This week, I’m sitting down with a guest whose life looks nothing like the script most of us were handed.
Melanie AyLin (_melanie.aylin) first gen kid, fulltime nomad, community builder, festival worker, and desert sunrise chaser joins me to talk about what it really costs to choose yourself when everyone expects you to play it safe.

At 19, she dropped out of college, converted multiple vehicles into homes, and hit the road with nothing but instinct and stubborn courage. Since then she’s lived everywhere and nowhere: national parks, parking lots, Burning Man, Joshua Tree, and more concerts and festivals than most people see in a decade.

In this episode, Melanie and I dig into:

• the immigrant roots that shaped her fire

• turning loneliness into chosen solitude

• sustainability and off-grid living

• how rejection becomes redirection

• building real community in spaces built to be temporary

• the moment she realized she didn’t want to wait to “feel ready” for her own life

If you’ve been craving freedom or feeling stuck in your routine, Melanie’s story is going to challenge you in the best way because she’s proof you can build a whole life out of courage and curiosity.

When artist and writer Eva (@birdlets) asked their therapist for help, they ended up locked in a psych ward. In this one-year anniversary episode, we talk about surviving childhood abuse, an eating disorder that nearly killed them, a $130K porn lawsuit pinned on an ex, and the long climb back to self-trust.

⚠️ CW: sexual assault, eating disorders, psychiatric abuse, self-harm.

Why are this year’s costumes mid while horror cafés and niche coffee shops are thriving? We get into men flopping photo poses (sorry, Travis), Eric André winning, Sabrina-core, the Xbox → Sega pipeline, and how third spaces beat corporate beige. The nerds won, the vibes are local, and Halloween doesn’t end on Oct 31 it just moves to your favorite spooky café.