Overcoming The Odds

In this episode, I talk with a friend of mine whom I've known since 1st grade. Lisa and I were neighbors and met at the bus stop on the way to school in 1987. Though she only lived near my for 2 years we remained in touch and friendly for all these years.

Lisa's journey was / is very different than my own. Her story has many twists and turns, including substance use disorder, long term recovery, sexual abuse, a major career change and bankruptcy. Through all these major life struggles, Lisa is able to help others with her work as a prevention specialist at the non profit, SouthWest Council. She has a podcast you can listen to here.  https://www.southwestcouncil.org/peer-recovery
Lisa joined the Southwest Council as a part-time peer recovery specialist in July 2020. In November 2020, she took a full-time position as a prevention specialist, implementing the Wellness Initiative for Senior Education (W.I.S.E.) program in Gloucester County. When not working, you can find Lisa spending time with her family and watching anything Philly sports related.

Many people are struggling with opioid addiction. For more info

I now have a youtube channel where all the podcast episodes live in video form. This way you see what my guests and I look like as we talk our way through the interview.
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This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
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In this episode, I talk to Linda Webb of amanimind.com
Linda Webb is the founder of a Amani Mind. The healthcare startup focuses on helping people improve healthcare outcomes and their therapeutic experience through an integrated model blending Western and Eastern treatments and practices. She is committed to working with children and women, focusing on asthma, autoimmune disease, fertility, endocrinology and oncology. 

We discuss, mental health, Ayurveda, yoga, diet and nutrition any more more things in a similar theme.  Linda’s personal experience with and knowledge of contemporary healthcare issues and trends resonates with providers and patients. She has been described as an advocate and champion for patient health and happiness and recognized as a change agent for the healthcare industry. She has spoken before health coalitions, community health centers, academic centers, and population health improvement teams.

Linda brings more than 16 years of healthcare management experience to this role. Prior to founding Amani Mind, she worked in delivery networks and health systems focused on early detection, prevention, bio-health, molecular diagnostics and education. She earned her master’s degree in healthcare management from the Loyola University Chicago Quinlan School of Business.

Enjoy my conversation with my Linda Webb.

I now have a youtube channel where all the podcast episodes live in video form. This way you see what my guests and I look like as we talk our way through the interview.
The YouTube channel is here. Please Subscribe!

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joshcoyne)

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In this episode, I talk to Bill Prokopow. Bill is an amazing musical talent with many projects under his belt. But this conversation with Bill doesn't really talk about music. More so, Bill talks about a multi year experience he had with this his father. Back in June I got an email from bill that went like this: "So I was recommended to your show  because of a crazy experience I had with my father a few years back. It involves money, prostitutes, a revelation, a life altering stroke, a mental breakdown in Costa Rica, therapy, a forced commitment to a mental hospital, a divorce, estrangement, reuniting, and way too many Flat Earth videos."

More about Bill
Bill began writing music as soon as he sat down at a piano at age 5, and since then he hasn’t stopped. His song Wonderlust recently shot to the #1 spot on the Shazam Discovery and US Charts for nearly two weeks after it was featured in the popular Netflix movie "The Kissing Booth 2". Bill has amassed over 20 million plays on Spotify for his solo project Will Post, and his music has been heard prominently in feature films and shorts, national prime time television shows and concert halls and rock venues all across the US.

The musical journey of Bill’s life has been deep and diverse, and he has spent much of it crossing genres - from composing, conducting, and singing with orchestras across the country (including The San Francisco Symphony and Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra) to touring the nation playing midi-hacked Nintendo controllers in the chiptune-rock band I Fight Dragons, to creating dazzling projection mapped visuals reminiscent of Fantasia for his award winning orchestral-electronic solo project.

But Bill feels most at home when combining his classical sensibilities with the ethos of the current moment, creating work that serves the now and launches itself into the future, toward eternity.

Enjoy my conversation with my Bill Prokopow.

I now have a youtube channel where all the podcast episodes live in video form. This way you see what my guests and I look like as we talk our way through the interview.
The YouTube channel is here. Please Subscribe!

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joshcoyne)

Support the show

In this episode I talk with a long time friend and fellow CF patient, Jason Shields. Jason and I met while being employed as snowboard instructors at Bear Mountain in CA during the early 2000s. Though our paths are different, they are also very similar. It amazes me that out of all the snowboard resorts in the world and the rarity of Cystic Fibrosis among adults at the time, Jason and I would meet at the same resort the same year and be able to know that we each shared this genetic disease and love for life.

In his own words:
"I was born in the mid 70's and Diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at birth. My parents had a son pass away in the late 60's from CF and so I was tested at birth. My mom was lucky enough to meet someone at the hospital when I was born that had CF and had made it to his late 20's, his advice to my parents was to let me do whatever I was capable of. My body would let me know if it was too much.

As a kid I lived a normal life except I coughed a lot, got a bad flu once a year and was the small & skinny kid in class. As I got older I started to get sick more often and more seriously but it didn't stop me from doing the things I wanted. I played H.S. Baseball, I started snowboarding my senior year of High School and ended up becoming a snowboard instructor. My disease started to take over at about 26 years old and I figured instead of laying around and let nature take its course, I would pursue my bachelors degree, I worked full time and went to college at night and received my degree at age 32. During this time I had a dr suggest I consider a dual lung transplant. I took him up and met with a transplant team at UCSD. I was on the transplant list for almost 8 years before I got my new lungs. Since my new lease on life I became an accountant, I earned an MBA in Finance, I've done extensive travel, and continue to live my life to the fullest. I've been post transplant for 11 years and hope this ride keeps on keeping on. "

Enjoy my conversation with my awesome and inspirational friend, Jason Shields. 

I now have a youtube channel where all the podcast episodes live in video form. This way you see what my guests and I look like as we talk our way through the interview. 
The YouTube channel is here. Please Subscribe!

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show

This is episode 5 where I talk with my friend and film making compadre, Ben Wong. We discuss his experiences been as an Asian American in todays America. We also talk about , his parents and his girlfriend having white men negatively comment about their being Asians too.
 
Ben is a very talented audio recordist and sound engineer for TV and film. I have had the pleasure of working with Ben on my own film projects as well as other film  jobs we had both been brought on as freelancers. Ben has been a sound designer and mixer with over 10 years of experience. He has designed and mixed advertisements for Fortune 500 companies such as Google, AT&T and Pepsi in his custom-built state of the art 5.1 mixing studio. When not working on ads he also supervised and mixed shorts, podcasts, and feature films including Netflix documentary Less are Now and Showtime documentary Macho: The Hector Commacho Story. 

As Co-Founder of Dragonfly Audio Post, he uses his years of experience to make any project sound as great as it possibly can. He carries his fascination of sound everywhere he goes, always carrying a small recorder with him so that he can record anything that captures his attention at a moment's notice.

 His experiences are very different than what I, as a white male, have had in the workforce and out in public. Take a listen to the episode and learn more about my fantastic friend with a great sense of humor, Ben Wong.

Check out his work here:
dragonflyaudiopost.com
and on instagram as @dragonflyaudiopost

I now have a youtube channel where all the podcast episodes live in video form. This way you see what my guests and I look like as we talk our way through the interview. Ben's camera cut out right at the beginning of the show, so you have the luxury of seeing my face 99% of the episode.
The YouTube channel is here. Please Subscribe!

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show

In this episode, Josh talks with Dr. Rocio C. Pasion, O.D. a board certified optometrist specializing in primary care, and specialty contact lens fitting. 
Prior to becoming a doctor, Dr. Rocky (as her friends call her) emigrated to the US from Columbia in the 1980s. As a non english speaking child, her and her mother came to this country as illegals escaping the crime wave of the of 1980s drug trade in Columbia. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Dr. Rocky and her mother were illegal immigrants, she would later find out when her full ride college scholarship was taken away for that very reason. 

After graduating from the University of Rhode Island, with a B.A. in Biology/Spanish, Dr. Pasion obtained her B.S. in Visual Science and O.D. degrees from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University. Dr. Pasion completed her optometry clinical externships at Allegheny University Hospital, Omni Eye Services in Atlanta, GA , the Eye Institute and JFK Hospital.

 Dr. Pasion is a clinical preceptor for the Pennsylvania College of Optometry interns and has been named one of the "Top Docs" in Main Line Today magazine. She has acted as a clinical collaborator in the Vital Study for low vision patients at Jefferson University. She received publication recognition by Retina, The Journal of Retinal and Vitreous Diseases for "Diagnostic and Therapeutic Challenges".

Dr. Pasion's honors include All American Scholar, National Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar, National Collegiate Minority Leadership Award, Career Expo Scholarship recipient, Spanish International Honor Society, and she is a member of the American Optometric Association.

Currently she is practicing at two different practices and volunteers her time helping underprivileged, underinsured and undocumented workers receive health care through the philanthropy group, Community Volunteers in Medicine, CVIM for short.

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show

In this episode, Josh talks to a long time friend Michelle Terry about what it was like for her and her brother to grow up with a dad who was diagnosed schizophrenic.  Together they discuss his mental illness, how we as humans find coping mechanisms to help us deal with the more serious parts of life and how her family was able to heal from the issues they faced years ago. They also discuss her charity work, and her ability to talk to the dead as a psychic medium.

When not contemplating deep spiritual truths and the nature of reality to the point of burning dinner, you’ll usually find Michelle juggling the joys of a full life. Like many modern renaissance women she flows through roles as mother, wife, employee, entrepreneur, amateur gardener, crochet artist, baker of sourdough breads she really shouldn't be eating, volunteer organizing force behind It Takes a Village Community Giving and yes, a fourth generation intuitive and psychic medium. She provides readings, coaching for intuitives, women’s circles and other events through Pure Love and Sisterhood.  Above all, her soul purpose is to hold space for compassion, divine love, humor and healing during life's most challenging moments. She wishes you clarity, love, strength and faith on your most unique journey – remember, keep a humble heart and an open mind and know there’s nothing but pure love supporting you on the other side.

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show

Put on your seat belts (no pun intended) for this one, it gets serious at times. In this casual interview between Overcoming the Odds host, Josh Coyne and May Herzfeld,  they discuss challenges May faced at a young age. She shares stories about being in a severe car accident which left her with a traumatic brain injury. If that wasn't enough, May talks about being the victim of a sexual predator as a child.  They also touch on what it was like for her to grow up in a culturally divided home and what it’s like to live with Complex Developmental Trauma, Depression, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
 
In her own words, "May Herzfeld is an agent of fun. She dislikes being bored, though you’ll likely have a good time when she’s around. Herzfeld gets offended by how easily people are upset in this modern world (but she is woke AF). If you meet her, she may tell you an antidote or two of her younger days when she would partake in shenanigans, escapades, and misadventures. Contact her by email at [email protected] and she’ll likely reply. Only, there’s no telling what that message might contain.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. 

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show

Host Josh Coyne talks with Sarah Bigham about living with chronic pain, art, healthcare and her new book, which can be found here:
https://www.amazon.com/Kind-Chemist-Wife-Musings-m/dp/1948920182/

One of the chronic pain conditions Sarah is living with is called Interstitial Cystitis or IC (also known as BPS or Bladder Pain Syndrome), something she ad never heard of until her diagnosis. Many people with IC/BPS go to multiple doctors before finally having a name for their pain. Having IC/BPS is bad enough. Being demoralized by interactions with healthcare providers who are dismissive simply compounds the pain. She is grateful to now have a wonderful team of medical providers, even though it took quite a while to assemble them.

My hope is that my work may inspire empathy and compassion for those living with chronic pain. Sometimes the deepest, most unbearable pain is the kind you cannot see.

To learn more about Sarah, check out website and FB:
http://www.sgbigham.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Sarah-Bigham-101883001439012

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends.

Thanks for supporting the podcast and thanks to our sponsor GamingVPN. Used for streaming and gaming as well as general internet safety. Available for in the App Store on
iOS only.

This episode is produced by Robot Mouse, LLC. If you like what you hear, please rate 5 stars and tell your friends. Episodes come out every other Monday. You can read more about Josh Coyne on his blog of the same name, www.OvercomingtheOdds.co

If you feel the content here in the podcast has given you any useful info and you'd like to buy me a beer, I would happily enjoy that beer.  BuyMeABeer
Please subscribe to the show !

Support the show