2/9/07 Heather mixes couples counselor Judye Hess, Talmudic scholar Zvi Septimus, Google partnership manager Jason Shellen and the people formerly known as the audience. What makes a good partnership work, whether it’s a marriage between people, companies or countries? How are the conflicts and dynamics similar, and how are they resolved?Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)

LtoR: Jason Shellen, Zvi Septimus, Heather Gold and Judye Hess

The more I thought about Partnership, the more I saw it everywhere. Isn’t a job like a a marriage? Great interviews are like hot dates: “You’re ideas, we love your ideas! And your rolodex, yes yes!” And then 3 months in, that same manager is wondering why you’re also “yapping up” with suggestions and you can’t just keep your head down and underline the stuff you’ve been told to find. Aren’t Israel and Palestine literally stuck together without any hot sex to keep things going?

How do you grow with someone without giving up your self?

Jason Shellen from Google (previously from Blogger) has been doing deals and relationships for a while now in the professional realm. This is now called “new business development,” a position I used to hold myself at different companies. At some companies this looks a lot like sales (aka “pimping”). What this comes down to is that both companies benefit from the relationship in an ongoing way. It’s more than fee for services (which is legally + historically, what marriage looked like). Jason is married (in a life, not business kind of way) to Alison whom his been with since they were 18.

A chevrusah is a Talmudic study partnership. The Talmud is like the literary criticism of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) and studying it is a major part of life if you’re a relgioius Jewish man (the man is a traditional thing) or a PhD candidate in Jewish studies like UC Berkeley, doctoral candidate Zvi Septimus.
Zvi talked about his most traumatic chevrusah chevrusah experience:

Me, my chevrusah Yoni, his wife and his two kids, all moved to Israel together because we thought we’d be able to study better there. And then, like, a month into it, he gave me the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech.

It always happens right after you move for them.

Veteran couples counsellor Judye Hess (who brought her boyfriend of 81/2 years) had the line of the night.

“Judye, is there any way to keep a relationship good all the time?”

“Denial”

“Does that work,” asked Zvi?

“It works for my sister,” replied Judye.

Highlights and Links

• God help my cynical roots, but here are books I found helpful. Just filter through the covers, fonts and much of the language for nuggets of truth
• > The Dance of Anger – Harriet Lerner [there is a basic dynamic that you are always part of. When you chnge, your partner will absolutely change.]
• >Passionate Marriage – David Schnarch [differentiation–holding on to yourself while in close connection with another–is the key to a healthy relationship and hot sex]
• Zvi leads study with partners on Sundays at the Mission Minyan in San Francisco
• The Cluetrain Manifesto. If markets are conversation, then all business is now relationships.
• Judye: “It’s hard to put all your eggs in one basket.” Heather “Is that why relationships are so hard?” Judye: “Yes, especially if you count on this person for everything…Nobody can really fill the bill for anybody if you’ve gotta be everything.”

We’ll be at The Ritz on the 6th Street strip on Monday March the 12th. 7-8:30 with lots of great drinks and fun.

Make a digital note of it!

The Heather Gold Show: Outside In

Friday January 12th, 2007

Bradley Horowitz‘s name kept popping up. Some programmers at Songbird raved about him, “He bought all the cool shit at Yahoo.” By that they meant: flickr, upcoming and other sundry “Web 2.0” companies that make great stuff.

As we discussed in the show, he’s like an A+R guy that the indie musicians trust. He has real spirit, which is why I thought he’d make a great guest. The passion he wanted to discuss was hacking and the sublime that comes from subverting systems for their own good. Bradley create Yahoo Hack Day. He’s an insider that got other insider’s to listen to outsiders: bringing hackers to camp on Yahoo’s lawn and bring Beck to play for them all. Super cool outside coming in. I thought so, until Anil let me know the other day about Beck’s Scientology, a “religion” that’s so insider, you have to pay to belong.

Harmon Leon is an outsider who stays an outsider by geing a fake insider. He read a piece about infiltrating a Benny Hinn faith healing hoping for release from his “bird flu” and being hurled to the ground by staffers as Benny rebuked the demons in him.

<a href=”http://www.culturalodyssey.org”>Rhodessa Jones</a> helps women who are outsiders (on the “inside,” aka prison) transform themselves through theatre. She defied cliche liberal ideas by asserting the need for prison, “some people belong in prison, okay?”

Bradley and Rhodessa were clear on one central truth. The way to connect and cross boundaries from outside in, is to really listen to people with regard. Harmon’s technique for gaining the trust of groups from the Christian right to the young Republicans? “I just parrot back to them their own beliefs.” People are happy to look f=no further.

Highlights and Links

• Harmon Leon – first infiltrated on a dare to himself that he had to get and lose a job within 3 hours, all the while working in a bad fake foreign accent. It took many efforts to get the fast food place to fire him. The clincher was shoving a vanilla shake and fries in his mouth, and spewing it on the floor by customers. “Ich been sick.”
• Rhodessa’s story about working in a peep show in early 1970’s San Francisco and recognizing ptron’s Richard Pryor and jazz great Mose Allison. She was playing Mose’s music and when he approached her she recognized him, and he took off.
• Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project

1/12/07: Heather conversates with creator of Yahoo Hack Day Bradley Horowitz, undercover satirist Harmon Leon, theatrical midwife Rhodesa Jones, Founder of The Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women and the people formerly known as the audience.

What allows people access to each other and places that they’d never otherwise go? What is gained by the outside/in perspective?

Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)

What happens when you get a pharmaceutical venture capitalist, a trans punk performer and a Sudanese refugee together over baked goods? Plenty.My first guest Antoun Nabhan struggles with the issue of heroism and courage in everyday life. In his office and plane-bound job, he wonders how and where the Courage shows up.Lynnee Breedlove demonstrated and some immediately, performed an excerpt from his solo piece One Freak Show about his genderqueer experience using public bathrooms. If he’s in the women’s bathroom, he gets told “there’s a man in the women’s bathroom.” The men’s bathroom is, apparently easier, in part becasue of the lack of eye contact and direct behaviour. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to catch all the nuances. We did have quite a discussion about bathroom behaviour. Lynnee demo’d the “piece- de’ beau” (I’m not sure how one spells it) that allows him to pee standing up. Look out Justin Timberlake, Lynnee’s got his own special present.Gadet Riek gave a new meaning and insight to everyday courage as he spoke about escaping Sudan on foot with his older brother. The greatest power of his story comes from the everyday nature of his act he reveals in the context of its time and place. No matter what questions he was asked by any of the guests or audience, his answers came back to the simple fact that it was the reality in which he found himself. There was no great moment, no epiphany, no John Willliams soundtrack letting him or anyone else know the greatness of his acts. “There was no time. We had to keep moving.”

Highlights and Links

One man in the audience asked Gadet about his feelings about his fellow students at USF. “They don’t realize how privileged they are.” Gadet responded by saying he does not resent or begrudge his classmates a thing, nor does he feel they should make their lives and different than they are. he himself would have accepted a life that came with more physical ease. Judging them “would change nothing about my life.”It was clear from the discussion and the connection between Lynnee and Gadet that courage is not about life without fear. It is, in part, about complete acceptance of oneself and life the way it is. With there is no need or inclination to judge others.

• Lost Boys of Sudan
• Save Darfur

Saturday November 11, 2006

i first heard about my first guest, love artist Kathe Izzo, during the Intimacy show, when Michelle Tea mentioned experincing intimacy when she was being loved by Kathy at a tremedous distance, across the country. “It just made me feel so good to know that three was someone out there loving me,” she said.

That seemed fascinating to me at the time, in an anthropological way. I didn’t understand that on a visceral level until I was injured just weeks before the Receiving show, and experienced asking for and receiving love at a distance from many people while recovering from my elbow surgery (I broke my funny bone. Comic karma).

Kathe takes love to new depths and certainly breadths. It is literally all she has done for years. She is a performance artist from the visual art tradition of installations. Her interest in the boundary between life and art drew her to the area of love and she had for years loved people, of every stripe in person at museum installations, at their homes for a day, or even at across the country while they are working at a bookstore, (as Michelle Tea was) sending them loving emails that come from a completely present place of loving acceptance.
While Kathe acknowledged that she is comfortable giving, the topic of Receiving was a challenge sh is working on. She has receintly been loaned a sum for career investment by a sweetie who wants to take care of her, a new adjustment she is making with her decision to value herself as she does everyone she will love (which is anyone)

Former San Francisco 49ers Tight End Dr. Jamie Williams gave a profound life and football receiving lesson. He picked a random woman out of the audience to teach who turned out to have quarterbacked her Nebraska high school team’s powder puff team. (I love how the midwest tries to mix a cosmetic term in there to make it seem like the girls aren’t really playing football).

Jamie had great chemistry with Kathe which I really enjoyed. I love it when the show brings together people who might not otherwise meet. Both Kathe and Jamie seemed to be coming at life questions in some similar ways, despite their very different pursuits in film and football (Jamie) and performance art (Kathe).

Shanan Carney, also known as the Voice of Tivo discussed her recuperation from her recent knee surgery. A neighbor kindly agreed to bring her ice every day to fill a special machine which cooled the swelling. This small act of kindness has prompted Shanan to soon launch a vlog called “Random Acts of Kindness” based on the premise that vrey small, meaningful acts can make a huge difference. Both of us, based on our injuries, agreed that receiving can make one feel compelled to give. Shanan called her doctor to find out who else had a surgery and needed ice. She later came over to my place, complete with elf costume, cohort and camera crew to loan me the ice machine and ice to cool my elbow, prepping for the vlog.

Audience regular Scott brought a fabulous Linzer tort. I will ask him for the recipe to post here.

Highlights and Links

• Even though Kathe has gone to the home of complete strangers in New York City to love them for the day, she has never felt unsafe. “If I am giving them everything they need,then what more can they want?” She has held her ground by clearly taking care of her own needs and letting those who are emotionally needy that her own aegis matters.
• Jamie Williams – “To catch the ball, you have to want to catch the ball.”
• Kathe Izzo’s True Love Project
• In order to truly receiv one has to not give back to the giver right away. This is something of a refusal of the kindness (and whatever else being given to you). If you feel compelled to give yourself, then as people say, “pay it forward.”

12/8/06 Heather mixes pharmaceutical VC Antoun Nabhan, punk legend and trans leader Lynnee Breedlove, Darfur survivor Gadet Riek, and the people formelry known as the audience. How do we remember and stand up for our principles in everyday challenges, whether that means saying no to a business deal, going the men’s bathroom or taking another step?

Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)

Heather conversates with love artist Kathe Izzo, Superbowl Champion, tight end and filmmaker Dr. Jamie Williams, Shanan Carney (aka the Voice of TiVo) whose debilitating knee surgery is teaching her first hand about the art of receiving and the people formerly known as the audience.
Is it always better to give than receive? Why is it sometimes harder?

Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)

Last night’s show on Learning had a great full house which participated more than ever. Is it getting cliche that I keep writing first lines in these rundown’s full of exultation? If it’s not such a great night, I will definitely say so. My general inclination is to be inclusive and listen to everyone, but the show does need to watch for interruptions whether its from audience members or myself as one audience member kindly pointed out to me after the show. I’m not being ironic. She gave me some good feedback. One of the threads that had the most traction throughout the night was gender. Do we learn better in sex segregated environments as one audience member Don suggested? Does the reported increased sexual activity of gay people affect the kids they raise? That question prompted a heavy number of guest and audience comments.Early childhood education expert Tracy Burt said that the research neither supports that LGBT parents with kids have increased sexual behaviour or kids who turn out much different that any other, except that they’re slightly more sensitized to inequality. I commented that I don’t know any gay or queer people who are in out relationships that have had any children accidentally. An early childhood educator in the audience and guest Tracy said that the said that the elements that matter most for learning and growing as a child are: responsiveness, dependability, stability and a few more things that I can post after I hear all the tape :-) A woman of East Indian origin told a hilarious story about how she learned about sex when her mother was chastising her brother for making so much noise with his wife the night before: “Can’t you be a considerate like your father? He did his business and turned over and went right to sleep.”Our first guest, comedian Bill Santiago talked about his obsession with tango and what a difference it makes to be exposed to music early in life. He also said there are 3 year old kids who can tango. Exposure came up again many times as something that enables us to learn things. Bill told us the story of the first time he tangoed and was led by another man who was constantly disappointed in him. “He wasn’t gentle,” but Bill overcame the trauma to come back to the dance two years later. He also had a hard time learning learning swing because there was no syncopation. Tango has obsessed him because “the only men who are really pretty good at it are all over 70. So I got time.”Bill also spoke up about the importance of fun in learning. “I was home recently and looked through my old report cards. I thought I’d done well, but I had a paper with an F+. That’s really an insult…”we know you tried and you still failed.” He said that kids aren’t going to bother learning something unless it’s fun.Singer Michelle Citrin showed how easily we learn cues with her song Who I Am. Michelle spoke a lot about the need to survive as a driver of learning. If you need to know something you’ll learn it. For example, even though she grew up in a two-language household, her Hebrew got rapidly better when a recent trip to Israel forced her to speak the language in order to eat and navigate each day. She also spoke of the value of a means of self-expression in teenage years, like a guitar.The value of sensory-motor and musical techniques for teaching was discussed. Apparently music and dance are extremely valuable ways to teach kids who have difficulty in school. Unfortunately, if you want to making a living at them, as Bill pointed out, they’re less valued.Tracy Burt had an awful lot to teach us. There was so much chunky goodness, I’ll put most of it in the highlights below.

Highlights and Links

• Tango Video Project
• “We are always learning. Kids in school are always learning. The question is what is it they are learning?” Tracy Burt
• You need to have a nurturing, reponsive person in your life as a young child in order to lay the foundation to be able to learn almost anything the rest of your life. There’s another opportunity as an adolescent to get this, but then after 25 in because extremely difficult.”
• We remember 10% of what we hear, 20% of what we see and hear, 50% of what we see, hear and do and 80% of what we teach another person.
• There are 9 temperments that are set biologically
• Our brains are “plastic,” meaning they are able to change our entire lives. But the most important tendencies are set by 3.
• Audience member Samuel said that,as hard as he’s tried, he can’t seem to learn a foreign language. One of our regulars, Beverly, was sitting near Samual and also turns out to be a linguistic therapist. Evidently we learn language by chunking. To encourage both necessity and desire, Michelle, Bill and the audience suggested he find a French lover who does not speak English at all.
• We all learned the word rhythmicity, which describes an aspect of temperment. Do you like life to be steady or for the pace to vary?