The Changed Podcast with Aden Nepom
Society & Culture
You may have heard of Wade McCollum. As an American film actor, stage actor, composer, and musician, Wade is best known for his roles as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Ernest Shackleton in Ernest Shackleton loves me for which he won the Norton Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Lortel Award in the same category.
These days, he can be found buried in his neuroscience textbooks as a student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Wade is truly remarkable and multi-talented, so it may be no surprise that like previous guests Maraya Brown and Lou Radja, Wade is also an alum of Ashland High School. Like many of the programs at Ashland High School, The drama program at AHS is one of the best (thanks to the brilliant thinking of Betsy Bishop marrying the program to the prestigious Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which continually attracts some of the world's top talent).
All of that is to say that any time I get to sit down and talk with Wade McCollum, it carries simultaneously that sweet feeling of the relief I associate with what is most familiar, AND the excitement of what's new because both of our lives are filled with shifts, changes, and curiosity. There is just so very much to talk about!
This may just be my favorite interview of the season!
What's in this episode?"I'm up there thinking, you know what, there's 3000 people watching the show right now... they're having that fulcrum experience where they may never be the same. And I'm literally at my office job. The juxtaposition of that is so incredible"
"When you're born into something, the assumption is that's life. That's life, and there's no other, you know, there's no other way to do it, because that's the way it's done."
"They said, 'We're the, we're the different ones. Most people live in a house. And they stay there. And most people don't move around like we do and go from town to town.' Everything just went boom, and suddenly I was the anomaly. And it was so fundamental, I could feel my brain change."
"Humans as a species are like story eaters. Rather than, throw the story up, this is a gross analogy, our tendency is to digest it. And in that...
Get full access to Making This up as I Go at makingthisup.substack.com/subscribe
Get full access to Making This up as I Go at makingthisup.substack.com/subscribe
Madeleine Ryan, Author of “A Room Called Earth”
Rediscover Your Play with Jeff Harry
The Cheerful Mind, Apryl Z. Schlueter
Science! Dr. Gerald T. Nepom M.D., Ph.D. Director of the Immune Tolerance Network
Melissa Thornley, Executive Coach and Consultant
Improviser, Shannon Stott
Lou Radja - Motivational Speaker and Social Entrepreneur
Founder of Breakthrough Play, Gary Ware
Actor, Writer Todd Stashwick
Writer, Animator and Head of Story at Sony Motion Pictures Animation, Guillermo Martinez
Best selling author, motivational speaker and AANP President, Dr. Rick Brinkman
Confidence and relationship coach Nadine Montaghami
BONUS! Host Becomes Guest with BJ Lange
B.J. Lange- retired Air Force Reserve Medic, Applied Improv Coach and Two-Time Testicular Cancer Survivor
Best Selling Author and NMI President, Dr Rick Kirschner
Guest Mo Daviau – Author of the novel, Every Anxious Wave
Mary Jo Pehl A.K.A. Pearl Forrester of MST3K
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