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Bestselling author, activist, and mom of three Samantha Ettus joins us to talk about parenting teenagers, losing her home in the Palisades fire, and the moment on October 8th that turned a women's-empowerment influencer into one of the most outspoken Jewish voices online.

We get into raising kids who are proud Zionists, why she says "vote the candidate, not the party," her take on where DEI left Jews out of the conversation, and what she wishes every parent understood about the phone-addicted teenage years. Unfiltered, unafraid, unexpert — as always.

0:00 – Welcome Samantha Ettus
1:30 – Parenting teens: "little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems"
9:35 – The two kinds of working parents
14:11 – October 7th: the day everything changed
23:00 – DEI, Islamophobia, and the Jewish blind spot
34:12 – The Jewish population myth
40:56 – "I'm not a party girl": vote the candidate, not the party
52:35 – Losing her home in the Palisades fire — and showing up anyway
57:19 – The Roger Waters confrontation
1:01:54 – Setting the record straight on Mamdani and Jewish voters
1:06:14 – Book recommendations & closing thoughts

SHOWNOTES:
https://www.samanthaettus.com/
https://www.instagram.com/samanthaettus
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001ITVGBO?ccs_id=f7ee9985-6d96-462d-aad9-1735e6231ec4
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthaettus/

RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

• God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah Is True — Mark Gerson
• As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us — Sarah Hurwitz
• People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present — Dara Horn
• Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth — Noa Tishby
• Bibi: My Story — Benjamin Netanyahu
• The Netanyahus — Joshua Cohen
• The Goddess of Warsaw — Lisa Barr

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Caroline has three organizers going through boxes from her old apartment — her kids' first shoes, their hair, their artwork, her dead dog's ashes. Eva has a closet she and her husband couldn't open, a two-week Splenda sobriety streak, and a drawer of hotel shower caps she's never used. This week we accidentally diagnose ourselves on mic — turns out one of us is a "scarcity hoarder" and the other is a "sentimental hoarder," and neither is as unrelated to childhood as we'd like. Plus: the etymology of "cold turkey," a poop-on-a-stranger's-driveway story of the week, and why Eva's frontal lobe meme might end her marriage.

Word of the week: Entropy.

Book of the week: In Love by Amy Bloom.

Chapters:

0:00 – Intro: Caroline's three organizers and the box excavation

2:30 – Splenda hoarding and the "cold turkey" tangent

5:04 – The grocery bag closet nobody could open

9:33 – The old Jewish grandma joke (and the sting behind it)

10:20 – Hotel toiletry theft + the scarcity hoarding diagnosis

12:38 – Chinese takeout containers, toilet paper, King David soap

14:44 – Ketchup, soy sauce, straws: the full inventory

19:22 – Free food, client meetings, and fight-or-flight logic

21:41 – Story of the week: the driveway poop incident

23:59 – Caroline admits she's a hoarder too: meet the lineage keeper

28:36 – Jeremy's normal, and the mystery art in Dad's office

30:54 – Fridge magnets, dog headstones, and Hugo's ashes

35:51 – Meme of the week: the frontal lobe bit

40:35 – Being the family archivist

42:54 – The moral: normal's overrated

45:12 – Word of the week + book of the week

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Caroline is halfway between two states with 32 unopened boxes and no idea what's in most of them. Eva hasn't moved an inch — and that's exactly the problem.

It started with a plane movie: Eternity, starring Elizabeth Olsen, about a waystation between life and the afterlife called Junction, where you get exactly one shot to pick where you'll spend forever. Caroline couldn't stop thinking about it, and it becomes the lens for the whole episode — because it turns out they're both stuck in their own version of Junction. Caroline's is physical: mid-move to Miami, emotionally committed but living out of boxes, watching her old couch get sent to storage while her daughter has a full meltdown about it. Eva's is quieter and, she admits, harder to explain — a stable life, a happy family, nothing forcing her hand, and still this nagging sense that she stepped off the achievement treadmill and doesn't know which direction to walk in.

They get into the psychology of it (there's an actual term for this — the "neutral zone," the disorienting space between an ending and a new beginning), why people get weirdly drawn to you the moment you announce a big change, the guilt of moving kids away from a hometown, and why regret is a waste of time even when you can't stop doing it anyway. Plus: the book of the week (Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver), a Chucky-adjacent couch standoff with a 13-year-old, and this week's meme.

#junction #midlife #podcast #momsofinstagram

Chapters:

• 0:00 – Cold open: "big episode" bit + the perfectionist confession
• 1:40 – The "save the marriage" trip that became a family trip
• 2:15 – The plane movie: Eternity, and what "Junction" actually means
• 5:30 – Eva's physical junction: the move to Miami, 32 boxes, nothing settled
• 8:55 – Why people get so interested in you the moment you're mid-change
• 9:45 – The movie's real twist: two husbands, one impossible choice
• 11:15 – "You can do it too" — manifesting the move and the election-exodus talk
• 13:22 – New York permanence vs. the "everyone eventually leaves" places
• 15:43 – Moving kids: age, timing, and why there's no clean answer
• 18:00 – Cop-out or reality? Debating how hard a big move actually is
• 20:21 – The midlife version of junction: gratitude vs. "what's still left"
• 22:33 – The snail-without-a-shell metaphor
• 24:57 – Off the treadmill: achievement mode vs. actually deciding for yourself
• 27:20 – What New York gives you (and what it's stopped giving you)
• 29:30 – Try it before you buy it: renting a life before committing to it
• 32:17 – Book of the week: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• 34:32 – Live interruption: the Great Couch Rebellion begins
• 37:53 – What the couch meltdown is actually teaching their daughter
• 40:14 – Kids have a delayed reaction to change — here's what to watch for
• 42:24 – Meme of the week + sign-off

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Caroline asks Claude (yes, the AI) to settle a mid-marriage word fight — and it doesn't go how you'd think. Eva and Caroline record their first-ever remote episode and immediately start bickering about lighting. From there: the great camp-letter drought, a 5-minute phone call that ends in "Mom, the counselor's looking at me," Eva's golf debut and her sudden mastery of terms like "compression," and a full spiral of envy over the carefree, helmet-free energy of Nantucket. A messy, funny check-in on camp season and everything it stirs up.

#campmom #podcast #momsofinstagram

Chapters:

• 0:00 – Welcome + first remote recording nerves
• 0:48 – Camp episode recap & the great photo shortage
• 2:14 – Getting camera-ready (dodging photos, "profesh" setups)
• 3:38 – The Sandy airport story
• 5:53 – Landing in Maine vs. JFK
• 8:07 – Camp letters: "a little fun" vs. "a good time"
• 10:02 – Mail then vs. now (the empty envelope)
• 11:27 – The 5-minute phone call: "Mom, wrap it up"
• 14:06 – Killing plants (RIP to Helen's garden)
• 16:20 – Dog food instructions and other adult failures
• 18:54 – "Two things can be true": missing home and enjoying camp
• 21:04 – Tech glitch + the Claude cameo
• 22:55 – Asking Claude to fact-check a word choice mid-fight
• 25:03 – The Nantucket envy monologue
• 28:43 – Letting kids do hard things (and not offering an out)
• 32:37 – Sign-off

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Zibby Owens — author, podcaster, and founder of a media and publishing company — joins Eva and Caroline to talk divorce, reinventing your identity after years as a stay-at-home mom, and starting over at 40 through dating and remarriage. The conversation kicks off, though, with a parenting disaster: a school "puberty prep" video with hyperlinked FAQs that gave her fourth grader a full definition list he was never supposed to see. From there it goes everywhere — the slow accumulation of small decisions that ends a marriage, what it takes to rebuild a life afterward, and why Zibby's open about using weight-loss medication to quiet the "food noise" she'd carried since childhood. She also gives the first-ever preview of her upcoming memoir, Between Chapters, out September 27th.

Word of the week: reinvention. Book of the week: Between Chapters by Zibby Owens.

00:00 The school video that went horribly wrong
—:— Divorce and the small decisions that add up
—:— Rebuilding an identity after "just" a stay-at-home mom
—:— Dating and remarrying at 40
—:— Weight-loss medication and quieting food noise
—:— Between Chapters — first preview

Shownotes:

• Website: zibbyowens.com (home of her Substack "Zibby's Highlights," covering books, life, and stories)
• Podcast: Totally Booked with Zibby (formerly Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books) includes daily interviews centered around books, authors, and story creators in 30 minutes or less
• Book pre-order: Between Chapters, out September 27th — you can pre-order here -- https://zibbymedia.com/products/between-chapters
• Instagram: @zibbyowens
• Bookstore: Zibby's Bookshop — located at 1113 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA, with an online shop as well
• Zibby Substack: @zibbyowens
• On Being Jewish Now: https://onbeingjewishnow.substack.com/

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

Send us Fan Mail

It's supposed to be refreshing. Instead, we're hitting refresh. Eva and Caroline are recording from the summer studio for the first time this season, and all anyone can talk about is camp — specifically the very particular madness of being a parent who just sent a child to sleepaway camp for the first time. Caroline is forty-eight hours in and kidsick. Eva has already mistaken another child for her daughter on the Campanion app. And somehow none of this is surprising.

They get into how camps have had to send formal written warnings to parents — please do not diagnose medical conditions from photos, please do not bribe your child to pose for the photographer, do not expect photos for the first three days — because the average camp parent has become so unhinged that the director's job is now half therapy, half crisis management, half explaining to grown adults that their kid standing alone in a photo does not mean they have no friends. They talk about the overpacking arms race, the medication spreadsheets, the Zoom therapists, the tutors, the two full-time photographers, and the charter planes — and whether any of it is actually for the kid or just anxiety management with a shopping component.

But underneath all the chaos is something real: we were raised in a world of benign neglect, and we survived. We had first kisses at camp, we changed our names for the summer, we had brothers who didn't shower for six days and developed a rash you'd only see in a third-world country, and nobody called anybody's parents. And we turned out (mostly) fine. The question is whether we're raising a generation that will.

Eva changed her name to Stephanie for an entire summer and was Lower Camper Captain. Caroline's mother wrote a letter promising caviar to celebrate her grandson’s return. And somewhere in Maine, a boy in a linen suit is having the time of his life while his mother scans 500 photos looking for his face.

Book of the week: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer — six kids at an arts camp in 1974 who decide they're destined for greatness, and the decades that follow. Everything you love and grieve about the friendships you make at camp.

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

Send us Fan Mail

The episode that started with a drug addict emptying his pockets into a tip jar at seven in the morning and ended with an explosive diarrhea metaphor — and everything in between was somehow coherent.

Eva and Caroline walk through every generation from the Greatest to Gen Alpha, and what strikes them most isn't just how each generation disappointed the one before it, but how the pendulum keeps swinging. The Greatest Generation stormed Normandy. Gen Z stormed college campuses in kaffiyehs. Caroline has been to Normandy, and it's humbling.

Also, why Gen X latchkey kids grew up to raise the most anxious generation in history, how the millennial burnout became a cautionary tale Caroline watched in real time, what happens when a moral vacuum gets filled with woke ideology instead of religion, and why the only plastic surgery philosophy that matters is the Barbra Streisand exception. They also ask Claude to define what a woman is. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

The Tyler Fish bisexual bit. The Barbie-Ken gender crisis. The "never has a generation documented so much and achieved so little" meme. And a book recommendation from Deborah Spar that every woman in her twenties should read.

Disclaimer: these are two unexpert observationists who are not anthropologists, not historians, and definitely not your doctor. They are, however, right about most of this.

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal