Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid

One little decision “for the plot” landed me behind the bar of a hostel in Hoi An, Vietnam.

In this episode, I’m sharing the real story. From five-hour night shifts and crazy pool parties to found-family friendships, I’ll take you inside the chaos, the laughter, and the hidden curriculum of bartending.

I’ll also answer some of the questions I get most often in my DMs:

• How I landed the job in the fi...

What happens when a woman refuses to be likable, palatable, or contained?

In this episode of Lost & Found, we sink our teeth into Chelsea G. Summers’s provocative novel A Certain Hunger, a literary thriller about Dorothy Daniels, a glamorous food critic with big appetites: for food, for sex, and for human flesh.

Far more than a cannibalistic shocker, this book is a biting commentary on female desire, hunger, power, and storytel...

Why do I solo travel? It’s the question I get in my DMs more than any other. The truth is, it isn’t always easy. Yes, it can be lonely, intimidating, and even a little chaotic at times. But it’s also the most liberating, perspective-shifting, and life-affirming thing I’ve ever done for myself.

In this episode, I’m making the case for why everyone should take a solo trip, whether it’s a weekend getaway or...

This is the second instalment in our two-part Getting Out of a Rut series. It’s for those moments when you look around at your life and think, How did I end up here? When the spark is gone, the days feel copy–paste, and you’re mourning something you can’t quite name.

In this episode, I’m sharing the tools, experiments, and uncomfortable (but freeing) truths that have pulled me out of my own deepest ruts. This isn’t about surface-le...

This is the episode I needed this week, so I made it for both of us.

If you’ve been feeling off… low on energy, creatively flat, stuck in a loop of procrastination and you just need something to shake you out of it, this one’s for you.

In part one of this two-part reset, I’m sharing 9 powerful, practical shifts to help pull yourself out of a rut and remind you who the hell you are.

We’re talking: how to shake off stagnant energy, w...

Our first Lost & Found Book Club episode is here and we’re starting tender.

In this deep-dive discussion of Thirst for Salt by Madeleine Lucas, we explore the slow ache of a relationship that never quite breaks, but hollows. We talk love and longing, emotional whiplash, age-gap relationships, unequal power dynamics, aestheticized sadness, and the fantasy of becoming someone through someone else.

Why do we stay in relationships ...

What if beauty wasn’t something soft and sweet… but something vast, dangerous, and soul-shaking?

In this episode, we dive deep into the Romantic movement - not dating apps or romcoms, but the 19th-century revolution of artists and poets who believed that awe, longing, terror, and wonder were not distractions from life but the very point of it.

This isn’t your high school English syllabus. The Romantics were obsessed with danger, de...

A bottle of whisky, a palm reader, a prophecy. And a night that unfolded like silk around the hips. Slow, hot, dangerous.

In this episode, I'm reading you my latest short story, "The Fifth Lover."

From rooftops in Northern India to the dark dancefloors where we lose ourselves, this is a story about what we remember and what we rewrite. About possibilities and dead ends. About the high of being young, untethered, and briefly, beauti...

In this episode, I’m sharing the mindset shifts I return to when I feel lost, tired, or just trying to ground myself in something deeper than a to-do list.

We’ll talk about:

• The underrated art of trusting detours (and the psychology of hedonic adaptation)
• What discomfort actually means, and why it’s a good sign
• How to stop squeezing ever...

At 21, I walked into a philosophy class on Critical Theory, not because I was particularly curious about Marxism, but because the professor radiated something I couldn’t explain. Calm. Clarity. Joy.

I didn’t know that one elective would unravel everything I thought I knew about ambition, success, freedom, and identity.

Two years later, I was living in a hippie commune in rural Nicaragua, showering outside, swearing off money, and t...

In this episode, we explore the cultural phenomenon and philosophical roots of main character energy, both its empowering promise and its dark underside. 

Sparked by a moonlit conversation in Hanoi, this episode unspools into many threads. 

We talk about:

• What main character energy really means (and why it matters)
• How to find joy and agency even in the absurd… yes, we...

You know how sometimes all you really need is something that shakes you by the shoulders and gets you so fired up you can’t not do the scary thing?

And other times, you’re craving a deep, heart-expanding, soul-softening chat about life and meaning and why any of this matters.

And then there are those times when all you want is an unhinged conversation with a friend that reminds you how young, dumb, and wildly alive you still are.

Y...

You’ve heard the rumours, right? Seen the movies with chaotic streets, overflowing trains, and spiritual awakenings. Heard the warnings: it’s too much, too unsafe, too overwhelming.

Well, I heard them too. And I went anyway.

This is what three months travelling solo through India as a woman really looks like. It was messy. It was heart-achingly beautiful. And it changed me in ways I never expected.

In this episode, I speak honestly...

Ever felt like you're surrounded by people, but still weirdly alone? Like you're just... not quite you lately? Like something’s missing, but you can’t put your finger on what?

This episode is about that feeling.

The kind of loneliness and disconnectedness that leaves you feeling depleted and lost.

In this one, I get into:

• The different types of loneliness (and how to tell what yours is really asking for)

• How to go from cr...

Recorded during a monsoon evening in Delhi with chai in hand and the world quieting outside my window, I read you one of my favourite short stories - a piece I wrote when I was 22, while riding Greyhounds across the American South with an uncharged phone and a journal in my lap.

Where the Women Go is a story about grief, sisterhood, memory, and the spaces that live between dreams and fore...

Tonight, I’m recording from a tiny apartment in Delhi, a little dazed after surviving what might’ve been the wildest overnight bus of my life. But also feeling grateful. Because I’m reminded, once again, that travel doesn’t have to be expensive to be extraordinary.

In this episode, I’m answering a question I get all the time: How do you actually afford to travel long-term? The answer? It’s not a trust fu...

📚 Some very exciting news: my book Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide to Solo Travel is officially available for pre-order on Kindle!

It’s part handbook, part workbook, part travel memoir. Check out the preview on my website or pre-order on Amazon Kindle to be the very first to get the book when it goes live on Sunday, 29 June.

____

Do you feel like you have so ma...

Our desires, our turn-ons, our ideas of sex… where do they come from? And who benefits from them?

Because sex isn’t just an act. It’s an archive of cultural conditioning.

This episode is a crash course in feminist philosophy, critical theory, and the tangled relationship between sex, power, and culture. From shitty sex ed classes to porn culture, internalized...

I just came out of one of the most inspiring conversations with a friend and had to hit record. So today, we're talking about the kinds of lessons that shake your worldview and leave you wondering how no one told you this sooner.

Some of what we cover:

• The breakup question that answers itself
• How bitterness is often just blocked creativity
• ...