All Episodes

In our “Behind The Scammer” episode, you met Celisia Stanton and Rev. Gonzales, two people who had their life savings stolen from them by their financial advisor, a man named Isaiah Goodman.  We intentionally focused that episode on the scammed – on the victims. But we do have a duty to reach out to the subject of any story and say “Hey, do you want to comment on this?” So we did. And Isaiah agreed to an interview, from inside federal prison. Celisia’s podcast is called “Truer Crime,” and you can (and should!) listen to it here. She also set up a GoFundMe to help the Gonzales family recoup some of their financial losses. You can help them here.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll get when you join us on TTFA Premium. For $8 a month, you can support our show AND get ad-free episodes and bonus content — including mailbag episodes like this one. Sign up today at TTFA.org/Premium.

We are all just products of the people who raise us. And they are products of those who raised them. Vanessa Zoltan knows that better than most. She is the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, and for her, nihilism and depression kind of run in the family. 

Many people who have autism are diagnosed at a young age. But today’s guest, Grace, wasn’t diagnosed with autism until she was 27 years old.  In the months since the diagnosis, Grace has spent a lot of time reflecting on her childhood and young adulthood to understand why this wasn’t caught sooner — and in the process, she’s come to better understand herself and who she’s always been.

We recently made an episode called “The Grudge Book” filled with your grudges, and the feedback was SO strong. People felt validated. They laughed. They connected. So Nora got to thinking … did we need an episode that also gave you a place to share the other things that are hard to say? Your regrets? Your almosts? We decided the answer was yes, and this episode is loaded with them.

Olivia is 7 years old when her dad moves out of state to take a new job … and is never heard from again. In high school, a manilla envelope appears in Olivia’s mailbox letting her know the reason she never heard from him is because he died by suicide. But when Olivia learns as a young journalist that her father might have faked his own death all those years ago, she decides to investigate.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll get when you join us on TTFA Premium. For $8 a month, you can support our show AND get ad-free episodes and bonus content — including mailbag episodes like this one. Sign up today at TTFA.org/Premium.

It’s the stuff of romantic comedies: Man meets woman as they’re boarding a flight. The two quickly discover they share many similarities and go on to chat for hours. There’s an instant connection.  The big difference here is the woman is Nora, and the man is a TTFA listener. And what she and Jose spend hours talking about, what they instantly connect on ... is their grief. Because like Nora, Jose recently lost the love of his life. 

Suffering can feel like such a singular experience -- like there’s no one else in the world who understands what we’re going through. But sometimes, if we look hard enough, we find that our singular experience intersects with another. This is the story of two young girls whose stories intertwined during a tragic accident on October 8, 1988 … though they wouldn’t meet for decades to come.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll get when you join us on TTFA Premium. For $8 a month, you can support our show AND get ad-free episodes and bonus content — including mailbag episodes like this one. Sign up today at TTFA.org/Premium.

In our “Behind the Scammer” episode, you met Celisia Stanton. Being the victim of a crime really makes you think through the way that you consume true crime entertainment, and Celisia wanted to approach the genre from a different angle — not just on the crime that occurred, but on the systems that surround every crime. She started her own (amazing) podcast called “Truer Crime” – give it a listen here!

We’re culturally obsessed with scammers, con artists and fraudsters. People like Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff dominate headlines and then get films made and books written documenting what they did and how they did it. But behind the scammers are the victims: individuals who are struggling to recover their sense of safety, their identity … and their money. In July 2021, Isaiah Goodman was sentenced to 7 years in prison for defrauding clients out of more than $2.3 million dollars. He spent the money on a hot tub, a fancy house, two cars, a cruise … but it wasn’t his money. That money belonged to -- among others -- Celisia Stanton and Rev. Michael Gonzales, two very real people whose lives were materially impacted by Goodman’s materialism.

When you introduce yourself to someone for the first time, you start by telling them your name and (maybe!) a few facts about you. The other person takes the information at face value. There’s no judgment, no opinion formed … just two people meeting each other.Amanda has no idea what that feels like. In 2007, she made international news headlines through no fault of her own. Now, more than a decade later, strangers decide their opinion of her as soon as they hear her name. But what many people consider Amanda’s story isn’t really hers at all.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll get when you join us on TTFA Premium. For $8 a month, you can support our show AND get ad-free episodes and bonus content — including mailbag episodes like this one. Sign up today at TTFA.org/Premium.

The internet and social media are a huge way for us to be seen as individuals. We share our lives online because it gives us connection … and because it gives us attention. But that attention isn’t always positive. Jolie knows this all too well, because in 2019, she found herself on the wrong side of the Internet Rage Machine.

We’re back with another Terrible Reading Club episode, sponsored by Betterhelp Online Therapy. Think of it as our book club for truly terrible times. Haven’t read the book we’re discussing? Good news: In this reading club, that’s not a requirement. Today, we’re chatting with Danielle Henderson about her memoir, “The Ugly Cry.”

Angela and Jeff have an awesome marriage. They share the same life goals, the same ideologies. Their life together is peaceful and easy, and they love their two kids. But just after their tenth anniversary, Angela starts to feel that something is ... off. And it's not Jeff — he's as steadfast as ever. It's her. 

When one of the people in a relationship is dead, the relationship becomes a bit one-sided. Your version of who that person is and was is obscured by all of your own biases, your commitment to your version of the truth, to your side of the story. Nora’s dad — Vietnam veteran, father of four, advertising copywriter — died seven years ago. And in this episode, the McInerny siblings reflect on who Stephen J. McInerny was … as a young boy sent to war, as a husband, and as their father. About how they love their dad, even if he wasn’t always the kind of dad they wanted.