The Art Of Risk

Susie Lee: Listening to Your Body Before Changing Your Life

What did want to be when she grew up? A bio-physicist! No, a science teacher! No, I know—an artist. No, wait—company CEO! Susie Lee CEO of Siren, an award winning dating app that subverts the usual paradigm of swipe left vs. right, talks about what it’s like to work hard, achieve your goal, take off in another direction, do this multiple times and how all the goals can contribute to the success of the next. Susie also discusses listening to your body when making a decision, growing up as a Korean American, divorce.    Susie's web site: http://www.siren.mobi/susie/ [http://www.siren.mobi/susie/]

Nikkita Oliver: Dare Me!

Because she promised her students she’d never make them doing something she wouldn’t do, Nikkita Oliver performed for the first time at the 2012 Seattle Poetry Slam. And she won. Oliver talks about taking risks as a black, mixed, queer woman, using her background as an attorney to help young, marginalized people understand the judicial system. In 2015 she won the Artist Human Rights Leader Award from the City of Seattle and appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And now she’s running for Seattle mayor as part of the People’s Party.

Amelia Bonow: How a Facebook Post and Tweet Started a Movement

It definitely can feel like a risk when you’re honest and open but it doesn’t usually result in threats to your personal security. But this is exactly what happened to Amelia Bonow after she frankly, gratefully, and unapologetically posted about her abortion on her Facebook page. Then she gave her famous friend, Lindy West, permission to share a screen shot of it with her 65,000 Twitter fans. #ShoutYourAbortion has transformed from a viral tweet to a movement that aims to shift the way society talks and thinks about abortion. Amelia discusses creating a safe place for women to talk about abortion, being doxxed after her Facebook post and how her life has changed as a result of that one choice.

Trudy James: Ahead of Her Time

Spiritual, emotional, professional, financial—how many risks can you take in one lifetime? In seventy-eight years Trudy James has taken all of these and more. As an interfaith chaplain she’s successfully created care team programs for people with AIDS when they were considered untouchables, end-of-life planning workshops before they were chic and made Speaking of Dying a documentary on dying well when no one wanted to talk about it. But between the successes, there were also some failures as not every risk paid off in the same way. Trudy talks about following your heart, dealing with misogyny, death and dying, film making and living deeply.  Speaking of Dying: .http://speakingofdying.com/ [http://speakingofdying.com/]

Linden Jordan: How To Be a Man

Linden Jordan took enough risks to last a life time: coming out as gay to a conservative Southern Baptist family; leaving a lucrative and prestigious job as an attorney to begin a llama trekking company and then took the most life-changing risk of all. In this episode Debra and Nassim discuss with Linden how family messages run deep; the influence of religion; the impact of music on his life, the incident that sparked his decision to change from a woman to a man, how his decision affected his marriage and what his life is like now.  Linden's musical group Jumbled Pie: http://www.jumbledpie.com/ [http://www.jumbledpie.com/]