Trail Mix: Inside 4A Coffee – Roasting a Batch and Learning to Cup

Trail Mix: Inside 4A Coffee – Roasting a Batch and Learning to Cup

Trail Mix is our bonus episode format — shorter, more experiential. In this first one, Matt heads to 4A Coffee Roasters in Newton, MA for a morning with founder Alan Draper to learn the roasting process firsthand. Alan walks through an entire roast of the Silk Route blend — from charging the drum to first crack to the cooling tray — then sets up a side-by-side cupping of an Ethiopian natural and a Honduras washed. Show notes: * 4A Coffee (order online): https://www.4acoffeeroasters.com/ [https://www.4acoffeeroasters.com/] * AeroPress (Alan's recommended home brewing method): aeropress.com [http://aeropress.com] * Rainforest Alliance (responsible sourcing certification Alan mentions): rainforest-alliance.org [http://rainforest-alliance.org]

Alan Draper – Kazakhstan, the Art of the Roast, and Starting Over

Alan Draper founded 4A Coffee in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2004, shipping a roaster and espresso machines across the world before specialty coffee was a known concept there. After nine years and three kids, he brought it home to Brookline. In this episode, we talk about Alan's path building 4A from scratch in Central Asia, the craft and precision behind roasting, surviving the Yelp era and alternative milk craze, and what drives him to keep getting it right — even after starting over. Show notes: * 4A Coffee (order online): https://www.4acoffeeroasters.com/ [https://www.4acoffeeroasters.com/] * SCA – Specialty Coffee Association (referenced by Alan): sca.coffee [http://sca.coffee]

Hunter Marston – Southeast Asia, Think Tanks, and Building a Career in International Affairs

Hunter Marston taught English in Vietnam after college, got hooked on Southeast Asia, and eventually turned that curiosity into a career as a foreign policy analyst. Based in Washington DC for years, he's now moving to Australia to take on a new role—continuing his work writing for major foreign policy publications and advising governments on US-China competition while building a different kind of life for his family. In this episode, Hunter talks about how living in Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar shaped his understanding of the region, why optimism still exists despite rising tensions with China, and what led him to leave DC for Australia. We also get into what it's like to build credibility in foreign policy without following the traditional path, how he balances being a public intellectual with the grounding ritual of trail running, and why slowing down to understand context matters more than reacting to headlines.

Matt Gregory – Operations, Startups, and Learning to Ask Better Questions

Matt Gregory has spent 20 years building things—from baby food to respiratory health devices to at-home hair removal. He's worked as an operator, a strategist, and now a consultant helping early-stage companies navigate the messy realities of product development and scale. Along the way, he's learned that the questions you ask matter more than the answers you think you have. In this episode, Patrick flips the table and interviews his co-host about career pivots, the tension between execution and strategy, what it's really like to work at startups during high-growth phases, and why Matt finds more energy in the diagnosis stage than the implementation grind. We also talk about coaching, curiosity, how to build a career that keeps evolving, and why Instagram cooking videos might be the best part of social media.

Mike Hanas – Teaching, Leading Schools, and Learning to Loosen Knots

Mike Hanas spent 40 years in education—teaching Latin, Greek, and ancient history, and serving nearly 20 years as a head of school at Carolina Friends School and San Francisco Friends School. He's the person schools called when things got hard: navigating conflict, addressing historical abuse, facilitating difficult conversations, and building communities grounded in truth-seeking and integrity. Now, through his consultancy Furthering, Mike helps leaders, teams, and organizations "loosen knots"—creating the conditions for people to have the conversations that matter, even when they're hard. In this conversation, Mike shares how his mother taught him to create space for others, what he learned from Quaker values like truth-seeking and silent reflection, and why holding the tension between our values and our actions is essential. We also talk about why reflection is so rare (and so necessary), and what it takes to help people expect their minds to be changed. Hosted by Matt Gregory and Patrick Dyer Wolf.