The Stories That Sparkle
Long-form intimate conversations with women navigating grief, starting over, reclaiming their voices, inhabiting their bodies and building community.
For the woman who feels alone in it—whatever 'it' is.
Hella Rader has spent twenty years working across creative industries—PR, arts management, tour management, and radio—always in service to other people's stories. After co-hosting a live internet radio show on East Village Radio and serving as tour manager for Shara Nova and My Brightest Diamond, she launched Stories That Sparkle in 2025. She is also a somatic coach, a writer on Substack, and the person who will drive four weeks across the country with recording equipment in the back of her car to bring back something true.
what the show is
Stories That Sparkle is a long-form interview podcast about women navigating the evolving chapters of their lives. They are women you could pass on the street or bump into at the grocery store, and never know they had survived something life-altering—cancer, divorce, career collapse, abuse, grief, creative reinvention, or starting over at 50. They are moms, wives, or kid-free and single. They run businesses, raise kids, travel and stay at home. Each woman’s story holds some part of her journey from who she was to who she is today.
Each episode is a single conversation. No panel. No hot takes. One woman, one hour, one complete story. And because host Hella Rader’s recording studio is fully mobile, the show meets women where they are. Episodes have been recorded in her own sunroom in Virginia, on Zoom from her desk in New York, and in other women’s living rooms across the country.
New episodes drop every other Wednesday.
The Pod At A Glance
50+ episodes · Long-form (typically 45–70 minutes) · One guest, one conversation · New episodes drop every other Wednesday · Available everywhere you get your podcasts
Because together, we bring light into dark places. 🪩
MOST DOWNLOADED EPISODE ★ EPISODE 17
Intentional Intimacy
Guest: Addie │ Theme: Voice, asking for what you want, what silence costs
Halfway through, I changed the subject. I knew it, and I did it anyway.
What started as a conversation about sleeping in separate bedrooms turned into something I wasn't prepared for—so, halfway through I derailed the whole thing. I knew it even if I didn’t say in the moment.
When I listened back to it, I knew it could not be released that way. So, I brought Addie back to re-record the second half, and told her, and you, what had actually come up for me. The final version is a conversation about voice, asking for what you want, and what it costs to stay silent. It's the most downloaded episode in the show's run. I think I know why.
Best for: listeners who want to hear what the show does when it goes somewhere unexpected—and what happens when the host stops performing and starts telling the truth.
What this episode shows: how the show works at its best—the guest's story becomes a mirror for the host, and both women arrive somewhere they didn't expect. No other podcast in this space features an episode where the host admits she panicked, stopped recording, came back, and told the truth about why.
the discoball tour
Four weeks. A trunk full of recording equipment (and snacks). a route from Virginia to denver and back. and a promise to go where the story is.
In September 2025, with the idea of a plan and a route, Hella threw the things she needed into the back of her car, mounted a camera to the dashboard, and drove off from Virgina to Denver, Colorado. For four weeks, across multiple states in the South, Southwest and Midwest, Hella followed a route shaped by the women who said “yes” to being recorded, The Discoball Tour was both a production trip and a personal reclamation of old and new relationships. Hella stayed in the homes of women (and, once, two dudes) she already knew well, regrouped in hotel rooms by herself, and visited women she'd never met before in person. She recorded in living rooms, sunrooms and kitchens, and once, even a park. In between stops, she recorded her journey in her car, on the side of the road, and in parking lots. She ate at the hotel breakfast bar in Amarillo, got re-routed outside of Boulder, and work up by a lake surrounded by cornfields in Nebraska. Along the way, she found out what it actually means to be a roving interviewer: that you have to trust the people you're driving toward, and you have to trust yourself to handle whatever you find on the way there.
Hella’s willingness to meet women where they are, to listen with an open mind and an open heart, is her special sauce.
The episodes from this stretch of the show are among the most sonically varied. They are less polished in some places, more alive in others. The imperfection is the point. Real conversations don't always happen in quiet studios. Sometimes they happen in the middle of a road trip, on the side of the road next to a river, or in a park with the wind blowing.
The tour also became something Hella hadn't entirely planned: a piece of her own story. Away from home, away from the familiar, the show stopped being entirely about other women's voices and became a space where her own voice found more room.
Everything from the Road in One Place
Recorded in borrowed living rooms, sunrooms, kitchens, an office space and a park, these are the conversations that happen when you drive toward something without knowing what you'll find. Link to all 18 podcast episodes plus docu-series videos of Hella’s personal journey, and Substack posts written for Substack while on the road.
→ Listen to all Episodes, Watch all Videos, and Read all Posts
Dig Through the Mountain (Tara’s Story)
🪩 DISCOBALL TOUR EPISODE 🪩 RECORDED IN NEBRASKA
Guest: Tara │ Theme: Survivorship, the body, fierce love
Tara drove five hours across Nebraska to record this episode, which tells you something about the Stories That Sparkle and the space it makes for women use their voices and tell their stories. And Tara was determined to share her daughter Naomi's story: born at 28 weeks with a rare kidney disease, given almost no chance of survival, Naomi defied every prediction. The moment Tara describes feeling 'no fear' after holding Naomi's finger for the first time is one of the most quietly extraordinary in the entire series.
Best for: listeners navigating illness, parenting under impossible circumstances, or anyone who wants to understand what Hella means when she says she goes where the story is.
survivorship · body · Discoball Tour · fierce love · NICU
→ Listen to Episode 37: Dig Through The Mountain (Tara’s Story)
“Hella, your Stories That Sparkle tour has been an amazing journey for all of those who have been with you in person and thru the posts and podcasts. You have created an amazing community as you traveled across the country. Thank you.”
—From a reader, listener and subscriber
grief and loss · breast cancer survivorship · divorce · domestic violence · military service · mental health · somatic healing · menopause · postpartum · creative reinvention · entrepreneurship · LGBTQ+ identity · faith and spirituality · community building · women's financial independence · starting over at midlife · voice and self-expression
what we talk about
50+ episodes. Eight recurring themes. One through-line: women claiming their voices and their lives.
Grief in All Its Forms
Not just the loss of people—the loss of identity, career, relationship, and the self you used to be. The show treats grief as a human constant, not a clinical category.
Voice: Finding It, Losing It, Reclaiming It
The thematic heartbeat of every episode. Who gets to speak. What it costs to be silent. What it takes to finally say the true thing out loud.
Reinvention & Starting Over
Women who rebuilt after illness, divorce, career collapse, and the end of a long identity. The show is interested in the messy middle, not just the arrival.
The Body as Truth-Teller
Survivorship, somatic healing, and the felt experience of suppressing your truth over years. The body holds what the mind tries to outrun.
Community & Chosen Family
Episode after episode returns to the sustaining power of connection and the village that makes survival and reinvention possible.
Women at Midlife & Beyond
Specifically interested in women in the second half of their lives who are reexamining what they've built and deciding what they actually want. Reinvention has no deadline.
Silence, Shame & the Courage to Tell the Truth
The show treats shame not as a personal failing but as a systemic force. Breaking it, in the presence of a witness, becomes the act of healing.
Risk, Entrepreneurship & Betting on Yourself
Women founders, creative leaps, and what it actually feels like to stop waiting for permission, including Hella's own experience of building a platform with no guaranteed outcome (or idea how).
start here
Not sure where to begin? These four episodes will give you good feel for the show—and its evolution.
Episode 1: I’ll Go First (Hella’s Story)
Guest: Marsha │ Theme: Origin story, perfectionism, starting over
The very first story of Stories That Sparkle is my own. I sit down with my bestie Marsha in the sunroom to explain why this show exists—and what led me to start it. COVID, divorce, and menopause hit simultaneously. A mentor died. A corporate job ended. All my excuses disappeared at once. This is the episode that sets every theme the show will return to: perfectionism, silence, voice, the village that gets you through.
Best for: new listeners who want to understand what this show is and why it matters.
origin · voice · perfectionism · starting over
Episode 2: Eileen’s Rule of 1 (Eileen’s Story)
Guest: Eileen │ Theme: Military service, breast cancer, reinvention
Eileen was a self-described 'ultimate hard charger'—Air Force veteran, high achiever, the person who got things done. Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer and lost her marriage, her business, and her physical capacity nearly simultaneously. Her rule: do one thing every day day. Whatever it is. Just one. This conversation is about what happens when the person who holds everything together has to learn to let things fall apart.
Best for: listeners navigating illness, burnout, or the collapse of an identity.
military · cancer · reinvention · grief · achievement as identity
Episode 9: One Woman Show (More of Hella’s Story)
Solo Episode │ Theme: Voice, silence, reclamation, the story behind the show
Eight months into recording episodes, Hella steps out from behind the guests and tells more of her own story. This is where the show's deeper origin comes into focus and Hella names what the podcast actually became: not just a container for other women's voices, but the practice of reclaiming her own. She also announces The Discoball Tour and that she's driving to Denver in September.
Best for: listeners who want to understand who Hella is. Producers who want to hear what she sounds like when she's the only one in the room.
voice · silence · reclamation · Discoball Tour origin
→ Listen to Episode 9: One Woman Show (More of Hella’s Story)
Episode 10: The Healing Power of Community (Mandy’s Story)
Guest: Mandy │ Theme: Suicide loss, grief, community
Mandy lost her mother to suicide. This episode doesn't soften that or rush past it. Hella handles the weight of the conversation with precision — content warnings delivered with care, space held without rushing, the harder follow-up asked when it needed to be. This is the episode where Hella's interview style begins its most significant evolution.
Best for: listeners navigating grief after traumatic loss, or those who want to witness what a skilled interview looks like in difficult territory.
grief · suicide loss · community · interview craft
→ Listen to Episode 10: The Healing Power of Community (Mandy’s Story)
download, rate, review, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts & subscribe to substack for the weekly Tuesday Tidings—the writing between the episodes.
never miss an episode
Stories That Sparkle is open to guest swaps, brand partnerships, and cross-promotional collaborations. Hella is also available as a roving host, correspondent, or branded series interviewer for hire.
want to work together?
Stories That Sparkle is always looking for women with something to say. You don't have to be famous. You don't have to have a platform. You just have to be willing to share from the heart.