Episode 176 - Paul Leisen, PhD.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Paul Leisen, PhD.

Paul Leisen holds a PhD in social-political philosophy (Loyola University Chicago). He has a background in theatre performance and set design (B.S., Northwestern University). Leisen flips the development story in favor of people. Strategic design thinking answers the felt conditions of fragmentation; project success closely follows the success of its makers. Person to person connection in a shared endeavor makes it happen.

Leisen worked as Director of Development for Intelligentsia Coffee during its most exciting growth phase, opening shops in Venice Beach, Pasadena; relaunching multiple stores in Chicago, notably Millennium Park, and breaking ground for a coffee roastery in San Francisco. Intelligentsia was subsequently acquired by Peet’s Coffee/JAB Holdings. (Andrew Barnett now owns the SF Linea Cafe Roastery on Potrero Hill!)

In 2011 Leisen formed leisendesign. He led a small group of investors and managers in reinventing two-store Dollop Coffee, resulting in 17 new locations, strategic acquisitions, and a roastery. Dollop won a buy out/capitalization by Docasa, the British powerhouse responsible for London’s Department of Coffee and Social Affairs. Leisen shepherded this rapid development, executing site selection, lease negotiation, design, architecture, finishes and successful shop openings.

Pairing with Datascope Analytics (acquired by IDEO in 2017) Leisen reclaimed a 17th floor office suite overlooking Chicago’s Millennium Park. He invented a multi colored and delightfully illuminated creative launch pad for a leading edge consultant in today’s big data world.

Leisen has designed theatre sets for the Curious Theatre Branch, Theatre Oobleck, and the Rhinoceros Theatre Festival. He sustains a small performance space adjacent his design studio on the South Side of Chicago. Leisen writes on Hannah Arendt and Bertolt Brecht. He has lectured on Philosophy at Loyola University.

Leisen lives in Chicago with his partner KellyAnn Corcoran, and their four children: Betty, Matthias, Penelope, and Sven.

Website: www.walnutspaceship.com

Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/paul_leisen/

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! The easiest way to donate is via the Venmo app and you can donate to @CuriosityHour (Download app here: https://venmo.com)

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Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 175 - Jennifer Dumpert

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Jennifer Dumpert.

Jennifer Dumpert is a San Francisco-based writer and lecturer, and the founder of the Oneironauticum, an international organization that explores the phenomenological experience of dreams as a means of experimenting with mind. She also developed the concept and practice of Liminal Dreaming--surfing the edges of consciousness using hypnagogic and hypnopompic dream states. Dumpert has lectured and led workshops at festivals, conferences, and venues such as Summit at Sea, Lightning in a Bottle, Symbiosis, Breaking Convention in London, Entheogenesis in Melbourne, Australia, the Women's Visionary Congress, the Transformative Technology Conference, Esalen Institute, Ojai Institute, the New Living Expo, the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and Synergenesis. She has also taught online classes on Liminal Dreaming through the Evolver Network, and has appeared on radio shows and podcasts such as Expanding Mind, on the Progressive Radio Network, The Daily Beat, on BTR Today, C Realm, and the Dream Studies podcast.

Website: https://urbandreamscape.com

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/liminaldreaming

https://twitter.com/OneiroFer

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 174 - Jen Novreske

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Jen Novreske.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 173 - Thomas Lecaque, PhD.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Thomas Lecaque, PhD.

Thomas is a dual citizen, France and the United States. He was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, France, and spent the first two years of his life in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, where his parents were professors at the University Ss. Cyril and Methodius. They moved to the U.S. when Thomas was two, and he grew up in Kirksville, Missouri, where his parents were professors at Truman State University. In high school, Thomas was in choir and theater, and his passion for musicals has never waned. Thomas met Tommy the summer after his senior year of high school, when they were both in a community theater production of Pippin. Thomas started his undergraduate career as a theater major at Tulane University in New Orleans. He left in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina and transferred to Truman State University, where he completed his bachelor's in history in 2007 and got married to his wife Annie a month later. They did a master's program in English together at Truman. Thomas started his Ph.D. program in medieval history at the University of Tennessee eight weeks later. He graduated in 2015, and taught at UTK for a year. He then taught at SUNY-Orange, a community college in downstate New York for a year. Since 2017 he has been an assistant professor of history at Grand View University in Iowa. He and Annie live in the Des Moines metro area with their four kids, three boys and a girl. In addition to teaching a wide range of history classes and an annual class on video games and history, Thomas has started doing community theater again (well, was pre-pandemic) and has indulged in the great Iowan past time of national politics, now writing occasional public history and commentary pieces for places like The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and The Bulwark.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tlecaque

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 172 - Marco Pavé.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Marco Pavé.

Since 2013, Memphis Hip-Hop artist Marco Pavé has forged a twin identity as a champion of independent Southern Hip-Hop and as an educator and arts advocate working to stimulate community activism and entrepreneurship through the lens of hip hop music and culture. On October 30, Pavé will release Crossroads EP through his independent label Radio Rahim Music. To mark the release, he’ll deliver a virtual performance and host Soundtrack for Life: An evening for Sync Licensing, Music Supervision, & Film Composing in DC at Georgetown.

Crossroads EP solidifies Pavé’s place in the league of rappers like Big K.R.I.T. and Isaiah Rashad who synthesize the sprawling and iconic Southern Hip-Hop tradition. Every Southern city has its own distinctive hip hop flavor that has evolved out of its local history, culture, scenes, and slang, as well as the way it incorporated hip hop with blues, soul, funk, and other styles. Defined by Pavé’s uncompromising blend of Tennessee grit, swagger, and substance, which lands somewhere between Kendrick Lamar and Memphis legend Project Pat, Crossroads should appeal to any true Southern rap aficionado.

Born and raised in North Memphis, Pave started rapping seriously to articulate the dangerous day-to-day realities of his neighborhood. It took a few years for Pavé to align with his sense of purpose. He continued to rap and attend open mics as he graduated from high school and entered the workforce in Memphis, a global logistics hub with a huge working-class population. He soon felt his life choices constrained by adult responsibilities, and he felt a dire need to branch away from paths that people told him were “safe.” An “observer by nature,” Pavé began to take both music and activism more seriously as he watched his city rapidly gentrify, conducted Independent research on social inequality, and reeled after the killing of Trayvon Martin. His upbringing as a Muslim in the inner-city Bible belt means that he has been going against the grain his entire life. “I'm coming from a family that is all about radicalism and black power,” he says. “Activism is in my blood.”

Pavé has built an unprecedented career that uses Hip-Hop culture not only as a means of personal expression, but also as an educational tool designed to make an impact on both individuals and systems of power. “My mission is to spread the lesson of creativity, spread the lesson of believing in yourself,” Pavé says. “But in the midst of taking care of yourself, I want people to think about how their story can be told without trying to get to a destination.”

Website: https://www.kingofmarco.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Kingofmarco/

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 171 - Lyz Lenz, MFA.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Lyz Lenz.

Lyz’s writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, Pacific Standard, and others. Her book God Land was published in 2019, through Indiana University Press. Her second book Belabored, was published in 2020 through Bold Type Books. Lyz’s essay “All the Angry Women” was also included in the anthology Not that Bad edited by Roxane Gay. Lyz received her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She lives in Iowa with her two kids.

Website: https://lyzlenz.com

Books: https://lyzlenz.com/books

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lyzl

Photo: Pilsen Photo Co-op

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 170 - Izzy Heltai.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Izzy Heltai.

With brutal honesty towards himself and forgiveness for those around him, Izzy Heltai’s music walks the elusive line between confessional and relatable. On his debut album, “Father,” the 23-year-old singer/songwriter dives deep into his fascination with human relationships, and specifically the way that those relationships change and reorganize themselves over time, including his own relationship to himself. On the album’s opening track, Heltai, who is trans, looks back at the way society fixates on his identity as the only story that he has to tell. “Being trans is a part of me that is worth talking about” he explains. “It’s a really cool thing that happened in my life, and informed a lot of how I see the world and how I know myself… but as a marginalized individual, there comes a point where you feel commodified and exploited for your identity, and I’ve always had a fear, as an artist with many stories to tell, that being trans is the only aspect of my work that people would take interest in.” On the album, there is no sign of musical overthought, allowing Heltai’s emotional vocals to shine organically. At a time when any conversation with a stranger can quickly become a sociopolitical battle, Heltai’s introspective and thought-out songs are a breath of fresh air. With an overwhelming empathy for humanity, and willingness to search for personal responsibility, Heltai’s Father will not leave your heart or your ears unchanged.

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 169 - Andrew Hosmanek, PhD.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Andrew Hosmanek, PhD.

Andrew Hosmanek is a lawyer and educator based in Iowa City, Iowa. He holds an MBA, JD and PhD from the University of Iowa. He owns a law firm, HawkeyeLaw, PLC, which specializes in sports and business law. In his spare time, Andrew enjoys exploring and photographing Iowa’s trout streams at https://troutfishinginiowa.wordpress.com/

and https://www.youtube.com/troutfishinginiowa

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 168 - Colin Dickey, PhD.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Colin Dickey, PhD.

Colin Dickey is a writer, speaker, and academic, and has made a career out of collecting unusual objects and hidden histories all over the country. He's a regular contributor to the LA Review of Books and Lapham's Quarterly, and is the co-editor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. He is also a member of the Order of the Good Death, a collective of artists, writers, and death industry professionals interested in improving the Western world's relationship with mortality. With a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, he is an associate professor of creative writing at National University.

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained - Purchase here: https://sites.prh.com/colindickey

Photo: © John Michael Kilbane

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

Episode 167 - Daniel Abbott.

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Daniel Abbott

Daniel Abbott is the author of the novel The Concrete and the co-author (Razel Jones) of the collaborative memoir WOUNDS. His writing has appeared in Lit Hub, the Noctua Review, the Ginosko Literary Journal, and the Owen Wister Review. He has a BA in Writing from Grand Valley State University and an MFA in Fiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Daniel lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Purchase Wounds: A Collaborative Memoir in Stories by Razel Jones and Daniel Abbott: www.indiebound.org/book/9781735363738

Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information: http://thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! To donate, click here: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/donate/

Please visit this page for information where you can listen to our podcast: thecuriosityhourpodcast.com/listen/

Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.