Mark and Toddcast

This week we dive into one of the most useful personality type tools out there: the Enneagram, which has been used throughout human history. Special guest Chelsea Heath joins the show to give an overview of what the Enneagram is (and isn't), how it works, and what it can mean for people who are striving to know themselves and their traumas better.

Nothing is more predictable about society than the fact that old people panic about how everything they don't understand is a sign of the end times. Aristotle complained about how rude the youth were to the elders. Authority figures freaked out about Teddy Bears and cars. Parents rended their garments about the Satanic grip radio and comic books had on kids. All you have to do is substitute the nouns, but the panic remains the same. This week guest host Nate Heath joins the show to talk about how the more things change, the more they stay the same. You can find Nate Heath weekly on his podcast NotNerd.

This week special guest host Dave Baehler of the NotNerd Podcast joins the show to take us on a trip from the theoretically smallest things in the universe, to the incomprehensibly largest things, and everything in between, from yottameter to zettameter. Meter? I barely knew her!

"Go Ask Alice" was a publishing and cultural phenomenon, with ramifications felt from the household level to the actual White House, and whose very real fallout included both the War on Drugs and the "Satanic Panic" of the 70s and 80s. But as Emerson discovered, perhaps not all was as real as it seemed with the mysterious, "Anonymous" book that still today is a best-seller and a cultural touch point. Find out the wild story, which is the basis for Emerson's new book "Unmask Alice," available in July.

This week we take a look at an international renowned chef and cookbook author James Beard, whose impact was so large that even Julia Child was a fan. We take a look at his start in Oregon, and his rise to be one of the most influential chefs in history. All that, and a special appearance by Zymo! "What is Zymo?" you may ask? Find out this week.

Humans are the only species on earth that can "understand" music. Why is that? What exactly *is* music, and why can't animals seem to put the pieces together? This week we take a look at what goes on inside the human brain to turn sound into that magic entity -- which has the capacity to help us heal, grow, learn, recover, remember, and more -- we call music. (It also makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel.) 

Yes, we've explored blockchain and bitcoin and NFTs before, but we're heading back in with a special guest (Mark's business partner Brett) who actually knows what he's talking about - so again we take a dive into just what this all means, especially for us "regular people."

Mark's away, which means Todd can play - and record an extra long episode with Nate and Dave from one of our favorite podasts, The NotNerd Podcast. After a wrap-up of news stories, Nate and Dave go head-to-head for this latest round of War of Wikipedia, in which each present a short, weird Wikipedia article to be judged by Todd as to whose is the most amusing. It's a Christmas miracle!

Much like "Tiger King," the story of the famous flight of the 1984 Olympic JetPack Guy takes some turns that go from mildly interesting to downright shocking. This week we find out how the jet pack (which isn't a jet pack, it's a rocket) was created, and what happened after its most famous flight.

After a lengthy discussion of science and Portland news, we dig into the story of the person who inspired the successful Montgomery Bus Strike against segregation -- 9 months before Rosa Parks became the face of the campaign. Find out all about 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, and how her actions led to a revolution.