Face2Face with David Peck

Maureen talks about her new film Wasted, alcoholism, compassionate evidence based care, why she might have too much empathy and how the world of medicine is changing when it comes to treating addiction.

Film Trailer

Film Synopsis

Filmmaker Maureen Palmer set out to make a documentary following her partner Mike Pond - a psychotherapist and an alcoholic 5 years sober - as he searched for the best new evidence-based addiction treatments. The intent was to help others battling substance use disorders. But to the couple’s shock and dismay, shortly after filming began, Mike drank again. In Wasted Mike and Maureen’s attitudes and assumptions about addiction are tested in real time as the couple search for a treatment that will work for Mike. A theoretical journey becomes very real and deeply personal.

There is urgency to their quest. Mike had already suffered one life-threatening trip to rock bottom; he likely wouldn’t survive another. In his past life, Mike spent two decades as a successful therapist in Penticton, BC, helping others battle addiction. Then he succumbed to one himself. Mike lost his practice, his home and his family to alcoholism, ending up homeless on Vancouver’s notorious downtown eastside. For two years before he got clean, Pond bounced between the streets and rundown recovery homes. The only treatment offered him: Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh my God. I can’t believe this has happened after almost 5 and a-half years. This is going to give me a dose of humility because I’ve been smug about your progress and now I’m really going to truly find out what it was like to walk in your family’s shoes.”

A one-hour documentary from Bountiful Films 2 But Mike was never successful at working the program. And he’s not alone. In fact, AA does not work for the majority who try it, leaving many to feel like failures. Remarkably, most medical doctors still believe it’s the only effective treatment for addiction, insisting their patients attend meetings while doctors ignore - or remain ignorant of - therapies proven to help addicts and their families. In their documentary Wasted Mike and Maureen discover a revolution in addiction research & treatment. They reveal tantalizing clues to what causes addiction and focus on compassionate evidence-based treatments that pick up where AA leaves off.

But as filming progressed, Maureen became aware that getting the message out to the public could come at a terrible price: “I have never felt more conflicted in my career. As we came to understand how the brain’s reward circuitry gets hijacked by even things associated with booze, like a flashing neon liquor store sign, I realized that the more we filmed, the more we risked Mike’s well-being. Filming had the potential to make his disorder worse.” As the cameras roll, Mike begins one of the new evidence-based treatments, not yet available in Canada. It doesn’t work for everyone. Will it work for Mike? Wasted makes a powerful case for an expanded tool kit to treat our number one public health care problem – a tool kit based on science and presented by some of the world’s most renowned addiction researchers.

Biography

After two award-winning decades at the CBC, where she held senior producer positions in both radio and television, Palmer left in 2000 to series produce for American broadcasters TLC and the Discovery Channel. Shortly after, she and partner Helen Slinger formed Bountiful Films.

The duo has produced a string of powerful and critically acclaimed hit documentaries. Maureen’s most recent writing and directing credits include How to Divorce & Not Wreck the Kids, Cat Crazed, Sext Up Kids (forDream Street Pictures), and Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents – all for CBC’s Doc Zone.

Maureen is also an accomplished Lifestyle and Factual producer/writer/director. Sample credits include the pilot for The Food Network’s Glutton for Punishment, The Week the Women Went for CBC Television, and Border Security, for National Geographic and Global TV.

Read about or purchase the book Wasted here.

Read more about Bountiful Films here.

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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Lawrence talks in this interview about mystery, context, the fear of failure, wonder and the ”business” of art making. He speaks about obstacles to good living, how are is life giving and why philosophy matters more now than ever.

Biography

Lawrence Hass, Ph.D., is Professor of Humanities at Austin College and the Associate Dean of the McBride Magic & Mystery School in Las Vegas. In 2010 he retired early from college teaching to pursue magic full-time as a performer, teacher, author, and publisher.

Lawrence Hass creates magic shows that combine astonishing, artistic magic with ideas that lift the spirit. He performs at theaters, nightclubs, universities, art museums, private parties, medical schools, public conferences, and corporate events all across America and internationally. He performs regularly in Las Vegas and at the world-famous Magic Castle in Hollywood.

Dr. Hass has also won multiple awards both as a writer and an inspirational teacher of magic. His expertise in teaching and directing magic takes him on the road to offer lectures, seminars, and workshops for magicians and magic conventions. Every year, he spends weeks in residence in Las Vegas teaching Master Classes with Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger at the Magic & Mystery School.

In addition, Lawrence Hass is the author of several internationally bestselling books for magicians, including Inspirations: Performing Magic with Excellence (2015) and Transformations: Creating Magic Out of Tricks (2007). He has published essays on performance in most every print and online magic magazine, and his writings have been translated into four languages.

Lawrence Hass’s visionary approach to magic has been featured in print media around the world, including The New York Times, USAToday, The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and by the Associated Press and Canada West news services. He has been interviewed dozens of times on television and radio, and for documentary films, including feature appearances on the Discovery Channel, National Public Radio, South Korean Television, and in his recent TEDx Talk.

http://www.lawrencehass.com/

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gavin is a social entrepreneur and talks about opportunities in the global South, the luck iron fish bio medics, the importance of research and ‎the interconnected like nature of it all. 

Biography

Gavin Armstrong is a dedicated impact entrepreneur who believes that businesses have the resources and power to solve some of the world’s most critical challenges. He is the Founder and President of the Lucky Iron Fish, a social enterprise dedicated to reducing iron deficiency rates around the world using a simple technology.

In commercializing the Lucky Iron Fish Gavin took the simple idea of cooking with a piece of iron and turned it into an international success. He has raised over two million dollars in scale-up money for his enterprise, has won numerous awards including the Clinton Hunger leadership Award, Cannes Lions Grand Prix, Edison Foundation Innovation Award, and the Michaelle Jean Emergency Relief Award. He has also developed a commercial model following the ‘buy 1 give 1’ plan that has resulted in over 60,000 people receiving a free Lucky Iron Fish. His efforts have had the Lucky Iron Fish brand receive an astonishing 2.8 Billion social media impressions around the globe.

Gavin is an eloquent speaker who has given presentations all over the world on the power of impact entrepreneurship, young entrepreneurship, and hunger and advocacy issues. Gavin often spends time spreading the message that failure is important, as a failure is the best way to learn and better oneself. He is the Entrepreneur in Residence for the Kirchner Food Fellowship Program and a Fellow Emeritus for the Hunger Solutions Institute.

He is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph and a Fellow at the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder Colorado.

For more information about their initiative please visit their site here.

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David recently launched his “#No Hair Selfie” campaign to raise funds for Cancer research. Today we talk about magic, “perfect editorial judgement”, what if questions, creativity, uncertainty and his fascination with paradox.

Read about the campaign here and check out the video here.

And don’t forget to check out the blog here about the initiative.

Biography

David was born March 5, 1961 and raised in Toronto, Canada. His interest in magic began after receiving the book, The Stein and Day Handbook of Magic by Marvin Kaye from his father in 1973. Ben's childhood interest turned into a lifelong passion after he watched the television special 'Doug Henning's World of Magic (1975). Ben became a frequent visitor to the Arcade Magic and Novelty Company in Toronto, and then Morrissey Magic Ltd. While in high school, Ben worked part-time at Morrissey Magic, learning the craft from store founder and Canadian magician, Herb Morrissey.

In 1978, Ben acquired the book The Magic and Methods of Ross Bertram and in 1979, through Morrissey, Msgr. Vincent Foy and P. Howard Lyons, met the book's author, Ross Bertram. Ben studied magic with Bertram for six years (1980–86) and became Bertram's sole protégé.

Ben graduated with a BA from University College of the University of Toronto (1983), an LLB from the University of Western Ontario (1987) and an LLM from the London School of Economics (1988). He articled at the firm of Macdonald & Hayden, was called to the bar in the Province of Ontario in 1989, and joined the firm of Goodman, Phillips and Vineberg (now Goodmans) as a tax lawyer.

In May 2000, Ben co-founded, along with broadcaster Patrick Watson and producer/director Daniel Zuckerbrot, Magicana, a not-for-profit organization (and now a registered Canadian charity) dedicated to exploration and advancement of magic as a performing art.

In 2005, inspired by his friend the late Tom Kneebone and the Smile Theatre Company, Ben created Senior Sorcery, a program designed to bring magic shows to immobile seniors, the goal being to create intergenerational opportunities for the old to invite the young to share the experience of magic. Magicana continues to offer Senior Sorcery to thousands of seniors, their families and friends at centers around Toronto.

Ben developed a number of online exhibitions for Magicana including Ross Bertram, Master Magician 2010; Sid Lorraine: The Magical Chatterbox 2009; The Life & Magic of Stewart James 2007 (in collaboration with PhD student Joe Culpepper); Postcards of Magicians 2005, 2010; and Bert Douglas: A Family Remembers 2005, 2010).

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Alan talks about his new film Hurt about Steve Fonyo. It’s a fascinating, beautiful and tragic story. Alan talks about the project, cognitive dissonance, brokenness and why he made the film.

Film Synopsis

First, Terry Fox turned personal tragedy into triumph, and then back into tragedy, with his 1980 “Marathon of Hope.”  That was followed by Steve Fonyo’s coast-to-coast 1984/85 “Journey for Lives” that kept the spirit alive. Three decades later, we are left with an inspiring memory, a tarnished hero, and a thriving charitable foundation.

The stories of Fox and Hansen have been told and retold with no detail left unpolished. Steve Fonyo is different.  He is the discredited hero who kinder souls refer to as the “Canadian Icarus.” Other characterizations are equally vivid, but far less charitable. His step-by-step fall from national grace has been widely documented in the news with all the charm of a police report.

But the decline ironically started much earlier, back before his first run.

At that time he was a burgeoning national hero who needed to be protected from his own bad publicity.  But fall, he did, publicly and personally, and that is not the substance of HURT.

Event reportage is not what writer/director Alan Zweig does in his documentaries.

This is portraiture. This is Steve Fonyo, now, having simmered for three decades in the wastes of his accomplishments, while continuously confronted with the cultural immortality of Terry Fox, who still, even though he died at the age of 23, generates his own pattern of economics.

HURT is significant because it showcases resilience, not only the kind that kept an 18-year-old cancer survivor running the equivalent of a half marathon a day for 400 days for 7924 km., but also kept him from sinking beneath the waves through a coke addiction, excessive drinking, surviving East Hastings, numerous stints in jail, having his prosthetic leg stolen, and being beaten and stabbed multiple times.

Steve Fonyo takes Nietzsche’s ‘what doesn’t kill me’ to an entirely new level.

Film Trailer

Biography

Alan Zweig’s grandparents came to Canada at the turn of the 20th century, from Poland and the Ukraine respectively. They came, like all immigrants, to make a better life for their children. One grandfather went on to run the gum and newspaper concession at the old Ford Hotel near the Toronto Bus Station. The other opened a furrier shop one month before the crash of 1929. But their hard work paid off anyway and their children succeeded, thus clearing the way for Alan’s generation to turn their back on all that comfort and return to the poverty of their grandparents. In Alan’s case he chose the film business.

In Canada he went to film school at Sheridan College in the 70s, where he fell in love with filmmaking. In the next 25 years he drove a cab, worked on film crews in the transport department, acted in a few short films, wrote a few episodes of television and finished three shorts and one feature film, all dramas. Of those four films the only one he will admit to is Stealing Images, which won the prize for best short film at the Toronto Film Festival in 1989.

In 2000 though, he snatched victory from the jaws of failure with Vinyl, his first documentary which has gone on to become a cult film and in 2013 was included in Pitchfork Magazine’s list of 20 Essential Music Documentaries.

After Vinyl he made two more personal docs, which altogether became known as his trilogy of “mirror films.”

His next film A Hard Name won 2010’s Genie for Best Canadian Feature documentary. And two films after that, his film When Jews Were Funny premiered at TIFF and went on to win the prize for Best Canadian Feature.

Over the years he has enjoyed retrospectives at Hot Docs, the Winnipeg Cinematheque and on TVO. HURT is his seventh feature documentary.

He lives in Toronto’s west end with his wife and young daughter.

For more info on the movie and Alan check out the website here.

Friend Alan on Facebook and follow him on Twitter

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listen as TJ talks about making a difference, Zimbabwe, the Trillion-dollar bill, the extraordinary versus the ordinary and unexpected outcomes within international development.

Biography

TJ Grant has a passion for working with the poor, the lost and the broken and seeking to bring hope and transformation to people’s lives. TJ has worked with World Vision for the past 8+ years in a variety of different roles including Advocacy and Education where he developed World Vision’s Youth Ambassador program and Marketing where he managed the 30 Hour Famine campaign which was the largest youth fundraising and engagement program in Canada.

More recently, TJ worked with World Vision’s Zimbabwe office where he led their grants acquisition and management working with donors such as the UN, Global Fund, DFID, etc.  TJ is currently working with World Vision Canada as the Regional Program Manager for Southern Africa. 

TJ has an Undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo in English and Religious Studies and a Master’s degree from the University of Guelph in International Development and Capacity Building. He is also a recent graduate of the Arrow Leadership Program. 

TJ has been married to his wife Heather for over 13 years and they have two boys, Everest who is 7 and Isaiah who is 5. This summer he completed a couple of bucket list physical challenges including climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and completing a 70.3 Ironman in Muskoka both in support of projects to end child slavery and trafficking in Southeast Asia. 

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Caroline and I talk about her beautiful new film, the complexities of relationships, boundaries and why so many of us are quick to jump to the wrong conclusions.

Film Synopsis

Beneath The Spaceship

Trailer

IMDB

This deeply insightful drama traces the events of one sweltering Swedish summer, when the bond between an adolescent girl and her older neighbour frays as their relationship comes under the scrutiny of those who can’t understand what they share.

Biography

Caroline Ingvarsson is a Swedish filmmaker. She studied at the Sydney Film School and earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from City University in London. She directed the documentary shorts The Dogwalker, I Met a Real Streety Once, and the fiction short Beneath the Spaceship.

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Daniel and Emmanuel talk about their new film Je suis Charlie and about the Charlie Hedbo massacre. We touch on issues of freedom, critique ideologies, the truth and chat a great deal about asking better questions.

Je Suis Charlie

Film Synopsis

Trailer

IMDB

This new documentary by the father-and-son directing team of Daniel and Emmanuel Leconte pays tribute to the 11 journalists of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo who were killed in the January 2015 attack by radical Islamic extremists.

Audio Player

00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.The January 2015 attacks on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were appalling in their brutality. But they were not a singular event. In the next two days, eight more people were killed in four separate incidents, one of them involving a Jewish grocery store. In total, twenty people were killed. Paris, and much of the world, was in shock. But the events galvanized a country and fostered a spontaneous outburst of collective outrage as millions gathered in the streets of French cities (and thousands more in Europe and North and South America), to protest the attacks.

Emmanuel and Daniel Leconte’s film is a document of the social upheaval that followed, as seen through television footage as well as the filmmakers’ own cameras. In this sense, Je suis Charlie is a public record; but its true power lies within the interviews the Lecontes collect from both before and after the assault on the Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Much of the film is devoted to creating a portrait of the magazine and the people behind it. Footage from over the years with key contributors who were later murdered, among them editor Charb and cartoonist Cabu, conveys a direct sense of the magazine’s personality and vision. Other interviews feature those who survived the attack — and watched as the two gunmen killed their friends.

The Lecontes also film writers, philosophers, editors, and politicians discussing their notions of freedom of expression and how France reacted to the crisis. We also see the remaining editorial staff as they work to produce their first post-attack issue, which went on to sell seven million copies. Je suis Charlie is highly moving, yet it will inspire examination of the complex issues that this magazine raises.

Biography

Emmanuel Leconte is a French actor and director. His directorial credits include the documentary series I Love Democracy and the feature Je suis Charlie.

Daniel Leconte was born in Oran, Algeria. He directed the documentary C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons and the series I Love Democracy. Je suis Charlie is his latest film.

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Federica and I have a wonderful time together chatting about politics, relationships, “common sense”, art and why she’s not shy of controversy.

Film Synopsis

Exit/Entrance or Trasumanar

IMDB

A flow of words and images portrays an artist’s journey through a variety of Italian landscapes and interiors, evoking an eminently modern strain of melancholy: the feeling of belonging to two places and being fully at home in neither.

Biography

Federica Foglia was born in Naples and lives in Toronto. She was Deepa Mehta’s assistant on Beeba Boys, playing this year’s Festival. Exit/​Entrance or Trasumanar is her directorial debut.

For more info about her look here.

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Jared talks about leadership development, possibilities, why words matter and why the “content is more important than the container.”

Biography

Jared spent over a decade as a teaching pastor and professor near Philadelphia, teaching courses and developing curricula in philosophy, ethics, & biblical studies before launching a creative communications company in 2011.

In 2013 had the opportunity to partner with a friend to launch Experience Institute, an experience-based graduate school in Chicago. He is currently a lead adviser at DVFBC, a business education and consulting firm north of Philadelphia.

Jared is the co-author of Genesis for Normal People (Patheos Press, 2012) with Peter Enns and continues to speak and teach on a variety of topics around creativity, Christianity, & communication.

He and his wife, Sarah, are the proud parents of 4 children, Augustine, Tov, Elletheia, and Exodus who constantly help them both see the world with wonder and possibility.

Check out his blog here.

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