(Catch full video episodes on The Connection Code with Rachel and Jeana's YouTube channel)

In this clip from The Connection Code, Megan Roudebush shares how curiosity, informational interviews, and intentional relationship-building helped her create a network without shortcuts or inherited connections.

Episode out everywhere Feb. 25, 2026.

Content warning: This episode and clip discuss grief, the loss of a child and breast cancer.

What does it really mean to be lucky?

In this deeply moving episode of The Connection Code, we’re joined by author, grief writer, and patient advocate Kelly Cervantes, whose memoir The Luckiest challenges everything we think we know about fortune, success, and happiness.

Kelly shares her extraordinary story on navigating motherhood, caregiving, and devastating loss while her husband starred in Hamilton on Broadway and in Chicago. We talk about how luck is often just a snapshot of what others can see, how grief reshapes identity, and why community isn’t optional during life’s hardest chapters.

This conversation explores:

• Why “luck” is often a matter of perspective
• How female friendships can become lifelines
• The grief of losing an identity — not just a person
• Letting go of control and learning to surrender
• Why connection matters most when life feels unbearable

Kelly’s reflections are honest, funny, devastating, and deeply human. This conversation is a powerful reminder that none of us move through life alone.

More from Kelly:

• READ: The Luckiest: A Memoir of Love, Loss, Motherhood, and the Pursuit of Self
• FOLLOW: Kelly Cervantes on Instagram at @kellygc411
• SUBSCRIBE: Kelly's weekly substack here

Content warning: This episode and clip discuss, grief and the loss of a child.In next week's episode, we're lucky to sit down with Kelly Cervantes, whose memoir ⁠The Luckiest⁠ challenges everything we think we know about fortune, success, and happiness.Prepare for a moving and truly human conversation of high-highs and low-lows. Kelly shares her extraordinary story on navigating motherhood, caregiving, and devastating loss while her husband starred in Hamilton on Broadway and in Chicago.

On this episode of The Connection Code, it’s just Rachel and Jeana.

We kick off the year with a “connection inventory”—a thoughtful, honest look at the season of connection they’re each in right now. From nurturing core relationships to following up without being annoying, this conversation spans friendship, networking, rituals, and the lessons we only learn by getting it wrong first.

If you’ve ever wondered:

• How often should I follow up?
• How do I build relationships without feeling transactional?
• What rituals actually keep friendships alive?
• And what does “connection” look like in this season of life?

This episode is for you. Cozy, practical, and full of real talk. Consider this your permission slip to reconnect with intention.

What if community wasn’t something parents had to find after a baby arrives, but something they could build before?

This week on The Connection Code, we’re joined by Georgia Kastaris, founder of Expecting Together, a prenatal social club designed to bring expecting parents together through education, connection, and shared experience.

Inspired by the UK’s National Childbirth Trust, Georgia is reimagining how parents prepare for one of life’s biggest transitions—by forming small, intentionally matched cohorts of expecting parents based on due date and neighborhood, and pairing expert-led prenatal education with built-in community.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why loneliness in early parenthood is so common—and so solvable
• How shared timing and life stage fast-track meaningful connection
• What Georgia learned from becoming a parent abroad
• The power of “organized friendship” for adults
• Fundraising, entrepreneurship, and building a mission-driven company while pregnant
• Why connection should be part of healthcare, not an afterthought

This episode is for anyone thinking about friendship, systems of care, and how we show up for each other in moments of major life change.

In this deeply resonant episode of The Connection Code, Jeana Anderson Cohen and Rachel Gilman Rischall sit down with Shabnam Mogharabi, entrepreneur, author, journalist, and co-founder of SoulPancake alongside Rainn Wilson.

Shabnam shares her journey from traditional journalism to building one of the internet’s most uplifting corners, creating beloved series like Kid President, The Science of Happiness, and My Last Days. Together, the trio explore big questions about faith, purpose, rejection, and meaning. They dig into why the messiest moments of our lives often matter most.

They discuss spirituality without dogma, the science behind awe and connection, parenting as soul-work, and Shabnam’s latest chapter: Soul Boom, a movement and upcoming workbook offering spiritual tools for modern living. From “rejection is God’s protection” to building community through service, this conversation is equal parts grounding, hopeful, and practical.

If you’ve been craving more meaning, deeper connection, or permission to believe there’s something bigger at work, this episode is for you.

More to love in this episode:

• Shabnam Mogharabi
• Soul Boom
• The Soul Boom Workbook
• Relive Kid President
• Revisit The Science of Happiness
• Revisit My Last Days

Books & Thinkers Referenced:

• Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
• Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
• Martin Seligman & Positive Psychology (PERMA framework)
• Dacher Keltner Awe

In this deeply moving episode of The Connection Code, Jeana Anderson Cohen and Rachel Gillman Rischall sit down with Morgan Radford. She's an NBC News anchor, correspondent, Fulbright scholar, and debut novelist who joins for a wide-ranging conversation about purpose, connection, and the relationships that shape a life.

Morgan describes journalism not as a job, but as a calling and a purpose, explaining why this difficult moment for the press is exactly the moment many journalists were “built for.” She offers a hopeful, service-oriented vision of the profession and why transparency and trust are central to her work.

A centerpiece of the conversation is Morgan’s story about Nancy Han at ABC News, who invested in her early career, pushed her toward excellence, and ultimately helped put her on air. The story becomes a beautiful meditation on mentorship, visibility, and the power of one person believing in you.

The episode then turns deeply personal. Morgan recounts a reporting story that changed her understanding of love and motherhood — a family who chose to adopt a high-school-aged basketball player. Witnessing that “chosen love” expanded her definition of family and later shaped how she thinks about her own life and future possibilities.

Morgan reflects candidly on becoming a mother herself, calling it “the most healing thing” she has ever done. She shares why she wants her daughter to know she is not only loved, but liked, and how parenting has widened (not narrowed) her ambition and creativity.

The conversation also explores Morgan’s debut novel, "Now Then," and how fiction allowed her to give shape, meaning, and emotional truth to experiences that journalism alone could not hold. Writing became a necessary creative outlet and a new way of understanding her own life.

In true Connection Code style, Morgan speaks beautifully about friendship and reconnection and offers advice to her younger self: be bolder, ask for the coffee, and don’t be afraid of connection.

She closes by naming her dream connection: filmmaker Ava DuVernay, whose storytelling across mediums gives life cultural and emotional shape.

This episode is generous, vulnerable, and illuminating — one that lingers long after you press pause.

Find Morgan: @morgankradford on Instagram and on NBC News Daily.

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of breast cancer, medical trauma, and serious illness. Please take care while listening, especially if these topics are close to home.

In this powerful and deeply human conversation, Jeana Anderson Cohen and Rachel Gillman Rischall sit down with Dr. Carlie Thompson, a breast surgical oncologist, mother of two, and breast cancer survivor, to explore how life’s hardest moments can become catalysts for clarity, connection, and profound transformation.

Only days after her final breast cancer surgery, Carlie shares her story with extraordinary honesty: from receiving her own diagnosis as a breast cancer surgeon, to choosing to pause her medical career, homeschool her children, and take her family on a bold global reset. Together, they talk about grief, resilience, friendship, identity, motherhood, marriage, and the people who show up when everything changes.

This episode is about what it means to stop, listen, and realign (and how connection becomes the foundation for healing). We discuss:

✨ Carlie’s diagnosis and the emotional impact of becoming both doctor and patient
✨ The wake-up call that led her to reshape her life and priorities
✨ How community and unexpected support became a lifeline during treatment
✨ Why she chose to step away from her career and begin a year of world travel with her family
✨ The courage to share her story publicly and the overwhelming response that followed
✨ Practical breast health guidance: when to start mammograms and who to see
✨ What true wellness really means — physically, emotionally, and spiritually
✨ The healing power of friendship and family connection during crisis

Dr. Carlie Thompson is a board-certified, fellowship-trained breast surgical oncologist and associate professor of surgery at UCLA Health. She is also a breast cancer survivor whose personal journey has reshaped her mission: helping women reconnect with themselves and redefine what it means to truly be well.

Follow Carlie’s journey and her work in women’s health at @drcarliethompson on Instagram & Facebook