Back2Different

What a combo of insight and humility is Melissa .  I know, that sounds like the first line of a sonnet - she and I tend toward the childlike and the fun. In our time with microphones, we explore - The Rat Tickler What's my Cat Hair? Math tests and egg timers "I don't just hire people who are smarter than me, I listen to them." Glial cells - the day shift and the night shift Cor...

In any conversation that includes Roger and Colin, I wait comfortably in silence for their contributions. What I get for a small investment of patience is wisdom, empathy, and self-effacing humor. When I asked Roger to contribute to Gender Crap , he hedged a bit. It turns out what he saw (or heard, I suppose) in the title was very different from my intent, which led to a wonderful conversation fol...

Byron Edgington and Mariah Edgington pay complement to each other very well indeed. They don't complete each others' sentences - a practice I find quickly tiring - but they never fail to leave the other space to help populate the insight of whatever we're trying to understand. They are both and separately devoted to opening up possibilities, and they are part of a growing critical m...

Vura 's voices are a joy. His speaking voice, his perspective, and his poetry, each rings straight and true. We both love writing and it brings us such pleasure that we spend a good part of this episode laughing. Vura serves on the Hertfordshire County Council in the UK and has a background in project management, as well as giving his time and energy to youth and recovery work. For two people...

Andee   and I discovered a parallel journey of confronting and casting off outmoded ways of thinking - "the lies we chose to believe . . . I just learned it that way."  We've both had winding journeys - I won't say career because neither of us has been that linear. And during the bumps and chasms of those journeys, we both found that once we started being clear and honest, The...

I grew up engulfing as much science fiction - and, later, what would be labeled speculative fiction - as possible, so connecting with Joseph Carrabis was a natural. Like me, he loves to write and is fearless in his exploration of ideas, plot, character and things in general. He's served as a mathematician, data scientist, chief research officer and, well, you get the picture. Join us as we ta...

Amy Olmedo's life has not been so much a series of forks as a series of switchbacks. Her journey provides a clarity about trauma, change, and courage that will help you take stock, and take aim, at finding and living as yourself. As Oscar Wilde suggested, "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." Join us for a wonderful exploration of  versions of the truth. Never know what&apo...

Bruno grabbed me from our first conversation. He is candid, smart, and powered by a strong sense of innovation and empathy. His book, The Art of Compassionate Business , is interesting as well as compelling. I have not finished it - full disclosure - and I'm caught up by his perspective. We talk about qualitative analysis, education, replacing Human Resources (yuck) with Human Assets , a dial...

The Rise of the Ambidextrous Organization is Eric's remarkable contribution to our understanding of a new way of thinking and of doing business. He and I have a romp through thinking, childhood, the creative machine, "you're not your brain," and The Memory Palace. Then we really hit the ground running. He and I connect like a couple of long-lost friends washed ashore together o...

Michael and I got together to record one of the early episodes of back2different. I know how passionately involved he is in his work with education, schools, and leadership, so I tapped him to record a contribution to Humanity@Work . You will enjoy and be moved by his vision for improvement. Never know what's going to show up when you click 'record'!

Susan Sneath and I share the experience of working as an actor, a tendency toward being wildly candid, and a willingness to  boldly go . . . .  I had a tough time with the title for this episode - I'm looking at a list of nine quotes from Susan that would be bang-up for where we went, but I think this is the best to capture her enthusiasm and courage. Acting, health, vulnerability, respect, d...

I'm reminded again how much we need, and how quickly we move toward, friendship during this dislocation. Ryan Maloney and I both played in many bands for years and years. We both played in rhythm sections (bass for me and drums for him), which creates a special bond. Most of us know, though we're not aware of it, that without a good drummer and bass player, your band's gonna suck ....

Okay, so we cover . . . mental health        being incarcerated             AI                hallucinating                    graffiti                         feeding the hungry ghost . . . and that's just for starters.  Jonathan is the author of Mission2Moga , a very interesting dystopian novel. He was a fixture among the crews of Brooklyn by age five, and, as Mark Twain suggested, "ne...

A wild and variegated journey with Aileda Lindal leads us through neuroscience, epigenetics, quantum physics and being human. We share a love of ideas and a generative attitude about this time in which we find ourselves. With all we know and are finding out about what makes us tick (and stumble), there is so much carryover of retroactive expectations and assumptions, so much we allow to stand in o...

Wow. So Tony and I go on a tear through our shared history and abiding love of music. He's from Manchester, UK, and he was intricately involved with the music scene there, starting with selling records out os his van, going upstairs at Virgin Rags (an early precursor to the Virgin records empire), following local acts like U2 and wrapped in the David Bowie phenomenon early on.  We both see th...

Melissa is a delight. We've shared many conversations, always building on each other's ideas and energy. She brings an analytical approach to experience that fills in the gaps my loosely and widely ranging curiosity sometimes skips past. So we spend about an hour exploring how the brain works (or not), how much we overestimate our (illusion of) rationality, why facts don't matter in...

Jon and I share a passion for music. We both also have itchy feet. He has been in sales, marketing, training design, graphics, and more. Since 2013, he has been developing TBAIMS - Connecting through Music . He loves discovering musicians and performers who are distinctive, creative and willing to fight the good fight to be seen and heard. It's a tough business, and Jon provides all kinds of...

Jag  and I went round and round . . . and round for 6 weeks for a bunch of reasons before we sat down for a wonderful trip together. She is not to be trifled with, and we fed off each others' energy on our wild ride. Her story, her courage, her uninhibited version of life and its lessons will grab you.  Please join us, buckle your seatbelts, and listen while she helps me - and all of us - get...

Catherine Fitzgerald is one of the contributors to back2different who had a 'straight' career - linear, climbing the corporate ladder, that kind of thing, and then realized it wasn't working. So off she went, fear, courage, determination and possibilities in hand and made her own thing. She's business-focused, and she has discovered that we can re-define 'profit' to e...

The beat goes on, doesn't it? My friend Shara suggested I get in touch with Kristina Holle. Here's what happened next: I discovered Kristina was following an expected path in the realms of the corporate world and suddenly veered off when that path grew narrower and narrower. Instead, she has chosen to explore and discover. Someone after my own heart. She recently published The   Authenti...

This is the first episode focused on Humanity@work . I'll be hosting a series of conversations based on a simple premise: setting aside the issue of pay (not to ignore the idea, but to set that apart), what do you want your job to provide for you and what do you want work not to do to you .? Join me with Shara, Andrew, Alex and Brett as we find that I can work better when I know where I am an...

Lots of change, lots of discomfort, lots of growth - Eileen Bild is living a no-holds-barred kind of life that many of us might find scary. Not that she is a spinning target for a knife-throwing act at the carnival, but because she embraces everything that comes her way. We bounce around and laugh as we explore pretty nearly everything in our time together, both of us engaging a time in our lives...

Last September, Shara Lewis-Campbell. Andrew Foster and I all came together and had an idea: How about if work felt more like purpose and less like a sentence? Last week, this idea was published: Humanity@Work , an ebook, paperback and hard copy that brought together over 35 people from around the world to contribute their insight about work. And life. And humanity. So join us for a little while a...

So Sybil Cummin is the friend of a friend. She lives in Colorado, and she has quite a story. “Knock on any door” as people say. She is a very accomplished gymnast, outstanding student, and a recovering perfectionist. She takes herself not-too-seriously. Which is very important because her field is domestic violence and narcissistic abuse. Part of how she opened my eyes was when she focused on how...

Having run into Mike Vacanti more than once at Our Friendship Bench (I promise, only one more link!), I did one of those two kinds of people things we all can fall into. In this case, it’s ‘people I could be trapped in a lifeboat with’ and ‘people I would throw myself overboard if I were trapped in a lifeboat with.’ Mike is in category a. We run amok together as we explore boyhood, school (we both...