rights counts—and dreams don’t expire.

👉 Books mentioned: Blood Mansion, Blood Castle, A Devil of a Time
👻 Themes: ghosts, witches, horror grounded in reality, self-doubt, perseverance, and writing as survival
🖊️ Find Robert at: storywriter.ca or @StoryWriter on all the socials
🌐 And don’t forget: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

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