Loners & Rebels

In this episode, the research stops being just records and timelines and starts hitting home. I talk through how the process becomes emotional excavation — how a name on a census turns into a person, how facts turn into feelings and how the paper trail eventually points back at you. It’s the moment the work stops being academic and becomes human.

This episode is about a woman who refused to stay in the box her era built for her. Sophonisba pushed past every barrier put in her way and left a record that shouldn’t have survived. It’s a look at grit, defiance and what it means to inherit a backbone from someone you never even knew.

In this episode, I confront the part of my lineage shaped by the Nazi era — the ancestors tied to atrocity and the silence that followed. It’s an honest look at what it means to face that history without excuses, to hold empathy without denial and to understand how these inherited horrors ripple through a family long after the war ends.Content note:This episode includes discussion of WWII atrocities, generational trauma, and difficult historical material.

This episode traces the first exile in my family line — William Munroe — and how displacement, reinvention and silence became woven into the generations that followed. It’s the story of a man forced into a new life, the quiet that came with that kind of survival and the echoes that still show up in my family today.Special thanks to the Lexington Historical Society and the Lexington History Museums for their ongoing work preserving the Munroe family legacy. If you’d like to support their conservation projects, you can learn more or donate at lexingtonhistory.org.

This episode is about a woman history tried to erase. She was labeled “intemperate,” punished for being unprotected and written off as a problem instead of a person. I walk through what her life actually looked like, the choices she never had and what it means to remember her now with empathy instead of judgment. It’s a story about forgotten women, survival, and reclaiming someone who deserved better.

This episode digs into my paternal grandfather’s military discharge and the fallout that shaped my father in ways he never talked about. It’s a look at how trauma gets passed down quietly, how grief becomes a pattern and how families learn to survive by not saying a word.Content note:This episode includes discussion of mental health, family trauma, and military related distress.

I open the series by digging into where all this started: growing up in a family shaped by unspoken things. This episode traces the roots of my curiosity, the silence that stretched across generations, and why I finally decided to break it.Content note:This episode includes discussion of childhood trauma, bullying and domestic violence.If something in this episode hits close to home:• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — text or chat at 988lifeline.org• National Domestic Violence Hotline — thehotline.org or text START to 88788