Conversations With Iris Podcast

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Ep. 113! Iris sits down with Memoirist, novelist and essayist, Carolyn Flynn. She is the author of the memoir Boundless and seven books of nonfiction. Boundless was longlisted for the 2021 Mslexia International Memoir Prize and the 2022 First Pages Prize.

Her novel Searching for Persephone, shortlisted for the Elixir Press First Novel Prize, is excerpted in The Write Launch. Her work has been published in Fourth Genre, Under the Gum Tree, Arts and Letters, The Colorado Sun, The Tampa Review, The Whitefish Review (Montana Prize for Fiction), Albuquerque Journal, Sage Magazine, Albuquerque the Magazine and Wilde Frauen.

She is a single mother of Ukrainian-Irish-American twins and was the longtime editor of a life-giving magazine called Sage. In her TEDx Women talk, “Tell a Better Story, Live a Better Life,” she has inspired countless others to live their sacred yes—even in a world that may split open, as the writer Muriel Rukeyser once famously said, if one woman spoke the truth.

She is a 2012 graduate of the Naslund-Mann Spalding MFA in Writing program and a native of Lexington, Kentucky, where she grew up near Red River Gorge. She now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is a hiker and a pilgrim and a desert dweller who is an appreciator of horizons.

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Ep. 112!!! Iris sits down with Human Rights and Women's Rights Advocate, Zolal Habibi. Zolal Habibi is an Iranian human rights activist and a prominent voice for justice, democracy, and women's rights in Iran. She serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), where she advocates globally for a secular, democratic republic in Iran. With over two decades of dedicated activism, she has become a fierce advocate on behalf of the voiceless inside Iran, regularly appearing in international forums, human rights conferences, and live broadcasts across major media platforms.
Zolal's activism began in her teens, profoundly shaped by the loss of her father—a respected Iranian writer and political dissident—who was killed by the regime during the 1988 massacre. This personal tragedy ignited a lifelong commitment to ensuring that no other family suffers such loss, and that the voices of Iran's political prisoners, dissidents, and freedom-seekers are heard on the world stage.

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Ep. 111!!!! Iris sits down with Lorie Kleiner Eckert! Lorie Kleiner Eckert loves words – the printed word, the spoken word, and even the quilted word.

THE PRINTED WORD:  Lorie has five books in print plus she writes two blogs. In all of her written work she shares the stories of her life hoping others will find inspiration for their own lives.

Chai on Life is Lorie’s newest book. To understand the name, think “High on Life” with a Jewish slant! The book is available wherever books are sold. It is a compilation of 36 of Lorie’s slice-of-life stories. Each story has a one line lesson as a takeaway, and each lesson comes with an illustration. The book contains 40 full-color images.

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Ep. 110!!! Iris sat down with Barr Maughan!! For most of Barry's forty year broadcast career as an international broadcast journalist spanning five continents, his main area of interest and focus has been on the African continent. 

Both his children were born in Ethiopia while he was employed in Addis Ababa between 1969 and 1975 as both a broadcast and print journalist.  He had the distinction of being among a handful of embedded foreign journalists who told the world about the long, sometimes bloody coup that ultimately toppled Emperor Haile Selassie in September, 1974. 

Barry and his colleagues were also the first to bring to the world's attention the catastrophic drought and subsequent famine that killed countless hundreds of thousands of people in the northern Ethiopian province of Wollo. 

In between his two tours of duty in Ethiopia, Barry and his then wife, Suzanne completed a solo overland journey in a Volkswagen Kombi Bus from Egypt to South Africa, visiting fifteen countries along the way. From Addis Ababa onwards, they were accompanied on that odyssey by their one year old son. 

From 1976 to 2000, Barry broadcast to Africa on a variety of subjects ranging from politics to sports via the Voice of America's English to Africa Service in Washington, DC. Long before becoming Service Chief the last five years, Barry broadcast a daily sports program to millions of listeners throughout Africa under the name of The Ole Sports Emperor.

You could say Africa is in Barry's blood. And you'd be right, both literally and figuratively. During his many forays far and wide on the continent, Barry contracted a variety of diseases including malaria, typhoid, para-typhoid and a couple of other ones either too complicated or not worth explaining.  

His memoir, Beneath the African Sun, details both his personal and professional life during the six years after first setting foot on the continent.

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Ep. 109!! Iris sits down with Russell Van Brocklen! Dyslexia touches as many as 15–20 % of all learners  yet most families still hear “wait and see.” Russell flip that script. As the Dyslexia Professor, Russell translate structured-literacy methods proven most effective for struggling readers  into bite-size actions parents can use tonight. Your audience leaves knowing exactly why multisensory routines beat generic worksheets and how to start seeing progress before the next report card

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Ep.108!!! Iris sits down with Kurt Bush! Most leaders aren't failing; they're simply exhausted and misaligned. Kurt Bush helps leaders move from survival mode to sustainable leadership through greater self-awareness, emotional health, and authenticity. As a certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner, trauma-informed leadership coach, speaker, author, and co-founder of Brimstone Coaching Group, he draws on nearly two decades of experience in corporate leadership, pastoral ministry, and executive coaching. Whether coaching executives, facilitating leadership retreats, or speaking to organizations, Kurt equips people to lead from wholeness instead of performance. He is also the co-author of Live Fully. Lead Authentically. The Surprising Link Between Self-Awareness and Your Impact.

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Ep.107!! Iris sits down with Rand Timmerman. Rand is a retired attorney who is a recovered alcoholic that hiked the Appalachian Trail at 72 years old with his younger brother (71) and then wrote a book with 500  pictures, called "A Spiritual Passage" describingl the difficulties and problems they encountered doing such an arduous hike while dealing with issues of grief, overcoming addiction and inspiring, spiritual  growth even as we get older.

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Ep.106!!! Iris sits down with Katharine Chestnut! Katharine Chestnut is a mindfulness teacher, author, and speaker who helps high achievers stop living in survival mode and reconnect with themselves through practical mindfulness. After nearly thirty years as a successful corporate executive and rebuilding her own life following emotional trauma, she developed a grounded approach she calls The Return, helping people rebuild self-trust, regulate their nervous systems, and remember who they are beneath the stress. Her guiding philosophy, This Moment Is Right and Perfect, reminds us that every moment offers another opportunity to return to ourselves.

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Ep. 105!!!! Iris sits down with Mariam Parineh! Mariam Parineh is a business development and marketing strategist. Passionate about doing business differently with a keen interest in business growth strategy through value alignment. She started her entrepreneurial career in Malaysia with her first company in stone care and restoration which she later sold to start a business consultancy and has gone on to build several companies. She has guided many companies through expansion and is experienced in business strategy pivoting. Currently she contributes as a director on several boards in the USA and Malaysia. She has a passion for the entrepreneurial journey of new organizations as well as innovations within established organizations.  Her life knowledge of the environment around those aging and disappointment in the invisibility of our  Olders lead her to create VivaValet. She and her partners are  determined to highlight how our OLDERS should be supported to live their most deserved years and alter the way that businesses view and treat the eldest as a market. Mariam studied a Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics at the University of California, Davis. She later continued her studies in the Executive Management Program at Columbia University, NY, and Harvard Business School, MA.  She is an impact investor at BabyBox Malaysia and involved in several projects empowering disadvantaged single mothers around the globe.

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Ep. 104! Iris sits down with Johnzelle Anderson! Johnzelle is a licensed therapist by trade, and believes in the power of storytelling to heal, imagine, disrupt, and inspire. His writing focuses on mental health, race, relationships, and identity. Johnzelle discusses his book ,Mixtape: A Memoir, therapist and storyteller Johnzelle Anderson weaves a raw, lyrical portrait of resilience, identity, and healing.

Born to a disengaged West African father and a volatile white mother, Anderson grows up mixed race in 1990s Roanoke, Virginia—feeling like an outsider in every room. Amid childhood abuse, neglect, and racism, he clings to the safety of his grandmother’s love and his inner voice’s promise of a better future.

Told in tracks rather than chapters, Mixtape charts Anderson’s journey from trauma to triumph—from being body-shamed and silenced to building a career in mental health and forming a family of his own. Along the way, he confronts the legacy of generational pain, redefines his sense of belonging, and takes a life-changing trip to Ghana in search of the roots his father never shared.

Honest, at times humorous, and unflinching in its vulnerability, Mixtape: A Memoir is a coming-of-age story for anyone unlearning and daring to rewrite the soundtrack of their life.

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