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The Indie Torchbearer
with Mike Mantione, Five Eight

THE FOOD FIGHTER.

Buckle up for an unforgettable conversation with Matt Eastland, the effervescent host of the Food Fight Podcast. Matt is a food fanatic, innovation aficionado, and lover of food trends and tech. As the creator and host of the popular podcast, Matt has interviewed hundreds of the world's leading agrifood entrepreneurs, innovators, and influencers to bring the world a better perspective on how we grow our food and the challenges facing our global food systems. Matt is also the Director of Brand and digital for EIT Food and fearlessly leads the brand and digital content strategy for the whole organization. 

In this lively episode, Matt discusses the importance of our food system and how his guests have opened his eyes to rethink how we grow our food. We also get into growing our own food, eating in season, the food discoveries he's made after having his first child, and the part you've been waiting for—his love of pizza! 

Matt has been on a mighty, one might say obsessed quest to find the world's tastiest, healthiest and most sustainable pizza, and he has found it. In this episode, Matt talks about what makes pizza special to him, his love for pizza as a child, and how it can be anything you want, depending on what you put on it.

As a delightful bonus for our listeners, he shares his secret recipe for that delicious Eastland special pie. You won't want to miss it!

Visit the Tiny Little Victories website for Matt Eastland's pizza with beer recipe.

THE CULINARY ARTIST.

Dallas culinary artist and entrepreneur Traci Moore is of those women who has creativity flowing out of her mind, body and soul in her four businesses.

From Moore's Twisted Berries - bedazzled and decorated chocolate strawberries fit for Beyonce; The Dinner Clique, private dinner pop-ups; Enchanting and meticulously crafted Lapin masks at Lapin Couture; and Co-Owner of Southern Pleasures Expo. Lapin Couture, like Traci, is a fusion of whimsy and sophistication in the world of fashion and self-expression.

Traci talks about how she got started in the business, how family dinners and her daughters inspired her to become a chef and accessory designer and her unwavering belief in herself and her creations.

Don’t miss season 3 penultimate episode!

THE MAGICIAN.

Blazej Wojtyla kind of human who uses every facet of his brain. The CEO and founder of Jazzy Innovations and Stream Sage is also the writer and creator of the one-man interactive stage show in Poland, How It Has to Be.

But let’s back up a little. As a successful entrepreneur, Blazej built Jazzy Innovations and Stream Sage in his native Poland. Stream Sage transforms content into a connected storytelling experience that engages customers. The technology he created lets users connect any content (video, live streaming, text, images, and storytelling) directly with their products/services, which offers a new way to unlock revenue and conversions and drive engagement.

But along the way, Blazej felt like he had a story to tell. He had grown up doing magic and was fascinated by the philosophical and problem-solving principles that empowered magicians.

So Blazej returned to his passion as a young adult and began developing a play about finding and recalibrating your instinct, letting go of programming, and challenging yourself to stand up for your path and the journey you are on.

He hired an acting coach, honed his playwriting skills and re-opened the door to his love of magic. After months of many twists and turns, defending his choice to focus on the show, How It Has To Be opened in October 2024 in Poland to rave reviews.

How It Has To Be challenges conventional thinking and encourages the audience to dig deeper into who they are and how they are defined. What’s not to love?

THE BEE HERO.

Here's a fact you need to staple to your head: 70% of crops worldwide rely on bees. Yup, so that tomato is in your BLT, and it needs bees. That avocado that's about to be inedible needs bees. But with their increased mortality rates, your neighbour spraying toxins in the form of mosquitos being gone, and pesticides flooding the planet, these poor bees - who only make a teaspoon of honey in their entire short lifespan, are experiencing whole colony collapse. Without pollinators, we have no crops.

Beekeepers and farmers are facing increased financial strains, which makes it much harder to feed a growing global population—which, by the way, we need and are running out of food.

Enter Itai Kanot, the Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at BeeHero, a technology company focused on precision pollination services to improve crop yields. He's a beekeeper, and he was part of his father's beekeeping business, Boaz Kanot Bees & Honey. He has been around bees (and stung by bees) since he was five years old.

Itai was on track to take over the family bee business, but his father gave him some good advice: Get out there and see what you want to do. So he did. Itai shares his story from beekeeper to entrepreneur and how he and his co-founders have created sensors for hives that help beekeepers understand what's happening in the hive through temperature, humidity, and even the nervousness of the queen.

Today, BeeHero and Itai are on a mission to help growers pollinate their crops with bees and ensure we all have a food future!

SAVING OUR SOIL.

Soil isn't sexy. Even Martha Stewart, in her new commercial for organic soil from Miracle Grow, is out stumping for soil, calling herself a 'dirt nerd.' Good for you, Martha, but now you need to meet Kathryn Radovan, Co-founder and Senior vice president of business operations at Terra Vera.

Terra Vera is a first-of-its-kind agriculture technology company using an amino acid platform to prevent crop loss and safely improve crop quality. Let's not forget about the bees. Their new company, ApiVera, is going to help commercial beekeepers in so many ways—and if the bees are healthy and happy, so are our crops!

Kathryn talks about the importance of creating sustainable agriculture, how the best discoveries can lead to a new way of thinking, and how her time growing up around the wetlands of Florida changed her perspective on the world.

Check out their upcoming crowdfunding campaign to help the bees: Indiegogo Pre-Launch (Coming soon!)

THE CHANGE MAKER.

On this show, we discuss a topic that people either love or hate: Needles.

Consider this: imagine all the waste that plastic needles make: the needle, the syringe, the little plastic coffin it lives in, and the latex gloves needed for each injection. Try Googling the cost of a needle's lifecycle, and you won't be able to find it. Medical waste is a global problem.

Lea Milovich, CEO and co-founder of Flowbeams knows we can do better and says it's time for a new way to inject micro fluids—needle-free injection using lasers.

Lea shares her journey from business innovator to CEO, her never-ending curiosity, and her desire to ensure that great technology gets out into the marketplace.

QUEEN OF FUNGI.

Here's a shocking fact: 11% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from materials in the construction industry. What if you could shift that number? And imagine you could do that with fungi and a mycelial network!

In this episode of Tiny Little Victories, meet concerned citizen and entrepreneur Joanne Rodriguez, CEO and founder of MycoCycle. She is tackling the construction waste problem with fungi. Joanne shares her journey on her discovery and idea of using fungi to break down construction waste to remove toxins from construction waste and transform it into valuable low-carbon, bio-based construction materials. 

Joanne shares why she founded the company, how she never stops learning about what fungi can do and how she believes that a bio-circular economy can change our world. 

THE CRUSDER.

On this episode of Tiny Little Victories, Briar Prestidge, CEO of the Prestidge Group, drops by for a chat about the future. From a small town in New Zealand to a Web3 evangelist, Briar is an entrepreneur like no other.

She is an advisor for Interpol on their investigations and forensics team; she made an award-winning documentary, 48 Hours in the Metaverse; she has an avatar fashion line on Roblox, the Hyperscale podcast, a new reality-style docu-series, Cyborg to Be, and ... wait for it ... an RFID chip implanted in her hand. 

Briar believes that no answer lasts forever, and that's why we have to ask questions to get answers that lead us to the future. 

Listen to her story about what our future can be.

INSIDE THE BOX.

Help me, André Smith, you're my only hope.

Nothing is more iconic than the most famous hologram of all time—Star Wars, when Princess Leia was projected through R2D2, pleading for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In this show, we explore the power of holograms and how they can create more human connections. André Smith, co-founder and CEO of Holoconnects, shares how his company is making Holo technology user-friendly.

Their Holoboxes are used in leading hotel chains for guest check-in and healthcare facilities like Crescent Regional Hospital in Dallas, Texas, which uses a Holobox to ensure patients in underserved areas have access to doctors. The company recently partnered with the UN to elevate the voices of people in emergency situations organized by CERF.

André shares his story of the journey to create their incredible Holobox in a way that keeps the human connection alive.

THE WRITER.

Shalene Gupta is a Minnesota-grown Boston-based writer with Chinese-Indonesian and Indian roots. She’s the author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD and co-author of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It. In 2022, she was nominated for a Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea award. She’s also the host of the Trustonomy podcast, which the Ambies nominated for excellence in podcasting.

Shalene is also a journalist. Her work has appeared in Fortune, The Atlantic, ESPN, Harvard Business Review, and TIME. She’s currently a frequent contributor to Fast Company.

Shalene tells us about her circuitous path to her successful career as a nonfiction writer, which includes giving up on writing fiction, getting lost in Malaysia, being lost on her return to the US, and stepping into her superpower—writing. She shares her feelings on what it means to be a writer today and comes full circle—writing her first fiction novel.

INDUSTRIAL HEMP FOR THE WIN.

Known as one of the most analytical minds in the business, a gifted raconteur, a modern philosopher, and just a downright good human being who the world needs right now, Pankaj Srivastava is here to tell us why ‘yes’ is the way forward and how industrial hemp will make the world a better place.

Pankaj is the CEO of Renaissance Park Corp, and he's right here in River City to tell us why it’s time to change the status quo and how we think about industrial hemp. It all starts and ends with hemp.

Farming hemp uses less water (psst, we are in the midst of a water scarcity epidemic), it is more cost-efficient than cotton, it can be used to make bio-based plastics and construction materials. Hemp is stronger and more durable than wood, it’s recyclable and is priced lower than glass.

Pankaj tells why he believes it’s time for a change with this ancient crop and what we can do about it.

GETTING EMOTIONAL & THAT’S OKAY.

Rosa Schmidt, Founder of the Defem Agency in London, talks about why she wanted to help companies change the narrative on complex issues facing the world today. Rosa's journey to becoming a storyteller was a byproduct of her quest to find meaning in her life.

Guess what she did? Supported by her partner, family and friends, she moved to Thailand to learn Thai Boxing. Through that experience, this petite firecracker of a human walked herself back into the stream and found her purpose.

For Rosa, storytelling is more than changing a company's voice; it is about creating a story that connects with people’s humanity. She believes that we don’t have to keep doing what we have done in the past to make genuine connections between a company and its customers.

Rosa is on a mission to bring more emotion to the world.

THE SCIENTIST.

Dr. Max Gulde, CEO and co-founder of constellr, takes us on his journey from scientist to CEO.

Before he created constellr, he used his PhD in Physics to create the first ultrafast low-energy electron diffraction instrument, which allows us to see cool stuff at the atomic level.

Today, Max focuses on the challenges of a growing population, food security, and a rapidly changing climate using satellites and a little secret sauce. The company uses global land surface temperature data from space, which gives us a view of future potential damage to make better resource application decisions.

He is creating the world's first chemical and physical bio-atlas. Can you imagine an entire data set of the earth based on carbon, water, and land temperatures? Constellr makes the invisible visible, so he's actually our new Ironman.

THE GAME MAKER.

Jan Ligaard is the CEO and co-Founder of Immer Puzzles, a new online word game.

Word games like MOVES and STACK let you combine different words of your own and create as many new words as possible.

Launched in April, the game already has more than 70,000 daily users in Denmark and has made its way to Reddit, where one user said, ‘What makes this game fun is the strategy of thinking ahead since you might get it gone quicker if you think a little ahead - like chess.”

Jan shares why he created the game—tired of playing Wordle—and the odd things they had to do to create words in Danish—like creating a new dictionary.

THE TRAILBLAZER.

Dr. Jennifer Hintzsche is the CEO and Founder of PherDal Fertility Science. Jennifer has defiantly stepped out of the shadows of an "infertile" diagnosis, setting her sights on revolutionizing healthcare.

She has pioneered the introduction of the first and only sterile, FDA-cleared, over-the-counter at-home insemination kit.

Jennifer shares her personal experience with infertility and how that drove her to create PherDal to transform infertility treatment and the lives of women and men around the world.

Listen and read the show notes for a special listener discount on the PherDal insemination kit.

WHAT’S UP WITH PUBLIC RELATIONS?

Back in the day, say 1948, two dudes breathed life into what we all have come to love and not love: Public Relations.

But PR today isn't exactly as it started out and, over the years, has come to mean many different things to businesses and brands.

Louis Bedigian, freelance tech journalist and superstar copywriter, and Mindy M. Hull, Founder and CEO of international boutique PR firm Mercury Global Partners, talk about what's changed in PR, what's not working, and some of the worst — and best — pitches out there.

THE FILM DIRECTORS.

Ken Feinberg has been making films for more than 20 years. His Creative Studios of Atlanta helps film actors discover their capabilities while fostering the independent filmmaking ethos.

Ken’s new film, Love and Taxe$, is a unique 1970s romance crafted by Lloyd J. Schwartz, the renowned "Brady Bunch" writer and producer. It is an unconventional story that unfolds between a CPA and a waitress over a seven-year period.

Ken is joined by Director Craig Tollis to talk about how the film takes a bold cinematic leap by shooting each scene in a single, continuous take. This approach challenges the conventional filmmaking process and creates a masterful dance of performances.

THE VR ARTIST.

Estella Tse is a VR/AR artist who hails from Oakland. She’s turning visual storytelling into a new art form.

Estella has been an artist-in-residence with Google, Adobe and Cartoon Network Studios.

She believes in doing work that moves people's hearts and minds. By having them step into her worlds, they become engulfed in her brush strokes and this allows them to become a character in that world — with the ability to walk in, around, and through the painting.

Estella talks about the power of art and technology to transform how people experience art - one intentional brushstroke at a time.

THE GIN BOSS.

Leon Dalloway, aka the Gin Boss, is the founder of Gin Journey - a curated gin tour that has been voted the #1 gin tour on the planet.

The Gin Journey has grown from a famously word-of-mouth experience in London in 2013 to a global phenomenon in the UK and Australia. And if Leon wasn’t busy enough creating Gin experiences and gin-tasting masterclasses, he is also the founder of Bondi Gin Company in Sydney, Australia.

Listen to this episode with Leon as he drops in from down under to talk about how this Gin adventure started and where he hopes it will go.

SLEEP STUFF.

Massive Talk is back with Naos Wilbrink and Jennifer Kite-Powell. In this massive episode, we take a deep dive into sleep, sleeping naked, and how bees sleep. Yeah, that’s a thing.

We zig and zag around the topic of sleep, how companies can use your sleep data, whether they should use it, and why sleeping naked has health benefits.

Guess what else sleeps? Bees, yup, on the whole, bees get more sleep a night than humans do. Why would you miss this episode?

FOR THE LOVE OF FEMTECH.

Theresa Neil, CEO and Founder of the women-led UX product design company Guidea, is bullish on two things: FemTech is ripe for a market transformation, and taboos, bias, and the status quo are holding back FemTech's trillion-dollar market growth.

But she’s not waiting around for that market to change. Neil created the UX design sponsorship program Femovate, which invested around one million in FemTech innovation by donating UX and product design services to a cohort of FemTech companies in 2023.

Tune in and hear how Neil created a program that is a raging success.

POETRY & PASSION.

Get ready for an exciting episode of Massive Talk by Tiny Little Victories!

In this episode, the tables are turned, and our guest host, Naos Wilbrink, becomes the host, and Jennifer Kite-Powell becomes the guest. Naos delves into Jennifer's world of poetry and discovers what drives her passion for prose.

You won't want to miss a single moment as Naos gets Jennifer to reveal her writing secrets, reveal her muses (mostly) and why she thinks people are missing out by not reading poetry.

IN AUTHENTICITY & DIVERSITY WE TRUST.

Rosemarie Wilson, Author and CEO of Pragmatic Coaching, and Jennifer Opal, a multi-award winning Dev Ops Engineer and founder of Data but Make it Human are both advocates for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

In this podcast, we talk about how far diversity and women in tech have really come, creating culture, bringing the human back to what you do and what it will take to get us to a better place.

THE MAGIC OF BEES.

The honeybee is very busy - making honey, staying alive and pollinating our world.

In this bonus episode, tenured Texas beekeeper Pat McKannan and new urban beekeeper Kyle Tindle talk about tending to 10,000+ Italian honey bees, how you don’t know what you don’t know, sugar water and how to think like a bee.

NOTHING AND SOMETHING.

Co-hosted by Naos Wilbrink (aka the Pilot) and host, journalist, and poet Jennifer Kite-Powell, this dynamic duo captures everyday thoughts about society. In this episode, we talk about Naos’ new jet job, the art of giving and shutting off at the end of the day.

DATING & ALL THAT SH*T

Clutch your pearls and grab a drink (you will need one) and buckle up for this live show about the insanity of dating over 45.

A candidly crazy conversation about what’s wrong with the dating world. Imagine a clown car of muscle shirts, motorcycles, and fish photos. Feat. the host, Jennifer Kite-Powell

THE REAL DEAL.

John Hazelwood is an entrepreneur, environmentalist and explorer. From Greece to Bulgaria to Austin, Texas, John is creating his most ambitious project on Lake Travis - it’s sustainable, it floats and it’s about a new way to be outside.

LOVE, SEX AND ROBOTS.

Alexander pulls from his industrial design experience in fashion and luxury hotels to bring a new concept of social robots to our world. Can you love a robot? What makes robotic companion meaningful?

A Frenchman living in Scotland, Alexander talks about creating aesthetically beautiful robots with purpose and a robotic pillow called Maah.

THE PILOT.

Naos Wilbrink hails from the Netherlands but now lives in Southern California after deciding to become a survey pilot. At the same time he’s a tech entrepreneur who knows a thing or two about startups.

Naos talks about so many thing in this episode including how to make friends in a new town when you are over 40 (hint: it’s an LGBTQ church), ChatGPT and pilot training and well, paradoxes. As Naos says, let’s go!

PRODUCING FILMS WITH MEANING.

Ron is the executive producer of Commitment to Life, a documentary about the true story of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles—and how a group of people living with HIV/AIDS, doctors, movie stars, studio moguls, and activists changed the course of the epidemic.

Ron talks about how the film evolved and its effect on the people he meets.