No Joke: Last Comic Standing Winner Alonzo Bodden Used to Be an Aircraft Mechanic
Release Date: 12/02/2024
The Caregiver’s Journey: Drawing Purpose from Pain
Second Act Stories
What would happen if you were suddenly thrust into the role of caregiver for someone you love? Would you have any idea what to do or how to do it? It’s estimated that as many as 50 million people in the United States are caregivers, a job that virtually none of them trained for. We all know someone who became a caregiver and had to learn on the fly. Unfortunately, there are precious few resources that can help. Sue Ryan and Nancy Treaster experienced it first-hand. These inspiring women worked together in the software industry before finding themselves facing a similar life challenge:...
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The Caregiver’s Journey: Drawing Purpose from Pain
Second Act Stories
What would happen if you were suddenly thrust into the role of caregiver for someone you love? Would you have any idea what to do or how to do it? It’s estimated that as many as 50 million people in the United States are caregivers, a job that virtually none of them trained for. We all know someone who became a caregiver and had to learn on the fly. Unfortunately, there are precious few resources that can help. Sue Ryan and Nancy Treaster experienced it first-hand. These inspiring women worked together in the software industry before finding themselves facing a similar life challenge:...
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He Stole $7 Million From A-List Clients…A Second Act After Prison
Second Act Stories
Jonathan Schwartz was at the top of his game serving as a business manager to top stars including Beyonce, Alanis Morisette, Gwenyth Paltrow, Mariah Carey, Linkin Park and others. But this Hollywood insider had a dark secret; he was a compulsive gambler and cocaine addict. And over the course of six years, he embezzled over $7 million from his clients to fund these addictions. Jonathan's criminal behavior earned him a six-year sentence in prison. When Jonathan returned to society in 2020, he found it almost impossible to get a job. But he went back to school and got a degree in alchol &...
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Peggy Rowe Became a New York Times Bestselling Author at Age 80
Second Act Stories
has accomplished a lot in her 87 years. She started her career as a schoolteacher in Baltimore, where she and her husband John – also a teacher – raised three sons. It was a pretty normal life by all accounts. But life got extraordinary somewhere along the way. One common thread in the Rowe household was humor, and Peggy had a finely tuned ability to recognize funny and write about it. See, writing has always been her creative outlet. She wrote all the time. She wrote fun poems for her students, which she would later hear them recite on the playground; she wrote short stories that were...
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Harvard To Home Repair: A Management Consultant's Unusual Career Pivot
Second Act Stories
With an undergraduate degree from New York University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Jon Malankar joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 2018. He climbed the corporate ladder at this top managment consulting firm and became a partner in his mid-30s. But the bureaucratic burden of working for a large consulting firm with Fortune 100 clients and a strong desire to be more plugged in to his local community ("I felt like a nomad in my hometown"), Jon yearned to be his own boss. After a year of exploration, he opted to become a Mr. Handyman franchise owner in Long Branch, New Jersey....
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Prescription For Change: A Doctor Pursues Her Passion For Fashion
Second Act Stories
Since her mother taught her to sew at the age of eight, Vanessa Gavin always wanted to be a fashion designer. Throughout high school, she made her own clothes experimenting with different colors, fabrics and patterns. But in college she opted to study biology, went on to get her masters in public health and finally got a degree in medicine. Now Dr. Vanessa Gavin-Headen, she spent the next 25 years in a rewarding career as a family physician in Long Beach, California. It was during the Covid-19 pandemic when health professionals started wearing medical scrubs again that Dr. Vanessa returned to...
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Lights, Camera, Education: C. Scott Votaw Shifts from Making Movies to Molding Minds
Second Act Stories
is the Assistant Vice Chancellor of the , where he is responsible for overseeing the . After growing up in Georgia and graduating from college, Scott packed his car and headed west without a plan. With no relevant experience in film and production, he eventually networked his way onto a crew as a runner. Just by being present and paying attention, he found a way to save the production money and was rewarded with an almost immediate promotion to second assistant director. That auspicious start launched him into what would become an incredibly successful 25-year career in the film and...
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Mad Men 2.0: Advertising Veteran Helps Launch “Geezer,” New Agency For 50+ Market
Second Act Stories
Brent Rivard had a long, successful career in advertising, working for major ad agencies in New York and Toronto. But as he entered his 50s, Brent faced an industry that is focused on youth in both it’s work and it’s staffing. The average age of an individual working in advertising is just 29 years old. Teamed with two advertising executives also in their early 50s, he is in the process of building a groundbreaking agency called “Geezer.” The new company is different from traditional agencies in two major ways: Geezer is focused on serving the 50+ market (the most lucrative segment of...
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All Eyes on Justin Farmer: Veteran WSB-TV News Anchor Launches a Second Act in Public
Second Act Stories
is one of the most recognizable people in Atlanta. He spent 17 years as the evening news anchor on , Atlanta’s top-rated news station, and one of the biggest local market news stations in the country. News was a Farmer family business; Justin’s father, Don Farmer, was an correspondent, a founding anchor, and later the evening news anchor on WSB in Atlanta, a job he held until 1997. Ten years later, Justin landed the same job, at the same station. But let’s rewind: this all meant that Justin grew up with an inside track to history. While he graduated from with a degree in political...
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Sparking Climate Conversations Across the USA: Kathleen Biggins' Second Act
Second Act Stories
Kathleen Biggins is a prime example of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. The genesis of Kathleen’s second act began in 2006 when she was asked to attend the Garden Club of America’s National Legislative Conference in Washington on behalf of her local garden club. That’s where her education about climate change began and ultimately led to the formation of C-Change Conversations. The organization is dedicated to helping people across the political spectrum understand the science behind climate change. Kathleen and her colleagues have made presentations to 21,000+...
info_outlineAlonzo Bodden is one of the hardest-working and funniest working standup comics on the touring circuit today. He won Season 3 of NBC’s Last Comic Standing; he has four standup specials so far; he’s a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!; he’s played a bouncer or a security guard in countless movies and TV shows; and he even voiced monsters on the Power Rangers. He’s been around.
But before he had anything to do with show business, Alonzo was an aircraft mechanic who got a job working for Lockheed Martin on the F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber – one of the most advanced top secret aircraft in the world – when he graduated from Aviation High School in New York. At 18, he moved to Los Angeles, started making a lot of money, found himself in the throes of addiction, and wound up in jail.
The sound of the cell door slamming shut was his turning point.
In this episode, Alonzo shares details about his New York upbringing, his battle with addiction, his path to sobriety (36 years ago!), and how it all led him to find his calling: comedy.
He also shares the one hilarious joke he told at the 1997 Montreal Just for Laughs festival that immediately transformed him from a guy who did standup comedy to fully realized comic. You won't want to miss it.
Wherever you live, Alonzo will be in a town near you sooner or later and seeing him live should be high on your priority list. Find him at www.alonzobodden.com.
Second Act Stories theme music: "Between 1 and 3 am" by Echoes