Loners & Rebels

Where the Paper Trail Turns Personal

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.

Sophonisba: The Thread that Found Me

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.

The Horrors We Inherit

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.

William Munroe, the Exile, and the Legacy

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.

The One Who Wouldn't Behave

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.