Half Hour Intern

Do you ever feel a bit off? You can’t really put your finger on why, but you’re not quite yourself. Have you ever considered that maybe your internal energy isn’t flowing very well, or that negative energy in your surroundings is bringing you down? Today’s guest Terje Kuusk is a Reiki master practitioner (heals and fixes energy flows in the body) and practices real estate energy clearing and upgrading as well. We’ll discuss Terje’s connection to energy and how we can tap into and clear the energy around us.

How do you feel about the things that you own? Does your enjoyment for them usually peak right when you purchase them and then slowly fade from there? There’s certainly science to back that up, which is one of the reasons that they say it’s better to spend your money on experiences as opposed to things. But what about things that we own that grow and change, whose ownership becomes a sort of experience in itself? A couple years ago I learned about raw denim and and decided to purchase a pair for myself. Unlike most of my clothes, I was looking forward to what they would look like in a year or two, and every day I wore them brought me more satisfaction that my new jeans were truly becoming MY jeans. The experience that I’ve had with my jeans is something that today’s guest, David Shuck, knows an awful lot about. He is the managing editor of heddels.com, the foremost website for all things raw denim. We’ll discuss denim and the philosophy behind owning things that need to be broken in.

Most of us live our lives looking forward to things. This is fortunate. This is the privileged position that we are in. It also means that we often neglect the present and miss out on the magic of the mundane. We look forward to getting off work, so we don’t have as productive of a day. We look forward to the weekend, so our week seems less fulfilling. We look forward to getting to our destination, so we overlook the beauty in the journey. Being present in the here and now is a popular philosophy, but few of us truly embrace it the way that today’s guest has. Reed is a tour cyclist. He rides his bike 100’s (sometimes 1000’s) of miles on vacation. He has ridden similarly freakishly long distances to work and back, day after day. Reed has taken what for many of us is the thing that stands between us and being where we want to be, and embraced it as the place that he does want to be.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. You know what’s really worth a lot? Both. Science tells us that if we both see and hear a concept our retention and comprehension go through the roof. It was this fact that today’s guest, William Warren, unknowingly channeled when he sketched concepts out during meetings at his former company. His drawings were so great that he became known for them in the office, and ultimately left to start a company dedicated to them and the art of visual communication.

Like just about everything else under the sun these days, we seem to be putting a lot more scrutiny and focus on the workplace. And why not? It’s where we spend the majority of our day. There’s the ‘work is work’ camp who believe that work was never meant to be fun, they pay you for it after all. There’s the ‘work should be fun and rewarding’ camp who believe that each of us should be able to have a role we enjoy. Luckily for us, more and more companies are coming around to the latter camp. Happier bees make more honey. Today’s guest, Gianna Biscontini, is a certified behavior analyst and founder of W3RKWELL. She created W3RKWELL to help other companies understand how to keep employees happy and healthy for the long run.

We're on vacation for 2 weeks. Enjoy some of our favorite episodes from the vault while we're out. New episodes start 6/26!

We're on vacation for 2 weeks. Enjoy some of our favorite episodes from the vault while we're out.

We're on vacation for 2 weeks. Enjoy some of our favorite episodes from the vault while we're out.

What is your brand? Are you the funny one that also has a soft side? Are you the quiet one that opens up to close friends? It can be so hard to nail down because people are so complex, and we’re constantly changing. The same can be said of most businesses. This is why businesses are turning to outside experts, like today’s guests from Blow Branding, to help them define their brand. Is it what you do? Why you do it? How you make people feel? We’ll learn all about the recipe in today’s episode.

I’m going to give anyone reading this a peek behind the curtain. When I’m writing these blurbs for the episodes I try to come up with a thesis around which I will write. Now, sometimes when I come up with a thesis I try to tap into the collective zeitgeist and think of a stat or a fact that we all agree with that is going to support my thesis. Like, ‘we all like puppies’. After I think of the stat or fact, I then go to good old google and search for it, to add some level of integrity to what I’m saying. Cut to this weeks episode.
 I think to myself, the most wanted superpower has to be flight. This is gonna tie in perfectly to this week’s episode on zip-lining and why people like my guest, Mike Seper, love it. So I go to google, see if a large scale survey has ever been done on what super powers people want, and low and behold one has been done. Cool, just gotta make sure everyone wants to fly like Mike and I and then we can get this show on the road. And…4th?! 4th place! Flying is not first, nor second, nor third. 4th. The number one power people want is invisibility, which in addition to ruining my blurb about flying, really throws a monkey wrench in my idea that the vast majority of humanity is good. Something tells me that these people don’t want invisibility so that they can anonymously help more people. Anyway, to all my fellow flyers at heart, today we learn about a way we can get close to the real thing.

Picture the person that you think has the perfect job? Who are they? If I had to guess I would say that the person you are imagining has a job that they love. Perhaps a trade that they’re really good at. I’m always so envious of the chef’s I see on Chef’s Table. These people have a singular focus. One that they love and one that they’re great at. Doesn’t that make for the perfect job? ‘Find something you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’ sort of stuff. Well, what if you’re like today’s guest, Khalif El-Amin, and you don’t want to find just one thing? What if you want to do a lot of different things? And help other people do a lot of different things? Now that can give a restless soul like me some hope.

Some things speak to our minds. These are the most common of things that we regularly encounter every day. Other things speak to our hearts. These are less common, but still encountered with regularity. Rarely, oh so rarely, does something speak directly to our soul. A good way to categorize these things is to realize that we, in turn, cannot really speak about them. We don’t know how to describe something that speaks to our soul. Think about a soul-mate, or love at first sight. We can throw a lot of adjectives around about why we like that person, but those are just the words that speak to our hearts and minds, and probably apply to plenty of other people that we have met. The thing that makes this one person so special cannot be spoken. There is just a deep seated knowing in the soul. Amazingly, there are things that seem to speak to all of our souls, belying the notion that we are not connected. Fire is the perfect example of this. Anyone who has ever gone camping and stared into a fire can attest to the feeling that you get. My best words to describe it would be a peaceful reverence, but again, words don’t really work here. Today’s guest, Victoria Zajac, knows all about the soul affirming power of fire. Rather than just be a cautious observer, Victoria decided to get up close and get to know fire even better. Spinning, swallowing, dancing, breathing, you name it, Victoria does it.

Over the course of the next few months we will be alternating between new episodes and some old favorites from the vault. This is the eighth (and likely final) of these, Prosthetist. Kevin is a truly amazing man. He makes custom prosthetic limbs for amputees, and if that's not enough, he donates his time to make prosthetic flippers and fins for dolphins and turtles that get caught in fishing nets. Enjoy!

Over the course of the next few months we will be alternating between new episodes and some old favorites from the vault. This is the seventh of these, Street Artist. I knew going into this interview that Cameron was a successful street artist from San Francisco. I did not know that Cameron is also an awesome human and a wonderful interviewee. Enjoy!

Over the course of the next few weeks we will be alternating between new episodes and some old favorites from the vault. This is the sixth of these, Creative Marketing Prodigy. I went into this interview thinking, 'How interesting can marketing really be?' I came out of this interview feeling like an idiot. Enjoy!

They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. I’d say that’s pretty good advice, and today’s guest is the living embodiment of why. Jamie went from Broadway actor to being recognized as one of the foremost experts on baby gear in the world. Jamie is a single male with no kids and no plans for having them. Someone whom you would not look at and think, there is a guy that knows all about babies. Yet, life is a strange and beautiful thing that takes us down paths we would never imagine.

Over the course of the next few weeks we will be alternating between new episodes and some old favorites from the vault. This is the fifth of these, Medicolegal Death Investigator. I mean...who deep down doesn't want to be a murder detective. Enjoy!

Ups and downs are part of life. The ups can feel great, the downs…not so much. Luckily for us there are people out there like today’s guest, Laurel Harlan, to help us survive and thrive in the valleys of the human experience. Laurel will explain the differences between clinical social work and other mental health roles. She’ll also give us some advice for coping with depression and anxiety in our own lives.

Over the course of the next few weeks we will be alternating between new episodes and some old favorites from the vault. This is the fourth of these, Ultra Marathon Runner. This was one of the more mind boggling hobbies that I've learned about on the show and really gives you a glimpse at the amazing things the human body is capable of. Enjoy!

As many of you know, our sound engineer is currently out because he and his wife just had their first baby. Today we honor him and parents everywhere with an episode all about babies and the interesting ways we can have them. Many prospective parents face difficulties when trying to get pregnant. Today’s guest, Katie Cline, will explain the various options available today to have a child. We’ll take a deeper dive into Katie’s forte, embryo adoption, and how this relatively new procedure is helping struggling couples have children of their own. Interview Contents: 2:00 - What is embryo adoption? 3:20 - The number of embryos made during IVF. 5:00 - Embryo adoption vs. IVF. 6:50 - Giving birth to your adopted baby. 7:50 - Frozen embryos and getting them in the mother to be. 10:30 - Having trouble getting pregnant vs. carrying a baby. 15:20 - The process for donating embryos. 18:20 - Benefits for the donor. 22:30 - The process for the adopter. 25:00 - Differences between embryo adoption and traditional adoption. 29:00 - Donors and Adopters getting to know each-other. 31:00 - Common questions Katie gets from donors and adopters. 33:00 - Negative pushback that Katie gets. 39:30 - The start of NRFA. 44:00 - Advice.