The Relief Valve Podcast

Jeff Prang was elected in 2014 as the 27th Assessor for the County of Los Angeles and re-elected in 2018. 

Raised in Warren, Michigan, Assessor Prang is a graduate of Michigan State University. After graduation, Mr. Prang relocated to California where he served nearly 18 years as a council member for the City of West Hollywood, including four terms as Mayor, among many other positions in his public sector career. 

Assessor Prang is...

Mitch Ziegler retired last June from a 35 year career in teaching. For 31 of them he was the adviser of the award winning newspaper and yearbook at Redondo Union High School, where he also taught AP English and photography. 

The recipient of numerous advising and service awards over the years, Ziegler was named the H.L. Hall National Yearbook Adviser of the Year by the Journalism Education Association.

Ziegler has been married to h...

Larry Blake is a supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer of feature films. He has worked on over 80 features since 1989 and won an Emmy for his work on “Behind the Candelabra” in 2013.  

He has been working with Film Maker Steven Soderbergh since the beginning with 29 features and three television seasons, plus multiple films from Victor Nuñez, David Gordon Green, and the Duplass Brothers.

He has written extensively on film sou...

Bobak Roshan is a recovering lawyer who opened his first coffee bar 10 years ago in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood.   While that store has closed in the pandemic, his Demitasse cafe continues on Third Street in Santa Monica where he uses unique brewing methods to make fine drinks from his own coffee roastery. 

In addition to Demitasse, Bobby now has a cafe and a dessert/mocktail bar called Kindred Spirits in Santa Monica o...

Hey Listeners.  No guest interview on this show.  I wanted to take a moment to reflect.  See August marks a year since I published the first episode and started down this adventure. 

I beg your indulgence for a moment while I share some of my story for perspective…

I’m hoping to pivot this podcast going forward into focusing a bit more on what my guests do, how they do it and how their ambitions are guiding them into the future.   ...

Lani Rosales is the Chief Operating Officer at The American Genius ,  a strong news voice in the entrepreneur and tech world, offering meaningful, concise insight into emerging technologies, the digital economy, best practices, and a shifting business culture.

She has co-authored a book, co-founded BASHH, The Big Ass Social Happy Hour , a monthly networking event offline,  and Austin Digital Jobs, a group  offering a quarterly mixe...

Kelly Cheatle is a materials and process maven who specializes in visual storytelling and innovation. 

She is the Artistic Director of Airigami, a creative firm that specializes in colossal experiential and dimensional illustrative projects built from modeling balloons. 

Along with her husband and partner Larry Moss, she leads teams of artists and community volunteers to construct ephemeral installations that enchant diverse audie...

Mike Appel is a Multiple Emmy Award winning Lighting Director/Designer, working on such projects as the Kid’s Choice Awards for Nickelodeon, Unplugged and The Video Music Awards for MTV, The BET Awards, NBC’s Christmas in Rockefeller Center and Democracy Plaza for Election Nights, VH-1’s Storytellers and the I-Heart Radio Festival Amongst many other shows.  He has lit performances at The White House and for the broadcast of The NBA...

Dave Dinsmore has never taken a single wine class, but he knows what he likes and best of all, he likes to share.  

Originally from Chicago, and currently working remotely from South Carolina, Dave works in IT at a film studio while building his his dream, Ascension Wines with his wife Lisa.

As Master of Quality Control of the company, he’s dedicated to testing every bottle, so only the best wine finds its way into the glass. 

Fi...

Annie Choi is the owner of Found Coffee, a specialty coffee shop in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles which recently celebrated it’s sixth year in business despite the pandemic! 

Prior to being an entrepreneur, Annie worked in television post production on notable shows such Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Project Runway: All Stars.

She loves telling stories and has a passion for gathering community.

On her days off, s...

Al Pimentel grew up in a family of musicians. 

By age 12, music became his passion and he decide he wanted a career in the music industry. 

Thru high school he performed in several small venues from Santa Monica to Venice Beach and started teaching part time during the summer. 

He completed his  formal musical studies at El Camino College, where he studied both Jazz and Classical saxophone.  

Besides teaching, he can also be found ...

Adam Bunnell is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in multiple coffee startups. 

He currently is the owner and operator of Hustle-N-Dough, a small batch donut company that serves handmade donuts- and Adam's own roast from a food truck in all four corners of Los Angeles.

Keep up on where to find the truck on his Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hustlendough/

http://www.hustlendough.com

If you enjoy the work we are doi...

W. Curtis Preston is a specialist in computer storage, backup and recovery and has been a consultant and analyst in the industry for many years.  

He’s the author of 3 O’Reilly books with a fourth, “Modern Data Protection” being released in May.

Currently the Chief Technical Evangelist at Druva, a cloud-based data protection company, You can also find his works in publications like Network World and in the “Restore It All” podcast...

Alyson Rochlin is a Student at California State University Long Beach in Southern California where she is studying Music Education and Performance.  

She has been studying flute since she was 11 years old and has since learned to play eight instruments as part of her education studies.

She teaches privately to help support herself through college, and works in the Pit Orchestra for the Encore Theatre Company in Los Angeles’s South...

Scott "Skottie" Miller is a Technologist focused on operational tactics and long-term strategy around High-Performance Computing, Storage and Networking as it relates to Computational Visualization for feature length animated films.  

A graduate of California State University at Fullerton, he spent 11 years in Aerospace before landing at The Walt Disney Animation Studio where amongst his many achievements, he helped build the first...

Born in Nashville, Dara McGarry worked at Disney Feature Animation for 14 years before trading her mouse ears for a bowler hat. 

She moved to London in 2010 to work as an Artist Manager at Double Negative, a Post Production, Visual Effects and Animation studio.  ( https://www.dneg.com )

Besides traveling around Europe (when that was a thing), seeing theatre on the West End, and historic sites around the UK, Dara also was a regular ...

Tommy Williams is a professional musician from Long Island, New York.

After honing his skills on guitar, bass, keyboards, songwriting and arranging, he began his professional career at 17 on the New York club circuit. He soon landed the position of guitarist, keyboardist and Musical Director for ‘80’s teen-pop star DEBBIE GIBSON, touring the world and appearing on her first three albums (including lead guitar on the #1 hit “Lost In...

Greetings Relief Valve Listener and Happy New Year!

Back in September 2020, during the third interview on the podcast, I spoke with Edward Branley.  (https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-m9ky7-e9ebc5)

Edward is a writer, teacher, historian, and computer nerd. He is the author of six books on the history of New Orleans as well as several Young Adult fiction novels.

He also teaches computer classes on high-end topics such as Converged Compu...