A Joyful Rebellion

What kind of conviction does it take to begin a nearly 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail hike at 72 years old?

For Rand Timmerman, the answer is layered in grief, sobriety, brotherhood, faith, and unfinished business.

A Vietnam veteran, longtime attorney, and recovery advocate, Rand set out on the Appalachian Trail with his brother shortly after overcoming alcoholism and while processing decades of emotional weight—including war trauma,...

Burnout doesn’t show up when it’s convenient. It shows up when you can least afford to slow down.

In this episode, Garrett Wood breaks down what burnout actually looks like—not the Instagram version, but the real, physiological, day-to-day experience of it. From sleep disruption and irritability to chronic pain and identity collapse, Garrett walks us through the five stages of burnout and why high achievers are especially vulnerabl...

A joyful rebellion isn’t reckless—it’s intentional.

In this conversation, novelist Cinda Gault breaks down a truth most people avoid: the hardest part of living on your own terms isn’t courage—it’s clarity. Because if you don’t know what you actually want, every decision becomes harder.

Cinda’s path wasn’t linear. She helped start a women’s crisis center in the 1970s, worked in a men’s prison, earned advanced degrees, raised two ki...

What happens when the system meant to protect you becomes the thing that wears you down? In this powerful episode of A Joyful Rebellion, James sits down with Lisa Johnson — educator, author, and co-founder of Been There Got Out — to talk about surviving legal abuse, reclaiming identity, and rebuilding life after a high-conflict divorce.

Lisa shares her deeply personal journey through a decade-long legal battle, repr...

In the early 1990s, college soccer coach Scott Martin walked into an emergency room with flu-like symptoms. A month later, he woke from a coma to learn he had contracted necrotizing fasciitis — and that his mother and brother had been forced to choose between letting him die or amputating both hands and parts of his feet.

What followed wasn’t a cinematic comeback. It was 30+ years of pivots, depression, lawsuits, di...

Some people rebel by getting louder. Carrie Birde rebelled by getting gentler.

After years of writing in secret—carrying shame, creative fear, and a persistent who am I to do this?—Carrie finished A Small Tale of Uncommon Grace, a novel that intentionally pushes back against a culture saturated with noise and dystopia. Instead of resistance, the book is driven by acceptance. Instead of spectacle, it offers wonder. N...

Creatives are often told business has to be rigid, serious, and exhausting — spreadsheets, rules, and hustle until you lose the joy that got you started. But what if the real rebellion is treating your business like a game instead of a grind? In this energizing conversation, James sits down with Paul Pape, creator of Gamify Business and the beloved “Santa for Nerds,” to explore how game mechanics can transform the w...

In this deeply resonant episode of A Joyful Rebellion, James sits down with choreographer, director, educator, and somatic movement analyst Alexandra Beller to explore the profound intersection of art, healing, embodiment, and authenticity. Alexandra has spent over 25 years helping artists unlock body-based creativity, cultivate rigor without harm, and create work rooted in truth rather than performance pressure.

T...

What if aging wasn’t something to fear… but something to design? In this empowering conversation, bestselling author and leadership expert Erika Andersen introduces the radical idea at the heart of her new book The New Old: that your “third act” can be your most vibrant chapter yet.

Drawing from research, decades of coaching experience, and her own personal reinvention, Erika breaks down the three guiding principle...

In this episode of A Joyful Rebellion, James sits down with writer, programmer, photographer, stand-up comedian, and self-described “professional dabbler” Matt Savino to unpack the winding path behind his debut book A Land Without a Continent. What starts as a practical decision to drive his Toyota FJ Cruiser through Central America turns into a life-shifting adventure spanning border crossings, unexpected friendsh...

Leadership isn’t about titles, charisma, or being the loudest voice in the room. According to Dr. Matt Kutz — professor, Fulbright scholar, organizational coach, and author of Becoming Epic — leadership begins with learning to lead yourself.

In this raw, energizing conversation, Matt challenges the watered-down pop-culture version of “everyone’s a leader” and explains why true leadership demands excellence, contextu...

Award-winning journalist and novelist John DeDakis joins A Joyful Rebellion to talk about the craft—and catharsis—of writing. From getting tear-gassed in the middle of an anti-war riot during his college days to serving two decades as a White House correspondent and CNN senior editor, John’s 45-year journalism career shaped both his worldview and his fiction. Now, as the author of six political thrillers and a writi...

When his marriage ended and his life unraveled, Melbourne-based entrepreneur Wes Towers found himself sleeping under his desk—emotionally exhausted and completely untethered. What followed wasn’t an overnight transformation but a two-year process of unlearning, rebuilding, and rediscovering what joy actually feels like.

In this raw and human conversation, Wes and James unpack what it means to remove the masks we wea...

Creativity isn’t a lightning strike—it’s a practice. In this candid conversation, songwriter–novelist–systems thinker Mark Firehammer unpacks why creativity is a habit you can train, and how treating it like a system beats waiting for the muse. We get the backstory of his new novel The Echo and the Voice (published under a pen name that honors his mother’s Swedish family), and the companion album he produced with AI...

We’re taught to chase the feeling of love, then panic when the feeling fades. In this wide-open conversation, Christian de la Huerta—spiritual teacher, TEDx speaker, and author of Conscious Love—draws a clean line between worldly (ego) power and soulful (inner) power, and why confusing the two makes us abandon ourselves in relationships. We unpack how early conditioning around power and emotions trains us to say “y...

Most people try to fix money with tactics—budgets, scripts, spreadsheets. Morgana Rae argues the real block isn’t financial; it’s emotional. In this conversation, Morgana shares how a 2003 rock-bottom moment led her to personify money as a “monster”—then destroy it and build a new, loving relationship with “Money Honey.” That shift turned a lifetime of doing “all the right things” with no results into a repeatable f...

Baker by day, medium by night, Kate Branagh treats the spirit world like a conversation—not a performance. From a first dorm-room visitation in New York to a Massachusetts guesthouse where an enslaved woman kept shouting “Get out,” Kate shares how she learned to listen, set boundaries, and deliver what people need—not always what they want. Her prep is practical and protective: Epsom-salt baths, a spoken filter (“me...

Former Fortune 100 exec turned award-winning thriller author Guy Morris writes high-octane fiction that doubles as a field guide to the near future. After leaving home at 13, working his way from janitor to software architect, and spending decades at the edge of enterprise tech, Guy now uses story to connect dots most people never see—across AI, geopolitics, and faith. His “Snow Chronicle” series grew from a real AP...

When a study showed that only 3.4% of children’s books feature a disabled protagonist, psychiatric nurse and educator T.L. McCoy realized the story her granddaughter needed didn’t exist—and decided to write it. Her middle-grade fantasy, Delilah vs. the Ghastly Grim, follows a 12-year-old with a life-threatening seizure disorder who’s pulled through an “indigo door” into a parallel world mid-seizure—then trapped ther...