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.

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.

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.