4/1/19 @9:45am pst - Peter Noble Darrow joined host Janeane Bernstein live on KUCI 88.9fm!

LISTEN to today's conversation!


The New York Times recently released an article on the “College Admissions Scandal,” exposing the parents of high school graduates who paid as much as $1.2 million to ensure their children’s acceptance to prestigious universities-- in most cases, kids were underqualified for their placements and unaware of their parents’ behavior.

Peter Noble Darrow provides commentary on how these parents’ are negatively affecting their children’s psyche as a result. A Millennial trust fund baby who spent his way too rapidly through his tony Upper East Side NY inheritance, this former 1%er is focusing on what really makes life valuable now...and sharing his lessons learned with readers in “Wise Millennial” (April 30, 2019). I've sent you a copy of his book already.

“I can understand and sympathize with the social pressures that society puts on higher education and parents' human desire to want to protect their children, but this is a microcosm of a larger gross confusion between ‘parental protection’ and emotional manipulation. This type of behavior robs children of their identity and any sense of self worth. I would even bet that this kind of behavior, even if successfully executed, would ultimately have an adverse psychological effect in the long run.” Darrow shares.

In “Wise Millennial” Peter Noble Darrow asks Millennials to think deeply about their parents’ expectations for their lives and find their own paths, instead.


Darrow shares his thoughts on “identity” in the college admission scandal.




In this insightful and personal debut, Peter shares much of his life story, blending anecdotes with the lessons they engender. Peter had a childhood that many would be envious of—he was born into privilege (both parents powerful business executives with tony backgrounds), attended the finest schools, and lived in luxury in the prestigious Upper East Side in New York City. Yet, in addition to the wealth of opportunity bestowed upon him, he has faced many challenges from his parent’s divorce to his father’s cancer diagnosis and eventual passing. In “Wise Millennial,” Peter shares that after “thousands of hours of therapy, introspection, and meditation, I finally began taking control of my life and creating my own opinions, most of which have evolved far beyond my family’s worldview.”

This collection of honest stories of setbacks and successes will inspire the motivated millennial reader.

In an interview, Peter will discuss:

How mindfulness can help Millennials and how Peter’s own meditation practice has impacted his life

Dating apps—the good, the bad and the ugly (and where the best dates can be found!)

How to launch a startup frugally (top lessons learned and mistakes to avoid)

The complexities of dating while also being a young entrepreneur dedicated to a growing business venture

What to do when you fail (and what to do with those feelings of failure!)


How to utilize your network and be a leader


Whether it is possible to keep “everyone” happy


How to choose a business partner


How to use screen time without mental health risks


How Millennials all over the U.S. can relate to this advice, in spite of Peter’s privilege



ABOUT

Peter N. Darrow is a Millennial, a native New Yorker, an entrepreneur, and an expert at learning from his mistakes. After earning an MBA in entrepreneurship from Babson College in 2014, Peter founded Darrow’s Farm Fresh restaurant in Union Square in NYC. He is the current founder of Veggie Dust, first ever vegetable seasoning for kids. A health and wellness entrepreneur with a passion for helping people, Peter has already seen much in the way of success and failure, and speaks to the challenges facing his generation, and dispels myths about what it’s like to supposedly “have it all.” Find out more about Peter at www.wisemillennial.com.

4/1/19 @9:30am pst author Irene O'Garden joined host Janeane Bernstein live on KUCI 88.9fm!

LISTEN to today's conversation!

What Others are Saying About Irene O’Garden’s Risking the Rapids (there are numerous other wonderful reviews!) 

For many years now, the poet, playwright, and memoirist Irene O'Garden has been a hero to me. I think of her as a walking, writing, beam of light. It is my hope that ...numberless others will come to know her gifts and, most of all, her captivating talent for wonder and marvel. —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic 

“Family is landscape,” writes Irene O’Garden in her breathtaking memoir, Risking the Rapids. She gives us a bold dose of both as she embarks on a remote river trip to help make sense of a family wild and dangerous. In her brave eloquence, O’Garden adds a thoroughly welcome voice to the rich vein of American literature on the singular healing powers of wilderness. —Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix, LA Times Book Prize winner and editor at Outside Magazine Risking the Rapids is a deep and powerful memoir. 

Irene O’Garden sifts through her family’s shared pain (and shared joy!) with elegance and care — searching for nothing less than ultimate understanding and supreme forgiveness.” —Martha Beck, Bestselling author, columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine 

Irene O’Garden has won or been nominated for prizes in nearly every writing category from stage to e-screen, hardcovers, children’s books as well as literary magazines and anthologies. Her criticallyacclaimed play Women on Fire (Samuel French), starring Judith Ivey, played to sold-out houses at Off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre, and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award. Her new play, Little Heart, won her a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Fellowship and was awarded full development at the New Harmony Play Project. O’Garden was awarded a Pushcart Prize for her lyric essay “Glad to Be Human,” (Untreed Reads.) Harper published her first memoir Fat Girl and Nirala Press recently published Fulcrum: Selected Poems, which contains her prize-winning poem “Nonfiction.” 

On January 31, 2019 O’Garden’s upcoming memoir, Risking the Rapids: How My Wilderness Adventure Healed My Childhood is being published by Mango Publishing. O’Garden’s poems and essays have been featured in dozens of literary journals and awardwinning anthologies (including A Slant of Light, USA Book award Best Anthology), and she has been honored with an Alice Desmond Award and an Oppenheimer for her children’s books. A seasoned and entertaining presenter both on stage and video, O’Garden has appeared at top literary venues: including The Player’s Club, the Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poetry Café, and KGB in Manhattan; The Poetry Café, Mycennae House and Vinyl Deptford in London, and all throughout the Hudson Valley. She’s a regular contributor to 650―Where Writers Read, in New York City and Sarah Lawrence College and has received several grants from Poets and Writers. 

Irene also presents to an audience of hundreds annually at the Global Seth Conference. O’Garden has presented at children’s literature conferences at Vassar and NYU and teaches poetry workshops at New York City schools. She is especially pleased to bring the national River Of Words program to Hudson Valley schools under the auspices of The Beacon Institute of Rivers and Estuaries. O’Garden is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild, The Authors Guild, Actor’s Equity Association, The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and The Society of Scribes. Irene O’Garden has lived joyfully with her husband John Pielmeier for over 40 years. Pielmeier, who is most known for his play Agnes of God, also writes movies and miniseries for television. In 2018 Scribner published his first novel, Hook’s Tale, and his stage adaptation of The Exorcist played London’s West End and will open in New York this year. They live and write in Garrison, NY. 

ireneogarden.com

4/1/19 @9:15am pst - Author Diane Les Becquets joined host Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm!

LISTEN to today's conversation!

Diane Les Becquets is the author of THE LAST WOMAN IN THE FOREST (March, 2019) and BREAKING WILD, both published by Berkley, Penguin Random House. BREAKING WILD, an Indie Next Pick and a national bestseller, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. It was also the recipient of the Colorado Book Award in Fiction, the New Hampshire Outstanding Work of Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award in Fiction. Les Becquets is also the author of three young adult novels: THE STONES OF MOURNING CREEK (Kirkus starred review); LOVE, CAJUN STYLE (Booklist starred review) and SEASON OF ICE, the latter being the recipient of a Pen American Fellowship. Other awards she has received include a BCCB Blue Ribbon Award, the Maine Lupine Award, ALA Best Book of the Year, Foreward Reviews Gold Winner Book of the Year, Volunteer State Book Award Selection, and Garden State Book Award Finalist.

A former professor of English, Les Becquets has served as a judge for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and has taught writing workshops at venues across the country, including the University of Mississippi, Auburn University, the New Hampshire Writers' Project, the Department of Forestry, Writers Conference at Ocean Park, Writers in Paradise, the Arkansas Literary Festival, the Telluride Arts District, and at shelters for Katrina victims. She is a volunteer at Back in the Saddle Equine Therapy Center and an avid outdoors woman, enjoying archery, bicycling, snowshoeing, swimming, and backpacking with her dog, Izzy. Before moving to New Hampshire, where she now resides with her husband, she lived in a small ranching town in Northwestern Colorado for almost fourteen years, raising her three sons.

Diane Les Becquets is a member of the New Hampshire Writers' Project, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and the Pen American Center.

Follow Diane on Goodreads.

Les Becquets’ new thriller, THE LAST WOMAN IN THE FOREST (Berkley Hardcover; on sale March 5) is a different kind of terrifying: in it, one woman suspects that the love of her life, her recently dead boyfriend, may have been a serial killer—and she could have been his next victim. This novel of suspense is a conversation-starter about how sociopathic, dangerous people exist in our midst and they are often impossible to spot, as well as a discussion about how women, unfortunately, do not enjoy the same freedoms as men when it comes to basic safety and solitude. This story stuck with me long after I finished the last page. And Publisher’s Weekly raves, “[An] elegantly written thriller… Eloquent, detailed descriptions of nature and of rescue dog training, survival techniques, and the peripatetic life of conservationists enrich the narrative.”



Some really interesting talking points:

· Les Becquets’ late husband was a forester who told her about the Connecticut River Murders of the 1980s: at least six women were stabbed and killed along the Vermont and New Hampshire border. The killer was never found.

· The stories of these women affected the author as she painfully remembered her own assault: being held at knifepoint for 12 hours in a trailer when she was eighteen, an ordeal she narrowly escaped from with her life. (One harrowing scene in THE LAST WOMAN IN THE FOREST is based on this very personal experience.)


· Les Becquets sought out retired criminal profiler and author of several books, John Philpin, who assisted law enforcement on the Connecticut River murder cases as well as 200 others (like the Jon Benet Ramsay case) during his incredible career. Philpin also served as a consultant on the TV show “Dexter,” helping the writers get into the mind of a serial killer. With Philpin’s help, Les Becquets was able to create the character of Tate, a conservationist working with her novel’s heroine that is charming and loving, but after he dies some troubling details of his life emerge. The sensational Netflix series “You” starring Penn Badgley and Bravo’s acclaimed “Dirty John” starring Connie Britton (based on the Los Angeles Times podcast of the same name) also illustrate the all-too-real terrifying notion that someone you meet and start to like—or love—may, in fact, be very dangerous.


· The author did extensive research with canine conservation units in the American wilderness. She would be happy to talk about these dogs and how they help us conserve the wildlife inhabiting our forests.


Les Becquets was on NPR/Morning Edition for Breaking Wild in 2016 if you are interested in taking a listen!

4/1/19 @9:00am pst - Author JB Jamison kicked off Monday's show!

LISTEN to today's conversation!

J.B. Jamison’s Emily Graham series has fascinating characters thrown into situations that are crazy enough to capture your attention, but just plausible enough to be believable.

He is a life-long believer in the power of stories. First as a pastor, then educator, creator of Centers for Innovation at multiple universities, Director of a national Game and Simulation academic degree program, a consultant for e-learning and brand development, John has used the power of story to bring about serious change and have some fun in the process.


ABOUT HIS LATEST BOOK

Emily Graham continues to tackle danger as thrilling adventures continue with third book in series, ‘Disbelief’

Agent Emily Graham is who she is today because of her family, because of her friends and colleagues, and because of her absolute belief that everyone should be treated fairly. She sees it as her role to make sure that those who do unfair things pay a price. She is a woman true to her beliefs.

But what happens when a group decides that their beliefs are the only acceptable ones and everyone else, including Agent Emily Graham, must bow their heads and surrender to them? What happens when, one by one, those things Emily believes in are shaken: her belief in family, her belief in friends and colleagues, and even her role as a protector of fairness?

Emily Graham has faced difficult times before, but in this third book of the series the greatest battle is a personal one. Will she bow? Will she survive? If she survives, who will she become?

In this third battle with a powerful enemy, Emily Graham is faced with completely redefining her life as she finds herself living in a world of…Disbelief!


In an interview, J.B. JAMISON will discuss:

Where he draws his inspiration for his stories and characters

The importance of setting in the Emily Graham series

Visiting the FBI headquarters to give the Agent in Charge a copy of “Disruption”

His take on conspiracy theories

How the St. Louis landfill provided inspiration for “Distraction”

The criminal aspect of the book, including betrayal and corruption

3/25/19 @9:15am pst - Ray Bouderau, CEO of Living the Dream Films, joined Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm!

LISTEN to today's conversation with featured guest Ray Bouderau!

As a native New Yorker born and raised in Rockaway, Queens, Ray Bouderau has had a lifelong love affair with movies and television. From a restaurant and bar owner to construction and New York City real estate, Ray continues to push to the edges of everyday life, adding successful Producer, Writer and Actor to his list of accomplishments.


With an indisputable zest for life, Ray captures the feeling of being alive through creating stories that need to be told in the most entertaining and powerful way. His work as an Actor is compelling, and as a Producer, Bouderau leaves you with a sense of disruption and self-reflection.


As the CEO of Living the Dream Films, Ray has worked on 7 feature length films in the last 2 years alone. His wholehearted passion for the entertainment industry has seen him work alongside the great talents of Amanda Seyfreid, Alec Baldwin, Johnny Depp, Adam Levine, Taylor Schilling and many others.


His films have been met with critical acclaim and wide audiences spanning several genres. It’s rare that filmmaker creates a such a splash right out of the gate, but Ray has accomplished just that, with his films screening at such prestigious festivals as the Toronto International Film Festival, South by Southwest, and the TriBeCa Film Festival.

ray's latest film - THE PUBLIC

Drama/2018


In “The Public" an unusually bitter Arctic blast has made its way to downtown Cincinnati and the front doors of the public library where the action of the film takes place.



Cast: Emilio Esteves, Jeffrey Wright, Michael K Williams, Gabrielle Union, Taylor Schilling, Christian Slater, Alec Baldwin

Director: Emilio Esteves

Writer: Emilio Esteves

Distribution: Universal

Festivals: TIFF, Hampton International Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival



For more info:

IMDb

THE PUBLIC

3/25/19 @9:45am pst - Award-winning author Carol Goodman joined Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

LISTEN to today's conversation
with featured guest Carol Goodman!

Award-winning author Carol Goodman is back with a psychological thriller that will take your breath away! The Night Visitors (William Morrow, March 26) is full of secrets and intrigue, and Goodman explores abusive relationships with a deft hand.

‘The Night Visitors’ is a genre-bending thriller with smart commentary on abusive relationships and family trauma

RED HOOD, NY –The latest thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages and The Other Mother is a story of mistaken identities, missed chances, forgiveness, and vengeance.

Alice is fleeing an abusive relationship and desperate to protect ten-year-old Oren when she finds herself stepping off a bus in the middle of a snowstorm in Delphi, NY. Though Alice is wary, Oren bonds nearly instantly with Mattie, a social worker in her fifties who lives in an enormous run-down house in the middle of the woods. 

According to protocol Mattie should take Alice and Oren to a local shelter, but she brings them home for the night instead. She has plenty of room, she says. What she doesn’t say is that Oren reminds her of her little brother, who died thirty years ago at the age of ten.

Alice is keeping her own secrets. And as the snowstorm worsens around them, each woman’s past will prove itself unburied, stirring up threats both within and without.

CAROL GOODMAN graduated from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin. After teaching Latin for several years, she studied for an MFA in Fiction. She is the author of twenty novels, including The Lake of Dead Languages and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize. Her 2017 thriller The Widow’s House won the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and teaches writing and literature at The New School and SUNY New Paltz.

In an interview, CAROL GOODMAN can discuss

Her experience working as a volunteer on a hotline for domestic abuse victims and how this impacted the writing of the book

How to continue to find inspiration after writing so many books, each with their own unique story to tell and characters to tell it

Her varying experiences writing in different genres

An Interview with CAROL GOODMAN

After nearly 20 books, what made you decide to write a book with a focus on domestic violence? 

According to the CDC, nearly 1 in 4 adult women and approximately 1 in 7 men report having experienced physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetime. That would be reason enough. It is a subject that I have always been concerned about, but when a student told me about her own experiences I was reminded of how important it was. My first reaction was to volunteer at a crisis center; my second was to address the issue in my next book. 

Your experience volunteering for the domestic abuse hotline plays out in Mattie’s job as a social worker. Can you talk about your research for The Night Visitors?

I did the training at Family of Woodstock primarily because I wanted to know how to help victims of domestic violence, but I knew I’d also want to use the material in a novel. The training gave me a visceral sense of how a crisis center deals with a call from a victim of domestic violence: I learned the protocol, the statistics, and the resources we could offer a caller. What moved me the most was the dedication and generosity of the social workers and volunteers who take these calls day in and day out, offering a lifeline to people in need. I wanted to create characters who embodied those qualities while also exploring the emotional costs of confronting these issues.

What inspires you to incorporate social issues into the your writing?

I think I’ve always wanted to show strong women coping with the challenges of modern life, but I was also a little wary of being too didactic or preachy in my writing. About five years ago, though, I started teaching a class called “Contemporary Issues in Literature” in which we read “social issue” books and talked about how authors handled that challenge. The example of these writers--Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Louise Erdrich, to name a few--and the response my students had to their work inspired me to be more daring in my own work. 

Why did you decide to donate proceeds from the book to Family of Woodstock? 

That seemed only fair since I could not have written the book without them. 

Did your writing process for The Night Visitors differ from your first books?

It’s the first book I’ve written that uses shifting point of view between two female narrators. I loved the juxtaposition of Alice’s and Mattie’s voices. 

What are you working on now?

I have just finished a book called The Ice Virgin about a teacher at a boarding school in Coastal Maine whose teenaged son is implicated in the death of a young woman. It contains all my maternal anxieties AND my love of Maine! 

3/25/19 @9:30am pst - Writer/Musician Doug Hoekstra joined host Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

LISTEN to today's conversation with featured guest Doug Hoekstra!

DOUG HOEKSTRA is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer and musician, educated at DePaul University (B.A.) and Belmont University (M.Ed.). His first book, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers (Canopic Publishing, April 2016) was an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) Bronze Medal Finalist for Best Short Fiction. Bothering garnered stellar print reviews and signature appearances at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville and WXPN World Café’s Summer Listening Series hosted by David Dye. Bothering also worked as a compliment to Hoekstra’s work as a singer-songwriter, as he included selections from the book in his live oeuvre during performances in the U.S. and Europe. https://doughoekstra.wordpress.com/



Doug Hoekstra will discuss:

• His musical career and how it influenced the poetry and prose in Unopened
• Where he draws inspiration to create so much original and unique content
• How he sees the writing process differing from music
• Why he chose to separate the book into the internal self, external world, and space in between
• The journey he hopes readers will take while reading the book
• Where his idea for the cover comes from

Books: Bothering the Coffee Drinkers: Musical Fiction and Essays, Unopened, The Tenth Inning

3/25/19 @9:00am pst - Artist Nita Patel joined Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

LISTEN to today's conversation with featured guest Nita Patel.


ABOUT NITA PATEL

Nita Patel’s life of art began upon hearing the fable of the Balinese dragon, the Naga who claims to protect its people during the day and descends the ocean at night to see his true love, the Pearl. John Hardy’s Naga collection sparked her desire for creative expression and she began creating Asian inspired art, later evolving to incorporate her spirituality and ideation of love depicting both direct and indirect interpretations. Her abstract work embodies the unknowns we struggle to untangle where enlightenment is the only way out. Sharing her creative interpretations with others is her way of passing the message forward.

Nita is best known for her multi-media work in which she exploits an array of mediums – from the more typical oil and acrylics upon canvas, wood, rice paper and glass, to her uniquely clever and masterful utilization of precious materials such as diamonds, gold, and other exotic constituents. Her use of precious materials signifies the ounce of hope that gives us strength to carry us through the dark moments.

Further, in her expression of care towards those she engages, Nita leverages her corporate experience and her formal psychology education offering guidance to those who embark on their journey towards fulfillment.

Born in Croydon, UK, Nita traveled frequently between London and Dallas during her childhood, attending elementary school in both countries. Her formative years were influenced not only by the American and English cultures, but also by her parents’ South Asian Indian and African origins. Being an amalgam of values and mores helped to formulate her strong and resilient character as an artist.

Nita shows her work in the UK and US. She is currently based in Dallas.






Just in time for the series finale of Game of Thrones, artist Nina Patel is attracting the interest of fans of the show.Although often passionately abstract in her work, Dallas-based artist Nita Patel’s recent Dragon Series was inspired by a fable about a Balinese dragon, the Naga.Rather than a fearsome Game of Thrones-style monster, the Naga is dedicated to protecting people by day, descending into the deep sea by night to visit its true love, a pearl.In the same way, Nita offers her growing audience compositions of great beauty, designed to reconnect them to both emotional and spiritual truths. In fact, she begins each of her works by inscribing “love" across the base in various forms. For the Dragon Series, she also uses a perfectly square piece of glass to represent the heart, something she feels “might be broken but is still somehow always whole.” 

Using everything in her work from paint and canvas to wood and rice paper, Nita has masterfully incorporate glass and precious materials such as gold and diamonds into her work. She finds a deep sense of satisfaction in the 3-D nature of her mixed media creations, as well as the spontaneous and free creative process behind them.Another popular mixed media series of hers, this one based on heart images,debuted this January in NYC.Nita’s inspiration for the Dragon Series began with a gift during a difficult period in her life,specifically a John Hardy bracelet. This gift led her down the path of researching the dragon legend and inspired her to create her own images.

For Nita, the dragon story not only gave her a much-needed sense of protection but also a new means to channel her artistic impulses creatively without intellectualizing them. Working spontaneously, she created dragon images that represented what she feels are the grounding principals of our shared humanity: love, protection, and inner balance, without which life is merely chaos.A truly international artist, Nita was born in Croydon, UK, and traveled frequently between London and Dallas during her childhood. She is influenced deeply by both cultures, as well as her parents’South Asian Indian and African origins.Now based in Dallas, Nita Patel’s work has been shown throughout the world, including exhibits at the Louvre, Art Basel Miami, the Museum of International Arts in Turino, the BridgehamptonMuseum, and most recently in NYC at the Saphira Ventura Gallery.
Her Bracelet Story:
I was going through an early mid-life crisis trying to understand my place in life among the many “why’s” of life, seeking answers to questions I had never crossed before, almost to the point of questioning my existence.During that time, I received a John Hardy bracelet as a birthday present.Not knowing the significance to the bracelet or the designer, I googled it and read about the Naga collection and the story of the dragon.This was particularly inspiring as the story read the Dragon protected its people during the day and descends the ocean to see his true love, the pearl.I immediately connected with this despite my strong sense of spirituality. It gave me a strong sense of protection through this uneasy period and a means to channel my energy as I without planning or thought started creating variations of these beautiful beings.Soon thereafter, I created hearts and yin-yang in the same fashion.I believe the idea was the same, but as I analyzed it after the fact, I understood this all came back to basic grounding principles of humanity:love,protection, inner balance (w/o it, there’s nothing but chaos).As I further explored these concepts, it led me to painting abstracts.I could touch, feel, share, and connect with others through
Find Nita on www.Nita-Patel.com

3/18/19 Great post show conversation with Vani Hari, New York Times best selling author and founder of FoodBabe.com about her latest book, Feeding You Lies - How to Unravel the Food Industry's Playbook and Reclaim Your Health

VANI HARI (AKA FOOD BABE)

LISTEN to today's conversation with Vani Hari!

FoodBabe.com

Feeding You Lies: How to Unravel the Food Industry's Playbook and Reclaim Your Health is now available for pre-order at Barnes & Nobel and Amazon.com.

ABOUT VANI HARI (an excerpt from her website bio)

My name is Vani Hari, but I’m now better known as “The Food Babe.” For most of my life, I ate anything I wanted. I was a candy addict, drank soda, never ate green vegetables, frequented fast-food restaurants and ate an abundance of processed food. My typical American diet landed me where that diet typically does, in a hospital. It was then, in the hospital bed more than ten years ago, that I decided to make health my number one priority.

I used my new found inspiration for living a healthy life to drive my energy into investigating what is really in our food, how is it grown and what chemicals are used in its production. I didn’t go to nutrition school to learn this. I had to teach myself everything spending thousands of hours researching and talking to experts. As I began to learn more, I was no longer duped by big business marketing tactics, confused by lengthy food labels, and it became easier for me to live in this over-processed world. Most importantly, the more I learned and the more lessons I put into action, the better I felt and wanted to tell everyone about it! My hope for you is that by assimilating the information you learn on FoodBabe.com into your own life, you can experience a richer sense of health and well being than you ever imagined possible!

I started this blog in April of 2011 to share my healthy lifestyle with friends and family. Little did I know at the time, that this blog would change the world. My first name means voice in my native language, but I never thought I would be the person to carry the voice of millions. I am forever inspired by the number of people who not only want to change the quality of the food they are consuming but take control of their own food and health. Over the last four years, FoodBabe.com has become a powerful vehicle for change due to the dedication of those that come here to read and share the information they learn.

Through reading the investigations and information I post on FoodBabe.com, you can expect to learn the truth about harmful ingredients in processed foods and how to avoid the stuff the food industry is trying to hide! You will also learn how to make the right purchasing decisions in the grocery store so that you can create a life long habit of choosing healthy food. I would love you to join my personal email list to stay up to date on hidden truths the food industry doesn’t want you to know about and the big changes that are happening in our food supply.

Creating FoodBabe.com has shown me that it is possible to change the world. Over the past four years, I have seen friends, family members, and the Food Babe Army voting with their dollars like never before. When we all vote with our dollars by choosing to buy products that are sustainably produced, we actively shape the market place. Companies have no choice but to respond to us and improve the quality of their products. We have made some big changes thus far and there is still work to be done! I look forward to what the future holds. What are you waiting for? Join the Food Babe Army today!




I’d love to know you on a first name basis – come on over and introduce yourself on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Hearing from readers is the best part of my day!




Also be sure to check out the new company I founded called Truvani – we believe in real food without added chemicals, products without toxins and labels without lies.

3/18/19 @9:45am pst - Janeane spoke with palliative care physician Sunita Puri about her brilliantly written memoir from the front lines of an increasingly relevant field—and a moving meditation on life, death, and illness THAT GOOD NIGHT Life & Medicine in the Eleventh Hour

LISTEN to today's conversation
with featured guest Sunita Puri!

“That Good Night is a timely and important work: an insider’s view of caring for the sickest patients and a moving exploration of life’s impermanence. Sunita Puri’s deft attention to language, both in her writing and in her work as a doctor, is a testament to the power of story, narrative, and context to help us make sense of life and its end.”
—Lucy Kalanithi, MD, widow of Paul Kalanithi, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book When Breath Becomes Air


“A profound meditation on a problem many of us will face; worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”
—Kirkus (starred review)


“Recognizing the complementary paths of science and spirituality, [Puri draws] upon the strength, support, and wisdom of her family’s beliefs and values—honoring life and accepting death—to help her patients make ‘eleventh-hour’ choices. . . . This is a powerful memoir, which Puri narrates with honesty, poise, and empathy.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)




When Dr. Sunita Puri was a young medical student just learning the ropes, she did a rotation that changed everything for her. Palliative care—care that focuses on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of serious illness—was a relatively new specialty, but one that immediately drew her in. She found herself asking questions she’d never thought about before. 

• What is a doctor’s obligation to a patient she cannot cure? 
• What should be the balance between the technical and humanistic sides of medicine? 
• Does a good doctor promise to do everything to save a patient’s life, or is she honest about medicine’s limits?

In THAT GOOD NIGHT: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour (Viking; Hardcover; On Sale: March 5, 2019), Puri weaves together evocative stories of her career and upbringing with tales of the patients she cares for—all from the front lines of an increasingly important field that has the potential to transform Western medicine. The result is a stunningly lyrical and poignant meditation on the role of medicine in helping us to live, and to die, well.


The American-born daughter of Indian immigrants, Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents’ experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Between days spent waiting for her mother, an anesthesiologist, to exit the OR, and evenings spent in conversation with her parents about their faith, Puri witnessed the tension between medicine’s impulse to preserve life at all costs and a spiritual embrace of life’s impermanence. But as she followed her mother’s footsteps into medicine, she found herself falling into the trap of depersonalization, spending more time in front of books and computers than with patients. As she writes, “By unintentionally treating patients like a panoply of diagnoses, biological mysteries to be solved, I was losing sight of what had drawn me to medicine in the first place: the unique opportunity to become both a scientist and a humanist, translating book knowledge into relief of human suffering.” But in palliative care—in facing death head-on and embracing what much of medicine sought to erase—she found the meaning she had been searching for.


There is no harder diagnosis to process than fatal illness, and it is physicians like Puri who have the courage to step in at that crucial moment—not only to provide medical knowledge, but also to extend emotional support, and to ask important questions about a patient’s goals and values. In a country with an aging population, this type of care becomes more relevant than ever, and THAT GOOD NIGHT is an essential contribution to our ongoing conversation about healthcare, critical illness, and end of life care. With deep curiosity, empathy, and a novelist’s eye for detail, Puri describes her own experiences in the field, including how she navigates difficult conversations with patients and their families, the differences between palliative care and hospice, and how our health care and medical education systems can be improved to better serve the needs of patients at the end of life.


THAT GOOD NIGHT is an eloquent and intimate memoir; a fascinating look at the interplay between spirituality and medicine; and a frank discussion of how the medical field—with its emphasis on prolonging life at all costs—often fails to be truly focused on what the patient wants. Despite the weighty subject matter, it is ultimately a story of profound hope and compassion, arming readers with powerful tools to transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sunita Puri is the Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Service at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center of the University of Southern California, where she also serves as Chair of the Ethics Committee. She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Anthropology and studied Modern History at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She completed medical school and residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and fellowship training in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and JAMA - Internal Medicine. She has received writing fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, UCross Foundation, and Mesa Refuge. In 2018, she received the Etz Chaim Tree of Life Award from the USC Keck School of Medicine, awarded annually to a member of the faculty who, in the eyes of the campus community, models and provides humanistic and compassionate care.


THAT GOOD NIGHT: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour

Sunita Puri

Viking | On Sale: March 5, 2019 |

Also available as an e-book

For more information, please visit:
www.sunitapuri.com | www.penguinrandomhouse.com

3/18/19 @9:15am pst - Director Cambria Matlow joined Janeane to talk about her film Woodsrider - A Season of Adventure and Discovery

Cambria Matlow, Director/Producer/Editor

LISTEN to today's conversation
with featured guest Cambria Matlow!

WOODSRIDER

OPENING ON DIGITAL ON MARCH 12, 2019

"A beautifully and unobtrusively observed homage to the power and

melancholy

of solitude."

- Matt Holzman, KCRW's The Document

"Hauntingly beautiful...Matlow's patient, unobtrusive camera and Ford's magnetism as a subject makes Woodsrider one of the most intimate docs you'll see this year."

- Walker Macmurdo, Willamette Week

2017 Portland Film Festival

2017 Santa Cruz Film Festival (World Premiere) - WINNER, Best Experimental Feature

2016 Northwest Filmmakers Festival, local preview

2016 Eastern Oregon Film Festival, secret WIP screening

2016 Visions du Reel, Market Library

Tenacious, 19 year-old Sadie Ford operates within the poetic persona of a searching pioneer. Her footsteps track over the town of Government Camp's mountain landscape, her dog Scooter her only constant companion. Deep among the Douglas firs Sadie snowshoes to build her nestled tent site, a place she feels more at ease than anywhere with four walls. Riding sessions and house parties in town provide breaths of social interaction and connection, but otherwise she chooses to spend time in solitude. Sadie's simple quest for joy is tempered by melancholy when increasingly warm temperatures on the mountain cause rain to replace snow, and the winter season grows shorter.

Striking a youthful yet elegiac tone, WOODSRIDER is a meditative film about identity, home, and the way that human experience echoes that of the natural world.

WOODSRIDER was written, directed and edited by Cambria Matlow and produced by Matlow, Janique Robillard, and Richard Beer. Uncork'd Entertainment will release the film digitally on March 12 (iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, Fandango Now, Xbox and local Cable Providers). The film has a running time of 83 minutes and will not be rated by the MPAA.

To view the trailer, go to: https://vimeo.com/306102229/93c9d94f59

Cambria Matlow is an Oregon-based film director, producer, and editor whose work seeks meaning in charged moments of stillness and values the emotional experiences created from atmosphere and mood. In her films, intimate interactions and environmental realities reveal hard-to-name personal and political truths.

Her latest film, WOODSRIDER (2017), an immersive portrait of a female snowboarder on Mt Hood, recently premiered at the Santa Cruz Film Festival, where it was awarded Best Experimental Feature. BURNING IN THE SUN (2010), about a young man who starts a local solar energy business in Mali, West Africa, was her directorial debut. The film was selected for IFP’s Documentary Lab and Independent Film Week, broadcast on Al Jazeera and PBS, and seen in festivals worldwide, including Rooftop Films, FICMA Barcelona, New York African Film Festival and Addis Int’l Film Festival, eventually winning the Cinema for Peace International Green Film Award in Berlin.

Her work has been awarded grants and residencies from LEF Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, Experimental Television Center, the Puffin Foundation, NW Documentary, and Playa/Oregon Film. Cambria holds a Certificate in Film Production from Burlington College in Vermont and a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from Columbia University. Her current projects include MATRESCENCE, a short essay film made in conjunction with NW Documentary’s anthology project ‘Canopy Stories’; a new personal documentary about her sister’s conflicted relationship with a long-lost Ecuadorian father; and a narrative feature-length script for an environmental fable about Mexican women set in the high desert of 1855 in South Central Oregon. She is an instructor with NW Documentary and Open Signal, and a leader for the Portland, OR chapter of Film Fatales.

3/18/19 9:30am pst - Experienced and respected writer E.A. Aymar is releasing a new thriller, The Unrepentant

LISTEN to today's show!

E.A. Aymar’s most recent thriller, The Unrepentant, was published in March of 2019 by Down and Out Books. His other thrillers include the novel-in-stories The Night of the Flood (in which he served as co-editor and contributor), as well as I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead and You’re As Good As Dead.

Aymar’s column, “Decisions and Revisions,” appears monthly in the Washington Independent Review of Books, and he is also the Managing Editor of The Thrill Begins, ITW’s online resource for aspiring and debut thriller writers. In addition to ITW, he is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and SinC.

Aymar also runs the Noir at the Bar series for Washington, D.C., and has hosted and spoken at a variety of crime fiction, writing, and publishing events nationwide. He was born in Panama and now lives and writes in the D.C./MD/VA triangle.

E.A. Aymar is represented by Michelle Richter with Fuse Literary.

(photo credit: Marian Lozano Photography)


Experienced and respected writer E.A. Aymar is releasing a new thriller, The Unrepentant (March 4 from Down and Out Books), that examines the dark corners of the human mind. It’s one of those books that is almost stressful because you feel like part of the gripping story!

E.A. Aymar talks about his extensive research into the crime and sex trafficking aspects of book or the theme of violence that runs through the book, how a shooting at his son’s daycare influenced it.

ABOUT THE BOOK
When eighteen-year old Charlotte Reyes escapes a predatory group of men, she teams up with a former soldier to take them down. Aymar put in extensive research into sex trafficking when writing this book, and drew on personal experiences of violence.

https://eaymarwrites.com/

3/18/19 @9am pst - Clinical Hypnotherapist Georgia Foster joined host Janeane to talk about her latest book Drink Less in 7 Days

LISTEN to today's conversation 

with featured guest Georgia Foster!

Clinical Hypnotherapist Georgia Foster has been a long sought after expert commenter on the subject of how to drink less in her home country of Australia, and in the UK where she now lives. February is "boost your self esteem month" and her angle on drinking too much is that people think self-critically and unhealthfully which leads to over-drinking, so her message has particular resonance this time of year! Here she is last January on Sky News (major London news source) talking about binge drinking and why culture’s of drinking occur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56nHHZV4vk8

She released her new research-based guidebook, “Drink Less in 7 Days” (Red Door Publishing, February 1, 2019) to assist a unique and often neglected audience: those who feel like they are drinking too much but who are by no means alcoholics.

A specialist in the myriad of unique problem-drinking behaviors, Foster sought to create a personalized approach to cutting back alcohol consumption. By addressing the emotional roots of over-drinking behaviors, Foster can help rewire your brain to enjoy alcohol in moderation instead of using it as a crutch.

In an interview Georgia discusses:


The importance of focusing on our thinking (instead of our drinking) in managing alcohol consumption

• Her own background with emotional drinking
• The role an “Inner Critic” plays in our drinking habits
• How some former “problem drinkers” are able to manage drinking without cutting it out completely
• Hypnotherapy and its role in her 7-day drinking program

Increased alcohol consumption in society today is rarely out of the news. But it seems that most therapies and therapists offer an all-or-nothing solution—give up completely or give in to the drink. However, for those of us who would like to reduce our intake without giving up completely, clinical hypnotherapist Georgia Foster offers a middle way—and even better, it takes just seven days! Georgia is a world-leading therapist, specializing in overdrinking behavior (as well as anxiety and self-esteem and other issues). Her drink less courses have a high success rate (95% of attendees report reduced alcohol consumption) and here she shares the secrets of this success. Georgia uses short questionnaires and tick boxes to help the reader establish how they currently relate to alcohol and then gives simple, practical steps to help the reader take back control of their drinking.

3/4/19 @9:00am pst - Professor Brian Levin, Director, Ctr. for the Study of Hate & Extremism, Cal St., San Bernardino, joined Janeane today on KUCI 88.9fm

LISTEN to today's conversation with Professor Levin, Director, Ctr. for the Study of Hate & Extremism, Cal St., San Bernardino, CJ Prof. Ed.: BA, Penn, '89; JD, Stanford '92. Fmr. NYPD.!


Twitter
@proflevin

https://csbs.csusb.edu/hate-and-extremism-center

3/4/19 @9:30am pst - accomplished photographer and visual artist Andrea Pritchard joined Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

Photojournalists Alexandra Avakian, Carol Guzy and Yunghi Kim reveal their stories. What drives them to the frontline and keeps them returning. A documentary that gives insight into a very small group of brave and passionate women committed to the engagement of conflict, even after all the other cameras are gone. An intimate portrait about a select group of story tellers. A documentary by Andrea Pritchard

LISTEN to today's conversation with Andrea Pritchard!

Andrea Pritchard is an accomplished photographer and visual artist. Her background having touched on, includes all aspects of visual arts, which translates into dynamic and striking imagery. She is a Fine Arts graduate from John Abbott College. Holds a Graduate Degree in Visual Journalism and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal. Her images document and capture evocative and emotional moments.

Andrea began photographing and documenting at the age of seven. This evolving passion has been a constant thread throughout her life. She has been a designer, art director, creative director and has worked with and mentored many talented artists.

Her work has been featured at the National War Museum of Ottawa as part of the exhibit "Vimy – Beyond the Battle”. Andrea’s telling portrait of Carol Guzy is featured as part of the Nikon Ambassadors program. She has been a contributor to The Link Newspaper and her work has also been featured on several photography sites including, Exposure, Art of Mob, The Whole Story, Adore Chroma Magazine. She has exhibited at Concordia University, John Abbott College, Desjardins, the Segal Center and The Story of the Creative New York, among others. She was nominated for a JUNO for her album design work for April Wine. Andrea is the creator and director of RISK: Women on the Frontline.

Andrea Pritchard, Carol Guzy, Alexandra Avakian, Yunghi Kim

https://www.facebook.com/RiskWomenPhotojournalists/


www.andreapritchard.com