Every Life Is Interesting

Paul Ruderman•www.everylifeisinteresting.com

Gimme an ordinary life; I'll give you an extraordinary story. The podcast's host, Paul Ruderman, interviews everyday people with extraordinary life stories, and tries to discern the unique arc of their singular lives. With each guest, Paul seeks to understand both their professional AND personal development across their life… exploring both the external (what they did and how they did it) and the internal (their thinking and feeling along the way) so that by interview’s end, we’ve painted a three-dimensional, complex and yes, interesting, life.

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Episodes

Episode 11: Jim Axelrod (Anchor, Saturday CBS Evening News)

Jim Axelrod may be best known for anchoring the CBS Evening News on Saturdays, or he may be best known as the long-time, first-rate reporter for CBS News. But I'm interviewing him here because he is the author of my favorite book of the past ten years, In The Long Run, the autobiographical story of his life and his relationship with his father, as told through the prism of running and training for a marathon, and growing up in a fairly standard family life in America. Jim's account of his life, ...

Jul 22, 2013•1 hr 13 min

Episode 10: Mitch Blank (Dylan Archivist)

Mitch Blank is well regarded as one of the pre-eminent archivists of Bob Dylan's music across the world. Mitch has over 180,000 recordings in his possession - many of which are Dylan's, but not all. Mitch is sought after for his breadth of knowledge about Dylan and his unmatched collection of the master's music. Interestingly, with tens of thousands of Dylan's live and bootleg recordings, Mitch still says he'd take Dylan's studio albums to the proverbial "island" rather than his trove of live re...

Jul 08, 2013•54 min

Episode 9: Sol Gittleman (Professor at Tufts)

Sol Gittleman is one of those legendary professors that you had in college... that you will always remember. I was fortunate enough to have him while I was Tufts for one class... Yid Lit. Yiddish Literature. He was and still is a tour de force. Sol is heading into his 50th year at Tufts, and is as responsible as anyone else in forging Tufts into the pantheon of top-tiered American universities. He served as provost for 22 years. But growing up in Hoboken, NJ, he dreamt of playing for the Yankees...

Jun 24, 2013•1 hr 1 min

Episode 8: Joanne Sandler (Women's Rights Activist)

Joanne has spent her life fighting for women's rights and gender equality across the globe. Over her 13 year tenure as the deputy director at the United Nations for Global Women's Issues, she helped raised dedicated budget from $18mm to over $200mm. She now writes books, and consults for agencies large and small, across the world, and continues helping oppressed women in every pocket of the globe. A fascinating woman who's lived a most extraordinary and important life.

Jun 17, 2013•1 hr 6 min

Episode 7: John Lee Dumas (Entrepreneur On Fire)

John is host of Entrepreneur On Fire, the most popular podcast in the world about entrepreneurs and startups... and for good reason. He's a most passionate and generous host, but he's also the kind of host you love... because he doesn't let his guests evade his most important questions. John started his podcast only 9 months ago and already has over 250,000 monthly downloads. Prior to launching Entrepreneur On Fire, John spent 8 years in the armed forces, sold real estate, worked for John Hancoc...

Jun 10, 2013•1 hr 2 min

Episode 6: Cassandra Knight (Attorney)

Cassandra is a double Stanford (undergrad and law) graduate, whose career path took her from Deputy County Public Defender in San Diego, to Legislative Aid in Sacramento, to boutique law firm in San Francisco, to City Attorney’s Office in SF, to in-house attorney at Morgan Stanley (first in SF, now NYC). She's a fanatical sports fan, and an incredible athlete. Oh, and she has 60 first cousins, most who live in Mississippi. AND... she comes from 4 or 5 generations of Mississippians!

Jun 03, 2013•1 hr 7 min

Episode 5: Matthew Abrams (Founder, Mycelium School)

Starting a new college is not for the faint of heart... so that makes this endeavor a good project for Matthew Abrams. Having traveled through 43 countries and 46 of these United States, Matthew got the idea to start a new college for entrepreneurs (The Mycelium School) while doing a residence in an underground Arts Collective in Havana, Cuba. Quote a bold vision, and quite a substantial project. But he started out as a relatively normal kid from Connecticut. Let's see what trajectory he followe...

May 24, 2013•1 hr 17 min

Episode 4: Charles Rosen (Community Developer)

Charles is an "individual" under the purest definition of the word. A unique worldview, a magnanimous spirit, and a colorful and varied journey from Kingston, Ontario to New York City to the suburbs around it. He's worked at a law firm, made interesting independent films and big budget commercials, and has created his own job type, if you will... a "Community Developer"... not a housing developer but a true community developer... with a mission to improve the lives of people around him. Listen t...

May 19, 2013•1 hr 10 min

Episode 3: Keoki Flagg (Phototographer)

Keoki Flagg is a photographer, artist, and one of the most experienced and travelled travelers I have ever met in my life. His grandparents escaped Nazi Germany, and he grew up Jewish in Hawaii in the late 60’s early 70’s before his parents decided to take their 4 kids on a tour of Europe for 4 years, establishing residence in different countries each year so the kids could go to school. Now Keoki is a world-renowned photographer of the outdoors, of extreme athletes, of the most scenic places on...

May 08, 2013•1 hr 38 min

Episode 2: Andrew Tedesco (Artist)

Andrew Tedesco is a professional artist living and working just west of New York City. He's married with 3 daughters. And in this interview, Andrew tells the story of growing up on the Jersey Shore a talented athlete before transitioning to the artist's mindset in late high school and into college at the University of Maryland. He then moved to NY with his wife and began the hard but successful journey of becoming a working artist, one of the toughest careers you will find. A deep and interestin...

May 03, 2013•59 min

Episode 1: Introduction to Every Life Is Interesting

This episode is not so much the first episode of the 'every life is interesting' podcast as it is an INTRODUCTION to the 'every life is interesting' podcast. In this "episode" I tell you a little bit about the podcast, why I created it, and what you can expect from it in the future. Enjoy! And please send me your feedback!

May 01, 2013•6 min

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