Thank you to all who joined me for Season One of Sweet Talk with Lina Kennedy. I hope you've found this season as interesting as I did. We will be taking a break for the month of August but Sweet Talk will be back with Season Two starting in September! 

Season Two will include a new project called OPSES - Ordinary People Sharing Extraordinary Stories. I am truly looking forward to getting this project off the ground and hope you will return to join me on this new venture.

See you in Season Two!

Some of you might have heard of today’s guest from his turn on the insanely popular TV program, Shark Tank, where he pitched his Mission Belt Company, which I’m very excited to talk about.

Nate Holzapfel is a successful entrepreneur, sales and customer expert, communications guru, Mission Belt Company co-founder, and as I mentioned, Shark Tank winner and alum. Nate will share his keys to success and what it takes to be a successful brand builder and salesman; tell us more about his experience on Shark Tank, and how that’s impacted his life and career.

By the way, if you want to know more about Nate and his work, please visit www.nateutah.com, www.missionbelt.com, or check him out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. You can also catch Nate’s star-making turn on the hit TV show, Shark Tank.

Those of you who know me and my outlook on life in general, will also know that I believe that everything happens for a reason, and out of the darkest places, light emerges and that in time, we will come out of this and be in a better place.

It's with those thoughts in mind that I'm pleased to welcome a genuinely inspiring and accomplished woman who has seen and lived through more than her fair share of challenges.

Mary Pflum Peterson is a multi-award-winning television journalist and New York Times, bestselling author. Her impressive resume includes stints as a reporter in Istanbul, Berlin, and Atlanta for CNN, where she was an on-camera reporter, and served for two years as the network's Turk Bureau Chief covering everything from earthquakes to unrest throughout the Middle East. Mary then moved on to Good Morning America. She's currently a producer and reporter for NBC News.

Mary is also a critically-acclaimed New York Times bestselling author. Her first book, White Dresses: A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters, which I fiercely recommend and which we will discuss today, looks at Mary's complicated, yet loving family, through the prism of white dresses that the women in her family wore on significant occasions.

Website: http://www.marypflumpeterson.com/

Twitter: @MaryElizPflum

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaryPflumPeterson/

SMS: It doesn’t mean what you think. We’re talking slow medicine and sleep and how they can reduce your stress. These are certainly unusual times. During these days of social distancing, working from home, constant news and alerts, and now even civil unrest, we’re all feeling stressed and filled with anxiety. It goes without saying, stress can take its toll on our physical and mental health. 

For today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Michael Finkelstein, aka “The Slow Medicine Doctor." We'll be discussing the importance of sleep and managing stress, which so many people are struggling with during these challenging times.

Dr. Finkelstein is the founder and executive director of The Slow Medicine Foundation and the founder and medical director of SunRaven, a holistic wellness center located in beautiful Bedford, NY. Michael Finkelstein is a highly trained and experienced allopathic/conventional medical doctor and board-certified in internal medicine. For two decades, Dr. Finkelstein served as the medical director of Northern Westchester Hospital before turning his attention to the world of integrative and holistic medicine. Dr. Finkelstein holds an Associate Fellowship in Integrative Medicine, which he earned under the aegis of his friend and integrative medicine pioneer Andrew Weil, MD.

Dr. Finkelstein is the author of the critically-acclaimed book, Slow Medicine: Hope and Healing for Chronic Illness, which was endorsed no less than by Andrew Weil and Mehmet Oz, Dr. Finkelstein’s medical school roommate; and a medical blogger for Doctor Oz, Sharecare, and The Huffington Post. His important work has been featured in leading media outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, and Real Simple; he’s a sought after public speaker, an adjunct professor at Binghamton University School of Management; and the Chief Executive for Continuity and Corporate Wellness at Max Finkelstein Inc, a leading independent and family-owned Goodyear distributor, with over 400 employees.

Today’s show deals with a subject with which I’m all too familiar—child abuse. As those of you who’ve read my memoir, The Sugar Queen, know, and for those of you haven’t read the book and are unfamiliar with my story, I am a childhood sex abuse survivor. My abuse started when I was just an infant and continued to through age 11.

Incidents of sexual violence haven’t stopped while most of us are sheltering at home. In fact, many experts fear an uptick in sexual violence due to stress, isolation and other hardships caused by the pandemic. Here in New York, we’re seeing an uptick in both domestic and sexual violence.

Today I am pleased to welcome two women, Rebecca Stevens and Brittany Palermo, Director and Assistant Director respectively of the Child Advocacy Center, a part of Best Self Behavioral Health, Inc located in Buffalo NY.

BestSelf is the largest community-based behavioral health organization serving children, adolescents and adults with mental health and substance use disorders in WNY. The Child Advocacy Center at BestSelf is an innovative, comprehensive center offering safety, support and a healing place for children and families affected by trauma and abuse in Erie County. The partner organizations at the Child Advocacy Center at BestSelf include law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, child protective services, medical professionals, mental health counselors and victim advocates. Together, they provide a coordinated, comprehensive response to victims and their families. The Staff of the Child Advocacy Center work tirelessly in our community providing education on how to identify and how to prevent child abuse.

https://www.bestselfwny.org/

https://www.bestselfwny.org/child-advocacy-center/

I’m honored and thrilled beyond measure to welcome not one, but two Incredible guests this week to Sweet Talk with Lina Kennedy, award-winning actor RJ Mitte and his mother, Dyna Mitte.

In the ensuing chaos and uncertainly about our lives, there is a real opportunity to learn even more intimately and dynamically about people and their individual, fluctuating lives – something that will help society not only adapt more readily and recover more quickly, but also become better and more evolved human beings by developing new levels of empathy.

Join us for a wide-ranging and spirited conversation. This mother/son duo is a force of nature, with great insight on turning obstacles into opportunities and overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, something we could all benefit from these days.

As we gradually prepare from state to state to re-enter life itself, including work, this mini-episode is to recommend that you step away from the hype and start focusing more on your direct environment and the bylaws set in your state for re-entering work, with a few small reminders to stick to the basics for your health and welfare. 

Here's a link to the article I mention: https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/news/article_page/40_of_consumers_now_wash_their_hands_6-10_times_a_day_to_avoid_Covid-19/164583

Misinformation and falsehoods spread create distrust and lead to poor decision-making even in the best of times, but in these extraordinary times, misinformation and falsehoods on social media, the news, or those constantly repeated by your friends and family could be dangerous to your health.

So, that’s why I’m pleased today to be speaking with Stewart Lonky, M.D.

Dr. Lonky is triple board certified in pulmonology, internal medicine, and critical care medicine. Originally from New York City (born and raised in the Bronx). He attended college at St Lawrence University in upstate NY and medical school at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine. He’s a researcher, writer, and medical device inventor. He’s formally a professor and researcher at UCSD School of Medicine. He’s a recognized expert on biological toxicity and the environmental causes of obesity, which is the subject of a book on which he’s currently working.

While we’re all impacted by this pandemic, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been of major concern to physicians who specialize in infectious disease and pulmonary and critical care medicine, like Dr. Lonky, since COVID-19 poses even greater problems for people living with respiratory illnesses.

As such Dr. Lonky has been writing and speaking frequently about the COVID-19 pandemic to set the record straight and correct the glut of misinformation, answer questions, and allay the concerns of those struggling to make sense of it all.

I feel that COVD19 is a good time for the intro to my Sweet Talk podcast. Why? Because irrelevant to everything we read out there in the news, I think we all have a little something hidden inside that we can to let out. I know I do.