Shows
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidHow 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.
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✨ Let’s Stay Connected:
🌴...
2026-02-1937 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidWhat Actually Is the Meaning of Life? Different Philosophers Try to AnswerIn 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.
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✨ Let’s Stay C...
2026-02-1247 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidFrom Hitchhiking Afghanistan to Couchsurfing With Saudi Royals: Leon Harant on Travelling DifferentlyIn 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 abo...
2026-02-051h 18Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid8 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 want...
2026-01-2948 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidWhat 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 fo...
2026-01-2228 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidSo… 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 t...
2026-01-1546 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidWhy Is My Skin Still Breaking Out in My 20s? And Other Skincare FAQs with Chief Cosmetic Formulator Eileen BotesToday I’m sitting down with Eileen Botes, chief cosmetic formulator for Willa Krause Skin Care and DC Laboratories.
Eileen has a background in molecular biology and biotechnology, decades of experience in the industry, and a rare ability to talk about skin with both scientific rigour and deep nuance.
We get into:
Why your skin barrier is the real non-negotiable and how to protect it
How climate and environment change what your skin needs
How to tell the difference between science and marketing hype
How diet, sleep, stre...
2025-11-2150 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidHow to Think for Yourself in an Age of AI & Algorithms+ Free episode workbook
In a world of hot takes, rage-bait, cancel culture, and instant certainty, thinking slowly has become an act of rebellion.
In this episode, we talk about what we lose when we trade nuance for noise, how binary thinking flattens our depth in politics, in love, and even in the way we see ourselves.
We’ll talk about how algorithms reward outrage over understanding, and how AI is training us to outsource our thoughts instead of forming them.
And because awareness isn’t enough, I’ll walk you through a 7-Day...
2025-11-1238 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidThe Biggest Lies We’re Told About Our TwentiesYour twenties come with a lot of noise.
Everyone has an opinion on who you should be, how you should love, how fast you should grow, and what your life should look like by now.
But what if most of that advice… was never actually true?
In this episode, we get into some of the biggest lies we’re sold about love, identity, success, healing, and what it means to “get your life together.”
If you’ve ever felt behind, overwhelmed, heartbroken, or unsure of who you’re becoming, this one’s for you....
2025-11-0532 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidThe Realities of a Nomadic Life and What It’s Taught Me About Love, Work & Home (A Brutally Honest FAQ Session)My first FAQ episode!
We’re talking everything: solo travel, love, work-life balance, loneliness, heartbreak, creativity, and what “home” even means when you’re constantly leaving it.
This one’s honest and a little chaotic. Kind of like my life.
If you’ve ever thought about packing your bags and building a life on your own terms, I think you’ll find a piece of yourself somewhere in here.
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Let’s Stay Connected:
📕 Buy my book — Untethered: A Beginner’s Guide To Solo Travel
📸 Follow along on Instagram
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2025-10-0946 minLost & Found with Karmen WiidRage to Reverence: How My Thinking About Feminism & Femininity Has ChangedFrom angry teenage feminist, scowling at boys who opened doors for me, to my misandry era, to now. In this episode, I trace how my thinking about feminism, and about being a woman, has changed over the past 12 years.
We’ll talk about casual misogyny, bad sex ed, double standards, feminist theory, Anaïs Nin, and why I now believe feminism is about the freedom to decide what femininity or masculinity looks like for you.
This isn’t a prescriptive episode. I’m not here to tell you what to believe. I’m here to offer you...
2025-09-1829 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidSo I Spent A Month Bartending in a Hostel in Vietnam… Here’s The Real StoryOne 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 first place + what it entails
Day-in-the-life: full-time remote work by day, bar shifts by night (was it worth it?)
Patterns yo...
2025-09-1127 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidBook Club: Cannibalism as Feminism? Digging Into A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. SummersWhat 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 storytelling itself. We unpack its themes one by one - female villainy as feminism, appetite as rebellion, consumption as intimacy, culinary satire, and the vo...
2025-09-0826 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidWhy Solo Travel Is the Most Empowering Thing You’ll Ever Do for YourselfWhy 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 a year-long adventure. I share the 12 biggest lessons that travelling alone has taught me: from breaking free of the “bluepri...
2025-08-2135 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidHow to Get Your Spark Back When You Don’t Even Recognize Your Own Life AnymoreThis 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-level fixes, this is about getting to the root. Stripping your life down to the base, figuri...
2025-08-1342 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidHow to Get Out of a Rut: 9 Practical Shifts to Feel Like Yourself AgainThis 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, work hacks that spark momentum instead of guilt...
2025-08-0733 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidBook Club: Desire, Ruin, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves About Love (on Madeleine Lucas’s Thirst for Salt)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 that hurt so much? Is it love or just projection? And what does it cost to be the one who feels more?
If you’ve ever...
2025-08-0443 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidWhat 19th-Century Romanticism Can Teach Us About Navigating Our 20s and Feeling Alive AgainWhat 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, desire, melancholy, and the sublime… that dizzying, breathtaking feeling that reminds you you’re still alive.
It was an art movement that inspi...
2025-07-3139 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidStory Time: Reading You "The Fifth Lover" (Think Sultry Nights, Doomed Prophecies & Ghosts in Silk)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, beautifully, unbroken.
Until it all unravels.
Is it a story or a memory? Real or constructed?
...
2025-07-2834 min
Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid8 Powerful Mindset Shifts That Will Rewire How You See Your LifeIn 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 every moment for meaning
Why empathy might actually be selfish and what that means for real connection (according to philosopher Edith Stein)
These are the beliefs that h...
2025-07-2445 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidWhen Ambition Becomes Identity: On Critical Theory & The Quarter-Life CrisisAt 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 trading work for food, trying to figure out what I really wanted when nothing familiar was there to define me.
In this episode, I ex...
2025-07-2136 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidThe Truth About Main Character Energy: The Beautiful, the Dangerous & the DelusionalIn 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’re talking The Myth of Sisyphus
The dark side of performance and Western privilege
Travel, language, culture, and why no one is just a “side character”
Martin Buber’s I-It vs. I-T...
2025-07-1736 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidFrom Broke and Burnt Out to Full-Time Travel and Writing: The Stories I’ve Never Told Before (and the Unlearning That Changed Everything)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.
Yeah. This one is all of that - in one conversation.
In th...
2025-07-141h 19
Kindred Roads PodcastHow She Went From $0 in Cambodia to Becoming a Full-Time Writer on the RoadKarmen Wiid is a South African solo traveler, writer, and host of The Lost & Found Podcast. She published her first book at 12, studied philosophy and literature in university, and now works remotely while moving through the world with curiosity and creativity. She’s currently based in India, and she shares such profound wisdom on the meaning of life and how to actually work through things, rather than letting fear or expectation stop you from living your dream.
In this episode, Karmen shares stories from running out of money in Cambodia, crashing a motorbike in Nicaragua, and traveling th...
2025-07-121h 17
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidI Travelled Solo Through India for 3 Months — Here’s Everything I Wasn’t Expecting to Learn, Love, and Leave BehindYou’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 about the magic I experienced, the discomfort I leaned into, and the lessons I learned the hard way - from...
2025-07-1033 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidFeeling Lonely, Lost, or Disconnected from Yourself? You Need to Hear This.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 craving connection to actually loving your own company
What philosophers and p...
2025-07-0734 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidStory Time: Reading You My Favourite Short Story I’ve Ever Written (Think Abandoned Manor Houses, Long Train Rides & Dark Forests)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 forests, life and afterlife. It’s lyrical and strange and vulnerable. And it matters to me deeply.
This isn’t my usu...
2025-07-0324 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidTravel For Free (Yes, I’m Serious): Work-Exchange, Couchsurfing & Other Legal HustlesTonight, 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 fund. It’s curiosity, courage, and a willingness to get your hands dirty.
I share the exact tools, platforms, and stories that h...
2025-06-3030 min
Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid5 Unconventional Tips to Stop Abandoning Your Goals And Finish Something📚 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.
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Do you feel like you have so many ideas but never follow through?
Sick of making plans, setting goals, getting excited… and then somehow abandoning them halfway through?
Then this episo...
2025-06-2624 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidThe Politics of Desire: The Sex Education I Got from Philosophers (That I Wish I Got in High School)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 scripts to embodied autonomy, we’re asking the uncomfortable questions we’re usually too afraid to voice.
We’ll talk consent beyond the yes/no binary, porn as both a...
2025-06-2341 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidIf You're Asking “Should I Break Up With Them?” You Already Have… And Other Unhinged Truths I'm Learning in My TwentiesI 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
Why your “cringe” phase was necessary
What it means to want more without lack
What real luxury is
The power of curiosity and letting yourself evolve
If you're in your twenties (or feel like you...
2025-06-1925 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidSolo Travel vs. Group Trips: How to Know Which One’s for You — and How to Make the Most of BothWhat do you need more right now — to remember who you are, or to remember you're not alone?
In this episode, we dive into the real differences between solo travel and group trips — not just the logistics, but the soul of the thing. From rooftop dance parties in Udaipur to quiet solo moments that changed me, I explore how each kind of journey offers its own kind of magic.
Whether you’re craving deeper self-trust, new friendships, a break from routine, or the courage to finally book that one-way ticket… this one’s for you.
Plus...
2025-06-1632 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidRest Without Rot: How to Spend a Weekend That Actually Recharges YouWe’ve forgotten how to rest and it’s costing us more than we think. In this episode, I dive into what it means to actually feel restored after the weekend, not just distracted, numbed, or hungover.
Let's redefine what intentional rest looks like (spoiler: it’s not just doing nothing), we talk nervous system repair, dopamine menus, and why scrolling isn’t a hobby.
This isn’t your typical productivity pep talk. It’s a reminder to treat your time off like a ceremony, not an afterthought.
Whether you’re burnt out, in need of a g...
2025-06-1235 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidThe Truth About Closure And What You Actually Need To Move OnWe think closure is a conversation. A final text. An apology. But more often than not, it’s silence—and confusion.
In this deeply personal episode, I talk about the kind of closure I never got, what I learned from it, and why waiting for someone to explain their confusion might be the thing keeping you stuck.
From messy endings to aisle-seat breakdowns to unexpectedly falling in love again—I take you through the real, raw, unfiltered journey of trying to heal when there’s no clean goodbye.
You’ll hear:
• Why they probabl...
2025-06-0941 min
Lost & Found with Karmen Wiid7 Things That Don't Belong in a Life You LoveYou can’t build a life that feels truly your own if you’re carrying things that don’t belong to you.
In this episode — a part two to How to Build a Life That Feels Like Yours — I explore the emotional clutter we need to let go of: resentment, guilt-tripping, over-explaining, comparison, victimhood, fear of loneliness, and more.
This one’s about radical self-responsibility. About learning to be unapologetically yourself without becoming bitter, about making choices that fill you up so your love and energy can flow outward, not get drained away.
If you’ve ev...
2025-06-0530 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidReimagining Your Twenties: How To Create A Life That Feels Like Your OwnWhat if the version of success you’re chasing isn’t actually yours? In this episode, I talk about throwing out the blueprint, redefining your values, and choosing a life that makes you feel lit up, not burned out.
I’ll walk you through:
Signs you’re living on autopilot
How to re-evaluate your values and beliefs
My own turning point that made me question what I really wanted from work and life
Why joy is not a luxury, it’s your compass
Let’s get a little lost...
2025-06-0430 min
Lost & Found with Karmen WiidWelcome: Solo Travel, Self-Growth, and Saying Yes AnywayIt’s 3AM in a tiny Airbnb in Rajasthan, India. I have a full travel day ahead, a 7AM meeting on the books—and yet here I am, recording the first episode of a podcast I’ve been dreaming about for months.
Welcome to Lost and Found, a space for anyone navigating the beautiful, confusing mess of their twenties. In this raw, unscripted debut, I talk about what led me here—from solo travel to heartbreak, creative restlessness to radical joy. There’s no niche, no filter—just a deep desire to connect and make sense of the chaos al...
2025-06-0418 min
2022-11-0203 min2022-09-1903 minVoelgoed PodsendingsGeloof is nie altyd maklik nie (Karmen Wiid)#SondagStilword vir Meisies Episode 35
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2022-07-2102 min
Voelgoed PodsendingsPassies en talente is rigtingaanwysers - Karmen Wiid#SondagStilword Meisies Week 15
2022-06-0102 min2022-05-0902 min2022-05-0304 min2022-02-1602 minVoelgoed PodsendingsMoenie jou voorregte as vanselfsprekend aanvaar nie - Karmen Wiid#SondagStilword vir MEISIES
2022-02-1603 min