Hosted by Emmy Award–winning journalist, filmmaker and PR strategist Tara Ruff, storychaser uncovers the powerful, human stories that too often go untold. From change makers to quiet revolutionaries, each episode amplifies voices overlooked by mainstream media and shines a light on the people reshaping our world.
And that’s a wrap on Season 1 of Storychaser.
Nine episodes. Nine conversations with people whose stories might not always make the headlines, but deserve to be heard.This season took us into newsrooms, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, kitchens and people’s homes.
We talked about grief, addiction, race, mental health, identity, ambition, resilience and what it means to keep going when life doesn’t go according to plan.
Storychaser was built around a simple idea: some of the stories most worth telling are the ones we almost never hear.Thank you to every guest who trusted me with theirs, and to everyone who listened along the way.Season 2 coming soon(ish). ❤️
xoxo
-Tara
15 Sept 2026
Ep 9: Chef Aarthi Sampath on Setting the Table Before Anyone Comes
Chef Aarthi Sampath wanted to be an actor. Her family told her that wasn't a career and when she looked at Indian film and television, she couldn't find a dark-skinned woman in any of it. So she went into a kitchen instead, and ended up on television anyway: she won Chopped, then beat Bobby Flay with a biryani she'd learned from an old master chef in Hyderabad who had to be bribed with liquor before he'd give up the recipe.
In 2019 she wrote down a different idea, not an Indian restaurant, but a restaurant about the entire South Asian diaspora. She pitched it for years. Everyone said no. Emmy-award winning host Tara Ruff sits down with Aarthi in the room she built anyway, to ask what it takes to set a table before you know anyone's coming.
5 Aug 2026
Episode 8: The Trauma We Don't Choose, the Help We Won't Take
What is therapy actually for and why are so many of us ashamed to need it?
In this episode of Story Chaser, Tara Ruff sits down with therapist, disaster responder, and resilience expert Kamran Sakhitab to unpack the invisible wounds we carry and the reasons so many people refuse help until they’re at a breaking point.
Drawing from his work in psychiatric hospitals, disaster zones, and with athletes, first responders, and communities in crisis, Kamran explains why therapy is far more than “paying someone to listen.”
Together, they explore the stigma surrounding mental health, particularly among men and immigrant families, the difference between individual and collective trauma, and why healing is as much about the body as it is the mind.
10 Apr 2026
Episode 7: Addiction, the Treatment Industry, and Living Out Loud
Michael Lynch will tell you exactly what addiction is: using despite negative consequences. And he'll tell you what it isn't: a choice, a moral failing, or something prison can fix.
He knows because he lived it. Foster care to gangs to prison to building a multimillion-dollar brand while destroying himself from the inside. The outside looked good. The inside was not. Police saved him without meaning to.
That was 18 years ago. Since then: Stairway Recovery. 170 beds. Thousands of lives. Court advocacy fighting a system that punishes disease. And some of the rawest, most honest truth about what recovery actually takes.
5 Mar 2026
Episode 6: Broken Systems, Impossible Choices, and the Social Workers In Between
What happens when someone is medically ready to leave the hospital but has nowhere safe to go?
Nick D'Agostino is a licensed social worker in New York City. Every day, he stands in that impossible space: between a system that says patients are ready to discharge and a reality that has no room for them.
He's worked with nine-year-olds in foster care, unhoused people navigating the court system, and patients in psychiatric units whose families can't take them back. He's the person making the calls no one else wants to make.
When a 22-year-old in Queens was shot by police during a mental health crisis, it raised the question Nick's entire career has been building toward: when someone is in crisis, who do we send?
This is a conversation about broken systems, impossible choices, and the social workers trying to hold it together.
16 Jan 2026
Episode 5: The Surgeon Who Walked Away and the Fight to Heal our Healers
She walked out of the operating room mid-case thinking, If I can’t be a surgeon, I want to die
Dr. Frances Mei Hardin was medicine’s ideal success story—until it nearly destroyed her. In this episode, she exposes the reality of malignant medical training, the moment she left clinical medicine, and why she’s now fighting to change the culture through the Hippocratic Collective.
A raw conversation about physician suicide, burnout, shame, survival, and rebuilding an identity after medicine takes everything.
Check out: (https://linktr.ee/francesmei.md?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnMH09bYxqHCrVjFsnwQUV6fPLttIbyTUwaOH8vk_S5pHELnIH9-DXQxn3gfc_aem_XRVS9_sF17XjUDHvKYOb8w)
Her podcast Surgeon, Interrupted (https://linktr.ee/francesmei.md?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnMH09bYxqHCrVjFsnwQUV6fPLttIbyTUwaOH8vk_S5pHELnIH9-DXQxn3gfc_aem_XRVS9_sF17XjUDHvKYOb8w)
Her new book coming out soon (https://linktr.ee/francesmei.md?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnMH09bYxqHCrVjFsnwQUV6fPLttIbyTUwaOH8vk_S5pHELnIH9-DXQxn3gfc_aem_XRVS9_sF17XjUDHvKYOb8w)
The Hippocratic Collective (https://linktr.ee/francesmei.md?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnMH09bYxqHCrVjFsnwQUV6fPLttIbyTUwaOH8vk_S5pHELnIH9-DXQxn3gfc_aem_XRVS9_sF17XjUDHvKYOb8w)
23 Dec 2025
Episode 4: Male Loneliness, Online Communities, and the Search for Connection
One in four American men under 35 report feeling lonely. When they go online seeking answers, some find communities that can turn pain into ideology. We speak anonymously with a 27-year-old man caught in that tension: he identifies as a feminist, struggles with social cues, and has spent years in incel-exit and incel-reform communities. A conversation about how autism intersects with the male loneliness epidemic and why some men find these digital spaces so appealing.
21 Nov 2025
Episode 3: Muslim Civil Rights, ICE Detention, and the Fight for Free Speech in America
2024 marked the highest number of Muslim civil rights complaints in CAIR's 30-year history. Zahra Billoo leads the Council on American-Islamic Relations' San Francisco Bay Area chapter—the nation's oldest—fighting battles from detention centers to the courts. When speaking up becomes dangerous, what happens to freedom of speech in America? We discuss in this weeks episode of storychaser.
17 Oct 2025
Episode 2: Crypto, Clarity and Carving Space for Our Stories
From the challenges of local news to the rise of crypto, Erika Lee (https://x.com/erikaleetv?lang=en) joins us to unpack the future of storytelling. We dive into representation in journalism, the hurdles of reporting in a fast-paced digital world, and breaking down complex topics like crypto in plain terms.
Check out Erika's new book: Reporting from the Trenches (https://erikalee.xyz/)
18 Sept 2025
Episode 1: Former NAACP Press Secretary on Racial Justice Beyond the Headlines
In the first episode of StoryChaser, host Tara Ruff sits down with former NAACP Press Secretary Alicia Mercedes to confront the weight of racial injustice, the power of story to spark change, and the personal cost of carrying both.
9 Sept 2025
Episode 0: Welcome to Storychaser
Welcome to Storychaser, a podcast that takes you beyond the headlines. Hosted by Emmy-winning former journalist Tara Ruff, StoryChaser dives into the human stories that don’t always make it on air, voices too often overlooked, perspectives that shift how we see the world. We're so glad to have you!!!
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