The Combustion Chronicles

What if we lived in a world where cognitive differences were embraced as strengths to be leveraged instead of disabilities to be managed? That’s just the world neurodiversity advocates Michael Brown and Tim Peace dream about. From ADHD to the autism spectrum, from bipolar disorder to depression and anxiety, the duo are hopeless champions for engaging neurodiversity as a unique opportunity to furth...

Imagine a reformed gang leader harnessing their inner poetic voice to fight for social change through the undeniable power and passion of their words. Imagine a community activist transforming the idea of what a gang is into what a gang can be. Now, imagine listening to that person’s stories through the lens of disruption. Join us for this week’s episode as we chat with Antonio (King Tone) Fernand...

To kick off season four, we flip the script and put host Shawn Nason in the guest seat. That’s right: the unapologetic founder of Man on Fire and the Nason Group ecosystem (MOFI, Disruptor League, Truth Tellers, and The Pink Couch) will be the focus of the conversation for a change. It’ll be a unique opportunity to get inside the mind of this insanely creative disruptor and strategy expert who oft...

“You’ll remember it more by being in it.” That’s the mantra of Neil Mandt, CEO/Founder of CrimeDoor. He’s harnassing the massive potential for artificial intelligence and virtual reality to humanize experiences and enhance learning by creating multi-sensory, multi-dimensional experiences through the “spatial web.” A winner of 50 international film festival honors and multiple Emmy Awards, Neil sto...

How does a KitchenAid brand ambassador and four-time Luxury Coffee Roaster of the Year blow people’s minds and tastebuds week in and week out without boring himself or his customers? Find out when we sit down with Chef Bryan-David Scott, America’s Celebrity Coffee Chef. Scott says the key to innovating in your field lies with two principles: being true to yourself and interrupting your routine to...

The best disruptors like to iterate as much as they can to perfect an idea—or at least a minimum viable product. So, it wasn’t a total shock when Chris McCarthy, vice president of strategy and design for Hopelab and founder of the Innovation Learning Network, asked us to re-record his podcast episode. In this second take, we go meta and get uncomfortable, diving deep into Chris’s mindset of embrac...

Before grade-school choral director Gregg Breinberg won the TriBeCa Disruptive Innovation Award, before his fifth-grade chorus at Staten Island’s PS22 performed for Lady Gaga and President Obama, before the appearances on The Today Show and Sesame Street, he was just another young public-school teacher trying to follow his instincts. On this week’s episode, Gregg dives deep into his story of findi...

While imagination has no limits, designers and creatives Nancye Green and Julie Anixter know all too well that bureaucracy, hierarchy, and tradition can put up barriers that prevent transformative solutions. That’s why they’re on a mission to unteach everything we think we know about creativity. Join the dynamic duo on this week’s episode, as they advocate for following curiosities, creating colla...

Leading functional medicine expert Dr. Will Cole thinks his being tagged as a “disruptor” says more about the field of medicine than about his own mindset. Now, he’s flipping the script on how healthcare is delivered by empowering patients to stay healthy, focusing on preventing disease rather than treating patients after they fall ill. On this week’s episode, learn more about functional medicine...

How do you draw passion and inspiration from family tragedy? When the matriarch of family-run Paxman Coolers Limited lost her hair to chemotherapy, the company turned its decades of cooling-industry expertise into a new product: scalp coolers for cancer patients. A hundred thousand cancer patients later, the family business has become a family legacy. Join this week’s conversation as Managing Dire...

Movember, a quirky moustached movement started to promote men’s health, has evolved into a global brand and charity that has raised $900 million and funded over 1,200 men’s health programs in 21 countries. How does something superficial like celebrating facial hair evolve into a worldwide phenomenon that digs deep into supporting men’s health issues, mental health and suicide prevention? Join Rich...

Kayak and Travelocity founder Terry Jones is the poster child for embracing failure, and he brings this mindset into everything he tries. In fact, he considers his $15 million worth of epic failures to be among his best investments. Why? Because every failure is a short course in What Not to Do Next Time. Join us on this week’s episode as we explore some of Terry’s biggest lessons and how we can a...

Leap before you look—that’s how HopeLab founder Margaret Laws approaches innovation. When she wants to launch a big idea, she just goes for it. She believes we learn to innovate not by planning but by doing, adapting to feedback, accepting failures, and pivoting on the fly. Join us for this week’s discussion as Margaret describes how this mindset guided her new app, Nod, which helps teens battle l...

What’s on Lucien’s mind? Quite a bit, actually, and it’s all focused on pushing the envelope on how we think about healthcare. In this episode, the infectiously enthusiastic healthcare strategist Lucien Engelen, CEO of Transform Health, engages a range of topics that will make your head spin and your passion ignite. Download the executive summary for this episode at manonfire.co. Learn more about...

Ballet and whisky might seem a weird combination, but for Allison Parc they are the ingredients that make her company Brenne French Malt Whisky unique. At the age of 23, she traded ballet shoes and a stellar career performing with national ballet companies for whisky flasks and brewery casks. Today, she is one of the leading American entrepreneurs in the world whisky segment and the first woman to...

Two decades ago, a friend gave Myra Biblowit a vision and a challenge: cure breast cancer. As CEO of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Myra has made major strides towards that goal. She believes a bold vision inspires you to take risks and happily fail forward. In this week’s episode, we learn how Myra’s passion to fulfill her vision inspires commitment, creativity, and support and how her wi...

Disruption ain’t easy, but that’s precisely why healthcare futurist Dr. Zayna Khayat knows it needs to happen, even when it feels like you’re being kicked in the teeth every day. On this week’s episode, Zayna recounts her journey from PhD biochemist to disruptor extraordinaire, and the hard-learned lessons along the way. She covers everything from the power of “creative destruction” to why health...

Like a lot of Americans, Dave and Erin Leaverton struggled with the political divisions they saw and felt after the 2016 elections. From Facebook fights to coffee shop arguments, they couldn’t stop wondering, “What would it take to bring unity to America?” Instead of just talking about this question or adding to social media echo chambers, they quit their jobs, put their three kids in an RV, and s...

One of Modern Healthcare’s Top 10 Leaders in Healthcare, Sean Slovenski has a knack for disruption, a commitment to transforming healthcare, and a fearless attitude towards failure. Throughout his storied career (including a recent stint as the president of Health and Wellness for Walmart, Inc.), he’s challenged companies to start with the customer/patient first and then build from there. In this...

Just months after landing a plum role on All My Children, Colin Egglesfield found his world turned upside down. A testicular cancer diagnosis threatened his career—and potentially his life. But the cancer (which he eventually beat) was just the latest obstacle on his journey from severe shyness to screen success. This week on The Combustion Chronicles, Colin, author of Agile Artist: Life Lessons f...

Every company in every industry is facing disruption as tastes change, profit margins shrink, and barriers to entry fall for upstart rivals. Soon Yu, former global VP of innovation at VF Corporation, says the key to avoiding obsolescence is to build iconic advantage. No, that doesn’t mean designing prettier smartphone icons; it means pursuing a strategy that builds real differentiation and turns y...

Paula Schneider made her name as an apparel-brand turnaround exec. Now she’s making her mark as CEO of cancer charity Susan G. Komen. At Komen Paula is fighting to slash breast cancer deaths by 50 percent in just six years. And the fight is personal: She lost her mother to metastatic breast cancer and is herself a survivor of the disease. Join us for this week’s episode as Paula discusses how she...

COVID-19 has disrupted healthcare like a Cat 5 hurricane. So what comes next? And how do we create positive change on the other side of the pandemic? Jane Sarasohn-Kahn thinks she knows. The CEO of THINK-Health and founder of the Health Populi blog, Jane is a health economist, advisor, trend weaver, and author. And she’s our guest on this week’s episode. Join us as she shares her insight about thr...

Las Vegas-based artist Juan Muniz wants people to know it’s OK not to be OK. In his new book I’m Not OK, he utilizes simple, meaningful illustrations and quotations to create space for people to voice their own struggles with mental health. Shining a light on mental health, depression, and anxiety is a theme of much of his work, including his popular Ninobuni World lifestyle brand. We get disrupti...

Who better to disrupt the healthcare system than a Stanford- and Harvard-trained physician-scientist, entrepreneur, inventor, and innovator with more than 25 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research, and healthcare transformation? That’s Dr. Daniel Kraft, our guest on this week’s episode. Kraft is the brain behind IntelliMedicine—think personalized prescriptions you 3D print a...