I don’t know how you feel, but I love weddings. I’m not a big fan of the traditions and black-tie-ness of most nuptials, but I am a HUGE fan of gatherings based on love, friendship, and family. Add to that an incredibly memorable day for at least two of the attendees, a verbal profession of love, and a hot dance floor where teens, grandma, and everyone in between can be seen, and I’d say we got a pretty magnificent event on our hands. So, what’s it like to have a wedding related job? Moreover, what’s it like to be entrusted to capture the heightened emotion of the day on film? Time to find out.
Marine Mammal Veterinarian (with Dr. Juli)
The ocean contains 71% of the Earth’s surface…it makes up 99% of the living space on the planet! And yet how much do we know about it? How much do we try to help its inhabitants? Me…Unfortunately, not so much. Today’s guest, Dr. Juli, has spent her entire adult life trying to help these creatures, trying to find out more about the 99%. She'll help us all learn more about that world and more about these amazing neighbors that call our planet home.
Experimental Particle Physicist (with Adam Bradley)
Who are we? Where do we come from? Just what the hell is going on out there?! That is what today’s guest, Adam Bradley, and his cohorts are trying to find out. Adam is an experimental particle physicist. Due to that lengthy title, it is Adam’s job to help us better understand the universe and our place in it. Dark matter, dark energy, and theoretical particles are part of his every day. If we hope to make it to the promised land as a species, it’s going to be thanks to smart people like Adam leading the way. Does all that knowledge weigh heavy on his mind, or is he able to live a normal life like the rest of us?
Caterer (with Simi Hansen)
James Beard said, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience”. No matter your station in life, or where in the world you live, food is the driving force for bringing people together to share stories and laughter. At most weddings the meal outshines the ceremony and becomes the main event. Every day, business deals go down over the dinner table where people both literally and figuratively break bread to find a common ground. And we just passed the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which does away with ambiguity and completely centers around the idea of coming together for a home cooked meal. Today’s guest, Simi Hansen, is one of the wonderful people enabling us to have our universal experience. Simi started her own successful catering business and brings amazing cuisine to where it is needed. She’ll tell us all about her strange path to becoming a chef and how changing other peoples experiences has changed her life.
Stay At Home Mom (with Brittany Marcotte)
Parenting. Holy crap. I want no part of it. I mean, who needs that sort of responsibility? I can barely take care of myself on a day-to-day basis. Put another human being under my care…that’s just downright negligent. But I do hold out hope that one day I’ll mature, thanks to today’s guest, my wonderful sister Brittany. Brittany is the most awesome, selfless parent you will ever meet, and currently she is a stay at home mom. Watching her has done a pretty good job at swaying me into thinking that maybe, one day, a million years from now, being a parent might actually not be that bad. Today she’ll tell us about what it’s like to go partly crazy from hearing Mickey Mouse songs all day, contemplating running away from home, and definitely not trading any of it for the world.
Air Traffic Controller (with Gabe Koa)
Have you ever thought about how much we take flying for granted? For one, the fact that we can even get off the ground is borderline miraculous. Something about thrust and lift, but it might as well be witchcraft as far as I’m concerned. Second is the fact that we manage to do so safely. Have you ever been in a plane crash? Do you know anyone that has ever been in a plane crash? Now replace the word plane with car and think of how many stories you can come up with. Would you ever take a long distance vacation if plane crashes were that common? The safety of air travel is pretty amazing, but not an accident or a fluke. It’s due to people like today’s guest, Gabe Koa. Gabe is an air traffic controller and he’ll give us a rundown on what a day in the life is like for one of the most important jobs in existence.
Baker (with Gillian Shaw)
Baking is so awesome. It’s fun and messy. For most people it reminds them of childhood. And you’re left with the greatest of treats when all is said and done. Just writing that series of sentence fragments makes me want to grab some eggs and sugar! Today’s guest was on the path to lawyerdom, and then looked around and said, ‘Forget this, it’s time to start baking!’ Now, years later, she has her own successful baking company whose goods can be found all over the bay area. How’d she do it? What lessons did she learn along the way? Just click play already!
Sommelier (with Sam Bogue)
Wine. The drink of the Gods. The blood or Christ. The Greeks and Romans each had a God dedicated to it and it was the focal point of Jesus’s first miracle and last supper. That’s quite a history for a beverage! So what is it that makes wine so awesome? So revered by man? And how does that reverie translate to today? We’ll speak with Sommelier Sam Bogue to learn all about what makes wine worth obsessing over.
Web Design (with Wes McDowell)
Have you ever been on a website before? Has it ever occurred to you that almost every website you go to was designed by a web designer? That fact reminds me a lot of the architecture episode. It’s almost hard to believe that EVERY building we walk by was conceived by an architect, and even harder to believe that EVERY website we visit was conceived in much the same way. Time to take a look into that career and see what this ubiquitous field is all about.
Architect (with Shayan Saghari)
Good ol’ architecture. Without it, we’d all be living in caves right now! No pyramids, no Machu Picchu, no Eiffel Tower. Thank god for us, people like Shayan exist to bring us out of the Stone Age and into the future. Using a dash of practicality, a pinch of creativity, and a heap of total badassness, Shayan helps people build their dream homes and by extension, their dreams. Let’s learn more about this awesome career that impacts how every one of us lives.
Vascular Surgeon
Do you get stressed out when your boss yells at you? Get a bad grade on a test? The waitress comes over to the table and you weren’t quite ready to order? Today’s guest, Dr. Raymond Shaheen, may make be able to help put some of that in perspective for you. Dr. Shaheen is a vascular surgeon who very regularly has to make life or death decisions to help save the lives’ and limbs’ of patients. We’ll learn what it is like to carry that sort of mental burden, we’ll hear some of the memorable stories from Dr. Shaheen’s career, and most importantly we’ll find out just what the heck a vascular surgeon does.