1000 w/ Ron Placone RonPlacone

Paul Gilmartin is a comedian, show host and mental health advocate. He hosts the podcast the Mental Illness Happy Hour which is one of my favorites and has helped a ton of people. Myself included. I guested on Paul’s show and talked about my struggles with anger, it’s still one of the only platforms where I’ve opened up about that part of my life. Trigger warning: This episode goes deep. Paul discusses his past trauma and life struggles that have lead to him to where he is today. Last but not least and how I first met him, Paul has a faux-right-wing satirical character called Richard Martin, which pre-dates Stephen Colbert’s character from the Colbert Report.

Also, Nicole gets her question answered.

Katie Love is an author and comedian. Also, she escaped a cult, at least that’s how she looks at it. For the record, I do as well. This episode concerns the Jehovah Witnesses, and how Katie Love eventually walked away from the Religion, after being indoctrinated into it at age 9. She also suffered abuse, and disclaimer, while we don’t go into as much detail as her book we do talk about it. 

Chris Lee is an author and historian. I’ve always been interested in the connection between politics in football aka soccer especially in Italy. It came up some in Episode 27 with Attila the Stockbroker. Well, I decided why not talk to someone who wrote a book on the topic. Chris Lee, among other things, is other of The Defiant: A History of Football Against Fascism. He dives into that history not just in Italy but other countries as well. This episode is almost more like a history lesson than an interview, and I mean that in a good way.

Tim Parks is an author, novelist and academic. One niche of his: He writes about moving and living in Italy as somebody from a different country. I’ve read several of his books on that topic as well as a book he wrote about overcoming a very severe illness. 

Wanna be a writer? This episode’s for you. Chris Silber is a writer. He’s had movies and television shows produced all over the world. One time, I was chatting with Chris, he had a series launching in the UK, a movie launching in Italy, and he was developing a series in the US. He did all of this from his house in Nashville. His more recent projects include Sam a Saxon on Disney Plus and a children’s book based on how he helped his daughter deal with the death of her mom and Chris’s late wife. In life, you meet people and you think, "I want their job", Chris is one of those people for me.

Jerry Rocha is a comedian and a damn good one. I met Jerry in 2015, right before I moved to LA. We became friends and like most LA comics didn’t stay in touch all that great, just how it goes especially out here. Recently, I saw a clip of Jerry’s online and while it was a hilarious joke it contained some not great news: Jerry had stage 4 cancer.