Follow Your Curiosity

Quitting Is Not an Option with Orrin Evans

Over the last two episodes, we’ve heard from Todd Evans and Rachel Marianno, a brother and sister who grew up in an unusually artistic home and both became artists themselves. This week, their younger brother Orrin Evans joins me to round out the family and talk about his experience as the much younger child was similar and different, and how it influenced his career as a renowned jazz pianist and leader of the Grammy-nominated Captain Black Big Band. 

We talk about how he decided to leave college to pursue his career in music (and how his parents managed to walk the fine line of being supportive parents), how limiting his options forced Orrin to find ways to be successful—never more true than during the coronavirus pandemic—how the record industry has changed just over the last few decades, how the opportunity to visit other countries has changed him as a person, and a whole lot more. 

Check out the show notes and links at fycuriosity.com, and join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Seeing Possibilities with Rachel Marianno

When your father is a playwright and your mother is a lyric soprano, you're unavoidably exposed to a creative outlook on life. This week is the second in a series of three episodes where we'll be hearing from three siblings from an incredibly artistic family, all of whom are artists themselves.

This week, I talk to Rachel Marianno, the middle sibling, a teacher, school administrator, and poet in Philadelphia. We talk about what it was like to realize she was "different" as a result of the environment she grew up in, why she decided to major in education rather than theater, and how she's been able to influence and support her students to follow their creative call. Rachel also shares a poem with us.

Next time, we'll round the set out with Rachel's brother Orrin Evans, of the Grammy-nominated Captain Black Big Band.

Check out the show notes at fycuriosity.com and join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Don't Give Up on Yourself with Todd Evans

When your father is a playwright and your mother is a lyric soprano, you're unavoidably exposed to a creative outlook on life. This week begins a series of three episodes where we'll be hearing from three siblings from an incredibly artistic family, all of whom are artists themselves.

We start with Todd Evans, the eldest sibling, a poet who has started several open mics in the Trenton, NJ, area, and also started the Don Evans Players, which performs his father's plays and other classics. We talk about what inspired him to start that group, how art came back to him after a period of addiction, and how his parents influenced him as a child and never lost their faith in him. He also graces us with a beautiful, brand-new poem.

Next time, I'll be talking to his sister, poet and school administrator Rachel Marianno, and we'll round the set out with his brother Orrin Evans, of the Grammy-nominated Captain Black Big Band.

Check out the show notes at fycuriosity.com for details, including a video tribute to their mother (including some of her singing!), and share your thoughts with us on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Becoming the Eighth Doctor with Paul McGann, Part 2

This week—this month!—I have the honor and pleasure of talking with actor Paul McGann. He started his career in the West End, moving to TV with the BBC’s Monocled Mutineer, and to film with the cult classic Withnail and I. His credits also include Horatio Hornblower, Luther, and the Dickens adaptation Our Mutual Friend, and he’s narrated numerous documentaries. All that said, he’s probably best known as the Eighth Doctor from Doctor Who.

In the second of two episodes, Paul and I talk about working in radio/audio, the way lockdown has changed recording audio, working with Richard E. Grant, his thoughts on Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, earlier roles in The Hanging Gale and The Monocled Mutineer, and why he left social media.

Check out the show notes and links at fycuriosity.com, and join the conversation about this episode on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Becoming the Eighth Doctor with Paul McGann, Part 1

This week—this month!—I have the honor and pleasure of talking with actor Paul McGann. He started his career in the West End, moving to TV with the BBC’s Monocled Mutineer, and to film with the cult classic Withnail and I. His credits also include Horatio Hornblower, Luther, and the Dickens adaptation Our Mutual Friend, and he’s narrated numerous documentaries. All that said, he’s probably best known as the Eighth Doctor from Doctor Who.

In the first of two episodes, Paul and I talk about how his elder brother, Joe, steered him to drama school, the advice he was given early on, and, of course, how he came to be the Eighth Doctor—and what that role has taught him about himself, fandom, and the power of stories to influence our lives.  

Check out the show notes and links at fycuriosity.com, and join the conversation about this episode on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Inspiration and Originality with Cindy Lynn Speer

Novelist Cindy Lynn Speer is one of my dearest writing friends. We met online years ago, and instantly bonded over our love of language and writing. We've never sat down and actually had a face-to-face conversation about writing, though—until now.

Cindy Lynn is the author of five novels and a short story collection. We talk about how she got started with writing, what she's done in the publishing world along the way to getting her own books into print, the myths and realities of our ideas around what's original and what isn't, who ideas "belong" to, and a lot more. Cindy's new book, The Key to All Things, is available on July 25th.

Check out the show notes at fycuriosity.com, and join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

 

Navigating Your Inner Wilderness with Darcy Wade

Darcy Wade is an expressive arts therapist who knows what it's like to be derailed from her creative dream. As you’ll hear, one simple incident in high school destroyed her artistic identity, leaving her adrift through college. A chance interaction brought her back to herself and got her on the expressive arts path. If you’ve never heard of expressive arts, don’t worry—she has you covered as we talk about her early life as an artist, how she was thrown from that path and how she got back on it, and how wilderness and expressive arts therapy can bring us back to ourselves.

Check out Darcy's art and links in the show notes at fycuriosity.com, and join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Running Away to Join the Circus with Ryan Ward

I couldn't resist this title for this episode, because it's true: Ryan Ward really did run away to join the circus. While that might sound silly, Ryan is wise beyond his years, having survived a deeply toxic relationship (which he discusses here), and reinvented himself, from changing his name to moving clear across the country to work as a circus performer and teacher. We talk not only about Ryan's history with the circus, but also about what he’s learned from his journey—how he interacts with his world, how he handles fear, and perhaps most importantly, how he determines what works for him and what doesn’t in relationships of all kinds, and how he handles the things that don’t serve him well. We also talk about what we're learning from this pandemic, and how it may catalyze change personally as well as globally.

Ryan's is a story of concentrated personal growth, especially in terms of the importance of taking care of ourselves first, and the wisdom and courage that come out of that growth. There's a lot to think about in this conversation.

Check out the show notes and links at fycuriosity.com!, and join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

The Power of Creative Constraints with Zoha Abbas

Zoha Abbas started her career as an advertising copywriter, and she’s here today to tell us how she got there, what it was like working for an ad agency (including the ups and downs of working with clients), and how she decided to take what she’d learned and help mere mortals figure out the best ways for them to market their businesses (as opposed to the ways everyone else says you have to do it).

We talk about everything from how creativity can be beaten out of us, the power of standing up for ourselves, how working in advertising both helps you develop a thick skin but also wears you down, and ways to get the word out about your next project without driving yourself crazy.

Check out the show notes at fycuriosity.com, and join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! You can rate and review the show here. Thanks!

Some Thoughts on Recent Events

You'd have to be living in a very deep, very dark cave right now to have managed not to hear about the death of George Floyd and the protests that have been happening across the country in response. A lot of people are making statements in response to these events, some better than others.

I wanted to take a moment to share my own observations, including where I'm coming from and where I hope we're all heading (with a little help from Trevor Noah's amazing "Born a Crime"). I'd really love to find a way for us all to come closer together rather than ending up farther apart.

You can find the resources I mention in my Instagram bio.