AfterParty contributor Tracy Chabala not only writes a good, um, 85% of the stories that are now appearing on the site but her work has also appeared in The LA Times, The LA Weekly and Salon. She holds a Masters in Professional Writing from USC and is working on a memoir about her journey through the sausage fest of fine dining kitchens (based on her history as a pastry chef). Among the topics she's covered on the site are escaping from a scary rehab, life in a mental ward and being 13th-stepped. If anyone is a testament to surviving most anything and then thriving, it is this girl. And—surprise!—this episode featured a special guest: Danielle Stewart, who appeared on the podcast so long ago that the sound was terrible and who has written even more for the site than Tracy (she's also an AfterParty editor and all-around problem solver around here). In this episode, we discuss getting 13th stepped and then being the 13th stepper, drinking Kombucha in sobriety and speaking openly about being in AA, among other topics.

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or listen to it on Soundcloud or Stitcher. Find Tracy Chabala on Twitter and her own site.

Journalist, author and editor Richard Rushfield is a man of many hats and even more opinions—most of them about relationships. A contributor to Vanity Fair, author of three books and former editor at The LA Times, Gawker, Buzzfeed, Yahoo and more, Rushfield is now the Editor-in-Chief of HitFix.

As AfterPartyPod veers into a direction of focusing not just on recovery from addiction but also on developing healthier relationships, Rushfield came in to school me (and you) on how to both find and then maintain romance. He claims that he comes by this knowledge by having worked on the TV show Blind Date as well as by his friendship with author Robert Greene (author of The Art of Seduction, among many other bestselling books). But the spin he gives is all Rushfield-ian (he is, it's worth mentioning, married to the brilliant and lovely journalist Nicole LaPorte and they have two kids). In this episode, he and AfterParty's Anna David discuss ways to seem desirable (ask to borrow someone's phone and then leave them sitting there while you go use it), whether or not we know if we're interested in someone immediately (according to him, yes) and why women need to talk less, among many other topics.