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Award-winning Napa Valley winemaker Ashley Hepworth joins Mic'd and Medicated to talk wine tasting tips, how to order wine at a restaurant, and 23 years working at Joseph Phelps Winery. Ashley — who also happens to be Caroline's sister-in-law — walks us through her path from Charlie Trotter's kitchen in Chicago to launching her own wine labels, A Bloom rosé and AH Wine (Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon). Plus: growing up outdoorsy in Denver, marrying into a Jewish family as a self-described "1% Jewish shiksa," and surviving chaotic in-law family dinners. A conversation about wine, identity, and family — unfiltered, unafraid, unexpert.

Ashley's wines: ablumwine.com | AH Wine (Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon)

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Every family is dysfunctional — the only question is whether you know it. This week, Eva and Caroline dig into family dynamics: the TV families they wished were theirs growing up, the ones that actually were, and the strangers-turned-in-laws they each married into.

They cover imprinting (why your childhood home leaves fingerprints on every relationship after it), the New York Times "Surrendered Wife" article that nearly ended their friendship, a highlight reel of meeting each other's in-laws for the first time, and a round of questions they asked each other that neither could dodge.

0:00 Intro: Is Your Family a Sitcom? (Birdcage Edition)
2:00 Word of the Week: Imprinting
12:00 Every Family Is Dysfunctional
22:00 The Surrendered Wife
30:00 Meeting the In-Laws
38:00 Quickfire Q&A
57:00 Book of the Week & Mic Drop

Have a question or a family dynamic that needs airing out? Reach out — we read everything.

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Bestselling author, activist, and mom of three Samantha Ettus joins us to talk about parenting teenagers, losing her home in the Palisades fire, and the moment on October 8th that turned a women's-empowerment influencer into one of the most outspoken Jewish voices online.

We get into raising kids who are proud Zionists, why she says "vote the candidate, not the party," her take on where DEI left Jews out of the conversation, and what she wishes every parent understood about the phone-addicted teenage years. Unfiltered, unafraid, unexpert — as always.

0:00 – Welcome Samantha Ettus
1:30 – Parenting teens: "little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems"
9:35 – The two kinds of working parents
14:11 – October 7th: the day everything changed
23:00 – DEI, Islamophobia, and the Jewish blind spot
34:12 – The Jewish population myth
40:56 – "I'm not a party girl": vote the candidate, not the party
52:35 – Losing her home in the Palisades fire — and showing up anyway
57:19 – The Roger Waters confrontation
1:01:54 – Setting the record straight on Mamdani and Jewish voters
1:06:14 – Book recommendations & closing thoughts

SHOWNOTES:
https://www.samanthaettus.com/
https://www.instagram.com/samanthaettus
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001ITVGBO?ccs_id=f7ee9985-6d96-462d-aad9-1735e6231ec4
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthaettus/

RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

• God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah Is True — Mark Gerson
• As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us — Sarah Hurwitz
• People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present — Dara Horn
• Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth — Noa Tishby
• Bibi: My Story — Benjamin Netanyahu
• The Netanyahus — Joshua Cohen
• The Goddess of Warsaw — Lisa Barr

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Caroline has three organizers going through boxes from her old apartment — her kids' first shoes, their hair, their artwork, her dead dog's ashes. Eva has a closet she and her husband couldn't open, a two-week Splenda sobriety streak, and a drawer of hotel shower caps she's never used. This week we accidentally diagnose ourselves on mic — turns out one of us is a "scarcity hoarder" and the other is a "sentimental hoarder," and neither is as unrelated to childhood as we'd like. Plus: the etymology of "cold turkey," a poop-on-a-stranger's-driveway story of the week, and why Eva's frontal lobe meme might end her marriage.

Word of the week: Entropy.

Book of the week: In Love by Amy Bloom.

Chapters:

0:00 – Intro: Caroline's three organizers and the box excavation

2:30 – Splenda hoarding and the "cold turkey" tangent

5:04 – The grocery bag closet nobody could open

9:33 – The old Jewish grandma joke (and the sting behind it)

10:20 – Hotel toiletry theft + the scarcity hoarding diagnosis

12:38 – Chinese takeout containers, toilet paper, King David soap

14:44 – Ketchup, soy sauce, straws: the full inventory

19:22 – Free food, client meetings, and fight-or-flight logic

21:41 – Story of the week: the driveway poop incident

23:59 – Caroline admits she's a hoarder too: meet the lineage keeper

28:36 – Jeremy's normal, and the mystery art in Dad's office

30:54 – Fridge magnets, dog headstones, and Hugo's ashes

35:51 – Meme of the week: the frontal lobe bit

40:35 – Being the family archivist

42:54 – The moral: normal's overrated

45:12 – Word of the week + book of the week

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Caroline is halfway between two states with 32 unopened boxes and no idea what's in most of them. Eva hasn't moved an inch — and that's exactly the problem.

It started with a plane movie: Eternity, starring Elizabeth Olsen, about a waystation between life and the afterlife called Junction, where you get exactly one shot to pick where you'll spend forever. Caroline couldn't stop thinking about it, and it becomes the lens for the whole episode — because it turns out they're both stuck in their own version of Junction. Caroline's is physical: mid-move to Miami, emotionally committed but living out of boxes, watching her old couch get sent to storage while her daughter has a full meltdown about it. Eva's is quieter and, she admits, harder to explain — a stable life, a happy family, nothing forcing her hand, and still this nagging sense that she stepped off the achievement treadmill and doesn't know which direction to walk in.

They get into the psychology of it (there's an actual term for this — the "neutral zone," the disorienting space between an ending and a new beginning), why people get weirdly drawn to you the moment you announce a big change, the guilt of moving kids away from a hometown, and why regret is a waste of time even when you can't stop doing it anyway. Plus: the book of the week (Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver), a Chucky-adjacent couch standoff with a 13-year-old, and this week's meme.

#junction #midlife #podcast #momsofinstagram

Chapters:

• 0:00 – Cold open: "big episode" bit + the perfectionist confession
• 1:40 – The "save the marriage" trip that became a family trip
• 2:15 – The plane movie: Eternity, and what "Junction" actually means
• 5:30 – Eva's physical junction: the move to Miami, 32 boxes, nothing settled
• 8:55 – Why people get so interested in you the moment you're mid-change
• 9:45 – The movie's real twist: two husbands, one impossible choice
• 11:15 – "You can do it too" — manifesting the move and the election-exodus talk
• 13:22 – New York permanence vs. the "everyone eventually leaves" places
• 15:43 – Moving kids: age, timing, and why there's no clean answer
• 18:00 – Cop-out or reality? Debating how hard a big move actually is
• 20:21 – The midlife version of junction: gratitude vs. "what's still left"
• 22:33 – The snail-without-a-shell metaphor
• 24:57 – Off the treadmill: achievement mode vs. actually deciding for yourself
• 27:20 – What New York gives you (and what it's stopped giving you)
• 29:30 – Try it before you buy it: renting a life before committing to it
• 32:17 – Book of the week: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• 34:32 – Live interruption: the Great Couch Rebellion begins
• 37:53 – What the couch meltdown is actually teaching their daughter
• 40:14 – Kids have a delayed reaction to change — here's what to watch for
• 42:24 – Meme of the week + sign-off

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

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Caroline asks Claude (yes, the AI) to settle a mid-marriage word fight — and it doesn't go how you'd think. Eva and Caroline record their first-ever remote episode and immediately start bickering about lighting. From there: the great camp-letter drought, a 5-minute phone call that ends in "Mom, the counselor's looking at me," Eva's golf debut and her sudden mastery of terms like "compression," and a full spiral of envy over the carefree, helmet-free energy of Nantucket. A messy, funny check-in on camp season and everything it stirs up.

#campmom #podcast #momsofinstagram

Chapters:

• 0:00 – Welcome + first remote recording nerves
• 0:48 – Camp episode recap & the great photo shortage
• 2:14 – Getting camera-ready (dodging photos, "profesh" setups)
• 3:38 – The Sandy airport story
• 5:53 – Landing in Maine vs. JFK
• 8:07 – Camp letters: "a little fun" vs. "a good time"
• 10:02 – Mail then vs. now (the empty envelope)
• 11:27 – The 5-minute phone call: "Mom, wrap it up"
• 14:06 – Killing plants (RIP to Helen's garden)
• 16:20 – Dog food instructions and other adult failures
• 18:54 – "Two things can be true": missing home and enjoying camp
• 21:04 – Tech glitch + the Claude cameo
• 22:55 – Asking Claude to fact-check a word choice mid-fight
• 25:03 – The Nantucket envy monologue
• 28:43 – Letting kids do hard things (and not offering an out)
• 32:37 – Sign-off

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal

Send us Fan Mail

Zibby Owens — author, podcaster, and founder of a media and publishing company — joins Eva and Caroline to talk divorce, reinventing your identity after years as a stay-at-home mom, and starting over at 40 through dating and remarriage. The conversation kicks off, though, with a parenting disaster: a school "puberty prep" video with hyperlinked FAQs that gave her fourth grader a full definition list he was never supposed to see. From there it goes everywhere — the slow accumulation of small decisions that ends a marriage, what it takes to rebuild a life afterward, and why Zibby's open about using weight-loss medication to quiet the "food noise" she'd carried since childhood. She also gives the first-ever preview of her upcoming memoir, Between Chapters, out September 27th.

Word of the week: reinvention. Book of the week: Between Chapters by Zibby Owens.

00:00 The school video that went horribly wrong
—:— Divorce and the small decisions that add up
—:— Rebuilding an identity after "just" a stay-at-home mom
—:— Dating and remarrying at 40
—:— Weight-loss medication and quieting food noise
—:— Between Chapters — first preview

Shownotes:

• Website: zibbyowens.com (home of her Substack "Zibby's Highlights," covering books, life, and stories)
• Podcast: Totally Booked with Zibby (formerly Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books) includes daily interviews centered around books, authors, and story creators in 30 minutes or less
• Book pre-order: Between Chapters, out September 27th — you can pre-order here -- https://zibbymedia.com/products/between-chapters
• Instagram: @zibbyowens
• Bookstore: Zibby's Bookshop — located at 1113 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA, with an online shop as well
• Zibby Substack: @zibbyowens
• On Being Jewish Now: https://onbeingjewishnow.substack.com/

We’re two New York City women talking candidly about the chaos of modern life, from relationships, parenting, working in and out of the home, to what it takes to stay semi-sane in a world that expects you to hold it all together and be #blessed.

We couldn’t find an honest and vulnerable conversation — so we started one! If you need a laugh, a cry, or just want to hear someone else admit their flaws and validate your crazy, you’re in the right place. Be ready to be… Unfiltered, Unafraid, and UnExpert.

Please follow, like, review, and share the podcast with your family and friends!

• Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/micdandmedicated and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MicdMedicated/podcasts
• Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@micdandmedicated
• Check out our website: micdandmedicated.com

Surgeon General Warning Disclaimer: We are self-prescribed unexperts, so if you have any real questions or need real advice, please call your nearest doctor.

© 2025 Eva Heyman & Caroline Leventhal