Chicken Soup For The Soul With Amy Newmark

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and today we’re talking about when husbands go shopping. Need I say more? These stories are from our new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: I Can’t Stop Laughing. This book is a true gift – one you can give yourself or anyone else in your life. Because we all need some comic relief these days, something to distract us from current events, social media, and all the other negative stuff we’re exposed to. The 101 stories in this new collection will you feel good, and they’re all true, related to us by the people who lived through these embarrassing, hilarious, and truly human experiences. No one is safe from our storytellers, from family members to friends to colleagues, and of course, spouses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and today I’m sharing a couple of funny stories from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Being Grandma, stories about grandmas going rogue. We have a little bit of everything in this book, stories about becoming a grandmother, getting that special grandmother name, taking the grandkids on adventures, being a regular babysitter, acting like a kid again, learning how to use technology to stay closer to the grandchildren, and a whole lot more. Some of the stories are about youthful grandmas and some are about grandmas who might be their eighties and nineties but don’t give in to age and continue doing exactly what they want to do. That’s what we’re going to talk about today, starting with a story by Laurel Shannon called “Grandma on the Lam.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and today I’m introducing our new humor book. I think this is something like the tenth humor book that we’ve published and they’re always very popular. They’re also so much fun to work on—reading the thousands of submissions and then picking the 101 to be included in the book. I found I was laughing out loud even the third time I read some of these stories. These are all feel-good stories, a welcome interlude during these times and a hilarious alternative to watching or reading the news. They’re all true—and revealing—and revealing is what today’s episode is about: two stories that are about getting naked, by accident, in front of the in-laws. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I’m excited about sharing stories with you from our new book about being a grandmother. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Being Grandma will make a great gift for Mother’s Day or any other occasion. It’s filled with stories written by grandmothers and also by grandchildren and grown children about the grandmothers in their lives. Now, if you have been exposed to small children you know that they all seem to love bathroom humor, so today’s stories are about when grandmas dive right in and get inappropriate along with their grandchildren. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I’m pleased to share new stories with you from Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Cat, which is our latest best-selling book of cat stories. We spent two years collecting stories for this book and there is SO MUCH variety in terms of what people learned from their cats – about resilience, and forgiveness, and living in the moment, and just plain being clever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and it’s Wow Wednesday, when I share stories that are a bit surprising or miraculous or just plain weird. And I happen to love our stories about dreams and how they can rather magically change your life. Whether you think that dreams are divinely inspired or whether you think that dreams are a result of your subconscious telling you stuff that you kind of know already but were too distracted to pay attention to, we have hundreds of stories about dreams that were like GPS for the people who had them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and we have a new book I’m very passionate about. It’s all about how Self-Care Isn’t Selfish. That’s because self-care is not optional. It’s a necessary, powerful commitment to making yourself a priority. And one of those priorities is your health. We all know that fitness is important, and what’s great about it is that you get to choose your own path to fitness. You don’t have to do what your friend is doing, or your spouse, there are a hundred different ways that you can pursue fitness in a way that works for you. All you have to do is pick your own way, and then put yourself on your to-do list. Fitness needs to come first. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and today we’re talking about traveling with grandchildren, from the mundane, like those emergency bathroom visits, to the sublime, which is basically everything else that happens when you travel with those amazing children. These stories are in our very cool new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Being Grandma, which is a fabulous gift for every grandmother out there, whether she’s brand new to the job or an old hand.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it’s Wow Wednesday, which is when I find awe-inspiring or surprising stories to share with you. Today I’ve got a couple of cool stories from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Being Grandma. These stories are written by grandmothers and by their very appreciative families… and our first one is something new for me, even though I’ve personally published more than 17,000 new stories during the last 18 years that I’ve been editor-in-chief here. Nancy Geiger tells us about her amazing mother, who was born in 1923 and lived through the Depression and then got married right before World War II and lived through all the hardships that Americans faced during that period. And her poor mom became a widow with infant twins right before the end of the war. She married again, had two more twins and another child, and was widowed again at age 60. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and today I’m sharing a couple of stories from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tap into Your Inner Strength, stories that will give you a better understanding of the troubles other people have and help put our own in perspective. When tough times happen, I think we’re all surprised by how strong and capable we can be, but it’s also great to see how other people do it, and we feel so much less sorry for ourselves when we have role models—often, people who are going through much worse problems than we are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I’m excited about sharing another couple of stories with you from our book for grandmothers. This is the best book ever for grandmas – and I should know, as I have seven grandchildren and they’re a huge part of my life. When you become a grandmother it’s so exciting, but also a bit like stepping into a minefield. You have your own expectations, but the new baby’s parents have expectations too, and theirs basically have to take precedence. They’re in charge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I’m pleased to add another element to our podcast – excerpts from our new audiobooks. We have a lot of audiobooks out there, and a lot more coming, and I thought you’d enjoy hearing some of the stories narrated by professional actors. So today, with permission of Simon & Schuster, I’m going to share a couple of stories from the Simon & Schuster audiobook version of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope, Faith & Miracles, authored and edited by me! It’s copyright 2025 by Chicken Soup for the Soul, and available now in all the places you go to listen to audiobooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I’m excited about sharing stories with you from our new book about being a grandmother. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Being Grandma will make a great gift for Mother’s Day or any other occasion. It’s filled with stories written by grandmothers and also by grandchildren and grown children about the grandmothers in their lives. I’m biased because I have seven grandchildren but I think this book is AMAZING. Today I want to share a couple of stories that will actually be helpful to anyone who is involved with taking kids shopping for gifts or providing gifts to children, as there are some good ideas in these stories about how to make shopping a more meaningful experience for kids instead of just the same old “more more more I want” kind of thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and it’s Friend Friday, which means I’m chatting with someone interesting from the Chicken Soup for the Soul world. Today I’d like to introduce you to Tess Clarkson, who has written two great stories for us, both about miraculous events. She also has such an interesting background that I wanted you to meet her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it’s Wow Wednesday. I always try to share awe-inspiring or surprising stories with you on Wednesdays, so I went back to one of our older books and found a couple that I really love from one of our biggest bestsellers, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Touched by an Angel. They are both about what I call “deathbed miracles.” We do get a lot of stories about miraculous things that happen even during an awful time, the death of a family member. It’s nice to hear these stories that provided so much wonder and comfort to family members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. I’m continuing to share stories with you from our new book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Self-Care Isn’t Selfish. We made this book because this is such an important truth for us all to embrace. I’m sure you’ve been through plenty of things where you have NOT put yourself first, where you didn’t even put yourself on your to-do list AT ALL. And that’s not good. It’s bad for you and it’s bad for all the people you take care of too. Because you’re no good to them if you’re frazzled and exhausted and starting to get resentful because your needs are not being addressed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and today I want to share a couple of stories with you that I found so helpful. These are about grieving, and how, instead of just focusing on what you’ve LOST, you can also focus on what you HAD and be grateful for having had that. These stories are from a powerful new collection of stories that we selected from our library, all about how you can tap into your inner strength. Because we all have these reserves inside us just waiting to be called upon when we need them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I’m pleased to share another couple of stories with you from one of our new audiobooks. Today’s stories are about amazing coincidences and they’re from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles, Angels & Messages from Heaven. We owe thanks to Simon & Schuster Audio for permission to play a couple of these stories from the audiobook of our Miracles, Angels & Messages from Heaven book, edited by me and the audiobook copyright 2026 and available now in all the places you go to listen to audiobooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and today I’m sharing some very wise advice from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tap into Your Inner Strength. This book contains 101 stories from our library about resilience during tough times. It always amazes me how much inner strength we have inside us, just waiting to be called upon. I’m sure you’ve been through things that were awful that you managed to weather and you looked back and wondered how you did it. When tough times happen, I think we’re all surprised by how strong and capable we can be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it’s Amy Newmark and I want to share a couple of stories with you today from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, stories that may help you develop a strategy for making your resolutions stick… or even better, give you better resolutions and goals. When we put together this new collection we chose the best advice and the most relatable stories we found among the thousands of submissions we received, and I think you’ll definitely find something that resonates with you. The stories in the book cover the most common resolutions, such as getting fit, losing weight, quitting smoking, and getting organized, but they also cover time management, improving relationships, engaging in self-care, and learning how to stress less. And no matter what your resolution, the tips from our writers will help you, finally, have success with your resolutions. Today I’m sharing a couple of stories from people who made their resolutions work by DOING LESS, by cleaning the unwanted stuff off their cale