This is the final episode of The Enlightened Omnivore Podcast — Season Two.
I’m taking a short break, but I’ll be back later this year with Season Three. In the meantime, there are more than 25 episodes waiting for you wherever you listen—so if you’ve been enjoying the show, please follow, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you download your podcasts. It would truly mean a lot.
Now, the real reason this episode matters.
My guest is Kurt Beardsley—one of my closest friends of more than three decades. And I don’t say that lightly. Kurt is the kind of friend who doesn’t just know my stories… he helped shape many of them.
Kurt is a photographer, an artist, a maker. He’s spent decades in music and entertainment—technical theater, production work, building sets, solving problems, getting impossible things done on impossible timelines. He has that rugged competence a lot of men quietly envy.
And somehow, alongside all that, he’s also one of the most emotionally grounded men I’ve ever known.
That combination—capable and tender—might be the most “sustainable” form of masculinity out there.
The Landscapes That Shape Us
The conversation opens with a question that sounds simple until you sit with it:
What landscapes shaped you?
Kurt’s answer begins where a lot of real answers start: his parents—and the strange luck (and challenges) of a childhood split between two homes.
That dual upbringing—not dissimilar from my own—had a focus on empathy and art, Which explains so much about who Kurt became: someone who notices people, sees beauty, and still remembers that everybody has a story.
At one point he quotes his grandmother:
“Strangers are just ourselves in disguise.”
If you’ve ever wondered why Kurt moves through the world like he belongs in it (without acting like he owns it), that line is a pretty good clue.
Photography as a Way of Disappearing
Ever since I’ve known Kurt, he’s had a camera in his hands, and my house is plastered with photos of his fantastic photographs.
We get deep into why he loves photography, who his biggest influences were, and how he prefers to blend into the background when he’s capturing the world on film. For Kurt, photography isn’t about announcing yourself. It’s about disappearing just enough to let the moment speak.
There’s something deeply human about that approach.
Travelers, Not Tourists
Then we get to the subject that has defined a huge part of our friendship: travel. We’ve visited much of Africa together over the last two decades.
Kurt talks about where that wanderlust came from, and how those yellow-spined National Geographic magazines made the world feel both impossibly large and irresistibly reachable. I relate to that. My grandfather had almost thirty years of the magazine stacked in perfect order on his bookshelves. I used to sit and page through them for hours.
Our first trip together helped me to learn that a tourist consumes, and a traveler participates. I wanted to be the later.
That distinction helped change the way I move through the world, even in my very own backyard.
Bringing Tinariwen to the U.S.
One of my favorite Kurt stories is how he helped bring the Grammy Award–winning desert blues band, Tinariwen, to the United States for the first time.
Don’t believe Wikipedia. This is the real story.
Kurt first heard the band at the Festival au Désert just outside of Timbuktu, Mali. Then he decided to bring them to his college town—with a little help from his high school buddy (and fellow Grammy winner), Ben Harper.
What I love most about this story is what it reveals about music.
Music is borderless.
It moves faster than language.
It bypasses ideology.
It’s one of the few things that can bring strangers into the same room and make them feel like they’ve shared something true.
I love that this is Kurt’s story to share.
Relearning from Nature
Kurt and I have spent a lot of time camping in the desert together. More recently, that’s meant New Mexico, where he now calls home.
This is where he and I really align—and why I sometimes wonder why we’re not neighbors in Santa Fe.
The Land of Enchantment offers a special connection to nature that most modern-day Americans have lost sight of. And at a time when we most need to remember we’re part of it.
We talk about needing to relearn from Mother Earth if we want to survival.
Masculinity Without Armor
Late in the conversation, we go somewhere I haven’t explored much on the podcast yet—but I plan to more in the months ahead:
Masculinity.
What does it mean to be a man without armor?
A man who can carry responsibility and still be tender?
A man who understands that vulnerability isn’t weakness—it’s balance?
Kurt’s answer is beautifully straightforward. You’ll have to listen to the full episode to hear how he frames it.
But I’ll say this: the conversation left me thinking there may be more here to explore. We’ve been quietly kicking around the idea of doing a limited-series podcast later this year focused specifically on masculinity—what’s broken, what’s evolving, and what a healthier version might look like.
Stay tuned.
Thanks Old Friend
At its heart, this episode is about friendship. The rare kind that makes you braver. The kind that makes you better.
And honestly? I can’t imagine a better way to close out Season Two than sitting down with a good friend and talking about the landscapes that shaped us, the journeys that changed us, and the kind of men we’re still trying to become.
That’s the kind of omnivory I’m interested in.
Not just what we eat.
But how we live.
Links & Resources
Kurt’s Photography
Tuareg nomadic people of the Sahara Desert
Ben Harper — the Grammy-winning buddy who opened for them
Festival au Désert (Festival in the Desert)
Henri Cartier-Bresson — Kurt’s favorite photographer
Edward Said’s Orientalism — overview of the “othering” critique
Stay Connected
Follow along on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for video content, reels, and behind-the-scenes thoughts. I’m also on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
