I moved to New York the year my father died. Not to grieve. To outrun it. My dad Luis was a songwriter before he was sick. Construction worker by day, demo recordings on a cheap mic and stereo system by night. When he passed in 2015, my cousin Angel picked me up from the airport and told me how the subway worked. That was the plan. That was all the plan there was. I transferred my Central Casting profile from Los Angeles to New York. Next day they called me for Orange is the New Black in Williamsburg. I sent out résumés between takes. Landed at Ajax Union doing digital marketing just to keep a roof. Took acting classes at Tom Todoroff's Conservatory and at James Franco's school. Hit Arlene's Grocery, The Bitter End. I was active. I was in motion. That's what I told myself. Then one night at the Lovecraft Bar I got off stage at an open mic. I had just performed. Done the thing I said I wanted to do. And I stood there watching the room. And this came out: --- As I dive into myself and open for truth to be allowed into individuality from its usual universal. I hear the poets cackle to each other as they socially rub elbows and reward each other for showing up. Each eager to receive the pat on the back in return. Networking is strange in the same sense that acting in a play or film is — the role is played and the motives are sought for closure. Humanity is loud and rebellious externally but internally complacent. Like a child. Our species is still young as a whole. Not yet mature. There are those few who are receptive to the vibrations and allow the universal to express itself consciously. For the rest they run on fuel without awareness of their relation to it. Still, I am confident we are as a species on our way. The law is immovable and certain. It loves and beautifies. So dive Into the self. Allow for truth, to be. --- A few weeks later I watched a guy deliver a Hamlet monologue from memory in an audition waiting room. I had never memorized that. Wasn't going to. And if I wasn't willing to make that sacrifice, I didn't want it as badly as I said I did. I took a long walk across the bridge from Manhattan into Brooklyn. No plan. Just the question I kept avoiding. I shelved acting that night. Not because the dream died. Because something more honest finally had room to breathe. That's how podcasting started. Not as a plan. As a clearing.

I was born at Ronald Reagan UCLA Hospital in Westwood. That's West Los Angeles. [pause] If you read my LinkedIn, you'd get a clean arc — podcast host, digital strategist, media builder. What you wouldn't get is the architecture beneath it. My father Luis Lorenzo Castellanos was a Mexican immigrant. Oaxacan descent. Construction worker. Songwriter. Before ALS took his voice and his movement, he was planting something in me — glam rock, classic rock, lyrics rewritten at his desk. By the time I was eight, he couldn't speak or sit up on his own. But the music stayed. It always stayed. My mother Cassandra was largely absent from birth. Going from man to man. Most of my 18 siblings ended up in foster care. [pause] Eighteen. My only full sibling is Samantha. The two of us got handed Greyhound tickets out of San Antonio. I was around 13, maybe 14. We got robbed in El Paso on the way. We landed at my uncle Jose's apartment in East LA. East LA wasn't where I grew up. It's where I arrived. From there — Koreatown, Mid City by 18. New York City at 24. No plan. Just capability showing up in whatever room I could get into. My father died in 2015. After that, I learned digital marketing at Ajax Union out of pure financial necessity. Not passion. Necessity. [pause] But here's the thing — I'd been performing my whole life. Radio prank calls mimicking Big Boy on Power 106. Singing contests. MTV Copycat. Telemundo's Yo Soy El Artista in front of Luis Fonsi with the wrong backing track in the wrong key on the wrong night. When I found podcasting, I didn't pivot. I recognized the room. The mic was just a different stage. Every job I've held — Ajax Union, CTRL Collective, Tigerhall, Al Jazeera, Grit Daily, Cal Fussman's Big Questions — was a zero-to-one build. Nothing handed over. Everything constructed from scratch. That's not a brand. That's just what happened.