The Colaborator Podcast with Douglas Caballero

How did Charles Yu get his big break? Writer of HBO’s Westworld on getting his big Hollywood break while juggling a family, writing a novel and working as a corporate lawyer. Download the rest of the iTunes podcast here: http://podcast.colaborator.com The Colaborator Podcast explores the convergence of entertainment and technology through interviews with luminaries in tech, gaming, media and business. Hosted by Douglas Caballero, executive at Colaborator and longtime TV host and producer for Current TV, The Young Turks and The CW. Business Inquiries: podcast@colaborator.com Charlie Yu: http://twitter.com/charles_yu JOIN COLABORATOR, the marketplace where video professionals can apply directly to top company jobs, and create their own projects using our easy online tools. Company or Professional? Join today! http://www.colaborator.com http://www.twitter.com/colaboratorpcn http://www.facebook.com/colaboratorpcn

Niko Bonatsos is a very successful and thoughtful VC at top tier venture fund 'General Catalyst Venture Partners' in Silicon Valley. In this talk, he schools me on the VC world: Niko describes how he helped fund Snapchat, talks about his do’s and don’ts for tech and media startups in 2016, and he discusses whether the tech community is more like HBO’s “Game of Thrones” or “Silicon Valley”. You’ll want to take notes on all of it.

Comedian Ben Gleib, star of the new hilarious Showtime comedy special, “Neurotic Gangster,” host of the hit game show, “Idiotest” on GSN, and host of the very funny podcast, “Last Week on Earth” joins me to talk about his career, question whether or not Snapchat is making us dumber, and to drop hilarious rap freestyles about Millennials and the state of social media. (Warning - You will laugh a lot during this interview.)

Dr Norm, renowned TM expert, psychiatrist, author and public speaker, talks about his brand new Transcendental Meditation book, “Super Mind.” He outlines the benefits of TM and describes how he uses media and technology to amplify his message of mental health and wellness. His TM instruction has improved the lives of highly successful people like Hugh Jackman, Arianna Huffington and Maria Shriver.

Heidi Levitt is the celebrated casting director of successful films “The Artist,” “Natural Born Killers,” and “JFK,” startup founder of two popular tech platforms (Actor Genie and qwireCast), and a professor at American Film Institute. We discuss how tech is disrupting the traditional Hollywood casting process, what it means to take career risks in entertainment, and what “good filmmaking” means.

3 time Emmy nominated director and producer of cult hit documentary “Confessions of a Superhero”, the new provocative documentary “Meet the Hitlers”, the upcoming narrative dystopian feature “North”, as well as director of numerous VR projects - talks about the changing video landscape.

Thor is literally on the battle lines of nonprofit messaging, the North Korean DMZ to be exact. Human Rights Foundation uses unorthodox methods of mixing media and moxy to to end human rights abuses by floating flash drives in balloons into North Korea, to producing feature films with “X-men” director Brian Singer.

Epic “origin story” of Human Rights Foundation founder and activist, Thor Halvorssen. Born in Venezuela, to parents who were imprisoned and shot for fighting government corruption, Thor is now fighting human rights violations all over the world in North Korea, Russia, East Asia, Africa and more.

A nerd-tastic deep dive into music with Jason Bentley, one of the most important music tastemakers in America. Jason is the music director and a DJ at world renowned taste making radio station KCRW 89.9FM in LA.

In depth conversations with luminaries in entertainment, tech, and business about the convergence of media and technology. My guest is HBO Vice correspondent/Navy Seal/Crossfit Gym owner Kaj Larsen. He reports in multiple episodes of this season of HBO's Vice - including going to Nigeria to see firsthand the rise of terrorist organization Boko Haram, to traveling the world to set the record straight about the United States' aging nuclear arsenal. Oh, and Kaj has paid other Navy Seals to waterboard him on national TV. Yeah, we get into that. And we delve into the cult of crossfire.

In depth conversations with luminaries in entertainment, tech and business about the convergence of media and technology. My second guest is longtime friend, Kelvin Yu, one of the stars of Netflix's Master of None and Emmy winning writer of Bob's Burgers. Kelvin talks about the new wave of diversity in Hollywood and how he hacked the system to go from a struggling actor to become an Emmy winning writer and star of an acclaimed TV series. Kelvin is one of the smartest and funniest human beings on the planet, so you won't want to miss this one.

In depth conversations with luminaries in entertainment, tech and business about the convergence of media and technology. My very first guest is Bre Blair, the star of NBC’s new drama “Game of Silence” debuting Tuesday, April 12th at 10/9 central on NBC. Bre is an amazing actor who’s been in the game for over 20 years and got her first big break as a teenage actor on the 90’s hit movie “The Babysitters Club." To get to this point, she has stories doing whatever she can to stay motivated and to pay the bills. from driving Uber to fierce competition on the soccer field. It’s a conversation that bounces all over from the serious to the hilarious.