My Interview with late Actor and Comedian Taylor

Here is my interview with the late actor, comedian, playwright and painter Taylor Negron from July of 2013. MY INTERVIEWHe was truly the kind of articulate, edgy, hysterical, whimsical, enchanting, enlightening, deeply heartfelt, and clever bloke that you can't imagine the world without. Unique and yet the perfect conduit for disembodied muses. He lived his life in an inspired array of colors, like illegal fireworks over an exotic and improbable juxtaposition of city and country. I believe his Aurora borealis soul is visiting us all, watchfully and insightfully guiding us. Like Jesus, but hornier, funnier, and better dressed. And, he's whispering profound everythings into our ears, as we fall asleep, before he cancans and fandangos through a mangrove-swamp-filled downtown Asian marketplace. He's the place where Ramadan, Chinese New Year and Obon go to party. We love you Taylor, everywhere you are. Rock on, brother. Thanks for your Pandora's Jukebox request for Sunday night. I should always get my requests from the other side! I don't think I ever heard that one! [Disclaimer: My dead pan jokes came off as earnest, because I was so darn joyful and nervous to be interviewing him. Please, pardon my chattiness.]

Author David Ryan on Healing Wisdom Thursday

THE POD IS UP.

David Ryan, the author of a short story collection, Animals in Motion (Roundabout Press), will be on Healing Wisdom this week. His stories have appeared "in Esquire, BOMB, Tin House, Fence, Hayden's Ferry Review, failbetter.com, The Encyclopedia Project, Booth, Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Cimarron Review, several Mississippi Review Prize issues, Nerve, Hobart, and Salt Hill, among others. His fiction has been anthologized in WW Norton's Flash Fiction Forward, The Mississippi Review: 30, and Akashic Book's Boston Noir 2: The Classics. His essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in The Paris Review, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, Tin House, BookForum, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Connecticut state arts grant and a Macdowell fellowship, he currently teaches in the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College."

His latest work, Animals in Motion, leaves you feeling restless and uneasy in your own skin, vaguely uncomfortable with humanity, strangely satisfied and piteous of the foibles and shortcomings of characters which seem all at once painfully self-conscious and completely unaware. You want to comfort the long shadows his tin, hapless and often mournful cavernous characters leave behind in their wake, but like naive children who are longingly lonely and yet too thorny and self-absorbed to touch. So you resign to appreciate their sorrows and blunderings at a safe distance. In the same tradition as Raymond Carver, William Faulkner and his ilk, Ryan has chosen to bring the reader into the world of characters we feel awkward and relieved to find sympathy toward.

Books are remarkable places to find private commiseration in darkened mental landscapes. Your compassion for the underdog can't take you down a notch here. Your reactions toward the secrets hidden and the mysteries unraveling are completely unknowable to the outside world. Your morality, your ethics, your sexual desire, nothing is under the microscope. You should be able to read things you don't want your shrink or your diary to know about. You get a free pass to a private non-corporeal experience, no paper trail necessary. The relationship is on your terms, you either keep reading or stop. Sometimes it seems that the longer an author forces you to excavate the wreckage, the more it becomes hard to decipher the contents. More revelations lead to more questions than answers. And sometimes, whispering between the third person and first person narratives, the author, like an imaginary friend who faintly haunts the hours through his darkened corridors seems to be an amalgamation of his characters and your subconscious mind. A companion, a path finder, ever present, yet invisible, and silent in the music of words like notes, and characters like melodies.

Ryan's book explores layers, sometimes peeling inflamed scars back like raw flesh, sometimes plinging you like a pinball into someone's head, sometimes putting a character like a breast between two pieces of glass like a painful mammogram, and at times it's very cinematic. In the tradition of southern short story writers, characters can be downright unlikable, unknowingly unethical, emotionally galvanized, and haunted by former love but exhibiting an admirable matter-of-factness and lack of self-pity. Perhaps Ryan and authors like him are helping readers to expand our minds, wonder about the back stories of strangers, the way adolescents do, before their world becomes a tunnel vision - focused on their daily minutia, insurance, loans. Before their futures become maps, like high-tech weather forecasts of tornado trips to Disneyworld and Legoland and ATMS.

Gotta love books that allow you to be a mute witness to accidents waiting to happen, like an angel in the afterlife, you await the return of the crushed souls, who somehow exhibit a triumphant surrender to the powerful absurdity and orchestrated chaos the universe seems to have foisted upon them.

Comedian Kate Clinton on Healing Wisdom

This Thursday at 9am EST on 92.1 WOMR, 91.3 WFMR, and streaming at womr.org

Guess who's coming to Ptown for Grrrly GirlSplash week? Why yes, it's Kate Clinton, feminist humorist (self-described "fumerist"), political comedian, author, columnist, film and stage actress. Her books include What the L? and Don't Get me Started. She's celebrating her 33rd year on the scene, with performances in Provincetown this summer. So, hop on the L train this Thursday morning with Healing Wisdom for a dynamic interview with a former high school teacher turned lesmedian. "I think that one woman's conspiracy theory is another man's history." She's brilliant.

Lee McCormick on Healing Wisdom this Thursday

What an awesome interview...do not miss Nashville songwriter musician Lee McCormick on Healing Wisdom discussing addiction from a unique spiritual perspective. McCormick is co-author of "Spirit Recovery Medicine Bag: A Transformational Guide for Living Happy, Joyous, and Free". (Mary Faulkner is his co-author.) Lee founded The Ranch Recovery Center in Tennessee, The Canyon Treatment Center in Malibu California, Nashville’s Integrative Life Center and IOP/PHP Community Recovery program in Nashville, Tennessee. He leads people on journeys to sacred sites in South America.

Here we talk about his journey, what's missing for some people in the 12-step recovery model, how people can get out of a rut and get clear enough to live their dreams: THE INTERVIEW

Shaman author Serge Kahili King, PHD on Healing Wisdom

My interview with shaman author Serge Kahili King, Ph.D. airs tomorrow morning at 9am EST. He talks with me about his work, from organizing community aid projects in Senegal to the philosophy behind the Hawaiian healing tradition. Serge Kahili King has published the world's largest selection of books and tapes on Huna, the Polynesian philosophy and practice of effective living, and on the spirit of Aloha, the attitude of love and peace for which the Hawaiian Islands are so famous. He shares extensively on Hawaiian culture through his fiction, nonfiction, his audio tapes, and his articles. Tune in to WOMR 92.1 fm Provincetown, WFMR 91.3 fm Orleans or streaming globally at http://womr.org!

In the next several months, we have Joan Rivers, John Waters, David Sedaris AND Amy Goodman doing benefits for Cape Cod's Outermost Radio WOMR! Pretty freaking amazing. I love these people. And honestly, I'd love to do dueling Billie Holiday impressions with David Sedaris. We shall see, we shall see.

Brigitte Mars Interview

My interview with raw food chef, herbalist, professor and author Brigitte Mars...

http://womr.org/podcast/raw-food-chef-brigitte-mars/

Author Brigitte Mars on Healing Wisdom

Thursday June 12th at 9am EST, author herbalist Brigitte Mars will be on Healing Wisdom next week talking aphrodisiacs, psychedelic plants and pain relief. From her website: "Brigitte Mars is an herbalist from Boulder, Colorado, with over 40 years’ experience in natural lifestyles. She lived for two and a half years, on wild edible plants while living in a tipi in the Ozarks, in the early seventies. She is the author of The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine, Country Almanac of Home Remedies, Addiction Free Naturally, The Sexual Herbal, The HempNut Cookbook, Rawsome!, and Healing Herbal Teas. Brigitte teaches at Naropa University, Bauman College of Holistic Health and Natural Chef, The School of Natural Medicine, Just for the Health of It School of Reflexology and Healing Arts, Boulder College of Massage Therapy, Esalen Institute, Kripalu, and at an Icelandic healing arts school called Heilsumeistraskolinn." Tune in to WOMR 92.1 fm Provincetown, WFMR 91.3 fm Orleans or streaming at globally at Cape Cod's Outermost Radio streaming globally. Real Radio for Real People!

Interview with Author Tom North

Hear my interview with author Tom North. He's a Transcendental Meditation advocate and former financial adviser, author of, True North: The Shocking Truth Behind "Yours, Mine and Ours" a 1968 film starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. Listen here.

Healing Wisdom airs every Thursday morning at 9am EST on WOMR 92.1 fm, WFMR 91.3 fm, and streams at globally at womr.org Tom North talks PTSD, surviving and overcoming childhood abuse and the story behind the story.

Cancer Survivor and Alternative Treament Advocate

Susan Liberty Hall, sister of the late LA Lakers' owner Jerry Buss, former Playboy bunny, author and alternative-medicine-for-breast-cancer-recovery advocate, talks about her new book, "Ha, I Laugh in the Face of Cancer", with me on Healing Wisdom. Listen here: http://womr.org/podcast/cancer-survivor-susan-liberty-hall/

Podcast Interviews with authors Llyn Roberts and Rosemary Gladstar

Llyn Roberts is the author of many books including, "Shapeshifting Into Higher Consciousness". She's the former director of the Dream Change Coalition. She's been fully initiated into shamanic medicine by the Quechua and Tuvan shamans. Her forthcoming book was co-authored with Sandra Ingerman, while she lived in the Hoh Rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. Click here to hear Llyn Roberts talk about shamanic healing: http://womr.org/podcast/shapeshifter-llyn-roberts/

Rosemary Gladstar is called the Godmother of American Herbalism. She is the founder of the California School of Herbal Studies, author of The Science and Art of Herbalism home study course, organizer of the International Herb Symposium and The New England Women's Herbal Conference, co-founder Traditional Medicinal Tea Company, and co-founder of United Plant Savers. She is the author of numerous herb books including the best seller Herbal Healing for Women. Click here to listen: : http://womr.org/podcast/herbalist-rosemary-gladstar/

Herbalist Authors & Shamans on Healing Wisdom

In honor of International Herb Day, here are some interviews from Healing Wisdom with author herbalists and author shamanic healers:

Sandra Ingerman, MA
Sandra Ingerman, MA, is the author of eight books including Soul Retrieval, Medicine for the Earth, Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner’s Guide, How to Heal Toxic Thoughts, The Shaman’s Toolkit, and Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation. Sandra is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist and Professional Mental Health Counselor. She is also a board certified expert on traumatic stress as well as certified in acute traumatic stress management. Most recently was chosen as one of the Top Ten Spiritual Leaders of 2013 in the November/December Issue of Spirituality and Health.

My Sandra Ingerman Interview Here

Rosemary Gladstar on Healing Wisdom

Rosemary Gladstar is going to be on Herbal Wisdom on WOMR May 8th at 9am

Rosemary Gladstar is a Master Herbalist, founder of the California School of Herbal Studies, the oldest running herb school in the United States, author of The Science and Art of Herbalism home study course, organizer of the International Herb Symposium and The New England Women's Herbal Conference, co-founder Traditional Medicinal Tea Company, and co-founder of United Plant Savers. She is the author of numerous herb books including the best seller Herbal Healing for Women, The Storey Book Herbal Healing Series, and Herbal Remedies for Vibrant Health. Tune in this Thursday May 8th at 9am EDT to WOMR 92.1fm in Provincetown, WFMR 91.3fm in Orleans, or streaming at womr.org!

We're both excited for her to discuss the Fire Cider controversy, trademarking traditional medicines, how herbs get a bad reputation, industry trends, and more!