Pickles & Pasta with Steph and Jay

About Pickles & Pasta with Steph and Jay

Welcome to Pickles & Pasta, a podcast about living creatively, loving boldly, and staying grounded in a world that often feels anything but.Steph and Jay met (or as Jay says “reconnected”) just before the pandemic and have been building a life, and a creative partnership, ever since. Together, they live, work, and support each other’s ventures while navigating the messy, beautiful chaos of modern life.No agendas. No sides. Just real conversations,sometimes deep, sometimes hilarious, always honest. This is their space to talk about creativity, connection, relationships, and everything in between. Pull up a chair. Let’s dig in. About StephStephanie Rado Taormina is the CEO and founder of Have Some Fun Today, a lifestyle brand inspired by her late father's mantra to live boldly and joyfully. With over 25 years of experience in branding, fashion, interiors, and entrepreneurship, she brings a sharp creative vision to everything she touches. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Stephanie has reignited her fine art career since 2021, creating emotionally driven abstract work and building a growing marketplace for contemporary art. While integrating her artistic voice into the evolution of HSFT, she also maintains an independent studio practice focused on exhibitions, fine art prints, and creative collaborations. As co-host of the podcast Pickles & Pasta with Steph & Jay, she brings thoughtful, unscripted insight to conversations about creativity, culture, and navigating modern life. About Jay Jay Schweid is a native New Yorker, creative entrepreneur, and cultural shapeshifter with a career that’s anything but conventional. From launching JCS, a bespoke racket service trusted by tennis icons like McEnroe and Agassi, to co-founding The Spot—a legendary South Beach lounge with Mickey Rourke, Jay has always lived at the intersection of bold ideas and real-world impact. He went on to create high-touch concierge and event services for celebrity and HNWI clients, and in 2012, launched ephelants, a media company focused on streamlining film and commercial production. Built to challenge industry inefficiencies, ephelants fuses creativity with technology to empower storytellers at every level. Now, Jay is building Village, a visionary entertainment platform that will revolutionize how projects move from concept to distribution. By bringing together creators, fans, and investors,Village is designed to democratize the entire entertainment ecosystem and give everyone a seat at the table. On Pickles & Pasta, Jay brings sharp insight, unapologetic creativity, and a relentless curiosity for what’s next.

Publisher

Stephanie Rado Taormina & Jay Schweid

Category

arts · business

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

12 Aug 2025

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

62 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Oct 2026

   How Much of Your Life Is Your Partner Actually Supposed to Fulfill?

   What happens when two creative entrepreneurs fall in love and go into business in the same orbit? In this episode of Pickles & Pasta, Steph and Jay take on one of the most nuanced questions in modern relationships: how much of your life is your partner actually supposed to fulfill? They get honest about what it takes to build a partnership where both people thrive as individuals while still growing together. Steph starts with how she and Jay met nearly seven years ago, when she was already deeply rooted in her own independence after years of building a life on her own terms. She wasn't looking for someone to complete her. She was looking for someone who would add to her life without taking it over. "I had an identity long before I knew you existed," she says, and she's unapologetic about protecting it. Jay takes the conversation into the entrepreneur's dilemma. When two business owners get together, the instinct to jump in and "fix" how the other operates is strong, and he's emphatic that taking over your partner's work is a recipe for disaster. He draws a clear line: he is not Steph's co-founder. Her vision, her business, and her creative instincts are hers. His job is to add value, guide strategy, and handle the operational heavy lifting so she's free to do what only she can do. That leads into a funny, surprisingly sharp rant about how loosely the word "co-founder" gets thrown around in startup culture. One of the most moving threads is Steph's reflection on being truly seen by a partner, not just physically, but for her interior wisdom and intelligence. That mutual respect is what makes space possible: attending events alone, building friendships and professional relationships without jealousy, chasing independent goals while keeping eyes on a shared finish line. Jay adds a deadpan story about a man who tried to meet Steph at the office on a weekend, and makes the point that trust means freedom, not surveillance. They close on listening as a love language. Jay shares a lesson from years of running a production company: watching team members sit silently in meetings without actually hearing the person speaking. Sometimes the greatest gift you can give a partner is to listen, hold space, and resist the urge to fix everything. This episode covers: Why independence is the foundation of a strong partnership, not a threat to it The entrepreneur's dilemma: when "helping" quietly turns into "taking over" Why Jay refuses the co-founder title in Steph's business, and what he does instead What it means to be truly seen by your partner Trust without jealousy, and why surveillance has no place in a real relationship Why being quiet isn't the same as listening Knowing when to listen and when to fix And more! Takeaway: A great partner doesn't fulfill your whole life. They help you become a better version of yourself without forcing their ideas on you, and they trust you enough to let you walk your own path next to theirs. Subscribe so you never miss an episode of Pickles & Pasta, and share this with someone who's figuring out how to love and build alongside another independent person. Tags: relationships, independence in partnership, creative entrepreneurs, couples in business, trust, listening, communication, personal growth, Have Some Fun Today, entrepreneurship Chapters 0:00 - Opening: Feeling Seen 0:41 - Welcome to Pickles and Pasta 5:06 - Two Entrepreneurs Getting Together 6:56 - Men Are Dogs, Women Are Cats 11:53 - Feeling the Connection Early On 13:37 - Supporter, Not Co-Founder 18:11 - Space and Freedom in the Relationship 23:50 - Trust and Navigating Jealousy 31:14 - Talking About Your Internal Landscape 34:11 - The Gift of Truly Listening 36:51 - Closing Advice 37:36 - Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Frozen in Time: Why People Never Let You Outgrow Who You Used to Be

   Have you ever run into someone you haven't seen in years and realized the person in front of you is nothing like the person living in your head? In this episode of Pickles & Pasta, Steph and Jay dig into a question that sits at the center of every relationship, every networking connection, and every social media interaction: do people actually know the real you, or are they working from a composite sketch built from first impressions, outdated memories, and a handful of posts? Steph opens with a story from a recent party, reconnecting with people she hadn't seen in years and finding her internal profiles of them almost entirely wrong. The moment that stuck with her: one woman paused mid-conversation and just asked, "what do you do?" instead of building her own narrative from fragments. It becomes the lens for the whole episode. Most people don't ask. They assemble a version of you from whatever's lying around, a college memory, a LinkedIn title, a photo, and stop there. Jay connects this to his own path in the tennis industry, going from an entry-level role to building a program from scratch, while people who knew him at the start still treated him like nothing had changed, like going from busboy to restaurant owner and still being asked to clear tables. The conversation turns personal when Steph opens up about the "dumb blonde" jokes that started in grade school and never fully stopped, a stereotype rooted entirely in appearance that pushed her to overachieve academically and still surfaces today as a reflex against being underestimated. Jay shares the story of a close friend who went from New York's top nightlife promoter to an accomplished director working in Scorsese films, and who is still just "the promoter" to certain people, no matter what he's built since. Perhaps the most quietly damning stretch is about curiosity, or the lack of it. Steph points out that people she considers close have never once asked about her podcast, now 60-plus episodes in, not because they disapprove, just because the topic never comes up. Jay wonders whether this is a bandwidth issue more than an indifference one: people living single-track lives may genuinely lack the framework to process someone whose life spans several identities at once. Steph pushes back gently. Even a passing "how's the podcast going?" costs almost nothing. This episode covers: Why most people freeze you at the version they first met, and never update it The "dumb blonde" stereotype and the armor it built over decades Why being multidimensional confuses people used to single-track identities The curiosity gap: when even close friends never ask what you're actually building Whether misperception comes from indifference or a genuine bandwidth limit What to do when someone's outdated picture of you actually matters Why flipping the lens, and actually listening, softens most interpersonal friction And more! Takeaway: Almost every misperception in a relationship could soften if people did the small, unglamorous work of asking a real question and actually listening to the answer, instead of running on a version of you they assembled years ago and never updated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3. 

   24 Sept 2026

   Has Wellness Become Another Job?

   Has the pursuit of wellness quietly turned into a second full-time job? In this episode of Pickles & Pasta, Steph and Jay dig into supplement overload, wellness marketing trends, and the real difference between integrating health into your life and obsessing over it, unpacking what actually moves the needle for longevity and what's just noise. Jay opens by naming the shift: wellness has gone from "take your vitamins and eat well" to an endless cycle of products, protocols, and conflicting advice, most of it built on fear. He points to the whiplash from "protein, protein, protein" to "fiber is everything" as proof that a lot of what gets marketed as essential is just the latest sales cycle repackaged as science. Steph brings a deeply personal counterpoint. At 61, a number that surprises most people who meet her, she's been on this path since 31, when a post-pregnancy moment in the mirror kicked off three decades of nutrition, movement, and preventative health work. She's candid about having gone through every phase the wellness industry sells, but insists it doesn't take a deep dive to separate hype from real science. For her, wellness ties directly to cognitive health and staving off dementia, grounded in something most people don't have: a Hashimoto's thyroiditis diagnosis at age five that's meant a lifetime of annual blood work and a genuinely data-driven approach to her own body. The conversation turns practical when Steph describes feeding her blood work and physical stats into AI tools to get supplement recommendations grounded in her actual numbers instead of trend-driven marketing, cutting both cost and redundancy. Jay builds on this, arguing the American medical system stays reactive rather than preventative, and that accessible diagnostics could shift that earlier, echoing his father's advice: go in with your brain, because you know your life better than anyone. The throughline of the whole episode is integration over obsession. Steph's routine, ankle-weight walks, a vibrating-machine session, green juice, a precise supplement stack, doesn't feel like a burden because it's folded into habits she already had. Jay's moisturizer analogy lands it: add a minute to brushing your teeth and it sticks forever; carve out fifteen dedicated "wellness minutes" and you'll quit within a month. This episode covers: Why wellness marketing cycles through trends and how to spot hype versus real science Steph's 30-year wellness journey, from a post-pregnancy wake-up call to a data-driven routine Living with Hashimoto's since age five and what it taught her about routine blood work Using AI to personalize a supplement stack based on actual lab results Why integrating wellness into existing habits beats bolting on new rituals Why the American medical system stays reactive instead of preventative Jay's closing advice on movement: balance, not intensity, is the sustainable play And more! Takeaway: Wellness doesn't have to be a second job. Start with real data, not trends, and fold the habits into the life you already have. The ones that stick are the ones you barely notice you're doing. Subscribe so you never miss an episode of Pickles & Pasta, and share this with someone who's exhausted by wellness culture but still wants to get it right. Chapters 0:00 Intro & Welcome — Pickles and Pasta with Steph and Jay 1:50 Has Wellness Become Another Job? 3:59 Stephanie's Perspective: Wellness as a Necessity for Longevity 5:11 Stephanie Reveals She's 61 — Wellness & Dementia Prevention 7:01 The 97-Year-Old Chain-Smoking Outlier: Genetics vs. Lifestyle 9:09 Think for Yourself: Protein vs. Fiber Trend Whiplash 10:36 Wellness Should Be Integrated, Not Feel Like a Job 11:08 Stephanie's 30-Year Wellness Journey: From Post-Pregnancy to Daily Habit 16:43 Stephanie's Daily Routine: Greek Yogurt, Seeds & Green Juice 19:00 Jay on Stephanie's Cooking & Integration vs. Obsession 25:27 Face Masks, Red Light Therapy & Where Stephanie Draws the Line 29:30 American Food Culture vs. European Organic — Cost & Access Barriers 35:01 Hashimoto's, Blood Work & Using AI for Supplement Guidance 38:48 WebMD, Second Opinions & Preventative vs. Reactive Medicine 43:30 Final Advice: Get Blood Work, Stay Open & Build Movement Into Your Day Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.