Dream Chasers and Eccentrics

Bob was a mob lawyer until he discovered the I Ching. He is now is a professor at Elon University, teaching Business Law and Meditation (two separate courses).  We talk about growing up selling hot dogs and cotton candy, becoming a lawyer in Miami in working for Janet Reno as a prosecutor; hitting the mob for $72 million; being recruited by the mafia; discovering the I Ching and Taoism; cultivatin...

Daniel Brown, aka @mullet_lord, is a former hard partier who nearly died from drug and alcohol abuse. He now lives and surfs in Australia, owns a coffee shop, and leads a healthy life, however, at 24 years old, he needed a drink to avoid seizure, and was also into marijuana and extasy. During a short coma, he had a near-death experience in which he spent, as he describes it, a lifetime in Heaven,...

In this episode, I read aloud a short story I wrote about one of my favorite places, Isla Escudo de Veraguas. If you like short stories, sign un for me free newsletter at paultrammell.substack.com , and get a story in your email at the begining of each month, as well as occasional poems, essays, and book reviews.

Sung J. Woo is the author of "Lines," a novel I recently read and loved. His short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, PEN/Guernica, Financial Times, and Vox. He has written five novels, Lines (2024), Deep Roots (2023), Skin Deep (2020), Love Love (2015), and Everything Asian (2009), which won the 2010 Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Literature Award. In 2022, his...

Erden is one of two people to have circumnavigated under human power, and Erden is the only to have done it solo, and he did it by rowing, cycling, kayaking, and hiking. He holds an amazing 18 Guiness World Records.  We talk about rowing across oceans, bicycling across continenets, hiking across Papua New Guinea, his route around the world, training, dealing with difficult situations, eating coffe...

Enzo Dal Verme is an Italian portrait photographer drawing on over three decades of experience in meditation. He approaches photography as a path of self-discovery and personal growth. His portraits have been published in Vanity Fair, l'Uomo Vogue, The Times, GQ, Madame Figarò, Elle, Glamour, Vogue Sport, Marie Claire and many other magazines. Enzo has been leading his acclaimed photography retrea...

Elijah Nisenboim is founder of Effiji Breathwork and has been helping people with suffering and trauma for 33 years. He is the author of 3 books including "The Trauma Code: Unlocking the Hidden Map to Your Life's True Purpose."  He has traveled to China more than 20 times, learning Sacred Taoist energy practice and Internal Martial Arts which he incorporates in his healing methods for trauma relea...

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is an author, creative-writing teacher, and host of my favorite podcast, " Writers on Writing ." She is also a lecturer at Chapman University's Dodge Film School, an adjunct professor of Advanced Creative Writing at Saddleback College Emeritus Institute, and instructor at   Gotham Writers Workshop (online). She also holds two private workshops.  Barbara was recognized with...

Brad Chandler is a successful entrepreneur who built a thriving real estate investment company, but is now dedicating his life to his true passion: helping others break free from their past, overcome limiting beliefs, and create the life and relationships they desire and deserve. Through mastering self-love and reprogramming the mind, Brad has transformed his own life, and he's here to share his p...

Jeff Patterson, from Portland, OR, USA, has over 36 years of experience, practicing and teaching the meditative and martial arts. As the founder of Northwest Fighting Arts/Portland Tai Chi Academy and The Yielding Warrior, he emphasizes the transformative power of meditative and martial arts practices, particularly the yielding concept. He has published two books and hundreds of instructional vide...

Matt O'Neill is a happiness expert whose work has positively impacted the lives of over 100,000 people worldwide. He's the author of the "Good Mood Revolution" book, and host of the "Good Mood Revolution" podcast. Matt teaches us that happiness is a choice, even when life gets tough. His teaching isn't just theory, it's tested in the real world too. Matt has 4 young children and runs two successfu...

Ronika is an award-winning screenwriter. She also directs, and runs the Wicklow Stories Film Festival. Having placed highly in both the Academy Nicholl Fellowship as well as the Austin Film Festival in 2019, she has since expanded her slate to contain more than 22 feature-length scripts. She has lectured at Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland and has given multiple workshops in Ireland and the UK....

Lion Goodman is founder of the Clear Beliefs Institute. He is a professional certified therapeutic coach with 40 years' experience as an executive coach, teacher, healer, and Subconscious Pattern Detective. He is the creator of the Clear Beliefs Method for deleting limiting beliefs, healing childhood wounds and resolving traumas from the past. We talk about wanting to fit in as kids, practicing te...

David Buck is the author of "The Time-Optimized Life." He has over 35 years of organizational and time-management experience, which led him to start Kairos Management Solutions, and the Infinity Lifestyle design program. David empowers business professionals to overcome the struggles of a lack of flexibility in life. He helps his clients craft a strategy to optimize their time that defines a lifes...

In 2018, while sailing in The Bahamas, I had a terrifying encounter with an oceanic whitetip shark, a known maneater, and one of the most feared sharks in the ocean. I described the encounter in my book Journey to the Ragged Islands . In this episode is a chapter in the audiobook, where I read from the book about my time at Cat Island. I encountered the shark while on a paddleboard at the north en...

A short story about a magical island, based on a real place - Isla Escudo de Veraguas, read by the author.   Support the podcast through Patreon here  http://patreon.com/DreamChasersandEccentrics

Martina is the author of the book Hello Flower: A real life story of narcissistic love and invisible abuse. We talk about living in Italy, learning foreign languages, teaching and building schools in Nicaragua, selling coffee, falling in love with a covert narcissist and suffering narcissistic abuse, defining a narcissist, avoiding them, the importance of seeking your own happiness, and more. Show...

This episode features the first two chapters of the audiobook Journey to the Ragged Islands, by Paul Trammell, as read by the author (and the host of this podcast). Shownotes are here https://www.paultrammell.com/dream-chasers-and-eccentrics Support the podcast through Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/DreamChasersandEccentrics

Brodie Farber was a professional Mixed Martial Arts fighter from 2002 to 2018.  We talk all about fighting, various martial arts and which ones work, training, injuries, preventing injuries, what it's like to be knocked out, the benefits of learning a martial art, travelling, and much more. Show notes are here https://www.paultrammell.com/dream-chasers-and-eccentrics Support through patreon here h...

Aiden Gabor was recruited into the mafia at a young age, led a life of crime, and became an enforcer. He was later coerced into being an informant for the Department of Justice, who convinced him to become a police officer in order to bring down corrupt cops. He wrote a book about his life, Conflicting Loyalties, which I read in three days since I didn't want to put it down. * If you are offended...

Frank Healy is one of 100 people in the entire world who has hyperthymesia. He remembers every day of his life, starting at six years old. He is now 64. He is also an author and a therapist, and we talk about memory, his obsession with weather, school, social life, how to control and minimize bad memories, astrology, OCD, controling emotions, reliving fond memories, emotional intelligence, forgive...

Clouds, thunderstorms, cool rain, surfing, life and death, strolling through the jungle. My poems are influenced by the natural world around me, as I live on my sailboat in Bocas del Toro, Panama. In this episode, the inner working of my mind are on dislpay for all to hear as I read my original poetry. Shownotes are here https://www.paultrammell.com/dream-chasers-and-eccentrics Support through Pat...

Shebana Coelho is an award-winning writer, performance artist and facilitator of workshops. Her work is about expressing our creativity to liberate us from fear and other colonizations and to celebrate our passion. She received a Fiction Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Fulbright grant to Mongolia. We talk about travel, and how it rchanges the way we think and act, overc...

John Guiver is the author of the book "To Play the Game," the story of the aeronautical disaster of flight 571, which crashed in the Andes in 1972, and involved cannibalism in order to survive. John Guiver's lifetime interest in the 1972 Andes Flight Disaster led him to travel to the site of the accident in January 2013 in the company of one of the sixteen survivors, Eduardo Strauch. Through him,...

Kamoka Pearl Farm produces pearls from oysters grown in the nutrient-rich lagoon of Ahe Atoll, 300 miles northeast of Tahiti. They are known for adhering to the strictest levels of sustainable farming in the pearl world and have pioneered many eco-farming techniques that not only help the environment, but also improve the quality of their pearls. We talk about living in French Polynesia, sailing t...