What’s Kraken? is Empty Hell’s interview series — host Jo Szewczyk (bestselling author of Surviving Gen X) in raw, unscripted 20-minute conversations with the people shaping culture, politics, and entertainment. Filmmakers, musicians, writers, activists, comedians, the occasional elected official — no PR gloss, just the stories and process behind the work. New episodes on YouTube and everywhere you get podcasts. Subscribe and pull up a chair.
From filmmakers to musicians, writers to activists, comedians to elected officials—What’s Kraken? brings you the stories, struggles, and process behind the people changing the world around us. No scripts. No pretense. Just real talk with real people.
Stephanie Roy joins What’s Kraken to talk about her book Chemotherapy and Tequila: The Last Road Trip — part memoir, part her late sister’s actual journal from the road trip she took to say goodbye to everyone she loved. Stephanie traces the road from shy straight-A dropout to the woman whose daily life is orphan Thanksgiving: married at 17, an aortic aneurysm at 23 that broke her open, a trailer park tragedy, and two deathbed promises she kept. Jo and Stephanie also go back to where it all started — ghost hunting meetups in Montreal — and ahead to the TV series she’s writing now.
Take Away: Life doesn’t get easier — the way you deal with it does. You can’t order the tools on Amazon. You build them by living through it.
Key Moments
- Ghost hunters at the mall — mostly there to weed out the weirdos (01:03)
- Why Stephanie writes longhand: road trips, the Metro, and the lost art of being bored (04:56)
- The book that’s written by two sisters — her sister’s journal is right there in the middle (08:32)
- The extrovert and the introvert: a tracheotomy at three vs. quitting high school over social anxiety (10:29)
- Married at 17 — “I knew everything” (14:44)
- An aortic aneurysm at 23: “Call your friends. You’re not going to make it.” (16:03)
- Waking up from the coma a different person — broken open, not broken (17:33)
- Trailer park tragedy, fireworks, and never blowing up your own supply (20:41)
- Her sister’s last road trip — smiling for the kids the whole way (34:12)
- Two promises: be there for her kids, and finish the book (36:21)
- The memoir is becoming a TV series (41:10)
- Advice to her younger self: hang in there — the tools are coming (44:20)
Chemotherapy and Tequila: The Last Road Trip by Stephanie Roy: Here
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