The Other 50%

Today I talked with Sigrid Gilmer. Sigrid makes black comedies that are historically bent, totally perverse, joyfully irreverent and concerned with issues of identity, pop culture and contemporary American society. Sigrid burst onto the national theater scene with her play Harry and the Thief, an action film/historical/time travel play about a thief who is blackmailed into traveling back in time t...

Angela is a writer and an actress with a degree from Emory University in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. In 2012, Angela founded Charley Bear Productions Inc, with a vision to affect change through art, showcasing the female perspective in front of and behind the camera. Charley Bear produced the dramatic short film, Without Grace , starring Angela alongside award winning actress Ann Dowd. It...

Today I got to speak with Stavroula Toska and Eleni Yiovas about their award-winning series SWITCH. Switch is the story based on Stavroula's experiences of going undercover and working as a dominatrix in New York City. Now before you pre-judge this, as I did, let me tell you, you have never heard anyone describe the BDSM world before in this way. Stavroula is the creator, writer, actor – coming fr...

Lee is an Israeli-born poet who writes about the beauties – and uncertainties – of life from a distinctly observant perspective. Her first book of poetry;  Whispers From the Moon  is available now and she reads some of it for us. Lee is also a celebrated actor and producer, and is the founder of  LB Entertainment , which develops, finances, and produces major independent films, where she has sheph...

Lorraine is a writer, an actor, a musician, and activist - but today we talked mostly about the writing. In 2010 she launched her "arts & politics" blog,  Rock+Paper+Music , and from 2011 to 2018 she was a popular contributor at  HuffPost  typically focused on politics and social issues. A produced and awarded screenwriter, she's spent more recent years working in longform fiction as well. Both he...

Pamela is an award-winning writer with numerous credits in television drama. She consults internationally with professional TV writers and producers, and has lectured in Africa, Europe, and throughout the US. She was awarded the Humanitas Prize for Between Mother and Daughter on CBS, and she has garnered multiple Emmy nominations and American Women in Radio and Television Awards for her other dram...

Ingrid is a stunt performer and stunt coordinator. She grew up in Australia and fell into the world of stunts while performing 140ft above the arena in the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games. Having toured the globe with renowned physical theatre company Legs on the Wall as well as the Sydney Theatre Company, she had formed a wealth of physical, technical & artistic vocabulary across multi...

T.L. is an independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles after studying Film Studies at UC Berkeley and working in production on major TV and Films in New York City. Her short films have been all over the festival circuit and her short film, Rule of Threes, won an Award of Merit for Women Filmmakers at the Accolade Global Film Competition and an Award of Merit at One-Reeler Film competition. She is c...

Liz is the Chief Financial Officer of Hello Sunshine, the media brand founded by Reese Witherspoon. She tells us all about the company, their mission, and their culture. It's as good as you imagined. Liz was formerly the senior vice president of corporate development and strategy at Media Rights Capital. While there, she worked on the deal to bring House of Cards to Netflix, which was then written...

Kaili is an actor with The Actors' Gang in Los Angeles. Her debut was in October Sky, and she has been acting on stage and in film ever since. We talked about her reluctant yet guided journey into acting, meeting Tim Robbins and joining The Actors' Gang, and living every day with the responsibility of an artist. And this - it can be a long journey in your body to joy. And, she has a beautiful love...

Melinda is the Chief Marketing Officer at Extreme Reach. You may notice that Extreme Reach is the sponsor of this podcast, so that's how I met her, but I would have interviewed her regardless. She tells us a bit more about the company, and we talked a lot about her journey in her work life. How important it is to be authentic, how self-awareness is key to leadership, and how knitting might be the...

Mari is a writer, journalist, filmmaker and actor. She holds a BA in Journalism and completed the 3 Year Conservatory program at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York. As a journalist, she has over ten years of experience in news, art and entertainment journalism, both in the Netherlands and in the U.S. She is producer and director of VAGILANT , a short documentary film about the Women's M...

Today I got to speak with Michelle Salcedo. Michelle directed a gorgeous short film called Piel Canela, that she shot in Cuba and which is screening at several film festivals this week. It will be premiering at the San Diego Latino Film festival March 23, as well as the Chicago Latino Film Festival March 29, and 31st, with a Miami screening happening first weekend in April at the Indie Pasión Film...

Today I got to speak with Judy Jean Kwon. Judy is a creative multi-hyphenate. She's an actress, a comic, a writer, producer, podcaster, creator…she does all the things. Her webseries, MILFriend will be screened on March 22nd at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres at the Golden State Festival. She is about to tell us all about it, along with her very interesting personal story and being perfectly poised to...

Today we have something new - new for the podcast and new for the industry. I sat down with Amanda Blumenthal who is one of a handful of people working in the new position called "Intimacy Coordinator." She is currently working on the HBO show called Euphoria. She breaks down for us what that job really entails, how her unique background, education and work history prepared her perfectly for it, a...

Jenny is a multi-award winning director and producer of the long running program called Project Explorer, and the founder of Project Explorer.org. which is a free multimedia website designed to educate kids about global cultures and histories. She has explored six continents, in over 500 episodes, and has met incredible people and seen amazing places. She is currently working on a television show...

Today I interviewed my friend, Ayser Salman, for the second time, because her book – The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in is coming out on March 5th, so I wanted to have her on to talk about it. She was previously on episode 47, so that was awhile ago and if I am remembering correctly, it was hilarious, and maybe because we were ha...

I took a detour into male ally-ship and spoke with Matt Birch. Matt is a partner at the Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) and is a co-head of the physical production department. He came up through production, reluctantly became an agent in 2009, and makes sure to bring a little something different to the art of agent-ing.  I met Matt while recording for the soon to launch podcast called Catch A...

I was lucky enough to pin down Allie Boettger. Allie is a sound mixer. And I don't mean the kind of sound mixer who works on a stage, although she can do that too. Allie is the kind of sound mixer that goes around the world on the Amazing Race , goes to Alaska in winter to shoot Alaskan Bush People , hikes to the top of a mountain and then rappels down it. She is super badass. And she is quite the...

Today I got to speak with the creators of the webseries called All About Manos – Eden Young and Catherine Natale. Eden is an actor and stand-up comedian turned creator and Catherine is also an actor and writer turned creator. They will tell us all about the show and how they came to do it. You can find All About Manos at allaboutmanostv.com and on a bunch of digital platforms including Amazon Prim...

Susanne is the Owner and Executive Producer at renowned production company Independent Media . She has been in the entertainment and advertising industries for over 15 years and worked with some of the feature filmmaking world's biggest names. This success has also built a knowledge and awareness around the massive gender biases and struggles intertwined within the female entrepreneurial world. We...

For today's episode I sat down with creator Lisa Ebersole. Lisa created and stars in the webseries called "37 Problems," which you can find on Amazon Prime and Who Ha Ha. The series is a comedy about a woman facing the end of her fertility and what she is going to do about it. She is also a playwright, whose plays have been produced off-broadway and regionally, and a screenwriters coach. We talked...

This is my month for playwrights, and today I have another very special episode with playwright Laura Maria Censabella. She wrote the play, Paradise  which was commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and was a runner-up for the 2016 Saroyan/Paul Playwriting Prize for Human Rights. And lucky for us in LA, the West Coast premiere of  Paradise, presented by Viola D...

Kim is a bestselling author known for writing romantic comedy fiction novels. I have read most of her books and had so much fun talking with her. Her debut novel, "A Total Waste of Makeup," has been published in six languages and eight international editions to date, and is followed by a sequel, "Misery Loves Cabernet". "Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink" is a sequel to 2010's "There's Cake in My Fu...