Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid

Who Are You Beyond What You Consume?

In this episode, we explore identity in the age of aesthetics, algorithms, personal branding, and late-stage capitalism.
From clean girl culture and curated online selves to Socrates, Marx, bell hooks, Kierkegaard, this is a conversation about who we become when we are constantly perceived. 
________________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📝 Read my blog on Substack
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

Wanting vs Being Wanted: Why Does Female Desire Still Make People Uncomfortable?

Bridgerton, Fifty Shades of Grey, the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights… oof are we getting into it.
On the surface, it looks like we’re living in a moment where female desire is more visible than ever.  But are we actually getting closer to understanding it… or have we just found new ways to package it?
In this episode, we take a journey through the strange, complicated history of female desire, from sirens and witches to corsets, hysteria diagnoses, and Hollywood censorship.
At the heart of it all is one question: What happens when women stop being the object of desire, and become the subject of it?
_________________________________________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
Read Substack post: The Feminisation of the Supernatural Grotesque: 
Read Substack post: On Writing What I Wasn’t Raised to
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

The Unlikely True Story of How I Ended Up Living on a Sailboat

A few weeks ago, I got on a boat with a stranger from the internet and somehow ended up living on a sailboat in one of the most remote parts of Indonesia. There were storms, there was a diabetic captain, a near-emergency evacuation, and a stretch of days where we were completely alone on the ocean with no fresh water and no working toilet.
Naturally, I wrote about it.
What started as a simple Substack post turned into a 10,000-word, three-part story that I couldn’t stop writing. And instead of trying to summarise it, I decided to do something different for this episode…
I’m reading it to you. Settle in, this one's a wild ride. 
______________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
Read my Substack
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

How to Heal Your Relationship with Yourself After a Breakup

Breakups are fucking brutal! There's no getting around that. But what makes them even worse is that we don't just lose another person, we are also left with the realisation that we might have abandoned ourselves in the process of trying to keep them.
And now they've left, and you have to learn to trust yourself again and reclaim your individual identity outside of an "us" dynamic.
This one is about coming home to yourself.
_____________________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

How To Be Healthier (And Stick To It)

When did “being healthy” become so exhausting?
After completing a year-long health coaching diploma and unlearning everything I thought I knew about discipline and dieting, my perspective shifted completely.
In this episode, we talk about:
– The concept of “crowding out” instead of dieting– How to actually nourish your body (without under-eating)– Moving in ways you genuinely enjoy– What the Blue Zones teach us about connection, purpose and longevity
You deserve to feel strong, clear, capable and awake in your own life.
__________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

What Actually Is the Meaning of Life? Different Philosophers Try to Answer

In this episode, we’re asking the biggest question of all: What is the meaning of life?
I’ll talk you through how different theories and philosophies have tried to answer it, from evolution, hedonism, religion, existentialism, nihilism and more. 
This episode isn’t about giving you a neat answer. It’s about helping you examine the philosophy you’re already living by. Because even if you don’t consciously choose what you believe life is about… You’re still living as if something matters.
And that “something” is worth investigating.
________________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

From Hitchhiking Afghanistan to Couchsurfing With Saudi Royals: Leon Harant on Travelling Differently

In this episode, I’m joined by Leon Harant, a long-term hitchhiker who has spent nearly two years travelling across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia without relying on traditional backpacking routes, flights, or money-driven travel.
From hitchhiking through the craziest countries and camping in the desert, to being welcomed into strangers’ homes across Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and beyond, Leon’s journey isn’t just a collection of wild stories. It’s a radical rethinking of how we move through the world.
We talk about why and how you can travel this way too, what truths about human nature emerge across cultures, and why it’s easier than you think.
If you’ve ever felt called to travel more slowly and more openly, or you simply want to see the world without much money, this episode is for you.
_____________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
Follow Leon on Instagram
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

8 Toxic Habits That Are Ruining Your Relationships (And What to Do Instead)

RELATIONSHIPS DON’T NEED TO BE CONSTANT HARD WORK! That’s a myth we tell ourselves to normalise shitty behaviour towards one another.
In this episode, we confront the toxic habits that erode trust, intimacy, and self-respect, and keep us stuck in relationship patterns that feel heavy, confusing, and exhausting.
This isn’t just a list of red flags or a guide to diagnosing other people. It’s an invitation to take responsibility for our own emotional maturity.
Because relationships should feel like support, not survival.
This one is for anyone who wants to do relationships better… with others, and with themselves.
_______________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
📹 Watch The Lost & Found video episodes on YouTube
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
💌 For collabs email: karmen@krause.co.za

What You Need to Reflect on in 2025 to Have a Better 2026

+ Free downloadable PDF with reflection prompts
You probably have a laundry list of goals for 2026. But how many of those goals are the same ones you had last year, and the year before that?
Why haven’t you achieved them yet? And what makes you think this year will be any different?
I want to invite you to try something different.
Instead of rushing into new goals, habits, and resolutions, what if you looked back, intentionally, at the year that was?
What if the most powerful way to move forward isn’t by doing more…but by understanding more?
In this episode, I guide you through 10 reflective questions to help you understand last year and step into 2026 with clarity and intention.
We’ll talk joy, fears, relationships, insecurities, dreams… and I also share a deeply personal story about trust, jealousy, and healing, and what it taught me about learning to tell the difference between healthy boundaries and old, unhealed wounds.
Because this podcast has never been about having it all figured out. It’s about figuring it out in real time, together.
_________________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel 
🌴 Join my Thailand wellness retreat June 2026
📝 Read my blog 
📸 Follow along on Instagram 
 

So… A Lot Happened, Let’s Catch Up (Bali, Wild Camping & the Hardest Goodbye of My Life)

It’s been a wild few months, and this episode is the full catch-up.
There was a passport situation that had me low-key committing administrative crimes. Bali, where I hosted my first-ever group trip, learned to scuba dive, and swam with manta rays.
Then I hitchhiked through Thailand with a bunch of friends, slept in abandoned hostels and lost resorts, went wild camping on a deserted island, didn’t touch my phone for days, and had the most insane moment of my life.
And then… I turned my phone back on and got news that changed everything.
We’ll also talk:- Is Bali overrated now?- What I learned about environmental conservation- How to talk your way out of being detained at the airport for passport fraud- And what happens when grief shows up in the middle of magic
So yeah. There’s a lot to cover.
Let’s catch up.
____________________________________
Watch the Bali group trip video
Watch the deserted island camping video
Find out more about my upcoming Thailand group trip
____________________________________
✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel
📸 Follow along on Instagram
📝 Read the blog