The Nik Hawks Show

A story on water for coffee. https://water.juliet.coffe

Pamela Bergmann takes us deep into the intricacies of balloon technology, from the emerging field of pico balloons to the substantial full-size NASA payload balloons, which can weigh up to 8,000 pounds. Pamela, a former senior program manager for the Google Loon project, shares her journey from fashion design to balloon engineering, highlighting the unique challenges and innovations within the bal...

"For as long as I can remember, I've made things." Dave Schipper joins us to re-start the pod after I've taken a 5 year hiatus. Dave is a generally rad dude hailing from Moab, Utah, and if you've ever done anything even half-way hardcore in the great outdoors it's reasonably likely you've used a piece of gear he designed. We talk about the paraglider bag we worked on together as well as his experi...

Principle Investigator at the Anne Andrews Research Group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences Psychiatry is the study and treatment of mental illness, emotional disturbance, and abnormal behavior Leads research on anxiety & depression Trying to understand how neurotransmitters are used in chemical communication by coming up with new senso...

From abalone hunter to national park service law enforcement to viral video cat rescuing star, Shannon Jay is the kind of guy you just love to sit down and listen to. A fantastic story teller, he is one of my favorite people to catch up with. In the podcast he talks about hunting giant red abalone on the Lost Coast, what he learned in 31 years of law enforcement (and some of the most important thi...

Stan Graham sticks out in any crowd. At 6'5" with a shock of white hair, he's a physical presence. He can also move that mass pretty quickly. In October of 2019 he's aiming for a world record for the 50 and over crowd. We talked about running a bit in the show, but went more deeply into his beliefs, how he got into running, and why he started Elements meals. A rad human with a story worth sharing....

Scott Mann shares his journey from revenge-driven Green Beret "putting scalps on the barn" in Afghanistan to creative storyteller helping guide other veterans through the process of transitioning from the military to civilian life. Scott takes us through his career including why he turned down a military command opportunity 3 times: "I joined to be a Green Beret, not a Colonel". He tells us about...

Been working on this piece of writing for a while, thought I'd share one of the first drafts with you. As you'll hear, this comes from my experiences riding earth energy, would love to get your feedback on it. Rock on! For more info go to nikhawks.com -NFH

After a chance meeting while coaching young athletes I stayed in touch with Eric Bostrom for two reasons. First, he had a clean energy. I know that sounds pretty damn woo-woo, but as I've gotten older I've just learned to trust my gut more when it comes to meeting people. Eric was soft spoken but from the moment I met him there was an obvious intensity to him. That leads to the second reason: He w...

What does it take to shoot a pistol faster than pretty much anyone else in the world? Mastery over awareness and attention. Whether you're a pistol wizard or a paraglider pilot, this show goes deep into how to improve at anything you do. Brian Enos is a well known pistol shooter who quit competing after 20 years of winning at all levels. He built a website with one of the most trafficked forums on...

I managed to fail at the MPM project, this is a little bit of the background regarding what happened. 

This is classic podcast material: A dive into a fascinating topic that you wouldn't normally hear about. Jeff Shapiro is a well known climber, base jumper, wingsuit pilot, hang glider, and paraglider but for this show we focused on his passion for falconry. Jeff is a Master falconer and has been working with raptors since becoming an Apprentice 2000. We talk about how you get birds, how to train t...

This episode with Massimiliano (Max) de Zambotti came about when I found his paper on comparing the Oura ring against the gold standard of sleep assessment, polysomnography. Being the curious type, I clicked his name on the Pubmed link and found a whole list of papers he's worked on. As it turns out, he studies insomnia up at SRI and is deeply and narrowly focused on understanding mechanisms of in...

This one covers one of my favorite stories, Ralph A. telling us about the opportunity of a lifetime. Enjoy the wanderings, for how often to lift weights on a maintenance plan to the latest hobby and books I'm reading. I finish off with a reading of the Letter to Jake. Yaww! Head over to https://www.patreon.com/nikhawks and support the show, thank you!

Random thoughts, recent news, and books I'm reading. Capacity for luck, creating a long term high, towels vs toilet paper and what happens when you're not prepared for the best day ever. Let's do this!

These are all the thoughts for the podcast gathered since mid-way through November, from wild ideas about waves and tides to the idea of 1st vs 3rd world consequences and finishes up with what books & movies I'm recommending. Enjoy!

This show with Roy Harris skips most of his (DEEP!) martial arts history and jumps into two things he's passionate about and equally stoked on: Teaching and Human Movement. Roy has the kind of resume you might build if you were writing a character for Hollywood that needed to be able to fight anybody, anywhere, with anything, but never needed to. He's known for his Jiu Jitsu courses, so we jump wa...

Thanks for the push, Jamie A! This one's for you. For the rest of ya... I had a rad guest lined up who got themselves in a spot of trouble stealing deer stands in Utah. Suffice to say there's more to the story than has been generally reported, but since he's gotten death threats I figured adding information to the internet about him probably wasn't going to help him & his family. So that one's gon...

Charlie is my kind of adventurer. Father, husband, pilot, sailor, and general fixer of anything broken, Charlie's been a mentor and example to me for a long time. Listen in to hear how a regular guy has lived the life you probably dream about. More at nikhawks.com

This is a short spoken word piece, less than 5 minutes. It came to me the other day in my truck and I recorded the initial effort. Over the following few days I wrote it all down, refined it, pruned it, made it closer to what I was hoping it would be. It ended up (as of 26Sep2018) in this format. Enjoy! -NFH

As you've noticed if you've followed along lately I've seen the stats: I get twice as many downloads for solo shows as I do for interview. It's been 6 episodes since I did a solo show so I've got a bunch of notes from driving around that we have to catch up on; here they are! As always, the Nik Hawks Notes are available for you Deep Divers. For the rest of ya, listen up and write it all down. :) G...

In this episode I interview Barb & Doug Garrott, owners of Orphan Espresso. B & D first attracted my interest when I went down the coffee rabbithole and discovered the importance of grinding coffee to A) the correct size and B) making sure ALL the grinds were the same size, and not having some large, some small. Their Pharos has become a part of my morning coffee ritual, in large part because of t...

There are some folks out there who are a little scary in their pursuit of excellence; they have an intensity about them that is damn near palpable. Randy Leavitt is one of those people. Randy is known as a climber, one of America's best. With just a little bit of Googling you'll see just how good he is, but this podcast ain't about climbing, it's about the pursuit of excellence. When I first heard...

"If you insulted Mackay you could expect to get in a fistfight." My good friend and author Greg Crouch comes back on the Paleo Treats podcast to discuss the story of John Mackay, one of the four Bonanza Kings who ran the massive profitable Con. Virginia mine on the Comstock Lode. Greg talks about how the digital age has transformed writing about historical events, about how writing a book actually...

Carla Naden talks about her world of edge cases in the larger world of animal rescue and how she's helping to build a community of people who work together to make animal lives better. From the way she shapes her language to reflect the world she wants to build, to her demonstration by living her principles of what it means to commit fully, Carla is an inspiration for those of us who want to live...