Erika Mahoney is an award-winning journalist, host, and creator. She is an on-air host at KAZU Public Radio, NPR for the Monterey Bay, and tells stories about what it means to be human — from life and loss to love, motherhood, and the questions that don’t have easy answers.

Erika was a journalist accustomed to covering other people’s stories. Then, in 2021, she suddenly found herself on the other side of the story.

Six months pregnant with her first child, Erika’s father, Kevin Mahoney, was killed in the mass shooting at King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado. In the span of a few months, she lost her father to an unthinkable act of violence and became a mother — experiences that profoundly changed the way she understood grief, storytelling, and what it means to move forward when life changes in an instant.

Those experiences eventually led Erika to create Senseless, her podcast from Lemonada Media. The first season explored grief, trauma, justice, love, and life after mass tragedy — and opened the door to a larger question that continues to guide her work: How do we make sense of the things in life that feel senseless?

Today, Erika explores that question and others through journalism, conversations, writing, and storytelling about life, loss, love, motherhood, and the beautiful complexity of being human.