Mark Smith grew up in Alberta, Canada and is currently an occupational therapist working with veterans at the VA clinic in San Francisco.musical notes:Antonio Williams & Kerry McCoy "Changes"Rosier "La volerie"Jackson Browne "These Days"T. Rex "Monolith"Porridge Radio "7 Seconds"Von Is Now A Good Time?

This is a conversation with my Dad (Bill Ehrlich) on the eve of his retirement at 65. He had a 35-year career as a sales professional in the commercial printing business. Photo: On the front steps of our house in Minnesota with his two grandsons.musical notes:Neil Young "Ohio" [1:14]Simon & Garfunkel "Punky's Dilemma" [8:40]The Beatles "Getting Bet…

January is currently studying to become a psychosomatic therapist.musical notes:Rostam - "Thatch Snow" [intro]Yo Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott - "The Swan (From _Carnival of the Animals, R. 125_)" @ [18:50]Thelonious Monk - "I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)" @ [29:45]Colleen - "Soul Alphabet" [outro]Von Is Now A Good Time?

Wesaam Al-Badry is a photojournalist living in San Francisco. He was born in 1984 in Nasiriyah, Iraq.website: http://www.wesaamalbadry.com/musical notes:Charlie Parr - "Jaybird" [intro]The Cannonball Adderly Quintet - "Mercy Mercy Mercy (Live) (Remix)" [outro]Von Is Now A Good Time?

Lorna Simpson is a stylist and art director currently living and working in San Francisco.website: https://lornaaisimpson.com/instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lopimpson/musical notes:Spoon - "Inside Out" [intro]Wilco - "I am trying to break your heart" @ [5:35]Wild Nothing - "Shadow" @ [15:34]Oddnesse - "Somewhere Somehow" @ [19:43]M. Ward - "E…

Simone wrote a piece about how he "solved his quarter life crisis" -- link provided below. Topically the piece has overlap with a number of the conversations I've had for this show and it displayed an admirable candor:"I’ve been out of college for four years, and while my med school friends inch closer to their white coats and my finance friends in…

Darrell Williams is an excellent barber and lends a nonjudgmental ear to his clients, I know because I'm one of them. Darrell's mixture of serene wisdom and humor come through in our conversation reflecting on his life. He's been through a lot but has made it through without bitterness."Their responsibility is to show me support, not to support me …

Nick Carrel - corporate sales turned dog walking entrepreneur . . .Nick went from corporate sales to dog walking via a failed attempt at "following his passion" for Yerba Mate tea. His story highlights the difficulty of career navigation in uncharted waters and how the vehicle to achieve work satisfaction can be totally unexpected.Show Notes: Websi…

Martina and Britney Abrahams are the sisters behind the podcast You Had Me At Black. They grew up in Bridgewater, New Jersey and despite growing up in the same environment had starkly different experiences. After high school Martina majored in Marketing at Georgetown University while Britney studied theater and creative writing at Spelman College. …

Io Kleiser is an astronomy and astrophysics PhD student at Caltech and is currently a visiting student at Berkeley. In our conversation we discuss how Io decided to go into the sciences and some of the challenges that have come with that path – among them building a foundation of subject matter knowledge in order to pursue the career she wanted as …

Dolly Li is a visual journalist at AJ+ - http://www.ajplus.net/english/ - http://dollyli.com/Dolly's grandfather was persecuted during the cultural revolution in China before her parents eventually immigrated to Brooklyn, New York.Dolly's story explores how in two generations you can go from cultural persecution to professionally practicing free sp…

I met Kalin while he was drawing a crowd outside of the Downtown Berkeley BART stop. He was playing the saxophone with a soul and depth that stopped me in my tracks and I had to find out more.He studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and is a graduate of the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. If you'd like to see him and his band l…

Willee's path brought him from California to South America and back to California via New Orleans. Over the past few years he worked for the ACLU, Goorin Bros Hat Co. and studied under San Francisco milliner Wayne Wichern before beginning to make his own hats.Willee is now a hatmaker based in Berkeley, California. He combines the practice of plant …

Siggy and Joey are the instigators of DadaConf (dadaconf.com), a conference built around the idea of “Big Dada” -- think Big Data meets Dadaism. Siggy and Joey work in the tech industry but maintain a sense of both the promise and absurdity of technology. They started DadaConf in order to bring people from all different backgrounds together to lear…

Michelle recently received admission to London Film School and moved to London at the beginning of April to begin her program at LFS in May.Michelle was a Digital Marketing Coordinator at Levi's in San Francisco for the past year and a half. Before San Francisco, she worked at Kinfolk Magazine and Sea Chant in Portland."It's like shedding skin as a…

Joel is a QA Software Engineer from southern Mexico (Villhermosa, Tabasco). He currently works at Endless Mobile in San Francisco and in June will be leaving to travel the world starting with a one-way ticket to India.“I’m not sold on this idea that I should be careful about every step I take to have the planned perfect life . . . why wouldn’t I tr…

Allison is Head of Education at 3Doodler and currently lives and works in Hong Kong."You can do anything that you want but you can't do everything . . . at least not all at once.""It's a lot of shiny objects out there.""Nobody tells you what to do after you've turned in all your homework."Her current side hustle is a clothing line most easily descr…

Jenna is a copywriter at Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. "It's very sad but also very empowering. The worst thing that could possibly happen to me has already happened . So in a way it kind of released me to this, that I realized I could take more risks . . . because what's the worst that could happen . . . there is none anymore." P…

Shane moved to California after spending time in China and South America post-college. "Go with your gut, whatever that tells you . . . whether it's the safe route, whatever it is. Your gut is going to get you where you are supposed to be."Podcast mixed by Mike Benz.Von Is Now A Good Time?

Mike is an aspiring writer who felt he needed more time to write. In his mid-twenties, he quit his day job and took a multi-year sabbatical only to find himself less productive than expected and yearning for some of the small things we take for granted as part of the daily grind.He currently lives in Oakland, works a day job, and is still writing.…

Lauren is an industrial designer focusing on user experience and user interface. What makes something well designed?"The fact that when you're using the product or service you don't actually think about the design, you don't even notice it was designed . . . it's when the design actually disappears and it's just so intuitive, that means it's a good…

Chloe is a food photographer and graphic designer who works in restaurant PR at Postcard Communications in San Francisco, CA. Website: http://www.chloelist.com/Instagram: @chloelistIf she had to choose a title for her autobiography: "I Still Don't Know"Von Is Now A Good Time?