Epis. #36: Berlin-based filmmaker Spencer McDonald feels like he gets paid TOO much money

11/13/19 • 31 min

Berlin-based American Spencer McDonald describes his path to becoming a professional filmmaker, from driving Lyft in San Francisco to interning for a filmmaker in Portland - while doing odd jobs from wild-berry harvesting to carpentry - and barely getting by, and then getting paid to shoot commercials for companies to Lyft to Disney, sometimes making as much as $30,000 for a single one-month job. He also talks about why he left the cozy bubble of Portland, Oregon for Berlin, where he lives mainly with non-Americans and enjoys the more social, communal lifestyle.

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Epis. #35: Why (and how) a tech entrepreneur lives in an urban adult dorm

Stephen Johnson is a twenty-something tech entrepreneur who splits his time between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It's a lifestyle that's actually far less pricey than you may imagine, because he's a member of the co-living space PodShare, which costs him only $1000 a month for adult-dorm style accommodations. He talks about launching his internet advertising business, FlipMass; the 11 items he owns (and why despite that, he calls himself a 'maximalist'); the life he leads in San Francisco compared with Los Angeles; and how he's able to live in a very non-private environment even though he's an introvert.

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Epis. #37: Colin Beavan, Brooklyn-based writer and 'No Impact Man,' on how to navigate what we really need as opposed to what we think we want

Colin Beavan is a Brooklyn-based writer and life coach. In the mid-2000s, he launched his “No Impact Man” experiment in which he and his wife and daughter led a carbon-zero lifestyle, in New York City, for 6 months. The project went viral, but Colin wrote books before No Impact Man (which also became a book and documentary), and has published books since, including most recently, “How to be Alive,” which explores how both science and traditional wisdom can affect our happiness. With his new work, along with No Impact Man, I got the strong sense that Colin would have a lot of insights relevant to our show (HIGB), specifically around what we want vs what we really need- and Colin delivers.