A wonderful conversation with singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer Sean Martin. We explored Sean's post-Iraq war experience with the horrors of PTSD, his slow and continuous recovery, and the way in which this has led him to uncovering his more 'authentic self'. This led to a conversation in which we dug deep into the relationship between music, writing, creativity and wellbeing. He also talked about how his aggressively metal/punk/grunge style was suited to waking people up. All in all an inspiring conversation that I recommend to you!

'Don't Walk Away' is Marilyn Raichle's wonderfully personal and surprisingly happy book about the transformative benefits of caring for a family member living with dementia. Topics discussed included: the distinction between being a care give and a care partner; dementia understood as loss versus understanding it as change; the power of a life of gratefulness; and lessons learned from loved ones with dementia. Here’s a beautiful insight from the book: “It turns out that everything that works so well to enrich the lives of persons living with dementia does the same for everyone, everywhere.” This is an important book that I highly recommend to you.

In this roundtable discussion of indie-folk artist Garrett Kato, diverse insights included: Garrett's description of himself as a "professional daydreamer" as a driver of his creative insight; how creative work needs modulations between hard focus and looser imaginings; how boredom stimulates the imagination; how social media's toll is worse for artists because it's tied to their income; how artists now do marketing work that labels used to handle, and how relying on social media is akin to gambling; how marketing music, on the other hand, has always been a gamble, from radio to promo tours; and how high social media numbers often don't turn into streams, while authentic music travels on its own. Check out my bio for links to these wonderful discussions.