Blair Speed's guest appearances

Blair Speed

The NonProphet Podcast

Steven Kotler

Jack Carr

Rebecca Rusch

Andy Stumpf

Alex Hutchinson

Trevor Thompson

Scott Backes

Johnny Carlquist

Jeremy Jones

Margaux Alvarez

Kristen Ulmer

Billy Innes

Shawn Kingrey

Tim Johnson

Payson McElveen

OwlTail

Julia Gumpert

Julia Gumpert, who appeared on Ep. 122 joins Mark and Blair Speed (Ep. 154) to discuss all things to do with endurance and love. To break the ice Julia talks about living in the south and seeking self-image in the external, specifically ancestry, her history and connection with land, and the stubbornness required to work it. She and Blair discuss the unique strength of women, love at first sight, marriage, being a military spouse, the languages of love, miscarriage and walking with grief. Together they explore their relationships with death, surviving, enduring, endurance as an expression of love, and that love is a hard thing we must constantly work to keep alive and vibrant. Two declarations stand out, "You can’t truly endure something until you know why you do it and where you’re going,” and perhaps more interesting, "When you stop trying to control everything then you can experience everything." The lesson of letting go is orbiting NonProphet lately and sooner or later someone is going to hear and heed it. Social media handles for folks related to this episode: @juliagumpert@blairspeed@gbriones_3@_nonprophet_@gritandteeth@wfmft (on VERO)

Julia Gumpert, who appeared on Ep. 122 joins Mark and Blair Speed (Ep. 154) to discuss all things to do with endurance and love. To break the ice Julia talks about living in the south and seeking self-image in the external, specifically ancestry, her history and connection with land, and the stubbornness required to work it. She and Blair discuss the unique strength of women, love at first sight, marriage, being a military spouse, the languages of love, miscarriage and walking with grief. Together they explore their relationships with death, surviving, enduring, endurance as an expression of love, and that love is a hard thing we must constantly work to keep alive and vibrant. Two declarations stand out, "You can’t truly endure something until you know why you do it and where you’re going,” and perhaps more interesting, "When you stop trying to control everything then you can experience everything." The lesson of letting go is orbiting NonProphet lately and sooner or later someone is going to hear and heed it. Social media handles for folks related to this episode: @juliagumpert @blairspeed @gbriones_3 @_nonprophet_ @gritandteeth @wfmft (on VERO)

# 171 — Julia Gumpert and Blair Speed

I met Blair Speed in the wake of great tragedy, two too-short months after her husband, Travis Swanson, was killed in a climbing accident. The words and images and emotion we exchanged in that wake led her to our space, our circle, to the safety of understanding and shared loss that seems to coalesce around the gatherings we sometimes host here. When I invited her to commune with us, she accepted, and replied, "Thank you for giving me something to look forward to when I didn't want to look forward." And how could she look forward, look ahead, to a life without her love, her guide, her protector, lover, teacher, love? How will any of us look ahead once we understand that who we love most deeply may be taken from us in an instant? Why do we count upon a future we only imagine — a future we have been sold as certainty — when we should be drinking the present, slaking our thirst for connection and love and understanding right now? Here and now. Blair does that, now. She is a writer, and a photographer, an antenna, her images communicate beauty, and empathy. Loss shapes her vision, gives her insight to the meaning and weight of the everyday, the hidden moments where our lives play out, where we make and feel connections, where we experience what we might not see until it is gone ... she photographs soul and spirit, she stops time, and preserves time, moments, seeing in subjects what they may not be able to see in themselves. Blair is physical, an athlete, an artist, and a survivor who has much to teach us about life, about living with such rage and love that we maybe, hopefully, never look back and ask, "What if?"

I met Blair Speed in the wake of great tragedy, two too-short months after her husband, Travis Swanson, was killed in a climbing accident. The words and images and emotion we exchanged in that wake led her to our space, our circle, to the safety of understanding and shared loss that seems to coalesce around the gatherings we sometimes host here. When I invited her to commune with us, she accepted, and replied, "Thank you for giving me something to look forward to when I didn't want to look forward." And how could she look forward, look ahead, to a life without her love, her guide, her protector, lover, teacher, love? How will any of us look ahead once we understand that who we love most deeply may be taken from us in an instant? Why do we count upon a future we only imagine — a future we have been sold as certainty — when we should be drinking the present, slaking our thirst for connection and love and understanding right now? Here and now. Blair does that, now. She is a writer, and a photographer, an antenna, her images communicate beauty, and empathy. Loss shapes her vision, gives her insight to the meaning and weight of the everyday, the hidden moments where our lives play out, where we make and feel connections, where we experience what we might not see until it is gone ... she photographs soul and spirit, she stops time, and preserves time, moments, seeing in subjects what they may not be able to see in themselves. Blair is physical, an athlete, an artist, and a survivor who has much to teach us about life, about living with such rage and love that we maybe, hopefully, never look back and ask, "What if?"

# 154 — Blair Speed