Kids these days.  All they care about is themselves and their Snapchats.  Too busy staring at their cellphones to even acknowledge anyone else.  I mean, where will the world be headed with this next generation at the helm?  Am I right?!  Psych! (that’s what the kids say these days) This week’s episodes showcase how off base and misguided statements like that can be.  In this episode I speak with a 16-year-old high school student that raised and saved money for a year so that he could participate in a volunteer program that helps children in Ghana.  Jack then flew to Ghana and spent three weeks teaching at a school, made bricks to help rebuild said school, and connected with formerly trafficked orphans in the community.  Again, Jack is 16.  Enjoy his positive mindset and let him assuage your fears about our youth.

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Teen Volunteer Abroad (with Jack Paquette)

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)

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)

For most of us having a properly running car is a necessity.  If our car isn’t functioning correctly, our lives can’t function correctly.  We’d be late to just about everything…if we even had any chance of making it at all.  Luckily for us there are wonderful people like today’s guest.  Car not starting?  Engine overheating?  Bizarre clicking noise that you’re afraid might be animal living in your undercarriage?  Steven has you covered for all of this and more.  He’ll find out what the problem is and have you back on the road in no time.

Auto Mechanic (with Steve Honaker)

Social media is such a pervasive fixture of modern society.  You may love it, you may hate it, you may think it’s a waste of time…but there it is.  Seemingly not concerned with peoples’ varying and ever-changing opinions of it, it remains, stronger than ever.  Today we interview a social media manger for a major fitness brand, Beach Body.  Jake will tell us about the ins and outs of trying to manage something as amorphous and massive as social media, and he’ll make us all feel a bit better about the social media hustle.

Social Media Manager (with Jake Repko)

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

Here is part 2 of our interview with Amy Baldwin, owner of Pure Pleasure sex shop in Santa Cruz, CA, and certified sex educator.  Different from a typical HHI interview, I put out a call to listeners to send in your sex related questions.  In part one we mostly covered questions sent in by women.  Today, in part two, we cover the questions sent in by men.  Enjoy.

Sex Educator (with Amy Baldwin) 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)

NEW CONTEST! CHECK OUT TODAY'S EPISODE FOR DETAILS.
When most of us are in school we don’t know exactly what we want to be when we grow up.  Yet, we know that we’re going to work for someone.  We put a lot of effort into learning as much as possible, grooming ourselves to be good employees for our future employers.  Then, we go through the rigors of career fairs, mock interviews, and finally the real thing.  Somehow, it never occurs to us, most of us, that we could spend this time and effort trying to find a way to work for ourselves.  Trying to do our own thing.  Today’s guests had this epiphany during their senior year of college in the midst of their own get-a-job hunt.  At the end of the year they were both offered jobs, which they later rethought and rejected, due to a budding fashion accessory company they launched.  A year later and they’re doing just fine having never worked a day for anyone but themselves.

Fashion Accessory Start Up (with Ibs Hyder & Bish Khella)

Most of us do not achieve all the things that we want to in life.  We see this as a given, that’s life.  But if we sit down and really analyze the things we fall short on, we might start to understand more about ourselves and what it is that is holding us back from what we want.  How do we talk to ourselves about losing weight?  How do we see ourselves when we have achieved the success we are going after?  How do we feel when we think about our life being completely different than it is right now?  Neuro-linguistic Programming is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy that aims to know these things.  Unlike many forms of therapy, NLP doesn’t need to know WHY you have problems with your mother, NLP just wants to know HOW you think about your mother and will help you reshape that thought.  For this reason it has made quite a splash in the personal development / self help scene.  Today we speak with a true expert on the topic, founder of iNLP, Mike Bundrant.

Neuro-linguistic Programming Expert (with Mike Bundrant)

I don’t know about you, but I sure want to have a job that I love.  Isn’t that a pretty universal goal in life?  To be one of those lucky people who says, “It doesn’t even feel like work to me”.  Until you get that job you just pretty much hate people like that, but you really, really want to be one of them.  Today’s guest thought she found that job.  It’s an amazing job, and you’ll hear all about it.  You might even decide that it’s your dream job.  For her it turned out to be fool’s gold.  She’ll explain why and how she went about fixing it…and she’ll tell us some pretty good celebrity stories too.

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Talk Show Host Assistant (with Katie)

I don’t know about you, but I sure do love animated movies.  The worlds that the artists and directors create are so full of wonder and magic.  Animation is also the modern day home of the allegorical tale.  Many live-action movies have forgone having a moral or some deeper story to tell, in favor of just being a straight shot of ‘action’ or ‘romance’.  Somehow, movies for “children” have become the best place for complex, deep stories that are deeply profound no matter your age.  Today’s guest, Leo Matsuda, is a director of one such very deep and profound Disney short, Inner Workings.  He has also worked as a story artist on many other big name films.  We’ll discuss the animation industry, the magic of Disney, and the philosophical messages in Inner Workings.

Animation Story Artist & Director (with Leo Matsuda)

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)

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 or "Dr. Z", 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.

Emotional Regulation (with Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona)

This week on Half Hour Intern we explore the mind, our thoughts, and how our emotions impact both.  Today we learn about a severe and traumatizing form of anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder.  We're usually only shown images of the classic 'clean freak' OCD person on television.  Dr. Z will tell us all about OCDs many other forms and how she helps patients cope with the disorder.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (with Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona)

‘A penny for your thoughts?’  An interesting question, isn’t it?  It sure doesn't place a whole lot of value on your thoughts.  Our thoughts, feelings, experiences, people just don’t care that much about them.  Everyone’s got their own problems and they definitely don't want to hear mine.  Yet somehow, some people are paid for their thoughts, more than a penny in fact, and it’s not just famous people.  Thanks to the internet regular people just like you and me are sharing their lives and finding that people value what they have to share.  Today’s guest, Geraldine DeRuiter of The Everywhereist, shares her award-winning-blog-book-deal-getting journey with us.

Blogger & Author (with Geraldine DeRuiter)

There are a lot of things in this world that I don’t understand. I guess that’s why I started this podcast. You'd think that I would usually be awed and baffled by new technology, but it’s typically stuff that wasn’t made in this millennia that has me looking like that super cute thinking emoji. Fax machines? Get outta here. Radio broadcasting? Basically witchcraft. Commercial flight? You can talk about drag and lift until you’re blue in the face, but I still can’t wrap my head around a 500 passenger plane when I look at one. And then there are things much, MUCH further back that I still can’t grasp. Today we learn about a really amazing one of those things, acupuncture. Acupuncturist Joyce Kawalchuk will educate us about the 2,000-3,000 year old art.

Acupuncture (with Joyce Kawalchuk)

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.  If only we could be surrounded by beer all the time.  Most beer aficionados have considered how amazing it would be to open up a brewery and make beer for a living.  Few people have actually done it.  Today’s guest, Drew Pool, followed through on the dream and opened up Wren House Brewing Company in Phoenix, AZ.

Microbrewery Owner (with Drew Pool)

The landscape of marijuana in the United States (and many other areas of the world) is changing.  Thanks to that changing landscape it is not only not as taboo as it used to be, it’s also a possibly serious, legal business venture to get started with.  Despite the shift it’s still a great place to make a lot of money depending on where you live.  Today’s guest, Alex, manages a full scale weed growing operation in Los Angeles.  He’ll tell us all about the legal ways to make money working with and growing weed in California.

Marijuana Grow Manager (with Alex) Part 1

What do you think of when you think of the word therapy?  Therapist?  Most of us think of traditional psychotherapy, talking through your life and problems with someone.  Using your head to fix your head.  However, many people and cultures throughout history have placed an equal, if not greater, focus on the body as a means to mental health.  Surrounding yourself with nature, exercising, playing, these are all things that can have a massive impact on your mental state.  In fact, it’s so important that an entire school of therapy is devoted to it.  Today’s guest, Andrew Hermansen, will teach us all about it.

Recreational Therapist (with Andrew Hermansen)

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.

Prescribed Burn Crew Member (with Tyler Cross)

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.

Programmatic Advertising (with Chris Cox)

Many of us dream of a life that is simple.  A life that is different from the one we live.  We think about separating ourselves from the chaos of the modern world, and moving out into nature.  Maybe we move to a farm and start our own little business working with animals.  That’s exactly what today’s guest felt like, and decided to do something about.  Erin will tell us what it’s really like to live the dream, and the path that she took to get there.

Goat Cheese Maker (with Erin Bligh)

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.

Fire Performer (with Victoria Zajac)

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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