Esoteric Quandary

Three combat veterans sit down to cut through the noise and give you the unfiltered truth on the current Middle East conflict. Drawing on firsthand military experience and a deep understanding of geopolitics, this episode pulls back the curtain on what's really driving the violence, who benefits, and what the West's role should be. We dig into the eerie parallels between today's con...

Yonatan, or as we all know him, Yoni, is one of my better friends in Israel. I first befriended Yoni back in the mid-2010s when I had just finished the military and became more involved in the Jewish Community. Yoni happened to become an Emissary for the Jewish Agency within the city of Denver and worked at promoting relationships with Israelis and Denver Jews.  Yoni can be seen as the poster chil...

Eyal is a very ambitious guy with a vision for the future of his people and the impact they can have in the Middle East and around the world. After his military service, he was traveling around the world as most IDF soldiers do after their service and met people on vacation. Things were going well until he was asked where he was from, when he said he was Israeli the mood of the conversation change...

Julia is probably one of the most thoughtful people I met in a long time. Her vast knowledge of culture, language, and professional experience is the exact kind of person that the founders of Israel wanted to immigrate to the country. As she is known in Israel, Jules has had a relatively more straightforward transition than most with moving and adapting to the local culture. However, she knows tha...

I know few people like Aaron, who are extremely well-read, pragmatic, and a believer in his country and the future it will bring. Aaron brings a sensical argument to anything his country faces because that is simply how he grew up. The son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, the family moved to Israel in the 90s as many Russian-speaking Jews did after the iron curtain fell. Aaron's family ha...

I really love podcasting because I get to hang with friends and people I know but get more depth and nuance into their thought processes. Mai is one of those people I thought I knew, and she really surprised me with her passion and activism in the industry she is a part of.  Mai began her career as a fashion designer and was lured into the industry based on the allure of these European fashion hou...

Alon is an exceptional person and someone who could feel like life is playing with him. A man whose life changed forever in the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and allied Arab Nations. The war has been studied ad nauseam by historians and how the effective reserve units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had so much success against Arab Ary regulars. However, this story is different and personal,...

Mitch is a character who loves what he does and shows off the country of Israel to the world. We talk about what makes the Negev unique, what is his draw to the Negev, and the history of the desert for the people around the world.

Lion David is a serial entrepreneur from the center of Israel and has been successful in managing startups. Sometime during his marriage, he began to take vacations to the Negev to get away from the hustle of city life. Slowly but surely, the family began to look at options to actually make the move to the Negev permanently.  The family initially began to work and live on the local Kibbutz and man...

Jared is the poster child for Zionism and what is expected for what it takes from making Aliyah (To immigrate to Israel from the outside world). He is a man of conviction and purpose who moved to Israel when he was a teenager. A belief in the country and the peoplehood he wanted to be a part of this and joined the military, becoming a paratrooper where he still serves as an officer today.  Jared i...

Tal became infamous during the pandemic for taking control of her city when the city was ravaged with Covid-19 cases. Originally from the town, she rolled up her sleeves with her city council and got to work. Relatively young for politics she was able to reach out to the locals to get buy-in on the measures she needed to take to get the city back to normal faster than the rest of the country.  The...

Eran is the Ramat Negev Regional Council of Southern Israel. The largest jurisdiction of land in Israel with the smallest population. Eran has been busy in his four years at the helm of the local municipality. The constant struggle of keeping the feel of the desert alive with constantly improving the lives of the citizens who live there. The demographics of the region are interesting in that it is...

Erik and Ben have known each other since the late 90's while attending High School in Heidelberg, Germany. Their lives have had similar trajectories such as serving in the US military, working in the Oil and Gas industries overseas, and now both active in local politics. This interview was intended to talk with Erik about his upbringing and bring more nuance to some of the positions he is run...

I thought it would be important to bring a few people together that I respect to go over the recent events in Israel and the surrounding areas. Yoni Alon, Aaron Benderski, and Kate Davis are well-versed in the region, and we collectively have all lived in the region. We talk about what has made this recent conflict different from the previous attempts and a myriad of other things relating to the r...

Jordan and Ben discuss the Q1 earnings from the market and how the tech sector is still booming, especially, Google and Facebook with their advertising platforms. We talked about how the hardware and App store continue to give Faceboook fits on their business model but Jordan, who runs a small business, mentioned that it is not as bad as Facebook is making it out to be. 

Jordan and I get serious in this episode talking about the change of work forever and the solopreneur might be the future. We also talk about some tech companies entering the space of government contracting and challenging the status quo on the big titans of the military-industrial complex. Finally, Jordan mentions Bitclout as something to keep an eye on, basically, an NFT platform designed to buy...

Rarely am I completely 100% immersed in the moment, but Jerry was a humbling moment for me. Jerry is originally from Pittsburgh, and he became an engineer at the University of Pittsburgh. He began his oil and gas career in west Texas and suddenly felt compelled to serve. He was enlisted into the US Army and part of a secret program of bomb disposal teams the US created. This unit was the precursor...

Eddie has been in Denver for a while now and joined the Army back in the 1960s in the draft. After his service, he went back to University in Denver at DU. After college, he began working for his father-in-law in the package delivery service for medical companies. He soon after took over the business and worked for the business up until recently. He is an advocate of being outdoors and volunteers...

Alan is originally from NYC and was drafted into the US Air Force. He was assigned to the Air Force Academy and spent four years there. After his time in the service, he migrated back home to NYC but realized that Colorado was for him. Alan then moved back to Colorado and found a job working for the Government Accountability Office (GAO). After thirty-five years of government service, Alan retired...

The consulting world is always filled with folks that have different reasons for being there. I get joy out of meeting folks that see the world differently. Jordan and know each other from a few years ago in the consulting world, and he seemed always to be thinking about things differently than the other folks. He had savvy business acumen, and the more you talked with him, the more you realize he...

Unfortunately, Sid Shafner is not with us any longer, but I had the opportunity to interview his kids about their father. Sid was a World War Two veteran, and his unit was one of the first to visit and liberate the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. Sid met one of the concentration camp survivors as he was running away from the camp, and since he spoke Yiddish, he was able to tell his co...

Elliot is an educator and friend who has done it all when it comes to education. In Denver, he was teaching kindergarten, and after meeting his future wife, they spent time overseas teaching in Korea. The couple moved back to the US and ended up in Minnesota, where Elliot and his wife are both educators. Elliot has transitioned from teaching to an administrator and, during this podcast, provides h...

Marvin is a special guy, and you would never think that he is 91 talking with him. He is one reason I became involved with our veteran group in Denver, and I am happy to know these guys with every interview a little more. Marvin, originally from Chicago, dropped out of high school and joined the service on the tail end of World War 2. He enlisted in the Army, and when he left, he separated from se...

Matt is one of the OGs when it comes to the food truck world in Denver. He successfully has run two food trucks simultaneously for a span of eight years, and his partner in crime, Holley, runs the events business. We do a deep dive into the small business world, the down and dirty on the food truck scene in Denver, and the constant struggle of dealing with employees, competition, and general stres...

Steve is a Denver native who grew up near the Hilltop area of town and served in the US Army after being drafted. He is part of the Jewish War Veteran Post, and we had an interesting conversation about growing up in Denver in the 1960s and getting drafted for the service during the Vietnam war. Steve returned from being stationed in Okinawa, began working in Real Estate, and still owns several pro...