Dr. Kevin Keough, clinical psychologist, and host of North Star Guardians and Warrior Traditions, interviews Mr. Marc "Animal" MacYoung.

Topic: Martial arts, self defense and the way of the warrior

Growing up on the gang-infested streets of Los Angeles not only gave Marc MacYoung his street name "Animal," but also extensive firsthand experience about what does and does not work for self-defense. What he teaches is based on experience and has proven reliability for surviving violence. He is considered by many to be one of the most analytical thinkers on the subject of  surviving violence and personal safety today.

He has taught police, military, martial artists and civilians around the world, his message is always the same: Hand-to-hand combat is a last ditch effort when other, more effective, preventive measures have failed. The best preventative measure of them all is not to put yourself into situations where you need to fight your way out. He knows that from personal experience and that is what he teaches, lest people find themselves in the same kind of situations that he did. Unlike many martial arts instructors, who claim to have been street fighters, his past is not a marketing promotion. Nor is it an exaggerated list of victories against legions of thugs through use of his undefeatable martial art style. It is filled with tales of ambushes, hit-and-run gang warfare, drugs, alcohol, bad behavior, stupid mistakes, weapons flashing in dark alleys, homicides, funerals and long nights spent in hospital waiting rooms praying  for wounded friends to survive. That is the reality of being a street fighter. It is nothing any sane person would brag about -- much less pretend to be. As he often says It's a whole different ballgame when the other side shoots back...(1)

Yet, as one who lived despite the blood-splattered streets, MacYoung knows that survival isnât a matter of how "tough" you are or your ability to fight. Nor is it how many stripes you have on a black belt or how many tournaments youâve won. Although some physical  skill is indeed necessary, survival is more a matter of knowledge and awareness. And that is what he stresses. Without those two key elements, you wonât make it out of a dark and lonely parking lot. 

About that "Animal" part of his name... yes, he did all the stupid and dangerous things one needs to do to earn that nickname. It is a lifestyle he no longer lives or endorses. Unfortunately, since Animal is the name he was first published under, like a tattoo, he's sort of stuck with it as a constant reminder of a violent and dangerous youth.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Holly George-Warren, author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry published by Oxford University Press.

Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer, editor, and a frequent commentator on Western films, music, and fashion.  A contributor to more then 40 books on popular music, she is the author of Cowboy! How Hollywood Invented the Wild West and co-author of How The West Was Worn: A History of Western Wear.  She is also the author of the children's books Honky-Tonk-Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music and Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll.

Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and many other publications.  Beginning in Fall 2006, she will be Adjunct Professor of Journalism at NUNY-Paltz.  Visit her website.

Read the Gene Autry cowboy code

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Barbara Bizantz Raymond, author of The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption published by Carroll & Graf.

Barbara Bisantz Raymond is an adjunct professor, adoptive mother, and writer. She has received two awards for feature writing from Women in Communications, and was an author of a child care section that won the National Magazine Award for Public Service. She contributed to The Handbook of Magazine Article Writing, and has written for The New York Times, USA Today, Working Mother, Parents, Writer's Digest, Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, McCall's, and Ladies' Home Journal. She lives in New York City.Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Lisa Alther, author of Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree- The Search for My Melungeon Ancestors published by Arcade Publishing.

Lisa Alther was born in 1944 in Kingsport, Tennessee, where she went to public schools.  She was graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in English literature in 1966. After attending the Publishing Procedures Course at Radcliffe College and working for Atheneum Publishers in New York, she moved to Hinesburg, Vermont, where she has lived for thirty years, raising her daughter. She taught Southern Fiction at St. Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont and Southern fiction at East Tennessee State Univ. in Johnson City, TN.

Alther is the author of five novels -- Kinflicks, Original Sins, Other Women, Bedrock, and Five Minutes in Heaven.  Her reviews and articles have appeared in many periodicals, including the New York Times, Art and Antiques, Los Angeles Times,  and the Boston Globe.

 Having lived in London and Paris, she currently divides her time between Vermont and New York and Tennessee. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution published by W.W. Norton.

David Quammen is the author of The Song of the Dodo and Monster of God, is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, most recently for a National Geographic story on Darwin.  He has also written for Harpers, Rolling Stone and New York Times Book Review.  He wrote a column, called Natural Acts for Outside magazine for fifteen years (for which he won two National Magazine Awards.) Quannen lives in Bozeman, Montana.

 

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Janine Latus, author of If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation published by Simon & Schuster.

Janine Latus is a freelance writer, radio commentator, and regular speaker on domestic abuse issues. She has also taught writing and journalism at several universities and is on the board of directors of the American Society of Journalists and Authors . Her work has appeared in O, the Oprah magazine, More, Woman's Day, Family Circle, Parents, All You, American Baby. She has written for WomensWallStreet.com and her commentaries have aired on Public Radio International's Marketplace, and she routinely speaks at conferences, workshops and press events. If I Am Missing or Dead is her first book. She lives in Virginia. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There: A Life In Two Genders published by Broadway.

Since 1988, Jenny Boylan has been a professor of creative writing and American literature at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine. Boylan was a visiting professor at University College Cork, Ireland, in 1998-99.  She was promoted to the rank of full Professor in May of 2001, and was chosen by students as the Charles Walker Bassett "Professor of the Year" in 2000.  At present she is Director of Creative Writing at Colby.

Her books include The Planets, and The Constellations,  and Remind Me To Murder You Later. Her stories have appeared in such literary magazines as Confrontation, Florida Review, Quarterly West, Western Humanities Review, Writer's Digest and Southwest Review. She lives in Maine with her family. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor Arnold Rampersad, author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography published by Knopf.

Arnold Rampersad is the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities and is a member of the Department of English at Stanford University.

His books include The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. DuBois (1976); The Life of Langston Hughes (2 vols., 1986, 1988); Days of Grace: A Memoir (1993), co-authored with Arthur Ashe; and Jackie Robinson: A Biography (1997). In addition, he has edited several volumes including Collected Poems of Langston Hughes; the Library of America edition (2 vols.) of works by Richard Wright, with revised individual editions of Native Son and Black Boy; and (as co-editor with Deborah McDowell) Slavery and the Literary Imagination. He was also co-editor, with Shelley Fisher Fishkin, of the Race and American Culture book series published by Oxford University Press

From1991 to 1996, he held a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Visit his webpage.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Shawn Decker, author of My Pet Virus: The True Story of a Rebel Without a Cure published by Tarcher.

Shawn Decker and his wife, fellow HIV educator, Gwenn Barringer- who is HIV negative, belong to CAMPUSPEAK, a speaker's bureau specializing in health issues. Since 2000, Shawn and Gwenn have spoken to over 50,000 students on colleges campuses, traveling nationally to share how they keep Gwenn HIV negative in their program, A Boy, A Girl, A Virus & The Relationship That Happened Anyway. Together they've been featured on MTV, the BBC, CNN.com and have appeared in an HBO documentary as well as in Cosmopolitan. My Pet Virus is Shawn's first book. They live in Charlottesville, Virginia. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Vanessa Vega, author of  Comes the Darkness, Comes the Light: A Memoir of Cutting, Healing, and Hope  published by AMACOM/American Management Association.

Vanessa Leigh Vega is a high school English teacher and motivational speaker in Irving, Texas. She is a contributing author to the award-winning Taste Berries for Teens Volume IV.  She has been nationally recognized for excellence in teaching by being named to the Whos Who Among Americas Teachers in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. She has degrees from Texas Tech University and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. She resides in Irving, Texas where she is working on her next book.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Tina Kotulski, author of Saving Millie; a daughter's story of surviving her mother's schizophrenia published by Extraordinary Voices Press.

Tina Kotulski, full time stay at home mom (S.A.H.M.) and author of Saving Millie; A Daughter's Story of Surviving Her Mother's Schizophrenia has played an active role in bringing awareness to the special needs of children, as well as families of the mentally ill. In 2006, she received an Award of Excellence in Consumer and Family Support from the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, as well as a recipient of a Global Award from the National Network of Adult and Adolescent Children who have a Mentally Ill Parent in Australia. Her most recent award was from the Midwest  Independent Publishers Association (MIPA) where Saving Millie won First Place in the category of Social Sciences.

Tina is founder of Extraordinary Voices, a national group of the "voices of those that have grown up in the shadow of mental illness", as well as President of of Extraordinary Voices Press.

Along with her husband, she is co-founder of Between The Bridges Healing Center, LLC,  a comprehensive medical center where personalized, comprehensive care and optimal health and wellness meet.

Tina speaks on the special needs of children of persons with mental illness, as well as the needs of families of those that have mental illness at conferences, seminars, churches, health care centers, schools, community centers and prisions. Tina, along with her husband Jeffrey Kotulski, D.O., and three children live in southern Minnesota. Visit her website.

Purchase the documentary about  Millie, created by her daughter Susan Smiley, Out of The Shadow.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Claire Fontaine, co-author of Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back written by Claire Fontaine and Mia Fontaine published by Harper Collins.

Claire Fontaine is an author and screenwriter who has worked with numerous award-winning producers and directors. She continues to write and leads writing workshops.  Visit her website  and blog.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor Charles Barber, author of Songs From The Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors, published by University of Nebraska Press.

Charles Barber is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. Barber won the 2005 Pushcart Prize for the title essay, Songs From The Black Chair. Excerpts or pieces related to Songs From the Black Chair have appeared in the New York Times, UTNE Reader, Psychotherapy Networker, and on National Public Radio.  Visit his website

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Pagan Kennedy, author of The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution published by Bloomsbury.

Pagan Kennedy has published eight books. Her biography, Black Livingstone was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel Spinsters was short listed for the Orange Prize and won the Barnes and Nobles Discover Award. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, and the Village Voice among others. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.  Visit her website.

 

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Bob Tarte, author of Fowl Weather: How thirty-nine animals and one sock monkey took over my life published by Algonquin Books.

Bob Tarte is a freelance writer who has written for a number of publications, including The Beat magazine, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Whole Earth Review, and the Miami New Times. He lives in Lowell, Michigan, with his wife, Linda, and more animals than we can list here. Bob is also the author of Enslaved By Ducks.  Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Bob Tarte, author of Enslaved by Ducks: How one man went from head of the household to bottom of the pecking order  published by Algonquin Books.

Bob Tarte is a freelance writer who has written for a number of publications, including The Beat magazine, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Whole Earth Review, and the Miami New Times. He lives in Lowell, Michigan, with his wife, Linda, and more animals than we can list here. Bob is also the author of Fowl Weather: How thirty-nine animals and one sock monkey took over my life.  Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. William Poy Lee, author of The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese Mother published by Rodale Books.

William Poy Lee was born in the North Beach-Chinatown districts of San Francisco on January 16, 1951 where he lived with one foot in a very traditional Chinatown and one foot in the bohemian arts, music, and politics of North Beach. He received his Bachelors of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969 and his Juris Doctor from Hastings College of Law, University of California, San Francisco in 1978.

 A lawyer since 1979, he lives in Berkeley, where he writes full-time. The Eighth Promise is his first book. For more on the author, please visit www.TheEighthPromise.com.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Glasgow Phillips, author of The Royal Nonesuch: Or, What Will I Do When I Grow Up? published by Grove Press.

Glasgow Phillips is a film and television writer in Los Angeles. His credits include seasons on South Park, and Father of the Pride, and catastrophic pilots for Comedy Central and MTV.  He wrote and directed the important zombie-western feature film Undead of Alive.  Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Susan Shapiro, author of Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, And Everything Else I Love in Life Except Sex published by Delta.

Susan Shapiro has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, The Nation, Salon. com, Village Voice, and many other media.  She is the co-editor of the anthology "Food for the Soul," and the author of the acclaimed memoirs "Lighting Up" and Five Men Who Broke My Heart which was optioned for a movie by Paramount Pictures. She has appeared on the Today Show, Dateline, Good Day New York, E!, Entertainment, and prime time documentaries on ABC and the Oxygen network. Susan lives in Greenwich Village with her husband, a TV/film writer and teaches journalism at NYU, the New School, and Mediabistro.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Susan Shapiro, author of Five Men Who Broke My Heart: A Memoir published by Delta.

Susan Shapiro has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, The Nation, Salon. com, Village Voice, and many other media.  She is the co-editor of the anthology "Food for the Soul," and the author of the acclaimed memoirs "Lighting Up" and Five Men Who Broke My Heart which was optioned for a movie by Paramount Pictures. She has appeared on the Today Show, Dateline, Good Day New York, E!, Entertainment, and prime time documentaries on ABC and the Oxygen network. Susan lives in Greenwich Village with her husband, a TV/film writer and teaches journalism at NYU, the New School, and Mediabistro.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor Eric Liu, author of  The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker published by Vintage.

Eric Liu is the author of Guiding Lights: How to Mentor- And Find Life's Purpose, the Official Book of National Mentoring Month.  He is also the author of The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, a New York Times Notable Book featured in the PBS documentary Matters of Race, and he edited the Norton anthology Next: Young American Writers on the New Generation.

Eric served as a speechwriter for President Clinton in the first term and as White House deputy domestic policy adviser in the second. After the White House, he was an executive at the digital media company RealNetworks. He's also been a frequent commentator of CNN, MSNBC and CNBC. In 2002, Eric was named by the World Economic Forum as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow."  He lives in Seattle, where he teaches at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs and hosts an acclaimed television interview program called Seattle Voices. In addition to organizing the annual Guilding Lights Weekend, Eric speaks regularly at conferences, corporations and campuses around the country. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Margaret Sartor, author of Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, And Growing Up In the 1970s published by Bloomsbury USA.

Margaret Sartor is a writer and photographer. She currently teaches at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and lives with her husband and two children in Durham, North Carolina.

Sartor's most recent book, Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970s  is a New York Times bestseller and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the Chicago Tribune.

Margaret Sartor's photographs of her family have been widely published and exhibited and are in a number of permanent museum collections. As an editor, Sartor has published three books, What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney (co-edited with Geoff Dyer) was chosen as one of the Top Ten Photography Books of 1999 by the Village Voice.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion- The Spiritual Memoir of a twenty-first century Christian published by Ballentine.

Sara Miles is the author of How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley and co-editor of Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan and the anthology Opposite Sex. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Out, The Progressive, La Jornada, and Salon, among others.  She has written extensively on military affairs, politics, and culture. The Founder of St. Gregory's Food Pantry, she lives in San Francisco, California with her family. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. William McKeen, author of Highway 61: A Father-Son Journey Through the Middle of America published by Norton.

Dr. William McKeen is the  author of five books and editor or three more. He has been copy editor and reporter at several newspapers, and was staff editor at The Saturday Evening Post and production editor for The American Spectator. His latest book, Highway 61, is a memoir of a 6,000-mile road trip with his college-age son. In addition to his anthology, Rock and Roll is Here to Stay, Mckeen has written critical biographies of Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. He is working on a full-scale biography of Hunter Thompson, an anthology about childhoods in Florida and a rock'n'roll book called Rip This Joint.

McKeen specializes in media history, popular culture and literary journalism. He has earned his B.A. in history and his M.A. in journalism from Indiana University and his Ph.D. in education from the University of Oklahoma. He is married and has seven children.  Visit his website.

Dr. Kevin Keough interviews Solicitor Adrian C. Laing, author of R.D. Laing: A Life published by Sutton Publishing.

Adrian C. Laing, is a practicing Solicitor Advocate of his own firm Laing and Co, and regularly writes and presents on issues relating to media and entertainment law. Adrian studied law at Exeter University and was called to the Bar (Inner Temple, London) in 1979 (aged 21). He subsequently studied under Michael Foucault at the College de France, Paris.

Adrian is the co-author (with his wife Deborah Fosbrook) of two leading law titles: 'The A-Z Contract Clauses' and 'The Media Contracts Handbook'. Adrian has five children and lives in Highgate, North London. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman, author of From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava with Melinda Roth, published by Lyons Press.

Jay Kopelman is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, stationed at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, CA in September 2004, as the Special Operations Forces Liaison Officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF), Jay deployed to Iraq to train the Iraqi Special Forces. In October, he was assigned as the liaison officer to an Iraqi Army battalion, and in November they entered Fallujah to battle insurgents for control of the city. It was there that he met and adopted Lava, a five week old puppy abandoned during the during the invasion.

Following his return to the United States, based on his experiences in Iraq, Jay was asked to help train the Marines who would return to Iraq as advisors to the Iraqui armed forces and the police. He currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for advisor training at I MEF.

Jay lives in La Jolla, CA, with his wife, Pam: son Mattox; stepson Sean; their two dogs, Lava and Koda, and Cheddar the cat.  Both Jay and his wife, an anthropologist, are avid surfers who make annual pilgrimage to Costa Rica. They also spend time skiing, camping, waterskiing/wakeboarding and rock climbing. Visit his website.  Watch a video of Jay and Lava.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews lawyer Dylan Schaffer, author of Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story published by Bloomsbury USA.

Dylan Schaffer has been a criminal defense lawyer in the Bay Area for 15 years. He writes the Misdemeanor Man legal thriller series. His first book, Misdemeanor Man, won Mystery Ink's 2004 Gumshoe for best debut. Misdemeanor Man and his second book in the series, I Right The Wrongs, were Booksense selections. His new book, a memoir called Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story was a Chicago Tribune 2006 best book of the year and a 2006 Barnes & Nobles Discover New Writers selection. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Harriet Brown, author of Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories About The Men We Used to Love published by Ballantine Books.

Harriet Brown is the award-winning author of the Good-bye Window: A Year in the Life of A Day Care Center and the Promised Land, a collection of poems. Her poems have appeared in Poetry and Prairie Schooner, among other literary magazines. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and other national publications. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interview Ms. Kat Albrecht, author of The Lost Pet Chronicles: Adventures of a K-9 Cop Turned Pet Detective with Jean Murphy, published by Bloomsbury USA.

Kat Albrecht is an award-winning former police bloodhound handler, crime scene investigator, search and rescue manager, and police officer turned investigative pet detective. She is the founder of Missing Pet Partnership, a national nonprofit organization working to establish community-based lost-pet services.

Kat lives in Clovis, California, with her three dogs and three cats.  Visit her website. For suggestions on how to find a lost pet, visit Missing Pet Partnership.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. John Higgs, author of I Have America Surrounded: A Biography of Timothy Leary published by Barricade Books.

John Higgs has spent 10 years writing and producing in a wide range of media, making him the only man who can boast of producing both a long running series for BBC Radio 4 and a best selling videogame for the PlayStation 2.

He created the innovative historical and geographical quiz show X Marks The Spot for BBC Radio 4. The series has now been running for eight years. Videogames that he has produced include Crash and Burn, and ATV: Quad Power Racing 2, which has sold over three quarters of a million copies.

In between these very different endevours he has worked extensively in television and animation, writing and producing programmes including Audrey & Friends, Pen Monkeys, and TooMuch TV, for which he earned a Best Children's Entertainment Programme BAFTA nomination. He has written for publications including The Guardian, The Independent and Mojo, and is a judge in two categories for the BAFTA Games Awards. He has a degree in Computer Science.

He lives in Brighton with his partner and two children. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Mindy Lewis, author of Life Inside: A Memoir published by Washington Square Press.

Mindy Lewis is a writer, painter, and graphic designer based in New York City. Her essays have been published in two anthologies and in Newsweek, Body & Soul, Poets & Writers and Lilith magazines. A finalist in The Writer's Voice 1999 New Voice Creative Non-Fiction Awards. She has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center, Palenville Interarts, Byrdcliffe Colony, and Banff Center for the Arts.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Joe Massengale author of Six Lessons for Six Sons: An Extraordinary Father, A Simple Formula for Success. published by Three Rivers Press.  Part One of a Two- Part Interview.

Boxer, preacher, and businessman, George Foreman says about our guest, Mr. Joe Massengale, "The Lessons Joe Massengale learned back in the piney woods around Marshall, Texas, and gave to his sons to take into the world are some of the same ones I hope my children, my congregation, the kids in my youth center and my customers get from me."

Entrepreneur Joe Massengale is the owner of Joe's Expert Tree Service. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Joe Massengale author of Six Lessons for Six Sons: An Extraordinary Father, A Simple Formula for Success. published by Three Rivers Press.  Part One of a Two- Part Interview.

Boxer, preacher, and businessman, George Foreman says about our guest, Mr. Joe Massengale, "The Lessons Joe Massengale learned back in the piney woods around Marshall, Texas, and gave to his sons to take into the world are some of the same ones I hope my children, my congregation, the kids in my youth center and my customers get from me."

Entrepreneur Joe Massengale is the owner of Joe's Expert Tree Service. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Allen Rucker, author of The Best Seat in the House: How I Woke Up One Tuesday and Was Paralyzed for Life  published by HarperCollins.

Allen Rucker is the author of seven books of non-fiction and humor, most of them written since he became paralyzed. He's written three books on the HBO series, "The Sopranos," including the New York Times #1 bestselling "The Sopranos Family Cookbook." His other books include "The History of White People in America," with Martin Mull, and "Redneck Woman," with Gretchen Wilson.  He is also an award-winning TV writer.

He is the recipient of the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the Writers Guild Annual Award, and two CableACE Awards among others. In 2005, he recieved the special WGA Joan Young Award for career distinction as a writer with a disability. "The History of White People In America" was honored by the Museum of Television & Radio in 2001 and TVTV was given a full MTR retrospective in 2004.

He also teaches at the USC School of Cinema-TV. He lives in LA with his wife, Ann-Marie. They have two sons. For more information visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney  interviews Dr. Joy Castro, author of The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah's Witnesses  published by Arcade.

Born in Miami, Joy Castro studied literature at Trinity University and Texas A&M University. She began publishing short stories during graduate school and took a position in 1997 teaching literature and creative writing at Wabash College, where she lectures on women's literature, race and gender issues, literary modernism, and the Harlem Renaissance. An award-winning teacher, she publishes articles on innovative strategies for the post-secondary classroom, and her published literary scholarship focuses on experimental women writers of the twentieth century such as Jean Rhys, Meridel Le Sueur, Sandra Cisneros, and Naomi Shihab Nye.

Committed to broadening the reach of higher education to communities in need, she has offered free courses to at-risk teenagers, low-income adults, and victims of domestic violence, and she runs the biannual Creative Writing/ Creative Teaching conference for Indiana high school and middle school teachers.

 Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and her short fiction and creative nonfiction appear in anthologies and in journals such as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, and Puerto del Sol.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Hillary Carlip, author of Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan published by Harper.

Award winning author and Multi-Mediast, Hillary Carlip's memoir Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan  is an American Bookseller's Association Book Sense Pick, and was selected by Borders as one of the Top Literary Memoirs of 2006. She has appeared on countless radio and TV shows, including Oprah, who dedicated an entire episode to Hillary's first book, Girl Power: Young Women Speak Out, and the Ellen Degeneres Show, where she taught Ellen how to eat fire (complete with Liza Minnelli running onstage--unplanned--with a fire extinguisher!) Hillary's second book, Zine Scene, won an American Libray Association Award.

Hillary is the creator, host and editor of the acclaimed literary website FRESH YARN, an NPR commentator, an artist, and a creative and motivational consultant and speaker.  Currently Hillary is working on her fourth book, and developing a network television show based on Queen of the Oddballs.  You can find out more about her, see video clips, etc. at her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Evelyn McDonnell, author of Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, & Rock' n' Roll published by Da Capo Life Long Books.

Evelyn McDonnell is the pop culture writer at the Miami Herald, where she has worked since 2001. She is the author of Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock 'n' Roll and  Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork.  She coedited the anthologies Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap and Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth. 

A former senior editor at the Village Voice and associate editor at SF Weekly, her writing on music, poetry, theater, and culture has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including Ms., Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Spin, Travel & Leisure, Us, Billboard, and Option.

Evelyn lives in Miami Beach with her husband, Bud, her stepdaughters, Karlie and Kendra, her son Cole, their dog, Otis, and two cats, Paleface and Moonpie.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Portia Iversen, author of Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism published by Riverhead.

Portia Iversen, an Emmy-winning art director, has been a vigorous proponent of autism research since her son Dov was diagnosed in 1994. Together with her husband, Jon Shestack, she established the Cure Autism Now Foundation, one of the largest nongovernmental funding resources for autism research worldwide. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.  Visit her website and new online community.

Purchase The Mind Tree: A Miraculous Child Breaks the Silence of Autism by Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Allen Shawn, MS, author of Wish I Could Be There: Notes From a Phobic Life published by Viking.

Allen Shawn grew up in New York City and currently lives in Vermont, where he is on the faculty of Bennington College. He started composing music at the age of ten, and has produced a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber, and piano works, as well as music for ballet, theater, and film. He performs frequently as a pianist, and he has contributed articles to The Atlantic Monthly, The Musical Times, and The Times Literary Supplement . Allen is also the author of the book "Arnold Schoenberg's Journey. He is the father of Annie and Harold Shawn.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Jeff Bell, author of Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder published by Hazelden.

Jeff Bell is a longtime veteran of radio and television news. He currently co-anchors afternoon drive at KCBS-AM, the CBS Network's San Francisco flagship and one of the most successful all-news radio stations in America.

Prior to joining KCBS, Bell spent eight years hosting drive-time news programs at KFBK in Sacramento. His reporting has aired on the CBS Radio Network; and The Associated Press, The Radio-Television News Directors Association of Northern California, and The Sacramento Bee have all recognized him for his radio work. On the television side, Bell spent several years as a writer for KTVU-TV's Mornings on Two, a ground-breaking and hugely successful Bay Area news program.

Bell holds a master's degree in business from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; and a bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of California, Irvine. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and two daughters. Visit his websites RewindReplayRepeat and Beyond the Doubt.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney interviews Dr. Daniel Burston, author of Erik Erikson and the American Psyche: Ego, Ethics and Evolution published by Jason Aronson.

Daniel Burston, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology who holds doctora