The Tea with Krema: Recent Episodes
Krema Smatini
Join us on this journey of reflection, self-discovery, and hilarious conversations. Kris and Ema (Krema, if you will), two friends just following our life paths and having a great time along the way.
During the summer, Krema takes a quick break and hiatus to reset and relax without the pressure of deadlines and editing. Catch up on Seasons 1 to 4 on your favorite streaming platforms! See you in August!
In the previous seasons, we’d only have a vision board episode at the beginning and end of the year and then wonder why we weren’t meeting our goals. In this week’s episode, we reflect on our year so far as we close out Season 4. We chat about what’s working in our vision boards and what’s not working so well. We make some changes as we look at the latter half of the year and plan for a strong second half of the year.
Artificial Intelligence, aka A.I., has been around in film since the mid 80s. This means that the idea of humans living alongside machines with A.I. is older than Kris and Ema, which has certainly meant that the concept of A.I. driven apocolypses have been on our mind forever. We revisit some of the major A.I. depictions in film during and before our lives. This is the start of a series about A.I. as it continues to grow in real life applications, and might even move us closer to the events we see in said films.
We chat with Ema’s cousin, Isa, who was born and raised in the Mormon church in both Hawai’i and Utah. We chat about intersectionality in the church and how our identities can shape our belief systems.
Kris and Ema go on a deep dive of processed foods: spray cheese, hot dogs, spam, jello, and meatloaf galore. We learn the history and fun facts about some of our favorite foods!
We bring you Part 2 of our #TravelGoals series! In this episode, we chat about the best part of traveling: the planning! Some love it and some hate it, but we give you some tips and tricks for how we pick our travel and adventures.
It’s Ema’s birthday and this year she is turning 30! We’re looking back at her 20s to enjoy the ups, downs, and sideways moments that have brought her into this new decade.
We review the book, “Attached.” by Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A. We discuss our own attachment styles and how we could use the things we learned moving forward.
Kris is beginning to think he wants to start journaling. Ema has had an on and off relationship with journaling. In this episode, they discuss some journaling basics and types of journals they’ve tried in the past as well as what they’re looking for in the “perfect” journal now.
This is Part 1 in a series about one of Krema’s favorite past times: traveling. We’ve been all over the country and the world via multiple modes of transportation. In this first part, we discuss our favorite trips, favorite moments, and future plans for their travels. In the upcoming parts, we’ll discuss dream vacations, planning, and travel hacks so stay tuned!
If we’re being completely honest, Kris and Ema don’t really pay attention to football. However, we do enjoy watching the Halftime show at every Super Bowl. In this episode, we discuss our favorites and our not so favorites.
It’s time for our annual love episode! We bring on two of our favorite guests who have been featured at least once per season: Shamaine and Brian! They spill the tea on the secrets to building a life with another person. We chat through lessons learned, their favorite memories of each other, and advice for a loving and successful marriage.
Do you enjoy survival shows? Discussing the techniques you’d use in a survival show and potential apocalyptic survival strategies? This is the episode for you! We have a semi-obsession with these topics and we discuss the logistics and our obsession behind Naked and Afraid. We talk about what we’d bring with us and some of our favorite moments from the series.
It’s a brand new year and that means new Vision Boards! Every year our process evolves and becomes more personal, reflecting our needs, dreams, and things we want to be true. We’ll cover what we included on our vision boards this year, how we got to that point, and the changes we’ve made along the way. We would also love to see your vision board to be sure to send it to us or tag us in your vision board pictures on Instagram or Facebook!
In this episode, we reflect on our vision board for the year. 2023 brought a number of highs, lows, and some changes in our lives. Listen in to our review of the year and what we hope to plan for our 2024 Vision Board.
In this episode, we chat about the messiness of the holidays through our favorite subreddit Am I The A-Hole, that we rebrand and call “Am I the Grinch?”
We play the viral game, “We’re Not Really Strangers”. Kris and Ema figure out if they’re actually strangers or not.
For some reason, Kris kept running into information about Mormons and it got pretty confusing to determine what was real and was exaggerated for TV. While Ema grew up Mormon for a while, we brought her sister, Setsuko, to the show because her experience was a bit longer and more involved.
In this episode, we discuss our history with meal prepping and why we’ve continued or discontinued doing it as we get older and further into our career. We chat about the logistics behind a successful meal prep and our favorite meal prep recipes.
Therapy is still expensive, so guess what? We’re still here! In this episode, we check in with our self care goals for the year. We also create a self care checklist of things we can do to help us maintain some self care in our lives!
This is the book that has taken our life by storm. We have been recommending it to anyone and everyone who will listen. We talk about boundaries and all of the things we’ve learned from the “Book of Boundaries” by Melissa Urban.
Ema has fulfilled her goal twice this year! She has brought on two friends that Kris has not met before. Listen to our first guest interview of Season 4! NhaHomie is an optometrist and streamer, learn more about how she does it all!
Have you heard of milk in a bag? Frito pie for lunch? We talk about it in this week’s episode. We also discuss lunches of our past and observations of lunches that our students eat now.
Krema is back and the tea is hotter than ever as we reveal some changes in TTWK, reflect on our previous episodes, and preview the new season!
Ema is starting the Soft 75 Challenge in the new school year… or so we think. Listen to hear why Kris is the hype person in this relationship and hear him convince Ema to change her plans!
The Tea With Krema is taking its first official break (not like the unofficial breaks where we just didn’t drop episodes) and starting season 2. We will be back August 5 with the first episode of the new season and a few other surprises too!
We made it to half the year! Where has the time gone? Listen in to see how our goals are going for the year and our progress (if any) have been made in our vision board. Also listen in for some special tea at the end of the episode!
Happy one year wedding anniversary to Ema and Izak! In this episode, we hear about the supposed “hardest” year of marriage and get some tips and tricks to surviving your first year of marriage in a new country.
We get the tea on What the Trio’s hiatus (for reference: they haven’t recorded an episode since January 2022). We get the tell-all interview from our favorite podcasters and hear what’s new in their lives.
Jeffrey and Justiz are longtime friends and first time parents. Jeffrey also owns his own business and Justiz is a full time working mom, so how do they make it work? Listen in as they discuss all the things about parenting, especially the hot takes. We discuss mommy Facebook groups, postpartum depression, and how to raise a child in this world.
In this episode, Kris and Ema take three language assessments: love language, apology language, and an anger assessment. These languages sometimes help to understand what your partner may need, so we took it to see if there were any changes in our love languages from 2019 until now.
In this episode, we talk story with fellow podcaster, Rosa, from Reads with Rosa. We discuss the ins and outs of running a podcast by yourself and how she chooses her guests. We discuss the stories she chooses to share and why they are so near and dear to her heart.
Kris finally made it to Brazil! Now it’s time to find out if this was the trip of his dreams worth the years of preparation or if reality fell short of his hopes!
We got our start after listening and discussing starting a podcast with What The Trio. They helped us get our start so now we're sharing the basics of starting our podcasts and few tricks we learned along the way.
Brian has completed his first full time season with Wilson’s Lawncare. We want to see how things went compared to previous seasons and what it’s like to work for yourself full time all the time.
There are so many pressures to meet timelines and adhere to the “right” time to accomplish these different things. Marriage, children, home, and career are some of the topics we discuss in today’s episode about the pressures we put on ourselves to get it all done at the “right” time.
Over the past two years, we have grilled Kristofer on his love life… This year, Kris decided to take matters into his own hands to get out of the hot seat and bring on our friend, Iranique, to discuss her love life instead. In this episode, we discuss love: what we love about love, the things we do when we’re in love, and our lessons on love. Listen in and hear what our friend and love expert has to say!
We look at all the predictions from all the stars in this upcoming year. We’ll be keeping track throughout the year to determine if astrology can make predictions or if it’s all just random.
Our last vision board episode did not result in the creation of any actual vision boards. The result was a very hard to define year in relation to our goals. This year, we committed to actually creating boards that we could use to shape and guide our experiences with our goals in mind during the new year.
We learned last year that a big part of creating a vision board for the new year is to reflect on the previous year. We take a look back at 2022 to help pull out the important events that are guiding us as we set out goals and intentions for the new year.
After three years, we go over the intricacies and things we have loved and learned about being on a podcast as best friends. We spill the tea on what it’s really like to work with your best friend.
In our very first episode, we talked about our self-care practices that we used to cope with stress in lieu of therapy. In fact, one of the main reasons we started a podcast, besides the fact that we think we’re hilarious, is because therapy was expensive and we wanted to try a different way of talking through our experiences. Two years later, we’re checking in to figure out how our self-care practices have changed, and what we need to do moving forward.
We both watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and were surprised that our reviews did not follow in the usual pattern. In fact, we both had such significant thoughts that we reorganized our podcast schedule to make room for this episode.
We ring in Kris’ birthday with an episode all about showing Kris’ mental prowess. He's getting old, but does he still know all the things he thinks he knows? Check out the episode to find out and feel free to ask him more questions on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter!
There were a lot of headlines and stressful news articles this summer, so Kris decided to take his social media presence from minimal to nearly nonexistent to really enjoy his time off. Ema was spending significant amounts of time on social media so she hopped off for a month to recenter herself. Check out this episode to see if a social media detox had any effects at all.
DFW has some really great vegan restaurants in the area. We brought Shamaine along to hit some of them up and offer our final reviews about our experiences.
There is a trend on TikTok and Twitter where people show or describe an attractive person but describe an undesirable trait about them to see how that changes their rating. We went to see how these traits would change a rating from Krema.
$10k of student loan debt has just been eliminated. For some that could be up to $20k. The Tea With Krema weighs in on this development from two perspectives: someone still paying their loans and directly benefiting from this forgiveness and someone who repaid their loans and will not directly benefit from this forgiveness. The Tea With Krema also invites those with differing opinions to join us on a future episode about this topic to really gain an understanding of the other side of the coin.
Ema and Kris have enjoyed reading since they were little tiny people. That may not have been the case forever but our overall relationship with books has been positive. This episode really highlights the early literacy journey we took since the book club has not been working out.
Kris and Ema have been friends for nearly 6 years now… But how well do they really know one another. This episode really finds out who has all the answers and who just asks the trickier questions.
In this episode, Kris and Ema discuss their favorite parts of their least favorite season: summer. They discuss the fun parts of summer, summer activities, and summer memories. What do you like to do during the summer?
Reddit is a wonderful community of knowledge and drama. One such place is the Am I The Asshole thread where people post stories trying to figure out if they were wrong in a situation or if the people around them just being ridiculous. Ema and Kris found their favorite AITA posts and determine who was really the asshole.
Ema has taught in Japan for one year. Kris has worked in a new position for one year. It’s time to sit back and reflect on these experiences. What were the highs, the lows, and most memorable moments?
Ema is getting married! In this episode, we discuss all wedding things and things that Ema has learned while semi-planning a wedding. We discuss cultural wedding practices, eloping vs traditional weddings, and "small weddings."
In this episode, we discuss the new Netflix series "The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On" and let's just say it was a roller coaster ride of emotions from beginning to end. We discuss the premise of the show, some moments that happened, the cast, and our overall feelings of if we would recommend it to a friend.
Since the housing market is currently in shambles, we decide to dream and manifest our dream homes. We talk about ideal locations, nonnegotiables, and the usefulness of a heated bidet. Listen in and let us know what's your dream home design?
KrEma turn 28 this year! (Ema in April and Kris in November) Listen to our advice to our 18 year old selves along with some hopes and dreams for our 35 year old selves.
If you listened to the first Dear Future Partner, you probably finished the episode and thought... "did he even talk about dating..." and you would be mostly right. Kris super dodged most of the questions or kept things pretty shallow. A year though, we're trying again and hopefully you'll finish this episode and think "oh okay, maybe he is ready for dating?"
We have the Lawn Don himself on today's episode: Brian Wilson! If the name sounds familiar, it's because we had his wife, Shamaine Wilson, as a guest on an earlier episode to discuss her small business, Ivy Grace Boutique. This couple is out here crushing it with their small businesses and we are so glad to finally have Brian stop by for an episode! He's going into his first full Wilson's Lawn Care season so we got to talk to him about how this business came about and how it moved from side hustle to full time company.
In this episode, Kris and Ema discuss their book club pick: "Felix Ever After" by Kacen Callender. This novel pulled at our heartstrings and we discuss our favorite parts, characters, and overall themes and messaging of the book. Overall, we ranked it a 10/5 stars because it was just that good. We also discuss our ongoing TBR lists, some other book recommendations, and we announce our book club read for this month!
Kris and Ema welcome their friend, Nau, to the podcast to discuss the mental health impact of testing positive for COVID. They also discuss the impact that it has on different parts of their lives, especially when it comes to the different industries that they work in and the locations where they all live. Listen in to hear their thoughts on living in a pandemic and making sense of this new normal.
Ema and I loved Vision Boards so much last year that we're making new ones this year. After some research, we found the best way to create a Vision Board is to reflect and then envision. This episode is our intentional setting visualization for 2022. For us, 2021 was a year of transition and laying foundations. 2022 is the year of refinement and building on those foundations.
We loved our 2021 Vision Boards so much that we're creating new ones for 2022! Ema actually did research this time around and found that a major part of creating a new Vision Board is reflecting on previous boards. Our episode really focuses on that reflection so that we can set our intentions for the new year on our new Vision Boards!
Happy Holidays! In today's episode, we play This Or That: Holiday Edition. Play along with us and see if you agree with our responses! We hope everyone has a safe and healthy new year and we hope to see y'all next year!
It has been one year since our first podcast episode dropped. Here we are 24 episodes later and reflecting on a year of creating a podcast with your best friend!
Kris and Ema haven't had a chance to check-in face to face so this episode is also a way for them to catch up! We talk birthdays, oven fails, getting sick, etc. Hope you'll listen in!
We've both moved recently. Or in Ema's case, moved twice. It was an experience for both of us to say the least! We share our journey as well as some tips and tricks (mostly for our future selves)!
Trigger Warning: The Magicians contains many trigger warnings (rpe, sxual asalt, sxual abse), please watch with your own discretion as the episodes with the trigger warnings do not warn audiences beforehand.
In today's episode, Kris and Ema discuss another show that they watched together: The Magicians. They discuss what they liked, didn't like, and gave it a final rating.
The Magicians is a show that follows a group of friends who learn about magic as adults and begin to navigate both the real world and a fantasy world, while trying to understand the inner workings of their newfound powers. They have to save the world countless times from magical beings, mythological beings, and sometimes just from themselves.
Hello and welcome back to the Tea With Krema! In this episode, we explain our new format for TTWK and also explain our long hiatus and give a life update.
Hair is an interesting topic. We’ve both had our own personal journeys coming to terms with our hair, and all of the things that come along with loving and caring for it.
We both recently finished this show and truly enjoyed it! Now we are taking the time to sit down and discuss our favorite moments, moments that made us cry, and even the moments that were downright infuriating. SPOILER ALERT We will be discussing all the seasons so if you have not seen this show yet and don't want any spoilers, we recommend you only listen to the first 5 minutes and the last 3 minutes of today's episode. Otherwise, enjoy!
Teaching this past year was especially challenging considering we were all dealing with a global pandemic. Ema and Kris take time to reflect on our experiences, both the good and the bad, before moving into your future plans.
In January, Kris and Ema created vision boards for all the things they wanted to accomplish and manifest for 2021. Listen in to hear how those goals and visions are coming along. Will we be changing anything going into the rest of the school year? Have we already accomplished all of our other goals on our board?
The podcast that got Ema and I are here!!! Join us as we learn more about What The Trio, a podcast by Kidd, Missy, and Kawehi. We highlight their podcasting journey as well as some obstacles they've encountered along the way.
Kris and Ema learn how to use sound effects in this episode! Cue applause track They also play some fun word games. Play along with them and let them know how you scored on the Instagram post for the new episode!
Ema and I invite the founder of Ivy Grace Boutique to the show to learn more about her hobby-turned-business. "My name is Shamaine Wilson and I have an addiction! I’m addicted to setting goals and crushing them. Some call me ambitious, others call me crazy. I am a Jesus lover, wife, mother of 3 boys, educator, and recently, an entrepreneur."
Kris and Ema have been trying to start a book club for a while now and after multiple starts, they get down to business to figure out what they want in a book club. Join them as they figure out what kinds of books they'd like to read and what kinds of discussions they hope to have. Would you join this book duo? Stay tuned to their Instagram (@theteawithkrema) as they pick out their first book to read and discuss together.
Ema’s birthday is this month and we wanted to celebrate by dedicating an entire episode to learn as much about her as possible. The questions range from hilarious to absolutely serious. Join as we take a deep dive and really get to know one of the cohosts of The Tea with Krema.
We made fitness goals for the month of February. Today, we check in to see how those goals went and what we can do better with our future fitness endeavors.
We have grown up in a generation that first felt the impacts of social media in middle school. There were no guides on how to navigate these platforms or their potential long term ramifications. We consider how we have been impacted by social media in our lives, if we would change our past approaches, and how we’ll continue to deal with it moving forward.
Everyone seems to have goals for Kris’ dating life except Kris. We sit down and learn about his dating history and consider HIS dating goals and how to reconcile those with everyone else’s goals.
Ema and Izak have been dating for 10 long years. After all this time, we sit down and discuss how things got started and where things are going. Kris asks deep probing questions to learn more about the highs and lows of a 10 year relationship.
In Part 2, Kris and Ema continue their conversation about their identies and whether they would consider those identies surface level, important, or core identities. This conversation helps them truly understand one another's foundations and provides a foundation for future conversations.
Ema and Kris come from very different cultures. We are both mixed, but that’s where our cultural similarities end. We take this time to reflect on how our identities as well as lay the foundation for future conversations about our cultures. This episode is part 1 of 2 of our identity mapping conversation.