Vibes Drop In

Cardboard boxes on the floor, a flight to catch, and a guitar that still knows the way to a cliffside bench—that’s where our conversation with Wax begins. We jump straight into the touring sprint behind Lifetime Achievement Award and zoom out to the bigger, messier story of how an artist stays steady through constant work, pain, and adversity. The Stutz framework becomes a recurring touchstone, no...

A familiar chorus can change your life twice—first when it finds you, and again when you hear it years later with new eyes. That’s the energy running through our conversation with John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting as we unpack what happens when “Superman” and “100 Years” trade arena volume for a string quartet’s precision. We talk about rebuilding beloved songs inside intimate rooms, letting stor...

What happens when scientific knowledge meets artistic vision? In this intimate conversation, Santa Cruz-based artist Ethan Estess reveals the fascinating journey that led him from marine biology to creating influential environmental art using reclaimed fishing rope. From his West Side studio, Ethan shares how a pivotal moment of burnout at the age of 24 pushed him to pursue his creative passion fu...

Dive into the extraordinary life of underwater photographer Patrick "Pat" Webster as he speaks to us from the remote coast of Greenland while on assignment for National Geographic Lindblad Expeditions. This captivating conversation takes us from his childhood as a missionary kid in Europe to his profound spiritual awakening in the kelp forests of Monterey Bay. Pat shares how a five-year-...

What if the most important conversation you’ll ever have is one you’ve been putting off your whole life? In this episode, Kyle Thiermann — Santa Cruz local, surfer, filmmaker, podcaster — drops in with a story that hits close to home. After hundreds of interviews with fascinating people, he realized he’d never really interviewed the two people who shaped him the most: his parents. That realization...