Just stop right there.  I know what you’re thinking.  ANOTHER episode about alcohol…that…is…AWESOME!  And you’re right, it is awesome.  Do you know how many treaties were signed over a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon?  All of them.  Do you know how many businesses were founded over a carafe of Zinfandel?  All of them.  Do you know how many statistics I’ve made up while drinking a glass of Sangiovese?  None of them, because that would be totally irresponsible.  Today’s guest, Madeline Puckette, is the ultimate Renaissance woman.  She’s the graphic designer responsible for some of the greatest wine infographcs that have ever been made.  She was voted Wine Blogger of the Year at the International Wine and Spirits Competition for her site, Wine Folly.  And now, she’s responsible for the #1 selling wine book on Amazon of the same name…and as of my writing this it hasn’t even come out yet!  So how, in just a few short years, do you completely take the wine world by storm?


Wine Blogger

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, ‘The only constant is change.’  Boy was he ever right.  Times they are a changing.  Some things for the good, others for the not as good, but that’s all a matter of perspective.  From my perspective, one of the better changes to come about in the last decade or so is bringing an element of casualness to once very formal and very serious institutions.  Showing that just because something looks more relaxed from the outside doesn’t mean that all of the emotion and substance that makes it special is not still on the inside.  On the contrary, it can make it even more special as it becomes approachable and inviting to a larger group a people.  One example of this is modern ‘fine dining’ institutions.  Most of the famous young chefs in the world work at restaurants that you can feel at home in.  No tuxedo necessary, just come in and enjoy the warm, unique atmosphere and amazing food.  This similar change has come around to the institution of weddings.  Gone are the days of 90% of people getting married in churches and country clubs, here are the days of my wife and I getting married outdoors in Yosemite.  Today’s guest, Maggie Lord, sensed the writing on the wall and created a Rustic Wedding (and Rustic Baby) empire.  She is the founder of one of the most popular wedding blogs, RusticWeddingChic.com, and proves that you don’t have to be precious and formal to be beautiful, memorable, and filled with emotion.


Wedding Blogger

Running, for reasons I personally can’t begin to imagine, is the most common and most popular sport in the world.  I suppose the barrier to entry is pretty low as everyone is born with the requisite materials to be a runner.  But have you ever tried running?  Do you have any idea how hard it is?!  If you haven’t run in a while, try running a mile this week.  There’s a 50/50 chance you’ll just collapse into an asthmatic blob after about 1,000 feet.  Yet somehow, every year, millions of people line up at starting lines all over the world to run marathons.  Forget 1,000 feet, we’re talking 138,336.  On purpose!  Even more impressive is the small population of ultra runners across the world.  They look at a marathon as a warm up, and start their races at 50k.  And the races go all the way up to, well, straight up Forest Gump style action.  Perhaps even crazier is that many of these ultra runners, like today’s guest Ryan Ghelfi, run all over rugged mountains and uneven terrain while doing this.  Some call it ultra running, some call it trail running, I call it totally insane, brave, and awesome.

Ultra Runner

Why do we always seem to limit ourselves?  ‘A job that awesome just isn’t going to happen for me.’  ‘That kind of success isn’t meant for me.’  ‘A relationship that great just isn’t in the cards for me.’  How do we know?  Who said that we could read the future like that?  You never know when something wonderful can be just around the corner.  Today’s guest Tyler Hilton followed his heart and never limited himself, and has been paid back in return.  He decided to not settle for having one awesome job and by the age of 21 had two.  He’ll tell us all about what it’s like to live two awesome lives at once, and explain why you should never assume what tomorrow holds in store for you because it might be more amazing than you could ever imagine.

Actor & Musician

Do you like nod your head to the beat?  Shake your butt?  Pop and lock?  Too far?  Well for today’s interviewee it’s not far enough!  Keon Saghari started dancing in classes at age 3 and never looked back.  There have been ups and downs over the years, but she is now a core member of Axis Dance Company in Oakland, CA.  She’ll tell us about what it took to get there and what her days are like now that she is living the dream.

Professional Dancer

Predator and prey, the circle of life. Who needs that when I’ve got Whole Foods? We may have used our brain power to remove ourselves from the food chain long ago, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t recreate the predator and prey roles for fun. Is that ethical though? Is there something sick and twisted about shooting a spear through a fish for your own enjoyment and meal? After speaking with today’s guests I say absolutely not. The roles of predator and prey naturally give the predator a respect for its prey. A respect that the rest of us living outside the food chain may try to empathize with and imagine, but can’t truly appreciate. In a bizarre twist the rest of us are left with a respect for money, our source for food on the table. Let’s hear from a couple of would be predators about the virtues (and fun!) of picking up the hobby of spearfishing.

Spearfishing (with Issac Daly & Levi Brown)

Flora, how we love thee. Think of how boring our surroundings would be without the vibrant colors of flowers, the varied shapes of bushes, and the sheer majesty of trees. We’re so lucky to have nature around us all the time. Many of us even have yards right outside out house that we can go and enjoy any time we want. Nature is wild though, and sometimes that means having a crazy, unmanageable yard that doesn’t inspire very much love. It can be hard to tame nature into something both usable and beautiful. Luckily for us there are people like Linda that specialize in making this dichotomy come together.

Landscape Design (with Linda Kelso)

Growth takes time.  Just ask an 8 year old boy who is smaller than everyone else in his class.  And success, well, success doesn’t happen overnight.  Just ask the founder of nearly every company imaginable.  But sometimes, very rarely, very very rarely, all the stars and planets align.  Sometimes you make a product that you hope people will like, and it turns out to be the product that seemingly everyone was waiting for their whole lives.  Sometimes you come to the realization that people just gotta catch em’ all.  

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Pokemon Go Expert (with Reddit Moderator - Sebastian Lamerichs)

Most people in the world don’t get enough exercise.  It’s just…so…hard.  It’s like work.  And we already have to work for a living.  Who wants even more work to do when we get done with work?  Many of us that do exercise tolerate it for the benefits, and we manage to maintain discipline long enough to get us to the gym or out the door for a run.  Others constantly look for more ways to spice up exercise to make it more than tolerable, more than just work.  Something, dare I say, closer to fun.  Today’s guest is a group fitness instructor and his whole goal is to help you have a good time while achieving your fitness goals. 

Group Fitness Instructor (with Mauro Wilder)

Sleep is a such an incredibly important part of life.  We all know that.  Strangely, it may also be the most universally taken for granted part of life that we all share.  When we are sleeping good and able to fall asleep easily we hardly give sleep a second thought.  It’s just…something you do.  When we can’t sleep, our bed can become a source of anxiety, our mind a prison, and our life a nightmare.  It’s the number one foundational cornerstone to both physical and mental health.  Today’s guest, Drew Ackerman, is very familiar with the pains of not being able to fall asleep.  He has struggled with insomnia since childhood.  Four years ago he decided to do something radical, and incredibly interesting, to help people like himself.  He created a podcast where he tells bedtime stories for people struggling to fall asleep.  Not too exciting, sometimes downright boring, the exact type of thing you would naturally fall asleep to.  Drew’s podcast has since exploded and he helps hundreds of thousands of people fall asleep every month.

Insomniac / Sleep with Me Host (with Drew Ackerman)

Luckily, for the majority of us, there are very few jobs that carry with it an assumption of who you are.  Values, ethics, personality type, all there wrapped up neatly with your job title.  Can you imagine if every time you mentioned what you did for a living people made an immediate judgement about you?  Not too fun.  Today’s guest, Eric Hobbs, carries around one such title with him.  Eric is a lawyer, and he is well aware of the snap judgements people like us make about “people like him”.  In Eric’s email to me detailing what he does for a living he even went so far as to say “Wait! Wait! Hear me out; yes, lawyers kind of suck (I’ll be the first to admit that), but I’m not one of those sucky lawyers”.  First of all, that is really funny and shows what an honest and humorous perspective Eric has.  Second, what is this non-sucky type of lawyer that Eric is referring to?  Why a corporate lawyer that is, working for a company that makes outdoor recreation equipment, a huge passion of Eric’s.  He’ll tell us all about what it is like to work in an industry that is related to your hobby, and what sorts of crazy things people try to sue his company for.

Corporate Lawyer (with Eric Hobbs)

Culture is a difficult thing to define.  It’s an even more difficult thing to influence and legislate.  What makes one culture thrive and another flounder?  What makes one artistic and another scientific?  In the workplace, what do we even really mean when we say workplace culture?  And once we get that defined, how do we try to influence that?  Does hiring pretty much take care of everything, or does it go much further than that?  Thankfully I don’t have to answer any of these questions.  Today’s guest, Tom Freeman, is the Culture Manger for the wonderful meditation app company, Headspace.  He’ll tell us about everything being a culture manager entails, and how he strives to keep a great culture through rapid growth.

Culture Manager (with Tom Freeman)

They say that diamonds are a girl’s best friend.  I’m more of a pet rock guy myself…but today’s guest has me considering expanding my horizons.  Hannah Powers is a gemologist which is a person that looks at gems all day and, among other things, grades them on their value.  She’ll tell us all about what makes a gem a gem, what makes said gem valuable, and why diamonds are in fact pretty darn cool.

Gemologist (with Hannah Powers)

They say that home is where the heart is, but what about when you rent a home on vacation?  Suddenly your heart becomes more vulnerable.  You want a home that treats your heart like the love of your life…but even better.  Dare I say, like how your grandma would treat you.  Anticipating your every need, and always having more in store than you could ask for.  Homes like this are what today’s gust specializes in.  Ryan saw the need for a home rental company that went the extra mile for both home owners, and guests on vacation alike.  He pairs up amazing properties with people looking for a “grandma home” (damn I’m good at marketing).  He’ll explain the ins and outs of the luxury rental business and tell us about his decision to quit the corporate life and pursue his own business.

Vacation Rental Mogul (with Ryan Bradley)

It is an interesting time to be a member of law enforcement in America.  There have been many events in the past two years that have drawn the ire and suspicion of the greater public regarding the people that are hired to serve and protect them.  This is on the one hand good, as we should question everything all the time, and audit our government employees to make sure they are serving the purpose for which they were hired.  This is on the other hand bad, as public sentiment and backlash fracture the country further.   Worse, it can cause good law enforcement officers, who risk their lives to help make our cities safer, to feel ostracized and looked down upon.  Today I interview one such officer, Matthew Barton, a sheriff from Yavapai county in Arizona.  We’ll discuss what it’s like being a sheriff in today’s world.

Sheriff (with Matthew Barton)

Sex.  It pretty much makes the world go round.  They say that nearly every major invention ever can be traced back to a desire to impress someone that you are sexually attracted to.  Moreover, adoption of new media and tech over the past 50 years has been heavily influenced by sex and the porn industry.  One of the major reasons VHS won over the Betamax format was VHS was the main format for porn.  By the late 1970s, erotic film accounted for over half of all VHS sales in the United States.  On the internet 13% of all searches are for erotic content, somewhere between 4-30% of all traffic is for porn, and at any second 30,000,000 unique people are viewing porn online.  Online payment was invented to collect money on porn sites.  Makes you wonder what the future will hold with virtual reality and artificial intelligence…actually it doesn’t, it’s going to be a lot of porn and sex.  Something this all encompassing takes a lot of time to talk about, and this will be the first of many of those talks.  Today’s guest, Maxine Holloway, is a porn actress and director, live show actress and director, an escort, a sex activist, and a college level sex educator that has her masters in public health.  As you can imagine, we had a lot to talk about.

Sex Worker (with Maxine Holloway) Part 1

Sex.  It pretty much makes the world go round.  They say that nearly every major invention ever can be traced back to a desire to impress someone that you are sexually attracted to.  Moreover, adoption of new media and tech over the past 50 years has been heavily influenced by sex and the porn industry.  One of the major reasons VHS won over the Betamax format was VHS was the main format for porn.  By the late 1970s, erotic film accounted for over half of all VHS sales in the United States.  On the internet 13% of all searches are for erotic content, somewhere between 4-30% of all traffic is for porn, and at any second 30,000,000 unique people are viewing porn online.  Online payment was invented to collect money on porn sites.  Makes you wonder what the future will hold with virtual reality and artificial intelligence…actually it doesn’t, it’s going to be a lot of porn and sex.  Something this all encompassing takes a lot of time to talk about, and this will be the first of many of those talks.  Today’s guest, Maxine Holloway, is a porn actress and director, live show actress and director, an escort, a sex activist, and a college level sex educator that has her masters in public health.  As you can imagine, we had a lot to talk about.  This is part 2 of our conversation.

Sex Worker (with Maxine Holloway) Part 2

Food.  It’s pretty important, ya know?  There’s the whole entire ‘don’t eat it and you’ll die’ thing, but for most of us food is so much more than just death prevention.  It’s our means to feeling good physically.  It’s our means to feeling comforted mentally.  The invention of agriculture was our main reason for coming together in large scale societies.  Pretty important stuff.  It’s no surprise then that we’re always trying to think of ways to make it better.  Currently, better means organic.  Today we speak to a large scale organic farm manager, Doug Kaba, to get his perspective on what better means, and learn more about the farm side of the farm to table movement.

Organic Farmer (with Doug Kaba)

Do you consider yourself a pretty discerning customer? Do you like having cool stuff instead of having lame stuff?  Well, the whole reason that people like us are even allowed to be discerning and have nice things is thanks to people like today’s guest, Jimmy Huynh.  Jimmy is an industrial designer which means it’s his job to make products look nice and function well.  Apple would be the primary example of a company that has considered industrial design a top priority.  Jimmy will break down the fun and difficulties of working in the industrial design world.

Industrial Designer (with Jimmy Huynh)

“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.

App Developer (with Matt Bauer)

When most of us think about the military we think of guns, combat, and camo.  There are, however, many different branches of the military.  While all are fully trained for combat, some are a far cry from the default image that we conjure up in our heads.  Today’s guest spent a good portion of his life with the Seabees, a smaller group of an already small group of naval divers.  The Seabees, a heterograph of C.B., are members of the naval construction battalion, and they help to ensure that fixed underwater structures are kept in working condition.  They also get to blow stuff up.

Navy Diver (with Steve Hentze)

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.

Schizophrenic (with Will Jiang)

Let’s play a game.  I want you to imagine that you are confronted by a nefarious magical being and said NMB says to you, “I am going to take one of your five major senses, but you may keep the other four”.  So first you try to remember what your five senses are, and you remember that you have sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.  Next you go down the line and think of how each one has been a part of your life in recent and distant memory, trying to asses which would be the most live-withoutable.  Which do you land on?  Which is the sense that you are okay with leaving behind?  I have a pretty good feeling that today's guest just might change your answer to that question.  Dawn is an olfactive expert and helps develop scents for companies all over the world.  And not just scents to make you think, “oh that smells nice”, but scents to make you have a particular experience.  She’ll explain just how impactful scent is in your life, and the hidden ways it’s probably impacting you right now.

Olfactory Expert (with Dawn Goldworm)

“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.

Children's Librarian (with Maggie Levine)

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.

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Elderly Services Non Profit (with Meg Barhite)

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.

Zip-lining (with Mike Seper)

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.

Brand Strategist (with Corin Camenisch & Sheila Cannon)

We're on vacation for 2 weeks.  Enjoy some of our favorite episodes from the vault while we're out.

Replay - Ep. 82 Paranormal Psychic (with Adrian Lee)

We're on vacation for 2 weeks. Enjoy some of our favorite episodes from the vault while we're out.

Replay - Ep. 60 Cuddle Therapy (with Travis Sigley)

We're on vacation for 2 weeks. Enjoy some of our favorite episodes from the vault while we're out. New episodes start 6/26!

Replay - Ep. 20 Sensory Deprivaton Floating (with Mike Garrett)

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.

Behavior Analyst (with Gianna Biscontini)

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.

The Sketch Effect (with William Warren)

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.

Tour Cycling (with Reed Olsen)

How do you feel about the things that you own?  Does your enjoyment for them usually peak right when you purchase them and then slowly fade from there?  There’s certainly science to back that up, which is one of the reasons that they say it’s better to spend your money on experiences as opposed to things.  But what about things that we own that grow and change, whose ownership becomes a sort of experience in itself?  A couple years ago I learned about raw denim and and decided to purchase a pair for myself.  Unlike most of my clothes, I was looking forward to what they would look like in a year or two, and every day I wore them brought me more satisfaction that my new jeans were truly becoming MY jeans.  The experience that I’ve had with my jeans is something that today’s guest, David Shuck, knows an awful lot about.  He is the managing editor of heddels.com, the foremost website for all things raw denim.  We’ll discuss denim and the philosophy behind owning things that need to be broken in.

Raw Denim (with David Shuck)

Do you ever feel a bit off?  You can’t really put your finger on why, but you’re not quite yourself.  Have you ever considered that maybe your internal energy isn’t flowing very well, or that negative energy in your surroundings is bringing you down?  Today’s guest Terje Kuusk is a Reiki master practitioner (heals and fixes energy flows in the body) and practices real estate energy clearing and upgrading as well.  We’ll discuss Terje’s connection to energy and how we can tap into and clear the energy around us.

Energetic Healing (with Terje Kuusk)

A podcast that explores the interesting paths people take in life, and why and how they take them. From cuddle therapists to financial advisors.  New episodes every Tuesday.

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