They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  You know what’s really worth a lot?  Both.  Science tells us that if we both see and hear a concept our retention and comprehension go through the roof.  It was this fact that today’s guest, William Warren, unknowingly channeled when he sketched concepts out during meetings at his former company.  His drawings were so great that he became known for them in the office, and ultimately left to start a company dedicated to them and the art of visual communication.

Like just about everything else under the sun these days, we seem to be putting a lot more scrutiny and focus on the workplace.  And why not?  It’s where we spend the majority of our day.  There’s the ‘work is work’ camp who believe that work was never meant to be fun, they pay you for it after all.  There’s the ‘work should be fun and rewarding’ camp who believe that each of us should be able to have a role we enjoy.  Luckily for us, more and more companies are coming around to the latter camp.  Happier bees make more honey.  Today’s guest, Gianna Biscontini, is a certified behavior analyst and founder of W3RKWELL.  She created W3RKWELL to help other companies understand how to keep employees happy and healthy for the long run.

What is your brand? Are you the funny one that also has a soft side? Are you the quiet one that opens up to close friends? It can be so hard to nail down because people are so complex, and we’re constantly changing. The same can be said of most businesses. This is why businesses are turning to outside experts, like today’s guests from Blow Branding, to help them define their brand. Is it what you do? Why you do it? How you make people feel? We’ll learn all about the recipe in today’s episode.

Picture the person that you think has the perfect job?  Who are they?  If I had to guess I would say that the person you are imagining has a job that they love.  Perhaps a trade that they’re really good at.  I’m always so envious of the chef’s I see on Chef’s Table. These people have a singular focus.  One that they love and one that they’re great at.  Doesn’t that make for the perfect job?  ‘Find something you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’ sort of stuff.  Well, what if you’re like today’s guest, Khalif El-Amin, and you don’t want to find just one thing?  What if you want to do a lot of different things?  And help other people do a lot of different things?  Now that can give a restless soul like me some hope.

What do you think ‘The American Dream’ is?  This was one of that hardest questions I was ever given in a small class in college.  Every student was put on the spot and had to answer in front of everyone else.  It was one of those times where you know the person asking has the ‘correct’ answer in their heads, and they just want to see what you’ll say, but you have no idea what they want you to say.  I don’t remember what my answer was, or what the correct answer was, but I often ponder the question.  What is The American Dream?  And does it change over time?

The most concrete and simple answer I can give to this is to be a property owner.  The single act of owning property is a statement that you live in a free and democratic society, and you are not going to be reliant on other people for your welfare.  It allows you to spend your greatest lifetime allocation of money on yourself.  It does…a lot.  And what’s more American than owning a piece of America.  Today I speak with Brandon Pfannenstiel.   He’s come up with an awesome business idea to help turn renters into owners, and put people on the path to the American Dream.

They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. I’d say that’s pretty good advice, and today’s guest is the living embodiment of why.  Jamie went from broadway actor to being recognized as one of the foremost experts on baby gear in the world.  Jamie is a single male with no kids and no plans for having them.  Someone whom you would not look at and think, there is a guy that knows all about babies. Yet, life is a strange and beautiful thing that takes us down paths we would never imagine.

As many of you know, our sound engineer is currently out because he and his wife just had their first baby.  Today we honor him and parents everywhere with an episode all about babies and the interesting ways we can have them.  Many prospective parents face difficulties when trying to get pregnant.  Today’s guest, Katie Cline, will explain the various options available today to have a child.  We’ll take a deeper dive into Katie’s forte, embryo adoption, and how this relatively new procedure is helping struggling couples have children of their own.

Have you ever wondered about how that pair of shoes you’ve been wanting shows up in an ad for you online?  Just how much data is being collected on you and how is it being used for marketing?  Enter the world of programmatic advertising.  Chris Cox will tell us all about the present and future of the marketing and advertising world.

First of all, I want to say that my thoughts are with everyone in California that is currently displaced because of the fires.  I also want to send out a huge thank you to all of the amazing men and women that fight fires like this when they arise.  If you would like to come on the show and tell your story, we would love to have you.  

In today’s episode I speak with Tyler Cross who is a prescribed burn crew member for a nature conservation company.  It seems counter intuitive when it damages homes and encroaches on urban areas, but fire can be a really good and natural thing.  Tyler will tell us why prescribed burns can be a good thing, and how certain pockets of nature thrive with regular fire.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that all of us are going to be old someday.  Yet, we don’t seem to give the elderly the amount of respect or attention that we would most likely want for our future selves.  The is unfortunate socially, but can become a real predicament when it comes to looking at and tackling the problems that face senior citizens today.  Trying to raise money for educating children in a third world country?  Here’s my credit card.  Trying to raise money for the elderly?  Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.  This is the uphill battle that today’s guest, Meg Barhite, has to face in her career.  She loves the elderly and will explain what her company does to help.

Reading is something that, like most people, I didn’t really take to until I got older.  When I was growing up, even through high school and college, I had way too much stuff on my plate to concern myself with reading.  Which friends house am I gonna go over to?  How can I cover up the fact that I didn’t do my homework today?  Does Madison like me or is she just being really nice?  So many questions and concerns running around my head, and reading definitely wasn’t one of them.  In the past few years though, things have really slowed down for me in the chronic existential crisis mode that is youth, and alas I have found books.  Luckily for our species there are some that are more mature than I was.  The impressive few that enjoy learning and reading at a young age.  Today we speak to Kara McCabe who liked reading so much she decided she wanted to be a high school English teacher.  Now, as an English teacher in the U.S. and as a volunteer teacher to girls in Afghanistan, she helps recruit the next generation of young readers.

As humans we are on a never ending quest to relate to each other.  It’s one of our best universal qualities.  Sympathy.  Empathy.  Walk a mile in their shoes.  We have words for all of it.  It is this unyielding empathy that makes literature, and the characters in the stories that we tell, so important.  When we relate to a character on the page, we may open up more to characters like that in our lives.  We may even open up more to parts of ourselves that we previously shied away from.  It is with this idea in mind that today’s guest, Maura Lee Bee, writes.  Her characters are often atypical, which is exactly why we should take the time to get to know them.

Imagine the one thing that truly captivates you.  The thing that you love doing, thinking about, and learning about.  Now imagine that you get the opportunity to do that thing for a living, and then imagine that you’re surrounded by other amazing people, from all over the world, who love that thing just as much as you do.  Today’s guest, Tom Perry, is a brilliant particle physicist working at the mecca of particle physics CERN.  He and thousands of other physicists work daily at the Large Hadron Collider to make some of the great scientific discoveries of our time.  In part one of our interview we’ll learn about life at CERN, the LHC, and what happens when you smash two protons together at close to the speed of light.

“You can find magic wherever you look.  Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.” - Dr. Seuss  

It’s been a while since I felt the magic and wonder in my life that I felt regularly as a child.  Luckily for me, in my adult years, I’ve learned that Dr. Seuss is right.  All you need to suddenly be in a place where magic and mystery are still alive and well is a book.  Luckily for them, many children realize that you don’t have to wait until you’re a boring old adult to have this epiphany.  Today we speak with the children’s librarian for the Boston Public Library, Maggie Levine.  She’ll tell us about what the heck librarians do all day, and explain why being a librarian for children is so much more fun than working with adults.

Have you ever been sick before?  How did you ultimately get better?  If it was anything more than a common cold, it probably involved taking some drugs.  The miraculous little pills that help us get back on our feet more quickly, or in the case of something more serious, get back on our feet at all.Today we learn about the drugs we take and the people that make them.  Emma has the incredibly important job of helping to create molecules that treat cancer, with the goal of one day eradicating it all together.

What goes into your mouth usually matters quite a bit more than what comes out.  Food allergies, celiac, IBS, cancer, Alzheimer's, depression; things that impact us physically, mentally, and emotionally all seem to be on the rise.  And yet do a quick google search and you can find someone that has fought every one of these things with changes to their diet.  With stakes like these, and general energy and happiness levels in play for all of us, it’s a wonder that more of us don’t track our diet and lifestyle.  What sorts of inputs are we giving our bodies, and how does changing those inputs change our bodies output?  Today’s guest has struggled with Celiac Disease and IBS, but has been living pain and symptom free for a while now. Laura will share her story, tips, and techniques with us, and go over the wonderful food and lifestyle diary she made in the process.

Language is unquestionably the most important revelation that occurred throughout human history.  An easy way to explain a complicated idea to someone.  A quick way to let someone know how you feel.  A means to prevent conflict and allow us to settle our differences in a more civilized manner.  Despite it’s importance, we don’t really pay it much attention from day to day.  We just walk around, using our language of choice, not considering how that language came to be.  Today we learn about one of the most important languages in the history of the Western world, Latin.  We’ll learn how it evolved and its massive influence over the languages many of us speak today.

I want you to think about the difficult decisions you’ve made in your life.  More specifically, I want you to think about the tough conversations you’ve had to have about these decisions.  Maybe telling your parents that you’re moving out?  Dropping out of school to pursue your dream?  How about telling your significant other, “You know that large amount of student debt I accumulated to become a lawyer?  Well, I decided I’m going to stop practicing law and start baking pies for a living instead.”  I know, pretty specific, but it’s also exactly what today’s guest did.  Now, only a few years later, her pie shop has almost doubled it’s business, she’s in the works to get their dough sold at Walmart, and her #WorldPieDomination blog has over 1,000 readers a day.

Food.  We all love to eat it, and a lot of us even love to make it.  Maybe that’s why so many people dream of one day opening up their own restaurant.  Making food for strangers who would one day become your friends.  Getting the know the community around you through the worlds greatest (family friendly) pastime.  It really seems like a great existence.  Today we learn about the ups and downs of the restaurant life from brothers and successful restaurateurs, Aaron and Jared Pool.

What is yoga?  Is the answer a simple one about exercise or is it a complex one about philosophy and awareness?  After today’s interview I have a feeling that if you asked 10 different people you may get 10 different answers.  Christie Rafanan is an amazing yoga teacher in San Francisco, and a good friend of mine.  We’ll dive into that many layered question trying to define yoga and hear about how it transformed Christie’s life.

Time.  A true currency if there ever was one.  Yet, rarely do we consider as diligently as we should if we are spending it wisely.  We may shop for good deals on a regular basis, some may even call us frugal, but when it comes to spending our time we give it away to the first thing that comes our way.  Today’s guest, Garland Coulson, is a time management consultant and it’s his job to change that relationship.  He wants us to be frugal WITH time, and regularly consider how we are spending it.  In this interview he’ll give us plenty of tips to help us better manage our most valuable resource.

Most of us live our lives looking forward to things.  This is fortunate.  This is the privileged position that we are in.  It also means that we often neglect the present and miss out on the magic of the mundane.  We look forward to getting off work, so we don’t have as productive of a day.  We look forward to the weekend, so our week seems less fulfilling.  We look forward to getting to our destination, so we overlook the beauty in the journey.  Being present in the here and now is a popular philosophy, but few of us truly embrace it the way that today’s guest has.  Reed is a tour cyclist.  He rides his bike 100’s (sometimes 1000’s) of miles on vacation.  He has ridden similarly freakishly long distances to work and back, day after day.  Reed has taken what for many of us is the thing that stands between us and being where we want to be, and embraced it as the place that he does want to be.

I’m going to give anyone reading this a peek behind the curtain.  When I’m writing these blurbs for the episodes I try to come up with a thesis around which I will write.  Now, sometimes when I come up with a thesis I try to tap into the collective zeitgeist and think of a stat or a fact that we all agree with that is going to support my thesis.  Like, ‘we all like puppies’.  After I think of the stat or fact, I then go to good old google and search for it, to add some level of integrity to what I’m saying.  Cut to this weeks episode.

I think to myself, the most wanted superpower has to be flight.  This is gonna tie in perfectly to this week’s episode on zip-lining and why people like my guest, Mike Seper, love it.  So I go to google, see if a large scale survey has ever been done on what super powers people want, and low and behold one has been done.  Cool, just gotta make sure everyone wants to fly like Mike and I and then we can get this show on the road.  And…4th?!  4th place!  Flying is not first, nor second, nor third.  4th.  The number one power people want is invisibility, which in addition to ruining my blurb about flying, really throws a monkey wrench in my idea that the vast majority of humanity is good.  Something tells me that these people don’t want invisibility so that they can anonymously help more people.  Anyway, to all my fellow flyers at heart, today we learn about a way we can get close to the real thing.  

Some things speak to our minds.  These are the most common of things that we regularly encounter every day.  Other things speak to our hearts.  These are less common, but still encountered with regularity.  Rarely, oh so rarely, does something speak directly to our soul.  A good way to categorize these things is to realize that we, in turn, cannot really speak about them.  We don’t know how to describe something that speaks to our soul.  Think about a soul-mate, or love at first sight.  We can throw a lot of adjectives around about why we like that person, but those are just the words that speak to our hearts and minds, and probably apply to plenty of other people that we have met.  The thing that makes this one person so special cannot be spoken.  There is just a deep seated knowing in the soul.  

Amazingly, there are things that seem to speak to all of our souls, belying the notion that we are not connected.  Fire is the perfect example of this.  Anyone who has ever gone camping and stared into a fire can attest to the feeling that you get.  My best words to describe it would be a peaceful reverence, but again, words don’t really work here.  Today’s guest, Victoria Zajac, knows all about the soul affirming power of fire.  Rather than just be a cautious observer, Victoria decided to get up close and get to know fire even better.  Spinning, swallowing, dancing, breathing, you name it, Victoria does it.

Professional sports are such a unique and incredible thing.  Unlike many other professions where there can be prerequisites, necessary degrees, and boxes to check to be afforded an opportunity for employment, sports asks only one thing of you.  Are you one of the best people in the entire world that does this?  If the answer is no, well then you better work even harder until you are or move along and find yourself another profession.  It is the truest form of Darwinism that we have in modern society.  Today’s guest, Sean Lawton, is a professional Lacrosse player for the Boston Cannons.  He’ll tell us all about the trials and tribulations of becoming a professional athlete and distill the lessons he’s learned from the process.  Also, we’ll get a brief course in Lacrosse 101.

Applications and technology have really changed the look and feel of the world in the last decade.  Transportation, finances, dating, you name it, it’s all been changed and it all feels very different than it did just 10 years ago.  One area that might not seem very different is how we make physical goods.  Manufacturing mass quantities of goods that we use has remained fairly the same, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has changed.  Recently, mainstream adoption and advancements in 3D printing have paved the way for a whole new type of manufacturing, and with it, entirely new possibilities about the products we can make.  

A couple days ago we celebrated Thanksgiving.  It’s a wonderful holiday where we spend time with people that we love and think about the things in our lives that we are grateful for.  With that in mind I wanted to put out an episode that could touch on that note of gratitude, and what better episode could there be than an interview on organ donation.  It is the biggest and most important gift that you can give someone!  There were people this past Thursday that were sitting with their families, that would not have been sitting with their families had someone not given them the ultimate gift.  Today we learn about how the process works, and what we can do to make sure we are in a position to help.

Humans are some pretty complicated organisms.  We have a body, mind, and spirit all wrapped into one package.  Each needs it’s own nurturing and care, and the health of each will influence the other two.  Yet even knowing this, we are often “too busy” to really care for ourselves the way we know we should.  We may go to the gym and see how the time that we give to our bodies also helps pacify our minds, but how often do we try to work the other way around?  Today’s guest, Stephanie Kato, is a pioneer of the concept of Metaphysical Cleansing.  She is a firm believer in healing the physical body through work with the emotional and spiritual bodies.  Today she’ll teach us about the metaphysical path to holistic health. 

Do you believe in ghosts?  Like religion, your belief in the paranormal can really be swayed by the culture you belong to.  For some reason in America we don’t really embrace the idea of ghosts, and yet over 80 percent of our population believes in the afterlife.  Today’s guest, Craig Owens, is a talented photographer and, like many people, used to be ghost-agnositc. Then, one day Craig was doing a vintage photo shoot at a supposedly haunted hotel, and he experienced paranormal phenomena first hand while doing the shoot.  This planted the seeds for an amazing passion project called Haunted by History. Craig uses actors to recreate scenes at haunted hotels and takes truly unique photos that teleport the viewer back in time.

I consider myself a pretty fit guy.  I like to eat relatively healthy.  Go to the gym from time to time.  Go for daily walks with my dog and even the occasional run.  Yet every time I go to the gym I am quickly reminded that there are people that are in a whole different stratosphere of fitness than I am.  They are the 1%.  They can be described by the same sentences I wrote above about myself, but with far less adverbs and qualifiers.  They are fit, eat healthy, and go to the gym.  All in all, they are really awesome, disciplined people.  Today’s guest is the 1% of the 1%.  She is currently the USA Weightlifting National Champion in the 63kg category.  She’ll tell us all about the sport of weightlifting and explain what it takes to get to the top of the mountain.

Have you ever been cut off in traffic and felt that you now had a personal vendetta against the person in the other vehicle?  Have you ever gotten in an disagreement with a family member and proceeded to think about how angry they make you for the rest of the day?  Have you ever had a bad day and taken it out on someone that had nothing to do with it?  It sounds like you could use some practice in emotional regulation.  Today’s guest, Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona, explains how most of us could use a little work at regulating our emotional state.  She’ll give us tips and advice for recognizing our emotions as they enter a heightened state, and altering them to for our benefit.

Being just fine, in perfectly normal health, is such an incredible blessing that we all too frequently take for granted.  It is only when we go through aches and pains, viruses and diseases that we really really consider how lucky we usually are.  Yet, even with aches and pains there is one area of our health that is still taken for granted, and that is our mental health.  Many of us have the fortune of going through our lives and dealing with a little bit of anxiety here, some depression there, but all in all our brains are wired for normal mental health.  Today’s guest, Will Jiang, is not so lucky.  While going to college he suffered a psychotic break that later got him diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.  Will will tell us all about what it is like inside the mind of someone with schizophrenia, and how he was eventually able to to thrive in spite of his condition.

I have been a fan of podcasts for close to ten years now.  I’ve always loved their ability to open my mind and teach me something new.  Two years ago I decided to start my own.  Having my own podcast has taught me even more than listening to podcasts, and has been such an incredibly fun journey.  I get a lot of questions from listeners thinking about starting their own podcasts and I always recommend that they do.  Today I bring on a couple that have a wonderful podcast that features small businesses in Arizona.  It’s a great idea for a show that any one of you could try to replicate in your local area.  We’ll discuss the ins and outs, and ups and downs of podcasting.  So, if you are one of the many people that have thought about starting your own podcast, listen to today’s episode and get inspired!

Cancer.  It’s probably the scariest, most feared word in the English language.  It’s a word that none of us ever want to hear and yet, surprisingly, about 40-50% of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime.  That means that it’s a near guarantee that you or someone you are very close to will get cancer.  Today’s guest, Dr. Sarah Boston, is one of the leading veterinary cancer surgeons in the world.  A few years ago her professional and personal life merged when she found a lump on her neck that she had a bad feeling about.  Sarah then became her own advocate on the long journey to diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”  For the majority of human history these words were a great motivator, but probably not very realistic.  There was a whole lot that just plain and simple could not be done.  Then, with the advent of computers, that statement seemed a bit more true.  Those with enough time and money could tackle all sorts of problems.  More recently, with the proliferation of the internet and smartphones, it would seem that statement is darn near fact.  Apple realized this fact back in 2010 and coined the phrase “There’s an app for that”.  Today there are tools online that can help just about anybody program an app to do just about anything.  Matt is one such anybody and in just a few short months he learned how to program apps that solved his problems.

What do you believe in?  Do you only believe in what you can see and touch?  Do people say that you’re the most gullible person in the world and you’ll believe anything?  Are you religious, or is science your only deity?  Where do you stand on the occult and mysterious?  In the past people that chose to balk at religion and consider themselves married to science and logic could sleep soundly only believing in the physical world that science explained.  Then came quantum physics, and with it a bunch of unnerving and miraculous observations without explanation.  Suddenly being ‘logical’ and ‘scientific’ didn’t look so different from being a believer.  Things in the world of mystery and science fiction were now sounding more possible and plausible in the world of actual science.  Of particular interest to me, and the focus of today’s episode, is tarot.  Ask a question, pick some cards, and they will help guide your future.  Sound like BS?  It also sounds an awful lot like the law of attraction mixed with some quantum mechanics helping to guide your life.

Cities.  Suburbs.  Rural country.  These are three very different and distinct areas that we often categorize, subcategorize, and most importantly separate.  But what if aspects of each could move and fit into each other?  What if the most important and vital aspect of one could be moved into the others?  Farming and growing a sustainable, real people feeding amount of agriculture is often thought of as something that can only be done out in rural land.  However, people like today’s guests are using a little bit of technology and creativity to help bring agriculture to an urban setting, and from the sound of it things are going very well.

There are not many foods that are irrevocably linked to days or events in our lives.  Turkey, for instance, for people in the U.S. on Thanksgiving.  There are fewer foods still that share their tie with events throughout the world, across cultures.  Go to a birthday party in Japan and you will find a birthday cake.  Go to a wedding in Switzerland and you will certainly enjoy some wedding cake.  When you really think about it, cake is in some pretty rarified air.  It makes since then that some people get really into the art and craft of making truly amazing cakes.  Today’s guest, Corrie Rasmussen, explains the hobby and career of cake decorating.

Do you like to exercise and consider yourself pretty fit?  Let’s take a little test.  Do you like swimming?  How about swimming for two hours straight, nonstop?  Do you like riding your bike?  How about riding your bike for 112 miles, roughly the distance from Los Angeles to San Diego?  Or maybe you’re more of a runner.  How about running a full length marathon?  I feel like I like fitness as much as the next guy, but I’m not lining up to do any of that stuff!  Now, think about doing all 3 of those things, swimming for 2 hours, biking for 112 miles, and running a marathon BACK to BACK to BACK, with no stopping in between.  Seems pretty inhuman.  Well, it’s what today’s guest, and thousands of other people in the world do.  Today we’ll learn all about the Iron Man triathlon and the crazy people that do them.

Ahhhh beer, how I love thee.  Is there anything more refreshing than a Mexican beer with a lime on a hot day?  Is there anything more satisfying than a dunkelweizen in the fall?  Anything more perfect than a complex IPA or red ale?  The answer to all of these questions is of course, no.  Beer is such a wonderful beverage with so much depth to explore.  Most of us undertake this exploration by heading down to our local market or bar, getting something that sounds interesting, and then imbibing.  This exploration can be taken a step further however by inserting ourselves into the process earlier, and making the beer ourselves.  Today’s guest, Emma Christensen (author of Brew Better Beer and True Brews) gives us a lesson on home brewing and explains how making beer can deepen our appreciation for this wonderful beverage.