The Truth Is with Kathryn Flaschner

Charlotte Jackson: Trust Falling With the Universe — On Dreaming Vaguely and Following Your Fun-tuition

Charlotte Jackson is a private chef, cofounder of CANDID, writer, coach, and host focused on helping people have better conversations with themselves and each other. She's also one of the original minds behind Reading Rhythms, the silent reading community that started on a rooftop in Williamsburg and caught the attention of the New York Times and the Today Show. Charlotte is one of those people who wants to do all of it — and rather than questioning what to eliminate, she's letting it all coexist. A lot of us feel the limitations, and even the slow death, of the linear career path, and Charlotte is a living example of what's possible when you loosen your grip on that model we inherited. When you give yourself permission to experiment rather than arrive. In this conversation: running two experiments at once, Internal Family Systems and the warring parts within us, why she's allergic to the word strategy, how to embrace your vague dreams and follow your Fun-tuition. Mentioned in this episode: Run Two Experiments [https://substack.com/home/post/p-195194846] — the framework Charlotte references for navigating a career transition: one experiment for the thing you can't stop thinking about, one for the skill you can offer tomorrow. Follow Charlotte: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/charlottejacksonn/] Substack [https://charlottejackson.substack.com] CANDID: Website [https://getcandidcards.com] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/getcandidcards/] Reading Rhythms: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/reading_rhythms/] The Truth Is: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/thetruthis_podcast/] YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@thetruthis_pod] Substack [https://substack.com/@kathrynflaschner] Editing and video production by Anton La Plume. Music by Will Savino. Visual identity by Sarah Gainor and Jonathan Bush. Guidance and advising by Natalie Tulloch.

Kate Mueller: Nature Can Hold All of Our Differences — On Coffins, the Camino, and Awe

"I'm the last to know why I do things," Kate Mueller said to me during this interview. What an enticing revelation, especially as Kate and I looked back on the creative projects that have come through her, starting with a coffin she began building when she was 19, that sits in the middle of her living room at 35. She told me it is a good way to not watch too much Netflix. Not only has her coffin been with her as a reminder of our shared truth, but she's made friends through it, hosting coffin parties in LA where people gather to explore mortality over a glass of wine. Great way to skip some small talk! In my experience, the exploration or the contemplation of our own mortality has a helpful side effect — it orients us back to our life. The nowness (whether you like it or not!) of it all. And her work also takes us there. Kate's large scale installations, including String of Light That Connects All Things, a series of steel sculptural forms placed along the Southern California shoreline at sunset, are designed not to be looked at but to draw your awareness to what's already there. We talk about her orientation towards the awe of the natural world, how she gathered her friends and family across political differences following the 2024 election for an installation on the beach, and what that experience opened up for her. Kate's journey has been true to her from the beginning, and her life as an artist has been informed by her own pilgrimage for truth. From growing up homeschooled in a conservative and religious household, to being met by a nun at the train station in Romania to live in a monastery — where she hoped to find the clarity and courage to be honest with her family about her faith — to walking the Camino de Santiago alone in her early 20s, she found her foundational truth. A belief that people are good, that we are here to care for one another, and that anyone can mirror back to you a spark of the divine. And that nature has a way of holding us all. This conversation will invite you to step into the awe that exists right here in this lifetime. In this episode we talk about: * Building her own coffin at 19 — and what it's taught her about living * Hosting coffin parties in LA and what happens when you bring mortality into the room * Growing up homeschooled in a conservative religious household and knowing early her truth lied somewhere beyond it * What 500 miles alone in winter taught her about people * String of Light That Connects All Things and the Thanksgiving beach installation * Sitting inside a mirror chamber and stepping outside your own ego * Why she still believes people are largely good — and what convinced her * Success looks like a worn down pencil — and wishing notes washing back to shore Links to Kate's Work: Kate's Coffin (Feature in LA Times) [https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2025-02-19/kate-mueller-artist-welder-coffin-maker-la-crafted] String of Light That Connects All Things [https://www.katemueller.com/stringoflight] Upcoming Installation May 23rd Oxnard,CA [https://www.katemueller.com/stringoflight/get-involved] About Kate Mueller Kate Mueller is a Los Angeles–based installation artist whose work feels like an invitation to step into another astral plane. Her large-scale sculptural forms shift perception, drawing viewers into a heightened state of awareness. Merging welding with transdisciplinary techniques, Mueller constructs immersive works that engage movement, scale, and presence, making participation central to the experience. Her sculptures are designed to be entered, circled, and encountered physically, drawing attention to the immediacy of the moment, the awe of the natural world, and the interconnectedness of all things. CONNECT WITH KATE KATE'S WEBSITE [https://www.katemueller.com/] KATE'S INSTAGRAM [https://www.instagram.com/katemueller__/] CONNECT WITH THE TRUTH IS Instagram: @thetruthispodcast [https://www.instagram.com/thetruthis_podcast/] YouTube: @thetruthis_pod [https://www.youtube.com/@thetruthis_pod] Substack: Kathryn Flaschner [https://substack.com/@kathrynflaschner] CREDITS Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume  Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com [https://wsavino.com/]  Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush  Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Tazin Khan: Are You Doing This for Ego or Impact?

Tazin Khan is a cyber risk strategist, digital rights advocate, and the founder and CEO of Cyber Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to making digital safety education accessible, human, and community rooted. Her work is driven by a simple but urgent belief: everybody deserves to experience the internet without harm. That belief didn't come from a boardroom. It came from growing up Bengali in post-9/11 Virginia as one of the only Muslim families for miles. From translating immigration documents in fourth grade. From living in and out of her car at nineteen while working three jobs and meeting a stranger who she emailed every month until she got hired. From watching her father get scammed on Facebook and realizing the gap between what the industry knows and what the people most at risk are ever taught. Tazin has spent over 13 years in cybersecurity — across Fortune 10 companies, government agencies, and grassroots organizing — and what she's built with Cyber Collective is something the industry was never going to build for itself. A community-rooted, feminine-designed organization that meets people where they are and asks the questions the sector would rather not answer. This conversation goes deep into all of it. We talk about: * Growing up bicultural and what it taught her about empathy, translation, and pushing back * The Michael Kors moment that changed the direction of her life * What she learned — and what she couldn't unsee — in corporate cybersecurity * Why the internet's harms are not the user's fault and what accountability actually looks like * Building Cyber Collective: the vision, the near-burnout, and what's coming * Feminine design principles and what it looks like to run an org aligned to your body and your values * The question she asks herself constantly: am I doing this for ego or for impact * What proximity to power does to you and how she stays honest about it * Why to get far, sometimes you have to stop What stayed with me after this conversation is that Tazin is doing exactly what this show believes is possible: taking the most personal work and turning it outward. Her story is her methodology. And her methodology is changing what the internet is allowed to do to the people it was never designed to protect.   ABOUT TAZIN KHAN  Tazin Khan is the founder and CEO of Cyber Collective, a nonprofit making digital safety education accessible, human, and community rooted. With over 13 years of experience spanning Fortune 10 companies, government agencies, and grassroots organizing, her work has reached more than 5.5 million people globally. She holds a master's from NYU and has been featured in Forbes, Harper's Bazaar, People Magazine, and on CNN. Tazin on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/tazinkhannorelius/] | Cyber Collective [https://www.instagram.com/cybercollectiveorg/]   CONNECT WITH THE TRUTH IS Instagram: @thetruthispodcast  [https://www.instagram.com/thetruthis_podcast/] YouTube: @thetruthis_pod  [https://www.youtube.com/@thetruthis_pod] Substack: Kathryn Flaschner [https://substack.com/@kathrynflaschner]   CREDITS Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume  Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com  Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush  Advised by Natalie Tulloch

Corey Thibodeau: When You Stop Forcing It

Corey Thibodeau is the co-founder of West Side Yoga — three studios in Providence, Rhode Island that have become something rarer than a successful small business. A place where people find each other, and sometimes, finally find themselves. She will not dress it up for you. What it actually takes to build something real while straddling a corporate career. What it feels like to give a decade of yourself to a company and have it end the way it ended. What patience and trust — not hustle, not forcing — actually produce when you finally give them room. And what it means to build something so rooted in a community that the community starts to heal because of it. That is what this conversation is. The honest version of a story a lot of people are living but not saying out loud. We talk about: * Running a half marathon ten years after swearing off running — and why this time felt nothing like suffering * Building West Side from a single studio to three locations, a teacher training program, and a waitlist * A decade of doing both — and what that duality actually costs * The truth of what it feels like to be laid off after ten years — and the honest reckoning with never having left on her own * Her husband Joe — business partner, balance, and the person who nudged her toward a half marathon at 1am in November * Santosha — contentment — and how hard it is to live a practice you teach * The third space that sat empty for months, and what shifted when she finally said yes * What happens when you stop forcing and start trusting — and what that produced * The impact of building something truly local, truly communal — and why that might be exactly what the world needs right now ABOUT COREY THIBODEAU Corey Thibodeau is the co-founder of West Side Yoga, a studio community with three locations in Providence, Rhode Island, which she runs alongside her husband Joe Thibodeau. She has been teaching yoga since 2015. Corey on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/corey_on_earth/] West Side Yoga on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/west_side_yoga_pvd/] West Side Yoga Website [https://www.westsideyogapvd.com/]   CONNECT WITH THE TRUTH IS Instagram: @thetruthispodcast  [https://www.instagram.com/thetruthis_podcast/] YouTube: @thetruthis_pod  [https://www.youtube.com/@thetruthis_pod] Substack: Kathryn Flaschner [https://substack.com/@kathrynflaschner]   CREDITS Hosted by Kathryn Flaschner Production & Editing by Anton LaPlume  Music by Will Savino — wsavino.com  Visual Identity by Sarah Gainor & Jonathan Bush  Advised by Natalie Tulloch   Topics: women and work, reinvention, building a business, yoga, community, corporate to entrepreneurship, trusting yourself, identity, truth

Spring Space

This week, I'm taking a little space — and I want to offer you the same. A year into leaving the corporate world to build something new, I caught myself in a familiar pattern: the same nonstop hustle I thought I'd left behind. This episode is a small pause to name that, sit with it, and try something a little different. I share where my obsession with truth actually began — a foundational acting exercise called Meisner repetition, where the whole practice is just speaking the felt sense of what's true in the moment. And then I offer a visual I've carried since 2019: a straight line and a squiggle. One is alignment. One is being human. This episode ends with a short guided meditation — whether you're sitting, walking, driving, or somewhere in between — just a few minutes to come back to yourself and notice what's true right now. Consider it spring space.