Eric Robinson walked into the FBI Academy having never held a gun.

Let that sit for a second. Before the Bureau, Eric spent twelve years in Christian ministry, including serving as a Baptist pastor in western New York. Then he traded the pulpit for a badge and gave the FBI twenty-four years as a special agent, fifteen of them on SWAT, plus time as a firearms and tactics instructor. The man who started out writing sermons ended up teaching other agents how to shoot.

When Eric sat down with me for Ship’s Log #46, I expected to hear about two separate careers. What I heard instead was one person who had been doing the same thing the whole time.

That conversation sent me back through my notes, because Eric isn’t the only guest who has done this. Some people don’t trade one life for another. They carry two at once, and somehow each one helps explain the other.

Living in Two Worlds at Once: The Guests Who Refuse to Pick One

Most of us are taught to choose. Pick a major. Pick a lane. Pick the answer that fits on a name tag. And for a lot of people, that works just fine.

But every so often a guest shows up whose life won’t fold neatly into one sentence. Their introduction has an “and” in the middle of it, and the “and” is the most interesting part.

I’ve noticed something about these guests. They don’t usually describe themselves as people who switched. They describe themselves as people who kept going and found that a skill from one world worked surprisingly well in the other. The two worlds aren’t competing. They’re having a conversation.

Here are three of them.

From Pulpit to Badge: Eric Robinson and the Power of Curiosity

Eric’s episode is called Preacher. Breacher, FBI Teacher. The subtitle asks a question I’d love you to answer honestly: Would you confess if your FBI agent used to be a pastor?

The thread that ties Eric’s two lives together turns out to be a single skill: getting people to talk. He told me he treats an interrogation like a normal conversation instead of a table-slamming standoff. No theatrics, just curiosity. The line he gave us for the episode says it best:

“I have never regretted going into an interaction with a victim, informant, or criminal and employing curiosity.” Eric Robinson

I loved that, partly because it’s the closest thing to my job description on this show. I just get to practice curiosity with coffee instead of a case file.

And Eric is funny. His resume is heavier than our conversation felt. Agents, he explained, get through the hardest parts of the work by telling each other stories, and he stays self-aware enough not to believe the whole world is as dark as his caseload. His way of putting it: “You’re a bird watcher; of course you find the birds.”

Some of the stories he shared came straight from his ministry years: the couple who got caught making out in the middle of his sermon and the church that held its services in a theater named for Lucille Ball. I can’t think of another guest whose stories range from church-pew comedy to fifteen years on SWAT, and he tells both kinds with the same easy timing.

Eric is now retired and turning those years into a memoir, Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI, which his website lists as coming soon. Given his storytelling, I’m guessing the title is earned.

Where Science Meets Soul: Sharon Madsen’s Two Worlds

Sharon Madsen‘s episode title is She Sails Between Two Worlds, and the subtitle tells you which one: Where Science Meets Soul.

For thirty years, Sharon has done work that’s hard to put on a business card. She is a regulated health professional. She is also a Reiki master teacher and a self-described psychic medium. Most people would assume those identities live on opposite ends of town. Sharon lives at both addresses.

What struck me most is who finds her. It’s usually the people who look the most put-together from the outside: the house, the marriage, the career, and the success. And underneath all of it, a quiet, confusing emptiness.

One story from her practice: during a session, Sharon says she channeled a client’s late father and the private nickname he’d had for that client in a language Sharon doesn’t speak. You can make of that whatever you like. It’s exactly the kind of story that never comes up over small talk.

She also offered the simplest practice I’ve heard on the show: stand at the mirror every day and learn to love the person looking back. It sounds easy. Try it tomorrow morning and tell me how easy it is.

Her line for the episode:

“Somewhere between surviving and achieving, you forgot you were born sacred. Your soul has been waiting in the stillness of your heart for you to remember.” Sharon Madsen

Two Worlds of Healing: Dr. Greg Yuen’s Forty-Year Search

Dr. Greg Yuen‘s episode is 40 Years Navigating Two Worlds, subtitled Heal Yourself. Live Longer. His story starts at a funeral.

When Greg was twelve, his grandmother died. At the funeral, as he placed paper money on her coffin and touched her pillow to say goodbye, it hit him that one day he would die too. He handled that fear the way a kid does, with a lot of Snickers bars. And he made himself a promise: he was going to find the secret to living forever.

That promise turned into a life with a foot in each of two worlds. Greg became a psychiatrist, prescribing pharmaceuticals for his patients, while quietly avoiding them in his own life and studying qigong, tai chi, and massage instead. More than forty years later, he’s a psychiatrist, a tai chi instructor, and a licensed massage therapist, and he teaches Do-in, the practice of mindful self-massage.

The idea at the heart of Do-in is that where the mind goes, the chi goes. During our conversation, Greg walked me (and everyone listening) through a hands-on demonstration of feeling your own vital force, right there in your palms.

His message is simple: the tools for your own healing are already in your two hands.

“Through mindful touch, we reconnect and restore our wholeness and health.” Dr. Greg Yuen

Why Two Worlds Can Make One Fuller Life

Looking at these three together, I see people who realized that a second world could make the first one richer, not people who couldn’t make up their minds.

Eric’s years in the pulpit made him a better listener in an interview room. Sharon’s clinical training sits right next to her intuitive work. Greg’s medical career and his tai chi practice ended up pointing at the same question he asked at twelve.

I suspect a lot of us carry a second world quietly. Maybe it’s the accountant who paints, or the nurse who writes music, or the retiree who finally said yes to the thing they always wanted to try. We don’t always mention it, because there’s no tidy place to put it in a conversation.

That’s exactly the kind of story Project Candor was made for. You don’t have to be famous to be fascinating. Sometimes you just have to admit there’s an “and” in your introduction.

Listen In (or Pull Up a Chair)

If you’d like to hear these conversations in full, you’ll find Eric Robinson (Ship’s Log #46), Sharon Madsen (Ship’s Log #43), and Dr. Greg Yuen (Ship’s Log #42) on the Project Candor episodes page, on YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if you’re living in two worlds yourself, or you know someone who is, I’d love to hear about it. Reach out at [email protected], or tap Become a Guest on the website. Every guest has a story browse Meet the Guests anytime. What’s yours?

That’s Project Candor.

Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories.