Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Jordan Criss, a longtime friend and guest. In many ways, we caught up after not talking for a couple of weeks. As always, it's a lot of fun to dive into everything we're thinking about, interested in, or just the goings-on in life.

Topics include storytelling in video games, VFX in films, photorealistic image enhancement, and more!

In this podcast, I catch up with my friend Joe Jackowski. We reminisce about old times before discussing psychology topics. We share two podcasts that have influenced our thinking: Sarah Hallberg on Peter Attia's podcast and Yeonmi Park on Jordan Peterson's podcast.

Alec is a business owner, entrepreneur, ultra-runner, mountaineer, and travel fanatic. He believes in the power and resilience of the human spirit and one who perpetually seeks to optimize life in all of its pillars.

Professionally, Alec is currently the Managing Partner of BDV Capital Group. This boutique capital advisory firm works with select investment groups, primarily focused on real estate private equity. In recent years, Alec has come from an entrepreneurial family and a real-estate-focused family business.

He is a former Division One athlete for the University of Oregon and now an ultra-marathoner and an avid mountaineer — currently climbing the highest point in all 50 states in America while simultaneously pushing his running endurance limits consistently further, recently completing his furthest race yet, the Ultra Race of Champions 100km (62 miles) through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.

Today, my guest on the podcast is Stephanie Garcia. Stephanie is a traveler who worked and lived in a London hostel for three years. She has spent much time teaching children and showing them there's more to life than books.

In this conversation, Steph and I dive into her travels, the most important one being, or the focal point, the hostel, because, from my own experience, the hostel doesn't have a large play in what I thought about it. I hadn't realized how many variations on a hostel there could be, and also around the stigma of it.

For someone like Steph, who said I'm going to live here and work here for three years, it is one of those moments that shape and define how you view the world. It seems so out of the ordinary, especially as someone who's grown and lived in a grown-up and lived in an area that is roughly where I've always lived. We get into other stories that Steph finds meaningful throughout the conversation, from favorite travel places to levels.

Today, on the podcast, I am joined by my friend, Mike Taccona. In this episode, we talk about his experiences joining the whoop community.

Mike has been wearing his Whoop for just about just over a month at the time of this recording. Mike is a registered nurse. And one thing that I enjoy talking about wearables, in general, is the impact that these devices can have on people with high-stress jobs.

I wanted to get his take on what he's been learning by wearing Whoop. This is a step one conversation since he hasn't been wearing it for too long—this kind of prefaces his opinions early on.

Today on the podcast is my friend, Nick Buegel. As always, Nick and I have great conversations. This was the first one we've had in person since the pandemic started. It was enjoyable for me to have him over to record this. There's something special about being in the same room with someone and having an in-depth discussion about your life or the ideas we've been thinking about. We expanded on what Nick did to cope with the pandemic, meaning what happened through the pandemic and what caused him to explore. What we get into basically is this immersing himself in nature.

May 4 is the day Star Wars nerds rejoice! “May the fourth be with you” in pop culture is the holiday that we all celebrate the impact the galaxy far, far away has on so many of us. At the core of the hero's reimagined journey is a phrase first spoken by Obi-Wan: “May the Force Be With You.” Hearing this phrase for the first time is a bit cheesy. But once you have a deeper understanding of the broader context, it connects you to an in-group. Think about it this way: A phrase has now morphed into a play on words to be celebrated on the day.

Let's rewind time to the 1970s, before George Lucas or anyone else knew what Star Wars would become.

Today, my friend, Joe Jackowski, joins me on the podcast. Joe now holds a bachelor's in biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience from the University of Michigan.

As he finished up his degree, he took it upon himself to continue exploring where his interests had taken him, specifically in psychology. He's been exploring two influential psychologists and psychotherapists, Erich Neumann and Camille Paglia.

My guest on the podcast today is my friend Ivy. For reasons you'll soon find out, she wanted to remain anonymous on this podcast so we could share it on her social platform by the same handle.

Ivy is based in LA and primarily works with paintings. Her style is heavily influenced by street art with themes of self-love and life struggle with different emotions, which she portrays by combining portraiture words and color elements. Her goal is to create art that connects with people on a deeper level by evoking emotions and developing a sense of vulnerability.

Holly is the creator of Kick Butt Life. Her brand emphasizes incorporating adventure, thrills, strength, play, and community into everyday life. She deeply loves the outdoors and strongly believes everyone should follow through on their craziest dreams. She thru-hiked the 2,200 mile-long Appalachian Trail in 2019 and has extensively hiked throughout Arizona, the Adirondacks, and the White Mountains. Her upcoming adventure plans include the Oregon Coast Trail, adventuring through the Caribbean, and Mount Kilimanjaro. Her journal on taking control of your life story comes out this June.

In today's episode, my friend, Jordan Criss. This podcast is a little bit special in that Jordan was actually in person for this episode.

We talk about the difference or the effect of workouts and mindfulness slash meditation. Highlighting what we think about this first year of the pandemic lockdown and how different life feels one year later or one year of living through this situation.

Aden Yaregal is an LA-based first-gen Ethiopian American working towards cultivating an executive-level career in television development to unite communities through representation and diverse storytelling. Aden is co-producing the Greater Film Festival and working as a development coordinator and script reader with the Enclave Entertainment Group. Previously, Aden began her career in telecoms sales and media before shifting full-time into entertainment.

Today, joining me on the podcast is Brandon Wenzel. Brandon is my cousin, as you could probably guess by the podcast title. Honestly, this was a treat of a podcast for me. So Brandon is a couple of years older than me, but we all had similar interests growing up.

As is normal in our family, or at least seems more normal. My family has thispropensityy to collect something, whatever it may be. Brandon’s big thing is retro gaming consoles, from the first generations of Atari and Sega, but what is closest to his heart is the PlayStation.

My guest today is Nick Buegel, who is returning to the podcast. In this episode, Nick and I go deep into what he's been exploring during the pandemic. As we all know, the pandemic has put unique stress on almost all of Nick and us. But what Nick decided to do was, in many ways, make the most of the situation.

He spent many days and hours outside nature, walking around different parks. Over time, that sparked his interest to explore what is happening within climate change and the broader environment as a movement and what's going on at a policy level. What's going on at a technology level? How do people think about the environment?

Today, my guest on the podcast is returning friend Jordan Criss. As always, Jordan jumps on the podcast and is off to the races. This episode was recorded on new year's Eve, a couple of hours before 2021. We took this time to reflect on the year. This year was a whole bunch of changes for all of us personally outside of the podcast. We dove around the different things we learned about ourselves and what changed in 2020.

My guest today is Sal Abbinanti. Sal Abbinanti was educated at the University of Southern California and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sal began his indie comics career in 2005 with the launch of Mercury Comics and the publication of Atomika-God is Red, and now, The Hostage. By day, he is the art rep for Alex Ross and Bill Sienkiewicz and lives on the North Side of Chicago.

Each year, I reflect on what it means and why I continue to spend an inordinate amount of time on Feeding Curiosity.

This year, I was drawn to the first episode of the podcast. I finally listened to it again in its entirety. As someone who criticizes themselves heavily. Had I not put it out in the wild less than 24 hours after recording the episode on February 8th, 2018. I don't know if I would have kept going.

My guest today is long-time friend Joe Jackowski on today's episode. It was mostly us catching up with the pandemic.

We have not had a lot of time interacting with each other cause he still is living near the University of Michigan. So this was when he was home for the Christmas break, roughly. We got to catch up on what we're reading and thinking about recently.

For Joe, he's been doing a lot of reading with Erich Neumann and Camille Paglia. Much of this conversation is around—both their bodies of work and what he's been reading in their different writings or ponderings.

We get into different ideas about how humanity has built systems for itself and how. The systems elaborate over time, starting straightforward and archaic to us now, modern people.

Liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation in the middle stage of a rite of passage when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. We can apply this concept of liminality to our daily routines.

Anne is the owner/artist of Cards by Anne, an inspirational greeting card company founded in 1986. Anne's cards, hand-designed in calligraphy and ink, are available online (cardsbyanne.com) and hundreds of stores.

For fourteen years, Anne taught “Cross-Cultural Understanding of Religious Meaning” at Carlow University; for seven years, she taught courses ranging from Chemistry, Environmental Science, and Nutrition, to World Religions and Ethics at a local community college.