Jade Oates, is a writer, poet and the editor in chief of The Mandarin, an online literary magazine based in California. Through the unique, personal and inspired writings shared in The Mandarin she has sought to cultivate and celebrate a New Romanticism, that is, the creative, individual, magically real, and yet naturally grounded landscapes of emotion experienced by humanity.

During her collegiate career she was recognized as Honors Scholar of the Year in 2017, and in 2020 earned her degree from Cal Berkeley. Professionally, she gives herself to opportunities in writing, editing, journalism, and publishing and is also interested in brand storytelling.

Jade believes in our outer selves reflecting and embodying our inner through fashion, color and words, in the light of wisdom, that art itself is the test of the artisan, in giving form to the invisible and invincible summer within us all, and in ever developing one's own personal magical realism manifesto.

Dr. Tracey Hunter is a clinical psychologist, relationship coach and Schema Therapy practitioner based on the Gold Coast of Australia. 

She received your PhD in clinical psychology at Griffith University, Gold Coast in 2005 and made the Academic Excellence List for her thesis work. She is also author of several publications that dissect the relationships between child development, depression, and peer relationships.

Tracey's aim is to help people get in touch with disconnected parts of the self so that they can create inner harmony and thrive in intimate relationships. Through the experiential techniques of Schema Therapy, her clients are able to bring unconscious patterns and wounds into awareness, to heal, and to gain clarity about core emotional needs and values. She also focuses on women ready to step into their feminine power and create loving and energizing relationships.

Tracey believes humans are fascinating and resilient, that underneath our protective layers, we seek a more satisfying experience of life, and that one of the most important journeys we can take as humans is the exploration of the effects on our lives of the messages we received in childhood about love, connection, self-expression, and worthiness.

To celebrate our 100th episode, we invited three of our listeners to be guests and talk about how they are meeting the physical, cognitive and emotional challenges of life.

David Robles is a program supervisor at the largest therapeutic residential non-profit in Oregon where he provides support to youth in need. He and Daniel have traveled distant lands together, have bled together through both the creation of stories and the living of our own. He has stood by Daniel during the most difficult moments of his life embodying his values of safety, consistency, emotional awareness and abiding presence. David values articulation, heightened cognitive and physical performance, solution based thinking, nuanced and effective trauma therapy, the light, the dark, the shadows between, and that the cat is but isn’t necessarily always both in and not in the box.

Parker Denae is on a journey of growth that is currently both at its beginnings, and has been happening for many years. The journey is one of learning to love and care for herself, including giving her younger self what she didn't have growing up, and at the same time fostering your overall growth into a strong and stable woman that little girl can rely on. She also plays roller derby, works hard, and plays harder. She is one of the most lively and unexpectedly raucous and at the same time intentional and perfectly genuine people we have known. She values speaking what she believes, questioning those beliefs, and in yeses to adventure, whether it be of the body, the mind, or the heart. 

Mike Lepis' professional life has been helping large companies connect with their employees. He is an entrepreneur and married to an entrepreneur. He considers himself a work in progress and have recently been processing and recovering from challenging life events via embracing therapy, self-reflection, and movement. You have two children and to help with your parenting challenges, you lead a group for dad’s of neurodiverse kids. Mike, you believe in creating space to support others, in process, togetherness in collaboration and co-creation, insight driven strategy and actionable plans both personally and professionally.

Ron Cecil was born in New Mexico, where he fell in love with rock climbing, the divine, and smoking cigarettes in secret. He has degrees in Biblical Literature and psychology, and though destined to be a cowboy, or preacher, he instead ran large companies both domestically and abroad until in 2015, he started guiding men toward mental, physical and emotional health. Ron's parents were married 13 times, creating in him a devotion to understanding what might make a healthy marriage. He's been partnered since 2009 and father to a daughter and adopted son. In 2020, you completed his dream of speed-climbing Yosemite's Half Dome. Later that year, he co-founded the podcast, Cutting for Sign and doubled down on his passion for writing via a modern western called Midland set in the high desert where he grew up. Ron believes in authenticity, in almost pulling that heist he's been scheming but instead writing it into his book, in caring for our sometimes skittish nervous systems, in long cold showers along warm beaches, in friendship, in bucking shame, in leaning on the world so it can lean back, and in relaxing into the surprising discomfort of living his future now.

Sam Lamott is an artist, writer, and host of the How To Human podcast, which explores how to acquire the psychological skills needed to thrive as an adult. How To Human was featured on Itunes New and Noteworthy as well as Apple’s top 200 podcasts in both Health and Self Help.

Sam is also owner of Square 1 Studio in San Anselmo California and founder of Hello Humans, a platform for storytellers to share their trials and capture the truth of what it means to be human. He is also co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Some Assembly Required.

Sam describes himself as a single dad, college drop-out, and ex-meth head, who, at the age of twenty two, came out of a ten-year bender with severe clinical depression, a two-year-old child, and zero life skills. 

He knows that life is more than what we show the world on social media, that it’s often much messier, but that the lessons learned from those messes are as valuable as anything on this adventure and creation of being human.

Additionally, in the time we at Cutting For Sign have known and and collaborated with Sam, he has proven to be dogged in his commitment to both self betterment and the projects that have captured him. He's become a friend, someone we can call for personal or professional support, and a fierce advocate for the transformation of the primordial energies we find ourselves steeped within, into the woven gold we call story.

Johnny Boyd, Ron and Daniel talk about how an artist's body of work evolves over time, to what extent and the nuance around choices one makes on what to create, how, when and with whom. Johnny is a singer, songwriter, aka crooner, composer as well as a cocktailier, and deep-dish vintage 1940’s bellywarmer necktie collector, 9,700 pieces and counting.

He began singing and performing at the age of eight in the Phoenix Boys Choir and later signed as a major label recording artist. He has recorded dozens of original songs and has licensed many for use in motion pictures, television and gaming.

He is the former Indigo Swing frontman, known for his work ethic (at times 300-plus gigs a year worldwide) with the ability to move an audience from smiles to tears in one sitting. He has been long-acclaimed as one of the most versatile vocal performers of today, a songwriter of genius proportions, butter smooth with assured grace to every note, born to sing and with the vision of a renegade artist.  

His music blends swing, jazz, pop, country, gospel, rock, torch, and jump blues into a stage show equal parts joy and musicianship, at some times nostalgic charisma, and at others, irreverent and dynamic.

Jazz Review said of him, “[He] touches on so many musical styles with amazing sincerity…a high plaintive tenor with excellent phrasing and a warm tremol.” Perhaps NPR summed him up best, "If Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash had a love child, it would be Johnny Boyd." 

Johnny believes in consistent, long term growth, in acting on what he values despite what others might want or demand of him, and in challenging himself with nuance and subtlety. As one periodical said of him…”like Frank, Johnny does it his way.”

Josh Connolly, Ron and Daniel speak about resilience, emotional sobriety, presence and breathwork.

Josh is one of the UK’s most influential mental health advocates, co-host of the 115 Miles podcast, and co-facilitator of the Uncommon Man group. He regularly speaks on BBC, ITV, Channel 5 news, the House of Commons, contributes to mental health policy and advises the scriptwriting team on Hollyoaks.

He has run resilience workshops for village schools and global brands alike. Additionally, he is an ambassador for Nacoa – a national charity supporting people affected by a parent’s drinking.

Josh values humanizing one’s emotions, creating spaces for people to breath, think, reflect and speak with others. He focuses on resilience and is defining a new perspective on it. He believes resilience is compassion to give oneself what one needs, the strength to accept your flaws, and not just about being tough.

Katrin Berndt is a coach and host of the Grumpy Girlfriend Podcast and had Ron and Daniel as guests.

Katrin always thought that she would be an independent, confident, secure girlfriend, and that she wanted an independent, confident, secure boyfriend. But within relationship, Katrin experienced jealousy, anxiousness, neediness and that to some extent, she wasn't ready for an independent partner. The advice she received was, “work on self-love,” so she asked herself what that meant.

She was relentless in her pursuit of answers to this question and remedies to the emotional issues she was suffering. She believed in logical, not vague, or “woo,” in change herself, not her partner and in her own ability to execute lasting change.

She realized that she used to think that a person was either born relaxed, happy, and easy-going, or that, if they weren't, then their parents didn't raise them right. But she discovered that being that kind of person is a skill, not a talent. It's something anyone can learn at any stage of life.

On the Grumpy Girlfriend Podcast and in her coaching, Katrin makes sense of why people think, feel, and act the way they do even in good relationships. She believes most people are intelligent, successful, and hard-working, but that sometimes these attributes work against us and delay our progress. She values personal accountability, getting specific around goals and requests, and in reprograming how we relate to the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings we experience on a daily basis.

Harlow Robinson is an accomplished mountain runner and the founding member of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame. Since 2006, he worked as direct care staff and board member with Healthy Futures, a statewide program that helps thousands of at risk youth around Alaska build self-esteem and life skills.

He grew up living a subsistence lifestyle in remote Alaska until third grade and in 1973 his family was the subject of the Alaska Family Robinson article in National Geographic. He and his Kiwi wife Gina spend a substantial amount of time in New Zealand and both of their fathers are renowned mountain climbers.

He's raced dozens of Alaskan mountain races and wilderness races and won several, including both the winter and summer Alaska Wilderness Races, an unsupported 100-200 mile point-to-point race through the Alaskan wilderness. Hd also did the Transalpine stage race in Europe, which is about 200 miles over a span of eight days through and over the European Alps.

Additionally, after many years and many attempts, Harlow completed the 12 peak challenge, a 24 hour race that links the twelve 5,000-foot mountains in the Chugach range overlooking Anchorage, Alaska.

In the past five years, Harlow has experienced life passing by quickly, and so in that time, he's changed some of his personal paradigms. This effort required acceptance, commitment, a new level of honesty with yourself, personal vulnerability and has revealed wonderful and surprising layers.

Tina Alexis Allen is an actor. In this episode, she plays the character of her father, who she also plays in her one-person play Secrets of a Holy Father.

Sir John was born in England, lied about his age to join the Merchant Marines, was an officer in the British Army stationed in Palestine, moved to the states, and started a Catholic Travel Agency. He also was knighted by the Pope, had a Vatican passport, traveled about 500,000 miles a year from the late 50s through the 70s, and lived most of his adult life in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He also had 13 children and lived at least one double life.

Tina Alexis Allen is also a playwright and author. She grew up the youngest of 13 in a Catholic family in Chevy Chase Maryland. After accepting a basketball scholarship to the University of Maryland, she earned an MBA in marketing and moved to New York, where she spent weekends at Broadway shows and after some soul searching started to pursue acting.

Her break out role was in the 2016 WGN hit series Outsiders, a clash-of-cultures drama rooted in coal mining Kentucky. Now, she is known for playing a diversity of roles, and were nominated for a GLAAD award for her work in The Break-Up Notebook. Celebrated acting coach Susan Batson called her “a true chameleon.” She wrote and performed the critically acclaimed solo show, Secrets of a Holy Father in which she played her own father, Sir John, an Englishman who had been knighted by the Pope. The play explores betrayal, redemption and forgiveness through her father’s secretive double life.

She is also co-founder of Gina Raphaela Jewelry, which turns deconstructed bullets into daring necklaces, rings and bracelets. The company donates proceeds to non-profit organizations that stand for peace.

Lastly, her book, Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception and Double Lives, builds on the story of her play, and further unravels the relationship with her formidable father, this time from her point of view. The book hinges on a moment in which a secret she'd harbored for years is revealed to her father; that she liked girls. But, instead of dragging her to a priest, her father shockingly says that he too, is gay. Through wild, clandestine escapades, her discover that this is not Sir John’s only significant deception.

The Washington Post said of the book, that she packaged grit and grime into glistening prose and that her twisted mystery is a ‘can’t-put-down’ read. And of the book, Tina herself said, “there is no shame in telling the truth.”

Pouya Hashemi is an entrepreneur, comedian, magician and Founder and CEO of spinTouch and SIP Awards. 

SpinTouch is an interactive application with expertise in development and hardware integration. SIP Awards is a unique spirits competition that puts smaller spirit brands on an even playing field with larger ones. It is the only spirits competition that solely recruits consumers as judges.

Pouya was also one of the first confirmed cases of COVID in the United States. This motivated him to create RapidScreen, a contactless screening scanner that uses Artificial Intelligence and facial scanning and was put into place across the nation.

Pouya believes in problem solving, in being utterly relentless in pursuing goals, and in a balance between confronting problems– including global injustices–and recharging with wonder and laughter.