Getting Unstuck – Cultivating Curiosity

Guest Kirk Wallace Johnson is the author of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, and To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, which covers his efforts on behalf of Iraqi refugees as the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi A...

Guest Bernard Beitman, M.D. is the first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to systematize the study of coincidences. A graduate of Yale Medical School, he did his psychiatric residency at Stanford University. The former chair of psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia medical school for 17 years, he writes a blog for Psychology Today on coincidence. He is the author of Meaningful Coincidences...

Guest A veteran San Francisco radio broadcaster, Joanne Greene currently hosts two podcasts -  "All the F Words", in which two writer friends nearly 30 years apart explore issues that begin with the letter "F" and "In This Story…." Joanne's 3-minute essays, set to music. In June 2023 she publishes By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go, her inspiring and growth-filled memoir through and emergence fro...

Guest Mark Reid is host of the "Zen Sammich" podcast and a maker of traditional handmade Japanese paper, called washi, where he lives in Yamaguchi, Japan. Before that he was an attorney, beginning his career as an Assistant District Attorney in New York. He's also been a professor of English at three universities in Japan and a graduate teaching assistant at Florida State University in Religious S...

Guest Jennifer Jane Young is an Intuitive Business & Leadership Advisor and Founder of The School of Intuitive Leadership. She helps entrepreneurs and leaders find the path of least resistance, make the biggest impact and create sustainable, aligned success through intuitive leadership. Jennifer is also the author of the forthcoming book, Say Yes to Your Yes – How to trust your gut and take the le...

Dr. Alan Stern is an aerospace executive and planetary scientist with experience on 29 space mission teams, 14 of which he played a principal investigator role. Among those, he is the leader of NASA's New Horizons, the first mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt—making the farthest exploration of worlds in history.  Summary Our conversation explored a number of questions: Why was the explor...

Guest Valerie Gordon is a 10-time Emmy-winning television producer with over 20 years of producing and overseeing award-winning content for HBO, ESPN, CBS, and the Olympic Games. She knows what makes a story meaningful and memorable and the incredible power of stories to engage, educate and entertain. An engaging speaker with innovative programming, Valerie offers audiences and individuals the sto...

Guest Hal Herring is an award-winning journalist and contributing editor at Field and Stream magazine. He is also the host of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Podcast and Blast. Summary The debate over public and private land and water in the United States has raised concerns over public access to natural resources. While large tracts of land are being bought up in the West, the major consequen...

Guest Jeanine Cowen is an active media composer and educator. She is the chair and professor of practice of the Screen Scoring department at the University of Southern California. Formerly the Vice President for Curriculum and Program Innovation at Berklee, she is an experienced and skilled educator and innovator. She is an active freelance composer, music producer, and sound designer focusing pri...

Guest Rick Locke was born and raised in Erie, PA.  He earned a BS in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in finance from Rutgers University. Rick's professional career in information technology spanned 39 years.  He completed his career as Chief Information Officer at his last two companies and retired in 2014.Rick became interested in photography around 1980.  He learned the...

Guest April Vokey is a  fly fishing writer, fly-tyer, and speaker . After guiding in British Columbia for ten years, she now splits her year between camp in northern BC and Australia. She is an FFF certified casting instructor, forager, bowhunter, and mother. Summary April Vokey can't help but look at life differently. From a very early age, April loved fishing and hunting. She's decided to shun q...

Summary In this podcast episode, my cohost, Steve Miletto, of the " Teaching, Learning, Leading K12 " podcast, and I talk with Elizabethton, TN High School teachers Daniel Proffitt , Jason Clevinger , and Patrick Roberts . Elizabethton is an XQ Super School with a mission to build a culture for learners to think and act as changemakers. This episode discusses how the school actualizes this mission...

Summary Cindy House is the author of Mother Noise , a memoir in essays, and is a regular opener for author/humorist David Sedaris on his tours across the country. She teaches in the MFA program at Lesley University. In this brief episode, we follow Dr. Christian Busch's 3-part process to showcase a beautiful example of personal serendipity — the act of creating personal smart luck. Social Media >W...

Summary Steve Jobs famously said, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward." Today's guest would respectfully disagree. As guest Dr. Christian Busch writes, "serendipity is not just about a coincidence that happens to us, but it is actually through the process of spotting and connecting the dots do we start to see bridges where others see gaps." This...

Guest Ted Merwin , Ph. D. is a Senior Writer for the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). Before coming to JFNA, he worked as AIPAC's Synagogue Initiative Director for the Mid-Atlantic Region. For many years, Ted taught Judaic studies at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa), where he was the founding director of the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life. Summary Look between the slices of rye...

Guest Lee Ellis is a nationally-recognized leadership coach, award-winning author, certified speaking professional* (CSP), a Vietnam Veteran and former POW, and USAF Colonel (Ret) | President, Leading with Honor Summary Some of the most interesting writing on leadership has come from active and former military personnel, but Lee Ellis has the added dimension of learning leadership lessons the hard...

Guest Founder of "Cherish Your World," Laura Stale y facilitates healthier connections to home, others, and self through decluttering, Feng Shui, and emotional intelligence. She's the author of Abundant Heart, Live Inspired, Let Go Courageously and Live with Love: Transform Your Life with Feng Shui, & the Cherish Your World Gift Book. Summary For good reasons and bad, we surround ourselves with th...

Guest In 2011, coach and author Jane Duncan Rogers was devastated when her husband died.  However, six years later, with two books and a TedX talk to her credit, she now runs her not-for-profit, "Before I Go Solutions." Its mission is to create a world where people are at ease talking about and planning ahead for death.  It helps accomplish this by providing products and programs so people can cre...

Guests Jeff Carver is an English teacher who has been working in New Orleans charter schools for the last nine years.  Before teaching, he spent the good part of a decade working in music and advertising.  Nia DeCoux is a writer, educator, and activist who believes that when done well, storytelling and teaching become the same practice. Her work has been honored by both the National Foundation for...

Guest — John Dietsch is an award-winning author and writer/producer best known for supervising the fly fishing scenes and doubling for Brad Pitt in the classic OSCAR-winning film A River Runs Through It. J ohn's latest book, Graced by Waters , explores our connection to the outdoors through the prism of fly fishing and investigates its transformative and healing power in the face of loss. John cur...

Guest — Rhonda Broussard is an author, entrepreneur, and futurist. One Good Question: How Countries Prepare Youth to Lead is her first book. Broussard is an award-winning education entrepreneur and sought-after public speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Beloved Community, a national nonprofit committed to sustainable economic equity in schools, the workforce, and housing. She is a 28-year educa...

Guest Dr. Nate Zinsser is an expert in the psychology of human performance who consults with individuals and organizations seeking a competitive edge. He has been at the forefront of applied sport psychology for over thirty years. From 1992 to 2022 Dr Zinsser directed a cutting-edge applied sport psychology program at the United States Military Academy's Center for Enhanced Performance. He is the...

Summary — Award-winning food and travel writer Sylvie Bigar found herself in 2008 "writing more about food than travel and had turned into a stroller-pushing Upper West Side Mama." Needing to "escape," as she admitted, "she decided to head to France to research cassoulet, that "slow-cooked carnivorous orgy of pork, lamb, duck, beans, and herbs stewed together in an earthenware tureen." A quick, fu...

Guest Bill Whiteside is a sales and marketing executive turned software salesman turned writer of narrative non-fiction, specifically a forthcoming book about an incident in Winston Churchill's tenure as Britain's Prime Minister during World War II.   Summary In this episode of "Getting Unstuck—Cultivating Curiosity," I talk with Bill about the process of writing, which he's detailed in a new book...

Summary Reflecting on past decisions, actions, and accomplishments can be a springboard to future action or a recurring regret for what we didn't do, impacting our ability to focus on the present. Takeaways √ Western society has slowly eliminated or reduced physical challenges to find food, build and take shelter, flee from predators, and avoid overly risky decisions. But that has resulted in us b...