Good Life Project

The first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden, Thomas Page McBee is an author, journalist, and television writer who explores the intersection of gender, culture, identity, and masculinity. His latest book, Amateur, shares the powerful story that led him from the keyboard to the boxing ring and back again.

You can find Thomas Page McBee at: Instagram | Website

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Sophia Chang is a force to be reckoned with. A soft-spoken French-lit major in college and the child of Korean immigrants raised in Vancouver, when she first heard "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five everything changed. Taken by the mix of urgency, anger, and pride that was hip-hop in the 80s and 90s, Sophia rerouted her life to New York, quickly becoming a fixture in the music industry and hip-hop scene, and finding fast-family with the legendary Wu-Tang Clan.

Over the years, Chang would end up not just a member of the Wu-Tang family, but also manage a number of the group's individual members, as well as other legends including A Tribe Called Quest, Raphael Saadiq, and D'Angelo. In 1995, she left the music business to train kung fu and manage a 34th Generation Shaolin monk, who would later become her partner and father of her two children, before returning to music. Now, after decades of being the force behind other amazing artists' stories, she's finally telling her own story in her breakout audiobook, The Baddest Bitch in the Room.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Tech-founder turned filmmaker, Tarek Mounib, had a crazy thought: what would happen if you brought together people from two radically different cultures, often presented by politicians and media as mutually hostile, to get to know each other in an intimate setting, as human beings…then filmed it all, then hoped for the best?

That’s exactly what he did in his cultural-experiment turned documentary, Free Trip to Egypt. Mounib traveled the U.S. where he'd eventually bring together a group of Americans fearful of Islam, but willing to confront their own feelings and assumptions, for an all-expense-paid trip to Egypt, where they would spend their days with Egyptian counterparts. What happened next was more than Tarek could have ever hoped for — a remarkable sojourn of revelation, self-discovery connection for the participants, the filmmakers, and the viewer alike. And Tarek’s just getting started. Join us today to hear the fascinating background story of his work and his new project, the #PledgeToListen campaign.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Marin Hinkle plays matriarch, Rose Weissman, on the Amazon Original series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which just released its third season. You may also recognize Hinkle from her long-running role as Judith on Two and a Half Men, and so many other contributions in theater, TV, and film. We’re huge fans of Marin, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and the entire ensemble cast. As we sat down with her in the studio, we discovered not just an incredible actor, but also someone who radiates kindness, warmth, and generosity of spirit, someone who is beautifully open, someone who left us feeling like we’d just spent time with an old friend. 

In today's conversation, we explored Hinkle's time growing up outside Boston, her love of the ocean and devotion to ballet in the early days that, after an injury, created the space for acting to emerge while at Brown and take center stage. We talk about the people who’ve touched down and served as teachers and mentors and explore candidly the tough decisions that came along the way as she stepped into the business of acting, the many learnings and how family began to take more of the spotlight over time. Marin also shares her very human experience with pain and how her time on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel became not just a job for her, but also a source of awakening and discovery, peace and ease.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

From the moment he drove his classmates into a screaming frenzy with a coin trick at age 9, Nate Staniforth has been hooked on creating experiences that awe. Now a professional magician, writer, YouTube creator, and author of Here is Real Magic: A Magician’s Search for Wonder in the Modern World, Nate has also co-starred in the Discovery Channel's international hit TV series Breaking Magic.

Today, he tells us about the road of self-described discipleship that brought him there — including the moment he walked offstage in the middle of a performance and nearly burned it all to the ground. We also get into the background process of writing his book, riff on notions of success and knowing when something’s good enough, how vanishing into India profoundly changed his trajectory, and we get Nate's take on finding goodness and wonder in a world that often seems to have lost them.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Former ESPN on-air personality, writer and New York Times bestselling author of What Made Maddy Run, Kate Fagan, has lived many seasons. A fiercely-competitive athlete as a kid playing pick-up basketball alongside her dad (and dominating on the court), she went on to play Division 1 ball for C.U. Boulder, before turning pro. But writing kept calling her back, Fagan eventually stepped out of the limelight of the court, began to write and just never stopped.

Her first book shared Kate's coming story. Her second, What Made Maddy Run, is a revealing look at the sometimes crushing weight we so often place on young adults in the spotlight (and they place on themselves), and what we might do to make things better. Along the way, Kate also fell in love, got married, and more recently, has been navigating the news and reality of her lifelong basketball partner, her dad, being diagnosed with ALS. Kate has so much to share about the importance of showing up for those you love, the thousands of tiny decisions that can change a life, the intersection between media, women's athletics and fans, and the power of valuing your own compass throughout it all.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Lisa Congdon is an acclaimed illustrator, author, speaker, and teacher, known for her colorful graphic drawings and hand lettering, her many books, strong voice on social issues and lens on earning a living in the arts. She has worked with everyone from Comme des Garçons, Crate and Barrel, and Facebook, to MoMA, REI, and Harvard University and so many others. Lisa's most recent book, Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic, explores a path to finding and honing your artistic voice.

In today's conversation, we explore the back-story on the events that led to her career taking off in 2016, how she learned to kick the scarcity habit and the shifts that helped her develop her distinctive, deeply personal voice. We also dive deep into the essential elements of artistic voice, what it means to live and work as a whole human being "in the arena", talk about hitting the sweet spot between artistic expression and commercial viability, and get a sneak peek into what Lisa's got coming up next.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Teaching self-defense to young women in her late twenties, Rosalind Wiseman saw a world she never expected; one where girls and young women would destroy each other. Not physically, but emotionally and socially. And, it wasn't okay with her. So, she stepped in, started to listen - really listen - not to adults, but to the young women, then all kids, and began to build coalitions in an effort to create better ways to be with each other. That eventually led her to write Queen Bees and Wannabees, a book that stormed onto the scene, rattled people to their core and started not just a conversation, but a global movement.

Wiseman has since devoted herself to helping communities shift the way we think about children and teens' emotional and physical wellbeing. Through her teaching, speaking, curricula which is now taught in schools around the world, and media appearances on relational aggression, ethical leadership, the use of social media, and media literacy, she works with educators, parents, children, and teens to help them navigate the power dynamics that influence their lives and relationships. Seeking to scale the impact of her work to more people, she recently launched Cultures of Dignity, an organization that helps adults in positions of power support the children around them. But the journey has not been easy. And, we cover the highs, lows and in-betweens in today's conversation.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

When a stranger thanks Kyle Carpenter for his service as a U.S. Marine, his automatic reply is, "you are worth it." Enlisting in the Marine Corps in 2009, he served for more than a year in Helmand Province, Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, when he and his fellow Marines came under attack. In an act of extraordinary sacrifice, Carpenter threw himself on a grenade to save those around him. Regaining consciousness briefly and realizing the extent of his injuries, as he drifted back into unconsciousness, he was sure he was taking his last breath. Thankfully, he was wrong. Kyle woke up 5 weeks later at Walter Reed hospital, where he would learn that large parts of his face, head and right arm had been destroyed and needed to be reconstructed and he'd have a long road to recovery. Still, he was alive and grateful. Now the youngest living recipient of the US military’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor, in today's conversation, Kyle shares his extraordinary journey, his deep sense of service, love of people, family and his fellow Marines, what happened on that fateful day, along with his years-long road to rehabilitation, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually, his reclamation of life and hope, and the legacy of kindness and service he is working to build and his desire to help inspire people to embrace life. Much of this is also documented in his moving memoir, You Are Worth It.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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

Even if you don't know Lisa Fischer's name, you do know her voice. A mesmerizing vocalist, Fischer spent decades touring and recording with The Rolling Stones, Luther Vandross, Sting, Tina Turner, Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. That earthshaking voice you hear alongside Jagger on the live version of Gimme Shelter, that's Lisa. She's also recorded and toured on her own, earned a Grammy, been featured in the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, and for the last 5 years, Ms. Lisa Fischer has been thrilling audiences with her own shows worldwide.

For Lisa, growing up in a neighborhood where loss was a part of the lexicon, she felt like a perpetual outsider. Music was her refuge. She eventually studied opera, then took a turn into R&B, found herself touring with Luther Vandross and other mega-acts, vaulted onto some of the biggest stages in the world. In the midst of this phenomenal success, Lisa wrestled with her own worthiness, and issues of identity, purpose, power, fame, and everything the stage and music industry can bring. We dive into all of this, along with Lisa's take on life, her lens on wonder and possibility, harmony and elevation, alter-egos and true self, and living with one eye on the finality inherent in every moment.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

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