Assorted Conversations

Text me what you think of today’s episode! Four years later, three familiar voices return with the kind of progress that makes you want to re-check your own “someday” list. We catch up with Rua Fay, who turned a film blogging passion into real industry access, landing Cannes and TIFF credentials, interviewing artists she once idolized, and learning the business of film through undergrad work, festivals, networking, and nonstop curiosity. Then we reconnect with Josh O’Connell, whose dee...

Text me what you think of today’s episode! Fear doesn’t disappear because we read the right quote. It fades when we train a new response. I’m joined by Kendra Mahon, aka Kung Fu Kendra, a Wing Chun Kung Fu master and founder of the Global Kung Fu Alliance, to talk about what real confidence looks like when life gets loud, stressful, and unpredictable. Kendra explains Kung Fu in plain language: skill built through practice. We dig into why Wing Chun is designed for close-range self-defense an...

Text me what you think of today’s episode! A single DNA result can feel like trivia until you chase it all the way back to names, places, and documents that prove a life actually happened. That’s where Joseph Bolton’s story gets gripping. He’s a West Point graduate and retired Army paratrooper who starts digging into his family tree, discovers Indigenous and French-Canadian roots he didn’t fully understand, and then turns that research into Old Grandmother’s Tree, a heavily illustrated folk t...

Text me what you think of today’s episode! Some healing happens by talking, and some healing happens when your hands finally tell the truth your mouth can’t. We sit down with artist Devorah Brinkerhoff, creator of Soul Portraits, a mixed media process that helps people turn trauma, grief, and life transitions into art that feels like relief in the body and clarity in the mind. If you’ve ever thought, “I’m not creative,” or you’ve treated creativity like a luxury instead of a tool for survival...

Text me what you think of today’s episode! We talk with best-selling author Laura Van Wormer about building a career in publishing and fiction, then losing her ability to write after a devastating crash. She shares how she rebuilt her creative life through serialized audio storytelling with The Class of 74 and why “pivot” is sometimes the only way back to joy. • working through podcast tech issues and learning a quick audio fix • Laura’s childhood origin story for becoming a story...