On an ordinary afternoon in March 2022, Melody Orak got a phone call that split her life in two. Her eight-year-old daughter Elilai had a bone tumor. What the doctors said would be 12 rounds of chemotherapy became 28. Then 33 consecutive days of radiation. Then nine months of fighting a disease that still treats children with protocols developed in 1956.

In this episode, Melody sits down with Erica Brinker to talk about what it actually takes to hold everything together when your child’s life hangs in the balance: the impossible choices made for an eight-year-old, the moment she shaved her own head, the day Elilai’s body said it couldn’t take any more, and the bittersweet reality of remission three years later.

Plus: the hype song that gets Elilai through middle school, why scan anxiety is real, and a toast you won’t forget.

Executive producer: Sara Glassman

Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcast

www.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Here you go:

At the Brink is a premium podcast hosted by Erica Brinker featuring raw, intimate conversations about defining moments — the question at the show's core: was there a moment when your story split into a before and after?

New episodes every Wednesday.

Website: www.atthebrinkmedia.com

Email: hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Instagram: @at.the.brink.media

Executive producer | Sara Glassman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people know Johanna Ricouz as one of the newest Pilates instructors on Peloton, the one with the tattoos, the nails, the hip hop and the mouth. What they don’t know is what it took to get there.

Johanna grew up in New Jersey, trained as a classical ballet dancer at an all-Black school, started using drugs young, got married at 21, divorced at 25, got sober, worked three jobs (nightlife, modeling and teaching Pilates at $23 a class), got fired from the club, and then built a career in wellness that she never planned but couldn’t stop building.

In this conversation, Johanna talks about what her ballet teacher taught her about effort and excuses, the moment she realized she could just show up and be taken care of, teaching Pilates inside a women’s prison through the nonprofit 300 Letters, how Peloton DM’d her during the darkest stretch of her infertility journey, what it means to be a stepmom to a child she met at four, and why she told both Peloton and Lululemon upfront: this is who I am and none of it is going to change.

She also shares where she is in her IVF journey and the stigma around infertility in Black and brown communities, and closes with her signature toast: here’s to doing no harm and taking no shit.

Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcast

Follow Johanna: Instagram @junglejohanna | Peloton: Johanna Ricouz

Executive producer: Sara Glassman

www.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Here you go:

At the Brink is a premium podcast hosted by Erica Brinker featuring raw, intimate conversations about defining moments — the question at the show's core: was there a moment when your story split into a before and after?

New episodes every Wednesday.

Website: www.atthebrinkmedia.com

Email: hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Instagram: @at.the.brink.media

Executive producer | Sara Glassman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rick Kuehner is a Navy veteran and single father who moved to Gilbert, Arizona, because it was rated the second safest city in America. His son Tristan was a competitive swimmer, a good-looking kid with a nice car. Starting in his freshman year, Tristan was beaten at a bus stop, attacked in a school bathroom and jumped by a group of strangers in an In-N-Out parking lot. Each time, Rick reported everything. Each time, the system treated it as kids being kids.

When threats followed Tristan to a second school and a group of kids showed up at their house, Rick made the hardest decision of his life: he sent his son to Europe to live with his mother, because it was the only place he felt safe.

What Rick didn’t know was that the group targeting his son was part of a loosely connected network of 40 to 90 teenagers across 16 schools in the East Valley. They called themselves the Gilbert Goons. They recorded their beatings, uploaded them to a Snapchat channel called Pound Town, and operated with near-total impunity. In October 2023, they beat a boy named Preston Lord and left him to die in the street.

Katey McPherson is a former school administrator turned youth advocate who had been tracking the violence before most people knew the name. Together with Rick and hundreds of other parents, she helped organize the Upstanders, a community group that crowdsourced evidence, pressured local government and ultimately helped pass Preston’s Law, an Arizona statute that created a new felony category for swarming attacks.

In this conversation, Rick and Katey talk about what the system looks like from the inside when it fails, what it took to make a community listen and what Rick’s family is still living with today.

Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcast

www.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Here you go:

At the Brink is a premium podcast hosted by Erica Brinker featuring raw, intimate conversations about defining moments — the question at the show's core: was there a moment when your story split into a before and after?

New episodes every Wednesday.

Website: www.atthebrinkmedia.com

Email: hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Instagram: @at.the.brink.media

Executive producer | Sara Glassman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.