4.8 • 861 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
When her abusive husband kidnapped her child for nine days, Karen Palmer knew it was time to run. The writer and Pushcart Prize-winner joins guest host Courtney Collins to discuss the early teenage trauma that drove her into a dangerous relationship with her ex-husband, why she fled into “D.I.Y witness protection” and changed her identity, and how she finally found the courage to write about her experiences. Her book is “She’s Under Here: A Memoir.”
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. |
| 0:05.8 | A few years ago, learning about the forgotten meaning of the pursuit of happiness changed my life. |
| 0:12.0 | When the founders wrote that famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence, |
| 0:15.6 | they meant an ongoing commitment to self-improvement and lifelong learning. |
| 0:20.5 | This discovery inspired me to write a book, |
| 0:22.8 | and in my new podcast, I explore the founder's lives with the historians who know them best. |
| 0:27.8 | Plus, filmmaker Ken Byrne shares his daily practice of self-reflection. Join me for Pursuit, |
| 0:34.4 | the Founder's Guide to Happiness. A Better Help ad. |
| 0:39.0 | Lewis Capaldi partnered with Better Help to get word out about how important therapy can be. |
| 0:44.3 | I struggle most weeks to get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or whatever. |
| 0:49.7 | Like even like to open the laptop to talk to, my therapist sometimes could be really difficult. |
| 0:54.1 | But I do it because I realize how important it is for me to continue to feel good. |
| 0:58.7 | Because I felt the best I've felt in a long time through therapy. |
| 1:02.3 | Learn more about online therapy at betterhelp.com. Trying to leave a dangerous or abusive partner is not black and white. |
| 1:18.6 | There's no simple universal exit route involving law enforcement doesn't guarantee safety. |
| 1:24.6 | If there are children involved, even thornier complications arise. |
| 1:29.5 | For Karen Palmer, even existing with the looming threat of her dangerous ex-husband became |
| 1:34.6 | impossible, so she sold most of her possessions, bought a used car with cash, buckled her kids |
| 1:40.6 | in the back seat, and alongside her new husband, left left her old life behind and started a new one. |
| 1:46.2 | From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Courtney Collins in for Chris Boyd. |
| 1:51.2 | Palmer's new memoir follows her complicated childhood and tumultuous marriage to the man who would later become a source of terror, |
| 1:59.0 | and it follows her family as they disappear and begin again. |
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