storychaser

And that’s a wrap on Season 1 of Storychaser.Nine episodes. Nine conversations with people whose stories might not always make the headlines, but deserve to be heard.This season took us into newsrooms, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, kitchens and people’s homes. We talked about grief, addiction, race, mental health, identity, ambition, resilience and what it means to keep going when life doesn’t go according to plan.Storychaser was built around a simple idea: some of the stories most worth telling are the ones we almost never hear.Thank you to every guest who trusted me with theirs, and to everyone who listened along the way.Season 2 coming soon(ish). ❤️xoxo-Tara

Chef Aarthi Sampath wanted to be an actor. Her family told her that wasn't a career and when she looked at Indian film and television, she couldn't find a dark-skinned woman in any of it. So she went into a kitchen instead, and ended up on television anyway: she won Chopped, then beat Bobby Flay with a biryani she'd learned from an old master chef in Hyderabad who had to be bribed with liquor before he'd give up the recipe. In 2019 she wrote down a different idea, not an Indian restaurant, but a restaurant about the entire South Asian diaspora. She pitched it for years. Everyone said no. Emmy-award winning host Tara Ruff sits down with Aarthi in the room she built anyway, to ask what it takes to set a table before you know anyone's coming.

What is therapy actually for and why are so many of us ashamed to need it?In this episode of Story Chaser, Tara Ruff sits down with therapist, disaster responder, and resilience expert Kamran Sakhitab to unpack the invisible wounds we carry and the reasons so many people refuse help until they’re at a breaking point.Drawing from his work in psychiatric hospitals, disaster zones, and with athletes, first responders, and communities in crisis, Kamran explains why therapy is far more than “paying someone to listen.” Together, they explore the stigma surrounding mental health, particularly among men and immigrant families, the difference between individual and collective trauma, and why healing is as much about the body as it is the mind.If you are or someone you know needs immediate support: 988 LifelineResources from the pod:Ellie Mental Health, BostonWim Hoff Breathing MethodsJamaal Williams Speech on Vulnerability

Michael Lynch will tell you exactly what addiction is: using despite negative consequences. And he'll tell you what it isn't: a choice, a moral failing, or something prison can fix.He knows because he lived it. Foster care to gangs to prison to building a multimillion-dollar brand while destroying himself from the inside. The outside looked good. The inside was not. Police saved him without meaning to.That was 18 years ago. Since then: Stairway Recovery. 170 beds. Thousands of lives. Court advocacy fighting a system that punishes disease. And some of the rawest, most honest truth about what recovery actually takes.

What happens when someone is medically ready to leave the hospital but has nowhere safe to go?Nick D'Agostino is a licensed social worker in New York City. Every day, he stands in that impossible space: between a system that says patients are ready to discharge and a reality that has no room for them.He's worked with nine-year-olds in foster care, unhoused people navigating the court system, and patients in psychiatric units whose families can't take them back. He's the person making the calls no one else wants to make.When a 22-year-old in Queens was shot by police during a mental health crisis, it raised the question Nick's entire career has been building toward: when someone is in crisis, who do we send?This is a conversation about broken systems, impossible choices, and the social workers trying to hold it together.