Join Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback as he talks with an eclectic variety of thinkers, artists, and change-makers about their experiences (Jewish or otherwise) and their own search for meaning and purpose in their lives.
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Episodes
Search for Meaning With Lisa Niver
In this edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts travel writer, author, podcaster, and Stephen Wise Temple Board member Lisa Niver, who just released her memoir, Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Continents, and Feeling Fearless After Fifty. Lisa's memoir debuted as the top solo travel title on Amazon.com when it released on Sept. 19. Her podcast, Make Your Own Map, launched this summer and has been watched on six continents. It was a finalist for two Southern California Journalism Awards in 2023. Elected this summer as a Congregational Director, Lisa is a graduate of Wise’s religious school program. Wise’s founder, Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin, officiated her bat mitzvah. She began her “nomadic” lifestyle by spending a summer in Israel on LA Ulpan, and went on to study abroad in Jerusalem at Hebrew University. She returned to Israel with her family for [...]
Search for Meaning With Lauren Ullmann
As we reflect during the High Holy Days on issues of life and death, Rabbi Yoshi shares an interview with Lauren Ullmann, a Stanford Business School student and former MIT varsity goaltender player whose life was saved by a donation of peripheral stem cells. Fans of the Search for Meaning podcast will know who made that donation.Determined to use her experience as a team leader and the lessons taught from seeing the whole field as a collegiate goaltender to excel in business, Ullmann interned for the prestigious Bain & Company, eventually becoming a senior associate consultant.Late in 2019, she headed to the San Francisco Bay Area -- where he grandparents lived -- for an externship. The night before running a marathon in early January of 2020, she experienced "horrible, horrible" stomach pain. Though she was able to run the race, it returned several days later. After [...]
Search for Meaning With Vanessa Marshall
If you have been any kind of nerd or geek or pop culture enthusiast in the last 20 years, chances are you know the voice of Rabbi Yoshi's guest this week on the Search for Meaning podcast: voiceover actress Vanessa Marshall. Though she has lent her voice to 226 shows, games, and movies, Vanessa is perhaps most famous for originating the role of General Hera Syndulla, the Twi'lek pilot and one of the main protagonists in the Emmy-nominated Star Wars animated series Star Wars: Rebels. She has gone on to voice the character—portrayed in the new live-action Disney+ series Ahsoka by Mary Elizabeth Winstead—in her subsequent appearances in the series Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and continues to voice her in games and online web series. During her career, she has voiced heroes—Metroid Prime's Samus Aran, Marvel's Black Widow and Gamora, and DC's Wonder Woman and [...]
Search for Meaning With Brian Hersch
In this 66th edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts board game designer Brian Hersch. Taboo. Outburst. Super Scattergories. Have you played any of these modern classics at family game night? You have Brian Hersch to thank. Now a General Partner at Hersch and Company, with over $850 million in sales under his belt, Brian didn't set out to design games. His first career was in real estate development, where he honed a keen sense for business. Then came Trivial Pursuit. When the trivia board game first burst onto the scene in the 1980s, Brian was a natural, so much so that his friends urged him to use his creative energies to invent a game of his own. Bringing his business experience to bear on the idea, he set himself to doing some market research, and found [...]