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Jim and Dar return with another packed Paranormal Report, diving into the government's latest UFO file release, the mysterious disappearance of a retired Air Force general linked to UFO programs, and claims that the infamous alien autopsy footage may have been based on something real. They also explore a psychic's dire prediction of an alien invasion, strange Bigfoot sightings in Canada, and eerie child-sized footprints appearing overnight in an Argentine shop. Plus, there's breaking news in the Conjuring House legal saga, a disturbing AI experiment that ended in chaos, allegations of a multimillion-dollar psychic scam, and a touching celebrity ghost encounter. As always, thanks for listening/watching! LINKS https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15895169/ufo-files-trump-pentagon-release-space.html https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15896093/william-mccasland-missing-ufo-new-mexico.html https://www.newsnationnow.com/missing/missing-air-force-mccasland-last-photograph/ https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alien-autopsy-scandal-ufo-coverup-37275505 https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/courts/2026/06/02/legal-fight-over-conjuring-house-intensifies-with-new-restraining-order/90361398007/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/11/sasquatch-bigfoot-sightings-fervour-scepticism-ape-ontario https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/ghost-kids-haunt-city-centre-37275470 https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15877085/terrifying-simulation-ai-destroy-society.html https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15904251/vo-bahiana-alien-abduction-world-cup-miami.html https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-couple-charged-psychic-fraud-bridgette-evans-vinnie-uwanawich https://ew.com/the-pitt-star-katherine-lanasa-haunted-by-ex-husband-dennis-hopper-ghost-12000247 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Trump's latest plans sparked praise and backlash as reactions poured in over a proposed UFC event at the White House and Fourth of July celebrations. Meanwhile, a tragic Air Force plane crash led the day's headlines before conservatives turned their attention to growing questions surrounding the Iran agreement. JD Vance defended the administration's position amid […]
Air Force's Wyatt Hanoian commits to the Vols College World Series talk The Top 5 at 5:00
Both Ellen and Sophie started as exhausted parents searching for answers to their own children's sleep struggles. Today, after nearly three years on the Sleep and Wellness Coach team, they've helped countless families navigate bedtime battles, night wakings, short naps, early mornings, and everything in between. In this candid conversation, Allison, Ellen, and Sophie share: Their personal stories of postpartum struggles and sleep deprivation How they discovered sleep coaching for the first time The one change that made the biggest difference for their own children What it's really like to work as a sleep coach The hardest and most rewarding parts of helping families Why no two sleep situations are ever exactly the same Encouragement for parents who feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or stuck You'll also hear behind-the-scenes stories about how Ellen and Sophie joined the team, what they've learned after working with hundreds of families, and why personalized support can make such a powerful difference. If you're currently struggling with your child's sleep, this episode is your reminder that you are not alone, things can get better, and there is help available. Listen in to hear: Why Allison hired Ellen and Sophie Ellen's experience with postpartum anxiety and infant sleep struggles Sophie's journey from Air Force pilot to sleep coach How bedtime structure transformed their families' sleep Why confidence and consistency matter in sleep coaching The emotional side of helping exhausted parents What keeps the Sleep and Wellness Coach team motivated after helping thousands of families Allison, Ellen and Sophie are always available for free 15 minute consultations. Click here to find out how to schedule your call.
A former Air Force flight-line worker and his son report a remarkable UFO encounter near Attica, Kansas, involving a silent, disk-shaped craft estimated to be 90 to 120 feet in diameter. During this episode of UFO Warning, we examine the detailed NUFORC report describing a glowing object surrounded by a vapor cloud that maneuvered overhead, displayed unusual propulsion effects, emitted mysterious blue and orange energy-like exhausts, and accelerated away at speeds the witness says exceeded any conventional aircraft.The witness observed the object through high-powered binoculars, providing an unusually detailed description of its shape, markings, lighting, and flight characteristics. The craft reportedly flew silently at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet before climbing thousands of feet and disappearing at extraordinary speed.Was this a classified military aircraft, an atmospheric anomaly, or something truly unexplained? We break down the witness testimony, the military aviation experience of the observer, and the extraordinary details that make this one of the most compelling Kansas UFO sightings reported to NUFORC.Join us as we explore this close encounter over the Kansas countryside and examine the evidence behind a case that continues to challenge conventional explanations.
On this orb-themed episode, Lee and Nathan talk about orbs. They look back at the foo fighter phenomenon from World War II, examine Air Force files from the 1950s about orbs over sensitive nuclear sites, and then look at some of the odd revelations from the recent tranche of files released by the American government.
Show Summary On today's episode, we're having a conversation with Army Veteran Ramon Salazar, Senior Manager of Learning and Experience Design for PsychArmor, as well as Executive Director for Warriors At Ease, an organization dedicated to empowering the military and veteran community with the tools and knowledge to harness the transformative power of yoga and meditation.Provide FeedbackAs a dedicated member of the audience, we would like to hear from you. If you PsychArmor has helped you learn, grow, and support those who've served and those who care for them, we would appreciate hearing your story. Please follow this link to share how PsychArmor has helped you in your service journey Share PsychArmor StoriesAbout Today's GuestRamón Salazar is a US Army Veteran with a diverse background in education and wellness. Holding a Master's degree in Education and experience in instructional design, he currently serves as an instructor at the University of Arizona. As an E-RYT 500 (Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher that has completed at leased 500 hours of advanced yoga teacher training and logged a minimum of 2,00 hours of teaching experience), Ramón brings a deep understanding of yoga practice, skillfully tailoring his approach to the specific needs of the military community. He incorporates trauma-informed techniques and mindful movement to foster healing and resilience. Ramón also holds various certifications in other wellness areas. His commitment to education and holistic well-being reflects his belief in yoga's power to positively impact individuals and communities.Links Mentioned in this Episode Ramon on PsychArmorWarriors At Ease websitePsychArmor Resource of the WeekThis week's resource of the week is PsychArmor's online course library, including many courses designed and led by Ramon. PsychArmor offers trusted, expert-led training for anyone who wants to better understand and support service members, Veterans, and their families. Whether you're a health care provider, educator, employer, caregiver, or simply someone who wants to make a difference — these courses are designed for you.You can find the resource here:https://learn.psycharmor.org/collections Episode Partner: Are you an organization that engages with or supports the military affiliated community? Would you like to partner with an engaged and dynamic audience of like-minded professionals? Reach out to Inquire about Partnership Opportunities Contact Us and Join Us on Social Media Email PsychArmorPsychArmor on TwitterPsychArmor on FacebookPsychArmor on YouTubePsychArmor on LinkedInPsychArmor on InstagramTheme MusicOur theme music Don't Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families. You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com
AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a crash at an Air Force base in Southern California's Mojave Desert.
In this episode of Macon It, we sit down with Macon-Bibb County's Chief Information Officer, Tekquell Watson, to learn more about the person leading technology and innovation for our local government. A U.S. Air Force veteran with more than 25 years of experience in information technology, cybersecurity, and public service, Tekquell shares her journey to Macon and her vision for the future. We also pull back the curtain on the County's Information Technology Department and the team that keeps everything running behind the scenes. From cybersecurity and digital services to smart city initiatives and improving government accessibility, Tekquell explains why technology plays such a critical role in serving our community and how Macon-Bibb is using innovation to build a more connected future.
Matthew James Sullivan was a U.S. Air Force Intelligence officer and a key firsthand witness who was scheduled to testify before Congress regarding classified, legacy government UFO (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) programs. [1, 2, 3] His background and the circumstances surrounding his death include the following details: Professional Background: Sullivan was an Air Force intelligence veteran who earned a Bronze Star for valor in Operation Enduring Freedom. He worked with the Air Force Intelligence Agency, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), and the National Security Agency (NSA). [1] Whistleblower Status: He was one of David Grusch's roughly 40 firsthand witnesses and was connected to the U.S. government's "crash retrieval" program. He was scheduled to testify to Congress regarding what the federal government knew and possessed. [1, 2, 3] Controversial Death: Sullivan died on May 12, 2024, in Falls Church, Virginia, just two weeks after agreeing to meet with congressional investigators. The official medical examiner's report ruled his death an accidental drug overdose from a lethal mix of alcohol and prescription medications. [1, 2] Government Investigation: Due to the suspicious timing, lawmakers—including U.S. Congressman Eric Burlison—have requested an FBI investigation into the incident. Sullivan's death is being scrutinized amid a broader federal investigation into more than a dozen deaths and disappearances of American scientists and aerospace researchers. [1, 2, 3] Attribution Nordic Little Rubio vis Frank McCormick @CBHeresy on X Link: https://x.com/CBHeresy/status/2065589913781682628?s=20 Jeremy Corbell via American Alchemy @AmericanALCHMY on X Link: https://x.com/AmericanALCHMY/status/2065538518701748389?s=20 Chris Bledsoe Orb via Chris Bledsoe @chrisbledsoeufo on X. Link: https://x.com/chrisbledsoeufo/status/2066017011532980731?s=20
The Post Relevant Podcast is a secret brought to Earth through the wise Owl, handed off to a cadre of Hawks, red-eyed demon dogs, an army of Deer, an Air Force of Vultures, and borne to the foot of the the mystical Blue Heron, who blesses every episode and eventually drops them beneath the Blue Moon into the ears of local Rabbits. The Rabbits leave each episodes of the show on listener's doorsteps, wrapped inside an acorn shell encased in flower petals. Its a cottage industry, but very efficient!Twin Peaks: the Return: the DECODE returns with an interpretation of episode 9! Its a 'no-bells-and-whistles' soft reboot of our show, originally recorded in January 2025 at the beginning of the LA fires. Appropriate for a Twin Peaks podcast, and strangely synchronous for our current "Year of the Fire Horse" in 2026. Hosts Phil Ristaino and Justin Epifanio recount Justin's first-hand experience surviving the Los Angeles inferno. Then they go in deep into trying to explain TP:TR episode 9. Statements are made, like "Its a fucking morgue!" And they are not wrong. Cutting questions are posed, like "When did he lose his marbles?" Insights are given, like "When the dog got his cat's eyes?" Tammy poses. Chad huffs and puffs. William Hastings yearns for scuba diving and mixed drinks. All the while, the disembodied head and decapitated body of Major Briggs looms large, holds clues, and rings like a monastery bell. We discover much!Throughout the show, Phil recounts stories of being visited by different wild animals while exploring the city of Nashville TN. Its another trippy show! Hope you enjoy it - I didn't mean for it to be over 3 hours, but, well, there you go....Find all episodes of the PRP: https://www.postrelevant.comPhil's acting/art/music: https://www.thesearedreams.comPRP on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/philristaino/Get the PRP "Under the Silver Lake" tribute shirt at Spyrodon Apparel:https://spyrodon.store/products/phil-ristaino-artist-edition-for-the-post-relevant-podcast-under-the-silverlakeenter 'postrelevant' at checkout for 10% off.Donate to the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/postrelevantand https://patreon.com/postrelevantJustin's doc: https://www.instagram.com/heyoka.documentary/PRP theme song by Agents of Venus: https://agentsofvenus.bandcamp.comDavid Lynch Forever....
On this episode of Left of Str8 Show Interviews, Scott Fullerton welcomes Benjamin Hightower, singer/songwriter, veteran, and America's Got Talent performer, for an inspiring conversation about military service, music, identity, faith, and advocacy. Benjamin shares his transition from the Air Force to the stage, his songwriting process behind “Holy Astronaut,” and his passion for supporting LGBTQ+ youth and veterans' mental health. His AGT journey has been highlighted as part of his extraordinary move from military service into performance.Listen to the story behind the Holy Astronaut song and discover how faith and romance intersect in this latest track. Get the full inspiration behind the lyrics and hear the chorus.This video provides an intimate look at the creative process behind my new music release, Holy Astronaut. I discuss the core themes of maintaining personal conviction while fully supporting a partner's passions, even when those passions take you to the edges of the cosmos. If you are interested in the intersection of faith and love, this breakdown offers context on why I wrote these specific lines.By watching, you will gain a deeper understanding of the song meaning and the emotional weight behind the chorus. I explain the artistic choices made to capture the feeling of worthiness in a relationship. Whether you are a fan of thoughtful songwriting or curious about the inspiration behind Holy Astronaut, this discussion clarifies the narrative arc I intended for the track.Subscribe for weekly songwriting breakdowns, and comment below on which part of the song resonated with you the most.Watch Left of Str8 Interviews every week for smart, funny, and heartfelt conversations with LGBTQ creatives, straight allies, entertainers, authors, musicians, filmmakers, and changemakers. Each episode goes beyond the usual interview to uncover the stories, struggles, laughs, and lessons behind the work — with guests who inspire, entertain, and remind us why visibility matters. Subscribe and come back weekly for fresh voices, meaningful conversations, and a little bit of fabulous you will not find anywhere else.Subscribe for excellent interviews from Entertainment, Music, Books and Advocacy. Hit the little bell for weekly notifications. New Episodes drop every week. Tell your friends.Follow Us on Instagram:Scott Fullerton: @leftofstr8Benjamin Hightower: @benjaminhightower_Tik Tok:Scott Fullerton: @leftofstr8Benjamin Hightower: @benjaminhightower
It's Marvel Monday and meet Marvel's most powerful hero! ABOUT CAPTAIN MARVEL Carol Danvers becomes one of the universe's most powerful heroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races. AIR DATE & NETWORK FOR CAPTAIN MARVEL March 8, 2019 | Theatrical Release CAST & CREW OF CAPTAIN MARVEL Directors: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck Writers: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Geneva Robertson-Dworet Cast: Brie Larson as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury BRAN'S MOVIE SYNOPSIS Carol Danvers is living her best amnesia life on the Kree homeworld of Hala under the name Vers. Got it? Good. She's got superpowers, cool space suits, and a mentor named Yon-Rogg who constantly tells her to stop feeling. The Kree government, which is basically run by a giant AI lady, insists that the evil shape-shifting Skrulls ruined her life and since Carol remembers absolutely nothing, so she just rolls with it. While on a mission to rescue a Kree spy, things immediately go sideways. The Skrulls capture Carol and start digging around in her memories, discovering that she used to be an Air Force pilot on Earth. Their leader Talos becomes very interested in a scientist named Dr. Wendy Lawson and a mysterious light-speed engine. Carol escapes before they get all the answers and crash-lands straight into a Blockbuster Video in 1995 Los Angeles. Her arrival gets the attention of a young Nick Fury, who still has two working eyes and spends most of this movie being confused. After a series of chases, explosions, and Skrulls impersonating anyone they want, Carol starts uncovering pieces of her past. She learns that she wasn't born on Hala at all—she was an Air Force pilot presumed dead after a crash years earlier. As Carol & Nick follow the breadcrumbs, she reconnects with her old friend Maria and Maria's daughter Monica, who are understandably shocked to discover their dead friend is actually a space superhero. Meanwhile, Talos finally reveals that the Skrulls aren't conquering villains at all—they're refugees looking for a home. Turns out the Kree may not have been entirely honest. The biggest bombshell comes when Carol remembers what really happened. Dr. Lawson was actually Mar-Vell, a Kree scientist secretly helping the Skrulls. Shes killed while taking control of an experimental energy source. Carol destroyed the engine to keep it from the Kree, absorbed its energy in the explosion, gained incredible powers, and then had her memories erased so the Kree could turn her into a weapon. The gang tracks down Mar-Vell's hidden space laboratory, where a bunch of Skrull refugees have been hiding. Unfortunately, Starforce shows up, the Kree try to reassert control, and Carol gets dragged before the Supreme Intelligence. She destroys the device limiting her powers and finally goes full Captain Marvel. What follows is a one-sided beatdown thanks to Captain marvel. With the Skrulls safe for the moment, Carol decides to head off into space to help them find a permanent home. Before leaving, she gives Fury a special pager for emergencies. Fury later loses his eye in an incident involving Goose - a cat who is actually an alien who is also holding the Tesseract in its tummy. Looking at Carol's old Air Force call sign, he lands on the perfect name: The Avengers Initiative. In the mid-credits scene, the pager goes off and Carol returns to Earth Watch the show on Youtube - www.deckthehallmark.com/youtubeInterested in advertising on the show? Email bran@deckthehallmark.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Democrats try desperately to push Hunter Biden as a viable candidate for office as a tale of two Americas emerges for all of us to see over the weekend. Juxtapose the violence and destructive rioting in NYC after the Knicks' NBA championship - burned school buses, destroyed cop cars, 63 arrests, a stabbing, and total filth left in the streets... versus the UFC 250th Celebration fights on the south lawn of the White House. Patriotism, a national anthem flyover by the Navy and Air Force with people enjoying a star-spangled event and leaving safely to go home. Which America do YOU prefer?
President Trump and Iran separately announced an agreement to end more than three months of war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. For more on what could come of the deal, we hear from Jon Finer, a former adviser to President Biden who helped negotiate the Obama administration's deal to restrict Iran's nuclear program. Then, a major Russian attack overnight set fire to a historic monastery complex in Kyiv and killed at least four people. It's the latest barrage by Russia, which launched 611 long-range drones and 70 missiles, according to Ukraine's Air Force. The Foreign Policy Research Institute's Rob Lee shares the latest from the front lines in Ukraine. And, a viral joke led to an Irish pub in Scotland becoming an Ivory Coast pub for the World Cup. Ruairi O'Neill, general manager at Biddy Mulligans in Edinburgh, Scotland, explains.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy
Last time we spoke about the Hubei-Henan Campaign of 1940-1941. In November 1940, a Central Hubei operation using multiple task forces aimed to exploit Chinese dispersal, achieving only local successes and no lasting territorial gains. The Japanese then tried again in late January 1941 with a major offensive into southern Henan. Despite concentrating a large force, the campaign failed strategically. After the Henan failure, Japan attempted to regain momentum in spring 1941 by attacking western Hubei around Yichang on the Yangtze. Despite an initial barrage and rapid early gains, Japanese forces became exposed in a narrow salient. The Chinese reorganized their river defenses and launched a converging counteroffensive, driving the invaders back and ending the engagement where it began, with the Japanese suffering heavy casualties and their westward push thwarted. #206 The Battle of Shanggao Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The year 1940 had brought a particular humiliation. In August of that year, Communist General Peng Dehuai had launched the Hundred Regiments Offensive — a massive, coordinated assault across North China that shattered Japanese rail and supply lines, embarrassed Imperial General Headquarters, and demonstrated that the Chinese were far from finished. Japan's response had been brutal, the infamous "Three Alls" campaign of reprisals across the countryside. But the damage had been done, and the attention of Imperial General Headquarters shifted northward. The autumn of 1940 had also seen the First Battle of Changsha, where the Japanese 11th Army under General Sonobe Yahachirō pushed south into Hunan Province expecting to overwhelm the Chinese defenders and finally deal a decisive blow to Chiang Kai-shek's armies. Instead, General Xue Yue — the "Tiger of Changsha" — had allowed the Japanese to advance deep into his prepared killing ground before counterattacking from multiple directions. The Japanese had been forced to retreat in disorder, and the front in Hunan and Jiangxi settled once again into sullen stalemate. It was in this atmosphere of frustrated ambition and strategic inertia that the seeds of Shanggao were sown. By February 1941, Imperial General Headquarters had decided to redeploy the 33rd Division — then garrisoned in the town of Anyi, in northwestern Jiangxi — to North China. The transfer was scheduled to begin in early April, and it made strategic sense: the north required reinforcement, and the front in Jiangxi had been quiet enough that one division could be spared. The problem was that the 33rd Division's departure would leave a gap in Japanese dispositions, and no significant offensive operation had yet been conducted to weaken the Chinese forces that would be left facing a thinned-out Japanese line. Lieutenant General Ōga Shigeru, the energetic commander of the Japanese 34th Division, saw opportunity in the window that existed before the 33rd departed. His division was concentrated around Xishan and Wanshou Palace, astride the Xiang–Gan Highway — the main road running westward through Jiangxi — and across that highway lay the town of Shanggao and the Chinese forces defending it. Ōga proposed exploiting the presence of both divisions for a coordinated strike: a sharp, limited offensive to crush Chinese field forces around Nanchang and the Jiangxi interior before the 33rd Division's train north. The 11th Army headquarters, now commanded by General Marube, endorsed a cautious concept — a "quick strike" with limited objectives. But the 34th Division's staff, energized by Ōga's ambition, had already run well ahead of this guidance. Large-scale requisitioning of coolies for logistics was underway; training exercises aimed at the specific terrain around Shanggao had been conducted; planning had progressed in far more detail than a "limited" operation warranted. This eagerness would prove to be the Japanese undoing before the first shot was fired. Chinese intelligence networks, always attentive to the movement of porters and the telltale preparations that preceded a Japanese offensive, quickly detected the scale of these preparations and reported them to General Luo Zhuoying, commander of the Chinese 19th Army Group. By the time the Japanese columns were forming up to march, Luo had already hardened his defenses and laid the groundwork for a trap. General Luo Zhuoying was not a passive commander. He served simultaneously as commander of the 19th Army Group and as Deputy Commander of the 9th War Zone — the latter post placing him directly under General Xue Yue, the victor of Changsha. Luo had spent the lull after Changsha doing what Chinese commanders across the theater had learned was essential: reorganizing, retraining, and above all improving the defensive architecture of his sector. The plan Luo devised for meeting the anticipated Japanese offensive was elegant in its simplicity and demanding in its execution. Rather than contesting the Japanese advance at the frontier, he would allow the enemy to push westward, yielding ground through three successive defensive lines while bleeding the attackers at every step. The first and second lines would slow the Japanese, exact casualties, and stretch their logistics. The third line — anchored at Shanggao itself — would be the killing ground. There, the Chinese forces would hold fast while other formations swung around the Japanese flanks and rear to close the encirclement. The Japanese, having marched deep into Chinese-held territory with their supply lines thinning and their flanks exposed, would find themselves surrounded rather than victorious. For this plan to work, each Chinese formation had to perform its role with discipline. The 70th Corps, deployed in the north along the arc from Shitou Street through Fengxin to Jing'an, would have to conduct a controlled fighting retreat — yielding ground but making the Japanese pay for it, never breaking and running. The 49th Corps would hold the southern flank and create conditions for flanking action. And the 74th Corps — General Wang Yaowu's elite formation, comprising the 51st, 57th, and 58th Divisions — would hold the final line at Shanggao and serve as the anvil upon which the Japanese advance would shatter. The 74th Corps was by 1941 one of the most battle-hardened formations in the Nationalist Army. It had fought at Shanghai in 1937, at Wuhan in 1938, and in the hills and valleys of Jiangxi through the years since. Its men knew the terrain around Shanggao. They had prepared positions in depth, studied the approaches, and rehearsed the defensive plan Luo had designed. When the Japanese came, they would be ready. Against the Chinese 70,000 — distributed across eleven divisions in four corps, with additional provincial security forces for local coverage — the Japanese would throw roughly 20,000 men: three major formations advancing in coordinated columns. The disparity in numbers was stark, but the Japanese had the advantages of offensive initiative, air superiority, and the formidable fighting quality that the Imperial Army had demonstrated throughout the war in China. The question was whether those advantages would be enough to overcome a prepared defense wielded by a commander who had invited the attack. The operational plan devised by the Japanese 11th Army called for three columns to converge simultaneously on Shanggao from north, center, and south — a classic encirclement concept that, if executed with precision, would catch the Chinese defenders in a tightening vice. In the north, the main force of the 33rd Division under Lieutenant General Sakurai Shōzō would drive westward from its bases around Anyi and Ganzhoujie, descending the Liao River valley to threaten the Chinese right flank and prevent the 70th Corps from interfering with operations in the center.In the center, Ōga's 34th Division would advance along the Xiang–Gan Highway — the direct route from Nanchang toward Shanggao — capturing the town of Gao'an along the way and pressing relentlessly westward until it reached the main defensive positions. This was the principal striking force, the column designed to crack open the Chinese defenses and seize the objective.In the south, the Independent Mixed 20th Brigade under Major General Ikeda would cross the Jin River and advance along its south bank, eventually swinging north to link up with the 34th Division and complete the encirclement of whatever Chinese forces remained in the Shanggao area. The plan was coherent on paper. But it contained a structural flaw so serious that, in retrospect, it is difficult to understand how the 11th Army's staff allowed it to proceed uncorrected. The success of any converging operation depends on synchronization — on each column hitting its objectives on schedule and maintaining communication with the others so that each can react to developments on the other prongs. Yet the 11th Army headquarters made no recorded effort to coordinate the 33rd and 34th Divisions before the battle began. There was no forward command post established to oversee the operation. General Marube remained at Hankou, hundreds of miles to the north, throughout the battle — as remote from the fighting as a Tokyo bureaucrat. Operational decisions were left entirely to the individual divisions, with no mechanism to coordinate their actions if something went wrong. Something was going to go wrong. Luo Zhuoying had seen to that. On the morning of March 15, 1941, all three Japanese columns stepped off simultaneously, advancing into the misty hills and rice paddies of northwestern Jiangxi. In the north, Sakurai's 33rd Division moved briskly from Anyi toward Fengxin. The town fell by noon, and the division pressed westward in good order. The Japanese infantry moved confidently along the Liao River valley, experienced soldiers who had fought across China and had no particular reason to expect what was coming. The Chinese 70th Corps gave ground — as it had been ordered to — but did so on its own terms, occupying and then abandoning successive pieces of high ground along both banks of the river, making the Japanese advance uncomfortable and costly. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the 33rd Division was being drawn forward into terrain that favored the defender. By March 18 and 19, the 33rd Division had pushed all the way to Guzhu'ao and Huamenlo — a considerable advance, but one that had taken the division far from its base at Anyi. And it was here, far from support and with flanks increasingly exposed, that the Chinese blocking forces closed in. Chinese infantry, who had been waiting in prepared positions in the high ground overlooking the river valley, launched coordinated counter-attacks that struck the 33rd Division from multiple directions. The fighting was fierce and costly. In two days of close combat, the division suffered more than 2,500 casualties — a grievous toll that represented a significant fraction of its effective strength. The northern column had been stopped dead. On March 19, Sakurai ordered the 33rd Division to reverse course. By March 23, after four days of painful withdrawal under pressure, it had pulled back to Anyi — the same place it had started. The northern prong of the Japanese offensive had accomplished nothing except the loss of thousands of men. In the south, the Independent Mixed 20th Brigade had a rougher start. Its initial attempt to cross the Gan-Jin river junction at noon on March 15 was repulsed by Chinese defenders, and it was only under cover of darkness that the brigade managed to force a crossing. Once across, it moved westward along the south bank of the Jin River, but progress was slow and contested. A detachment — the Gan River Detachment — ran into fierce resistance from the 26th Division of the Chinese 49th Corps on March 19. The brigade's main body meanwhile fought its way through the 51st Division of the 74th Corps, but the 107th Division and elements of the 51st managed to contain the advance at the Laichunling–Zhutoushan line. On the night of March 20, the main body of the 20th Brigade crossed the Jin River at Huifu to link up with the 34th Division — but a portion of its troops, cut off on the south bank, was destroyed by Chinese forces. The southern column was across the Jin River, but it had taken losses and was already engaged in ways its planners had not anticipated. In the center, the 34th Division fared best in the early going. Ōga's division moved westward from Xishan along the Xiang–Gan Highway on March 16, and by the 17th had captured Gao'an — a meaningful early success. The Chinese 74th Corps, executing Luo's plan faithfully, dispatched only screening forces east of the Tangpu River to slow the Japanese advance rather than contesting it decisively. The main body of the 74th Corps fell back to the third-line positions at Sixi, Guanqiao, and Tangpu, preparing the killing ground that Luo had designated. Simultaneously, the 26th Division and most of the 105th Division from the 49th Corps were shifted across the Gan River to operate south of the Jin River on the Japanese left flank, and the 72nd Corps was ordered to maneuver on a wide envelopment around Daxia and south of Ganfang. By March 20–21, the 34th Division had pressed forward to attack the Chinese positions at Sixi and Guanqiao. Ōga's men were confident — they had taken Gao'an, they were moving, and the objective of Shanggao lay within reach. But as the division pushed toward Shangjijia, it ran squarely into the 57th and 58th Divisions of the 74th Corps, fighting with a tenacity that told the Japanese plainly enough: this was where the Chinese intended to stand. The week of March 21–24 brought the battle to its crisis. The 34th Division hammered at the Chinese positions defending Shanggao itself, while on the flanks, the fighting took on a character that neither side had entirely anticipated. On March 21, General Wang Yaowu — commanding the 74th Corps from his headquarters in Shanggao — decided it was time to do more than absorb Japanese blows. He ordered General Li Tianxia to clear Japanese forces from the south bank of the Jin River and advance on Gao'an, with the aim of cutting the 34th Division's supply line and threatening its rear. It was an aggressive move, and if it had worked, it might have produced a decisive result earlier than history would record. It did not work — at least not immediately. That very evening, the Independent Mixed 20th Brigade, which had been reorganizing after the chaos of the river crossing, launched a powerful offensive at dawn on the 22nd. Li Tianxia's lead elements had barely set out from Shitou Street when they collided head-on with the main force of the 20th Brigade, which had crossed back from the north bank of the Jin River. The Japanese thrust was coordinated and aggressive: one column circled wide to attack Lazhu Mountain; another swung south of Hu Family west of Shitou Street to strike Li's division in the flank and rear; and nine aircraft with four artillery pieces bombarded the Chinese positions from north to south. Li's division could not hold against this convergent assault and fell back to the high ground southwest of Shitou Street. Wang Yaowu reacted quickly. He ordered Li's main body to wheel left to face the new threat and simultaneously dispatched the Army's Field Supplementary Regiment — held in reserve near Yintang — on a forced march to Huayang to block the Japanese westward drive. This regiment, racing down roads strafed by nine enemy aircraft, covered 15 li per hour and seized Huayang and the high ground to its northeast by around seven in the morning. By nine, the 20th Brigade arrived in strength and — supported by more than ten aircraft — launched a fierce assault on the regiment's positions. The regiment's officers and men held firm, taking heavy casualties but refusing to break. Frustrated at Huayang, the 20th Brigade shifted its effort to the Kuang Family area, linking up with over a thousand men who had crossed from Baichetou to the south bank and pushing along the river toward Xiongfang in an attempt to outflank the Chinese left wing. The Supplementary Regiment sent its 1st Battalion with a mortar company to meet this threat, and the two forces met in a fierce engagement. When the Japanese reinforced their assault and deployed incendiary bombs and poison gas, Xiongfang fell by early afternoon — but Li Tianxia immediately sent two regiments from his right flank to take it back, and by midnight the position was in Chinese hands again. Shitou Street and Jigong Ridge were simultaneously recaptured. The Independent Mixed 20th Brigade now found itself in an increasingly uncomfortable position, fighting with the Jin River at its back and the initiative slipping away. Meanwhile, the main event was being fought in the rubble and ridgelines around Shanggao itself. From March 22 to 25, the 34th Division and whatever remnants of the 20th Brigade could contribute threw themselves repeatedly at the defensive line anchored on Stone Arch Bridge, Xia Po Bridge, Xu Lou, Pan Family Bridge, Cloud Head Mountain, and Lei Family Mountain. This was not the fluid, mobile warfare that the Japanese had envisioned but brutal, grinding attritional combat for individual strongpoints and ridgelines, with positions changing hands multiple times in a single day. The Japanese air arm was deeply involved. Ōga's division had close air support that could operate even in poor weather, and Group 3 of the Japanese Air Force hammered the Chinese positions with sustained effort. On the morning of March 24, after the 34th Division fed in more than 3,000 additional troops transferred across the Jin River, the Air Force dispatched over seventy aircraft that dropped more than 1,700 bombs, largely destroying the defensive positions of Liao Lingqi's division. The Japanese exploited the resulting chaos and twice broke through gaps in the line — but were driven out each time by Chinese counterattacks. At noon, enemy aircraft bombarded in relays and Japanese infantry broke through at Xia Po Bridge. It was at this moment that Li Hanqing, commanding the Chinese infantry defense in that sector, did what officers throughout history have done when systems fail and only personal example can stem the tide: he personally led his officer cadre in repeated counter-attacks, hand-to-hand fighting in the rubble until the Japanese were finally expelled. By this point, the 34th Division's offensive capacity was nearly spent. At the same time — and this was the critical shift that would determine the battle's outcome — General Luo Zhuoying recognized that the moment to spring the trap had arrived. The northern column had already been broken and sent reeling back toward Anyi. The southern column was pinned against the Jin River with its back to the water. The central column was bled white against the defenses of Shanggao. Luo now ordered all his armies to close in from multiple directions. On the morning of March 22, he had already begun revising his orders; by noon on the 23rd, the forces of Liu Duoquan and Li Jue had occupied Shitou Street, Guanqiao Street, and Yanggong Market, pressing on Huifu and Gaoyao. The encirclement of the 34th Division was not yet complete, but its shape was unmistakably forming. By March 25, the 34th Division knew it was in mortal danger. Surrounded on three sides, its ammunition running low and its casualty lists growing by the hour, the division urgently appealed to the 11th Army for rescue. The message that arrived in Hankou was a shock. General Marube and his staff, who had remained at their distant headquarters throughout the battle without establishing a forward command post, had not properly grasped the scale of the disaster unfolding in Jiangxi. The lack of coordination between the 33rd and 34th Divisions — the structural flaw that had been built into the operation from its conception — had allowed Luo Zhuoying to defeat each column separately, and now the central column faced annihilation. The 11th Army responded in a scramble. Chief of Staff Kinoshita was dispatched by aircraft to Nanchang with Operations Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Yamaguchi and Captain Ōne to organize a relief operation. The 33rd Division — barely recovered from its own battering in the north — was ordered to sortie immediately and fight its way to the 34th Division's relief. Sakurai organized his battered 33rd Division into three rescue columns. Infantry Brigade Commander Araki Shōji took the right column, leading Infantry Regiment 215 with one mountain artillery battalion. Infantry Regiment 214 formed the left column. The divisional commander himself led the central column with the main divisional force. On March 24 and 25, all three columns sortied from strongpoints at Niuxing, Fengxin, and other positions, attacking across the Wuqiao River and through Cunqian Street toward Tangpu and Guanqiao. The relief operation brought the battle to its most complicated moment. On the morning of March 25, the 33rd Division launched a fierce assault on the forces that Luo Zhuoying had positioned to tighten the encirclement from the north — striking Zhang Yanchuan's division at Kengkou Leng, Jiezipo, and Nancha Luo. Zhang's division, struck simultaneously from the front and rear, withdrew at dusk to near Tu Di Wang Temple, where it linked up with Tang Boyin's division. What happened next became one of the most controversial decisions of the entire battle. Zhang Yanchuan was serving as deputy army commander in the absence of Li Jue from the front. Surveying the situation — his own division under heavy pressure, the 33rd Division's relief columns pushing aggressively — Zhang concluded that the position was untenable. On his own authority, without authorization from Luo Zhuoying or any superior commander, he withdrew both his own and Tang Boyin's divisions to Fenghuang Market and Zhuangfang. The consequence was immediate and severe. The withdrawal opened a corridor through which the 33rd Division entered Guanqiao and linked up with the encircled 34th Division. An encirclement that had taken days of blood and sacrifice to construct was torn open by a single unauthorized decision. Luo Zhuoying, when he received word of Zhang's withdrawal the following morning, was furious — but he could not change what had already happened. He could only adapt. The breakout itself was an ordeal. A portion of the 34th Division that attempted to escape to the east was intercepted near Huifu by a division of the 49th Corps and lost roughly half its strength before being compelled to turn back. The main body ultimately broke out on March 27, withdrawing in march order that told its own story of disaster: headquarters, baggage, artillery, casualties, field hospital, rear guard — all moving in what the records describe as "a wretched state." On the night of March 27, Japanese troops escorting the 34th Division's field hospital — a field artillery company of the 8th Battery — were completely annihilated in a Chinese night attack. When the division reached Longtuan Xu on March 28, the stretcher-bearer column carrying the wounded stretched some seven to eight kilometers along the road. That same day, the 33rd Division's Infantry Regiment 214 finally made contact with the 34th Division's headquarters, completing what amounted to a rescue of men who had already endured their defeat. The 33rd Division's mountain artillery batteries exhausted their entire ammunition supply covering the retreat and required emergency aerial resupply drops to continue. The 34th Division limped back to its original garrison on April 2. Despite the setback caused by Zhang Yanchuan's unauthorized withdrawal, Luo Zhuoying did not abandon his design. Assessing his situation on the morning of March 26, he found reason for cautious optimism: Wang Yaowu's army was still making progress at Shanggao; the Japanese south of the Jin River had largely been cleared; and Sichuan Army and Northeastern Army units that had been moving to reinforce the battle had now reached the field, meaning Chinese forces retained significant numerical superiority. He resolved to execute a second encirclement. At nine in the morning of March 26, Luo issued strict orders: Zhang Yanchuan's and Tang Boyin's divisions were to immediately comply with their original orders and block the enemy near Guanqiao; Yu Chengwan's division was to attack northward via Pan Family Bridge; Liao Lingqi's and Song Yingzhong's divisions were to press toward Guanqiao with full force; Wang Kejun's division was to strike the enemy's flank and rear east of Guanqiao; Fu Yi's division was to advance south of Jiang Family Isle; and Chen Liangji's division was to swing southeast via Changpu to complete the enemy's destruction. The second ring was being drawn. On March 28, as the 34th Division's battered column trudged eastward toward survival, Wang Kejun's division advancing from Yanggong Market moved to intercept it. The Chinese occupied high ground north and south of Yanggong Market and along Mozi Ridge, and what followed was a grinding all-day battle that fixed the Japanese column at the Xiama Bei–Huxing Ridge line. Part of the 20th Brigade, moving up from Gao'an to assist the withdrawing 34th Division, was blocked near Long Tu Market. Liao Lingqi's division pursued the enemy rear guard to the Changling–Manmei high ground, where the fighting erupted with renewed intensity. At noon, part of Li Tianxia's division arrived and deployed along the Shangluoxiang–Shanyuan–Fangtounao line to harass the Japanese right flank; part of Yu Chengwan's division reached Longxing Mountain and outflanked Guanqiao Street from the south. The surviving Japanese defenders in Guanqiao withdrew into the town for a last stand, and after Liao's division pressed the assault, street fighting raged until five in the afternoon, when over 600 defenders were annihilated. Over 2,000 troops of the Independent Mixed 20th Brigade conducted a fighting withdrawal from Long Tu Market and Yanggong Market, covered by Japanese aircraft bombing to shield the 34th Division's retreat. By noon on March 30, the Japanese had abandoned both strongpoints and scattered northeastward. One group of over 600 men fled directly into the main positions of Zhang Yanchuan's division — an ironic fate, given Zhang's earlier withdrawal — and were largely annihilated. The encircling forces had been essentially dispersed, and the two pursuit columns now pressed forward under the overall direction of General Xue Yue, who had assumed personal coordination of the chase. On March 27, Luo Zhuoying — confident that victory was secured — issued a general order for a final offensive and announced substantial cash rewards to his troops: prizes offered for the capture of Japanese officers, artillery pieces, regimental colors, and other materiel. The rewards were both a practical incentive and a mark of how far the battle had tipped. By midnight on March 31, Chen Hongshi's advance column had recovered Gao'an; Wang Tiehan's division had recovered Xiangfu Guan. On April 2, the divisions of Zhang Yanchuan and Song Yingzhong recovered Fengxin; that afternoon Wang Tiehan's division took back Xishan and Wanshou Palace — the very base from which the 34th Division had launched its offensive. By April 3, the pursuing armies had reached the vicinity of Dacheng and Ganzhoujie. On April 8 and 9, the 70th Corps recovered the outpost strongpoints around Anyi before halting operations. The Japanese had retreated into their original positions and were defending from prepared terrain. The pursuit was over. The Battle of Shanggao had lasted nineteen days and nights. No battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War was ever free of the fog of competing claims, and Shanggao was no exception. On March 29, before the pursuit had even concluded, Luo Zhuoying telegraphed Chiang Kai-shek with his accounting of the victory. His numbers were dramatic: Major General Iwanaga, the Japanese infantry commander, killed; regimental commander Colonel Hamada, killed; over 15,000 Japanese killed or wounded in total. Chinese losses, Luo reported, exceeded 20,000. Ten guns, over a thousand rifles, and numerous machine guns had been captured. His superior, General Xue Yue, was skeptical. In a telegram to Chiang Kai-shek on April 5, Xue reduced Luo's numbers by twenty percent, reporting 12,520 Japanese killed or wounded and 14 prisoners captured. The discrepancy between two Chinese commanders reporting on the same battle speaks to the difficulty of battlefield accounting in any era, and suggests something of the competitive pressures that shaped how Chinese commanders reported their victories to Chongqing. The official Chinese histories, compiled after the war in the History of the War of Resistance, reported approximately 15,000 Japanese killed or wounded, 17 prisoners taken, and significant quantities of captured materiel: 6 mountain guns, 1 mortar, 24 light machine guns, 408 rifles, 24 grenade launchers, and over 111,717 rounds of various ammunition. Chinese casualties, by the same records, were 17,119 killed or wounded and 2,814 missing. Japanese records for the battle do not survive — a consequence of the wholesale destruction of Imperial Army documentation at the war's end. Contemporary scholars, working from other sources, estimate actual Japanese combat losses at approximately 5,500 killed and wounded. This is substantially lower than the Chinese claims, as was nearly always the case in the war, but represents a significant defeat by any measure: roughly a quarter of the force committed, many of them veterans impossible to replace. Chiang Kai-shek subsequently awarded the victorious Chinese units a commendation prize of 150,000 yuan — a substantial sum that marked the battle's significance in Nationalist eyes. The outcome at Shanggao was not accidental. Several interlocking factors combined to produce a Chinese victory, and each deserves consideration. The most fundamental was Luo Zhuoying's defensive plan. The decision to trade space for time — to absorb the Japanese advance through three successive defensive lines rather than contest the frontier — required both tactical confidence and a willingness to accept initial setbacks that could easily be misread as defeat. Chinese forces had to give ground, and they did. They had to suffer through the early days of Japanese advance without breaking and running, drawing the enemy forward and allowing the encirclement to take shape. That they largely succeeded in executing this plan reflects the improving quality of the Nationalist Army by 1941: better trained, better led at the operational level, and — critically — equipped with a strategic design that matched the actual balance of forces. The defeat in detail of the Japanese columns was equally important. By neutralizing the 33rd Division in the north before it could contribute to the central effort, and by pinning the 20th Brigade against the Jin River with its back to the water, Luo's forces ensured that the 34th Division faced the third-line defenses essentially alone — outnumbered, overextended, and unsupported. The Japanese operational concept had been a three-pronged convergence; what actually materialized was a single exhausted division hammering at a prepared defense while two other columns were rendered ineffective. The absence of coordination within the Japanese 11th Army was a gift that kept giving throughout the battle. No forward command post. No mechanism for the divisions to adjust their operations in response to each other's situations. No ability to recognize, in real time, that the northern column was being destroyed and redirect resources accordingly. General Marube's decision to remain at Hankou while his men died in Jiangxi was not merely an administrative failure; it was an operational catastrophe. Japanese commanders acknowledged this failing explicitly after the battle, but the acknowledgment changed nothing for the dead. Zhang Yanchuan's unauthorized withdrawal — the single most consequential individual decision of the battle — ultimately prevented a complete annihilation of the 34th Division rather than affecting the battle's outcome. The 34th Division escaped; but it did so in a "wretched state," having lost enormous numbers of men and equipment. It broke out, not triumphed. The encirclement Luo had constructed was torn open, but the Japanese paid dearly for the breach. The consequences of Shanggao rippled outward in ways that shaped the subsequent course of the war in central China. The transfer of the 33rd Division to North China — the original logistical rationale for the entire operation — was delayed by the division's involvement and subsequent losses at Shanggao. When it finally arrived at the Battle of Central Plains the following month, it did so on the eve of battle with no time for preparation or orientation, entering combat under severely disadvantaged conditions. The operation that was supposed to facilitate a smooth redeployment had instead damaged one of the two units involved and delayed the other. For the Chinese 74th Corps, Shanggao had an ironic consequence. The Japanese 11th Army, following the battle, formally designated the 74th Corps as a priority target — a "standing enemy" and directed its forces to seek out and destroy it in future operations. At the First Battle of Changsha that September, the 11th Army specifically oriented its forces against the 74th Corps, a testament to the lasting impression that corps's fierce resistance at Shanggao had made on its adversaries. The compliment of being specifically targeted by the enemy was one the 74th Corps had earned in blood at Shanggao's ridgelines and shattered bridges. More broadly, the battle was widely regarded at the time, and has been regarded since, as one of the most significant Chinese tactical victories of the first four years of the War of Resistance. Its significance lay not only in the casualties inflicted — those were contested and probably inflated in the Chinese records — but in what it demonstrated. The improving tactical and operational competence of the Nationalist Army was on display. The deliberate defense, the layered withdrawal, the coordinated encirclement — these were not the operations of an army that had been fighting desperately for survival since 1937 and had learned nothing. They were the operations of an army that had studied its defeats and adapted. Shanggao did not change the strategic situation in China. The front in Jiangxi remained where it had been; the Japanese still occupied Nanchang and the major cities; Chiang Kai-shek was still in Chongqing and the war was still far from over. But it demonstrated something important: that the Chinese Army, given capable commanders, a sound plan, and the discipline to execute it, could do more than survive Japanese offensives. It could reverse them, encircle them, and pursue them back to where they came from. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In March–April 1940, Japanese forces attacked Shanggao with a limited, multi-pronged plan. Chinese troops used elastic defense and coordinated counter-moves, turning initial advantages into a trap. After intense fighting and air strikes, a coordinated encirclement and timely breakout routed the Japanese, forcing retreat despite their numbers in a costly battle.
Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Johnny Lynum.
Send me a DM here (it doesn't let me respond), OR email me: imagineabetterworld2020@gmail.comToday I'm so honored to introduce you all to: Satanic and Masonic Ritual Abuse, MK ULTRA, and organized abuse survivor, overcomer and now whistleblower for the first time ever today, creative writer, gardener, talented musician, singer and songwriter, dancer, content creator, and the brightest and bravest light in the darkness, DianaA little bit about Diana and what we will be discussing today:Diana was born and raised under the neon sky of Las Vegas, Nevada - a city that dazzles the world with spectacle while hiding its deepest shadows. She comes from a lineage that loomed large across her childhood: granddaughter of a 32nd degree Freemason of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine and a Purple Heart–awarded Air Force veteran; and niece of a Nuclear Health Physicist at the Nevada Testing Site. Her family's names, titles, and networks formed a powerful backdrop - one that Diana would someday outshine through courage, clarity, and a relentless devotion to truth.From before she was born until the age of 13, Diana endured multi‑generational ritualized abuse inside a system designed to fracture memory, weaponize terror, and suppress the sacred autonomy of a child. She remembers cages and costumes; staged violence and choreographed “performances”; rituals in deserts and parks; music used like a metronome for fear;and electric shocks meant to rewrite what the mind could bear to hold. There are lodges and locations that live in her memory, rooms of role‑play and indoctrination, and the adult faces of collusion. There are stories she once wrote as “fiction” to safely tell the truth. There are nights of survival that no language fully contains.And yet - Diana is still here.What they tried to shatter, she gathered. What they tried to bury, she unearthed. Piece by careful piece, she recovered memories and meaning, walking back through the labyrinth with a light she had to build herself. She learned how trauma attempts to divide a life into locked rooms—and how, with patience and steadfast love for the self, those rooms can be opened, honored, and reintegrated. She came to understand that the most radical act in the aftermath of systematic dehumanization is to insist on one's humanity—publicly, powerfully, and without apology.Today, Diana stands as a survivor, a truth‑teller, and a fierce advocate for others emerging from hidden violence. She speaks for the child who was silenced, and for every survivor who still feels watched, doubted, or alone. She knows the architecture of coercion - how it recruits authority, how it hides in plain sight, how it scripts stories for the powerless - and she dismantles it by telling her own story first. In a world that prefers comfortable myths over uncomfortable realities, Diana chooses reality, and in doing so, she gives other survivors a map.Las Vegas taught Diana about illusion. Survival taught her about revelation. She has learned to live in the bright noon of her truth - a light that refuses to flatter the past or dim itself for anyone's comfort. Where others built cages, she builds doorways. Where others arranged rituals of control, she practices rituals of restoration: rest, remembrance, relationship, responsibility, and repair.This is not a story of what was done to her. This is a story of what she has done with it.Diana is the storm that breaks the script. She is testimony and tenderness, endurance and emergence. She is proof that memory can be mended, that dignity can be reclaimed, that the body can become a home again. She is a survivor and advocate who meets people in the dark without pretending the dark is light - and then walks with them until they can see the horizon for themselves.In a city famous for borrowed light, Diana carries her own. It does not blink. It does not sell. It is not for show. It is the steady flame of a life remade - one that warms, one that guides, and one that calls the lost back to themselves.Diana survived. Diana speaks. Diana leads. And because she does, more of us will live free.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) Podcast: Watchdog Report
During long flights or extended air combat missions, aerial refueling tankers can eliminate the need for military planes to land. Having this capability is vital for some missions, like rapid long-distance strikes or when landing to refuel isn'…
Monica Reza and Gen. Neil McCasland are missing. Melissa Casias disappeared June 26, 2025.Monica Reza disappeared June 22, 2025.General Neil McCasland disappeared February 27, 2026.Casias worked for Los Alamos.Reza helped develop materials designed to survive one of the harshest environments in engineering: rocket engines.Neil McCasland oversaw the U.S. Air Force's top research laboratory, the AFRL, which connected them all.All vanished.Now, people are noticing possible connections to other missing or deceased scientists and military personnel.Episode Links: Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/v7a2bFVpSqMSubscribe to PHARRAOH on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PHARRAOHSearching for missing hiker Monica Reza video by @PHARRAOH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyYsHmsAJ_ULASD Missing Persons Policy https://pars.lasd.org/Viewer/Manuals/10008/Content/12336Crescenta Valley Weekly https://www.crescentavalleyweekly.com/news/07/03/2025/update-on-efforts-to-locate-missing-hiker-monica-reza/The SentinelNet on Reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/1s1jhs2/update_monica_jacinto_reza_disappearance_lasd/?solution=82e4c0967d1cdecf82e4c0967d1cdecf&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ecbc8f1e74bd6820864f295ff3495ce1b7&jsc_orig_r=&solution=80275b8905cc6f5580275b8905cc6f55&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ec2061dc8c33c2992a31add99a5fc67a47&jsc_orig_r=&share_id=qQVk0_yfCtXmnmB8QUmgK&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=4Solve the Case Monica Reza file https://www.solvethecase.org/case/2025-56/monica-rezaMissing North Carolina woman found https://abc7ny.com/post/michelle-hundely-smith-found-rockingham-county-woman-missing-2001-alive-north-carolina-deputies-say/18639377/Missing scientist and general playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUBNCmjIGgJj34s02zqwIvv_hCASUdo9_Subscribe (free) to ATU on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@allthingsunexplained Shop: https://all-things-unexplained-shop.fourthwall.com Website/support: https://allthingsunexplained.com Guest list: https://allthingsunexplained.transistor.fm/people Watch Dr. Mounce in Episode 0 of Beast Games by @MrBeast: https://youtu.be/gs8qfL9PNac?si=whD290YawP8WBSTH Watch Larry as #76 on @MrBeast : https://youtu.be/9WEQts7b8Pw?si=yVDRYlUcirHi-Pmx _______________________Hosted by Dr. Tim Mounce—best-selling author, Audible narrator, and Beast Games (by @MrBeast ) Season 1 contestant #718—alongside occasional cohosts The Unexplained CJ and Smitty._______________________Featured in Patricia Cornwell's New York Times Bestselling Novel Identity Unknown:“Earth was plan B. It's where the Martians escaped thousands of years ago when their own planet was about to be destroyed,” Marino replies as if it's commonly known.No doubt he learned this and more from All Things Unexplained, Ancient Aliens or one of his other favorite podcasts and TV shows. He and my sister both tune in religiously, and it makes for lively dinner conversations when all of us are together.— Identity Unknown, p. 164_______________________Ranked #9 Alien Podcast, #8 Bigfoot Podcast, and top 40 UFO Podcast by MillionPodcasts.Top 15 Science & Society Podcast.People's Choice Podcast Award Nominee._______________________Follow All Things Unexplained: YouTube https://youtube.com/@allthingsunexplained X https://x.com/@ATUnexplained IG https://instagram.com/allthingsunexplainedpodcast TikTok https://tiktok.com/@allthingsunexplained FB https://facebook.com/allthingsunexplainedpodcast Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-unexplained/id1518410497 Email us: allthingsunexplained@yahoo.com Music Credits sourced via YouTube Audio Library.Almost in F - Tranquillity by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100394Artist: http://incompetech.com/ ★ Support this podcast ★
I'd love to hear your thoughts - send me a text hereWorld War II continues in Europe and the Pacific, while Bob Dole continues to train on the home front and wonders if he will ever make it overseas, like his younger brother Kenny who is an experienced combat veteran by summer 1944. When Dole gets another chance to attend OCS and become an officer, he jumps at it - and this time he gets a class slot. The Army has a shortage of lieutenants and needs to quickly train more. Dole is happy to replace an LT but never stops to ask why so many need to be replaced.
On this Zero Limits Podcast Matty Morris chats with Jason Hiscox State Emergency Service Vertical Rescue Operator.Jason grew up in Coffs Harbour — a self-described ratbag who needed a magistrate's wake-up call to turn his life around after multiple criminal convictions.His son Nate was born in 2012 and changed he's prospective everything. Jason joined the NSW SES, became a Vertical Rescue and Road Crash Rescue Instructor, rose to Deputy Rescue Officer, and spent over a decade responding to some of the most confronting jobs emergency services will ever see — including leading flood boat crews through the 2017 Lismore floods, earning the National Emergency Medal.On February 28, 2015, he drove home from a training exercise to find three ambulances in his driveway. His son Nate, two weeks from his third birthday, had drowned in the family pool. Three months later, Jason was back in training completing Swift Water Rescue.He kept showing up. In uniform, and as a father.Send us a text however note we cannot reply through these means. Please message the instagram or email if you are wanting a response. Support the showWebsite - www.zerolimitspodcast.comInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/zero.limits.podcast/?hl=enHost - Matty Morris www.instagram.com/matty.m.morrisFor the new Zero Limits Pre workout and creatine supplements head to link belowZero Limits Supplements - www.zerolimitssupplements.comSponsorsInstagram - @gatorzaustraliawww.gatorzaustralia.com15% Discount Code - ZERO15(former/current military & first responders 20% discount to order please email orders@gatorzaustralia.com.auInstagram - @3zeroscoffee3 Zeros Coffee - www.3zeroscoffee.com.au10% Discount Code - 3ZLimitsInstagram - @getsome_auGetSome Jocko Fuel - www.getsome.com.au10% Discount Code - ZEROLIMITS
Episode Summary: The ties between the French Air Force and U.S. Air Force go back to the dawn of aviation and have been intertwined ever since: from early Wright Brothers flights, the Lafayette Escadrille, World War II, operations in Afghanistan, and so much more. Today, this relationship is more important than ever given the challenges facing our respective nations. Brigadier General Pierre Gaudillière, Commander of the French Air Combat Command, joins us to explore how France views the current security environment through an airpower lens. Credits: Host: Heather "Lucky" Penney, Director of Research, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Producer: Shane Thin Executive Producer: Douglas Birkey Guest: Brig. Gen. Houston "Slider" Cantwell, USAF (Ret.), Senior Resident Fellow for Airpower Studies, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Guest: Brig. Gen. Pierre Gaudillière, Commander, French Air Combat Command Links: Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3GbA5Of Website: https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MitchellStudies Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mitchell.Institute.Aerospace LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nzBisb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitchellstudies/ #MitchellStudies #AerospaceAdvantage #Allies #France #AirForce
In 1861, one man and a “gas bag” filled with hydrogen sparked America's obsession with going higher, farther, into the unknown. In this episode, Roman and journalist Jack Hitt tell the story of Thaddeus Lowe — showman, scientist, and dreamer — whose balloon flight from Cincinnati went wildly off course and straight into the Civil War. Lowe pivoted to create the US military's first aerial reconnaissance unit, a precursor to the Air Force, and today his legacy spans generations— stretching all the way to the dark side of the moon. A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In this SITS classic from 2017, we speak with Mark O'Connell. With UFOs once again dominating headlines through government hearings, whistleblower claims, and renewed public interest, we're revisiting this conversation with O'Connell about his book,The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs, chronicling the life of legendary astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek. Originally hired by the Air Force to debunk UFO sightings, Hynek's years investigating unexplained cases led him to a startling conclusion: UFOs deserved serious scientific attention. Through unprecedented access to Hynek's personal and professional files, including his time working with Steven Spielberg, O'Connell paints a compelling portrait of the man who transformed from skeptic to pioneer in UFO research. At a time when many of the same questions Hynek raised decades ago are resurfacing today, this episode remains more relevant than ever. Buy the book: https://amzn.eu/d/05vp8xtW Use promo code: SOMEWHERE15 for 15% OFF Anomalous Cards: https://www.letsgetanomalous.com/ Send us a voicemail with questions, comments, or topic suggestions: https://www.speakpipe.com/SomewhereSkiesPod Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All socials and books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Follow Suzanne on X: https://x.com/csuzannelanders Email: ryan.sprague51@gmail.com Opening theme song by Septembryo Closing song by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #DisclosureDay #UFO #UAP #SomewhereInTheSkies #JAllenHynek #UFOPodcast #AlienLife #Disclosure #ParanormalPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Arizona state representative and Air Force veteran Nick Kupper (Kupper4Arizona.com) was handed separation papers three weeks before his 19-year mark — one year short of retirement — for refusing a COVID shot the DOD was legally required to admit in court had never actually been manufactured in its fully approved form until six months after the Air Force's compliance deadline. Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.
──────────────────────────────────────── [00:05:00] Hegseth Quotes Psalm 144 as God's Blessing for War — Knight: David Prayed Before Every Battle and Never Assumed God Was With Him David used the Urim and Thummim to ask God's will before war. Hegseth has no such instrument and no declaration of war from God or Congress. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:15:00] Dispensationalism's Core Error: Treating the Shadow as Greater Than the Reality It Points To Knight: Hebrews was written to people returning to the shadow of Judaism rather than the substance in Christ — Hegseth and Huckabee are the Judaizers of Galatians, replacing Christ with a political state. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:28:00] Nick Kupper: The COVID Shot Was Never Legally Approved — Pfizer Didn't Manufacture an Approved Version Until January 2022 DOD admitted in Kupper's lawsuit that nothing was fully approved until June 2022 — by which time the Air Force had already kicked people out for the unlawfully mandated product. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:38:00] Kupper's Base Immunologist Admitted He Had More Antibodies Than the Vaccinated — His Religious Accommodation Was Denied Anyway Kupper had natural immunity; his immunologist confirmed he had more antibodies than someone with both shots. Every single religious accommodation filed was denied. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:50:00] Kupper Was Given Separation Papers Three Weeks Before His 19-Year Mark — One Year Short of a Full Retirement A class-wide court injunction from attorney Aaron Siri covered Kupper the day after his separation papers arrived — but thousands of others had no such protection. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:02:00] $6 Billion Was Already Appropriated to These Service Members — the Military Used It for Something Else When It Kicked Them Out Kupper: every dollar was authorized in the NDAA but never spent on the personnel allocated — it could be repaid to the 8,000 dismissed without any new appropriation. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:12:00] A Technical Sergeant With Both Shots Died of Heart Failure in His Early 30s — the Air Force Stopped Updating Its COVID Death Tracker That Day The Air Force had listed 16 COVID deaths noting none were vaccinated — the day this man died with both shots on record, they stopped updating the tracker. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:22:00] 'Duty to Disobey' Documentary Releases in AMC Theaters June 30 — dutytodisobeyfilm.com Children's Health Defense produced this with service members from multiple branches; Ron Johnson appears alongside those kicked out for refusing the unlawful emergency use mandate. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:38:00] Dr. Michael Guillén: 95% of the Universe Is Invisible — Modern Cosmology Has Been in Crisis Since Hubble's Discovery in 1929 Dark matter and dark energy are completely unknown. The steady-state model was destroyed by Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding — the crisis has deepened since. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:55:00] Guillén: From Atheist to Christian Through Science — the Universe Had to Hit the Jackpot a Million Times at Every Level for Us to Exist The anthropic principle: from the quantum level to the cosmic web, everything was calibrated precisely for life — either infinite accidents or one designer. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.
──────────────────────────────────────── [00:05:00] Hegseth Quotes Psalm 144 as God's Blessing for War — Knight: David Prayed Before Every Battle and Never Assumed God Was With Him David used the Urim and Thummim to ask God's will before war. Hegseth has no such instrument and no declaration of war from God or Congress. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:15:00] Dispensationalism's Core Error: Treating the Shadow as Greater Than the Reality It Points To Knight: Hebrews was written to people returning to the shadow of Judaism rather than the substance in Christ — Hegseth and Huckabee are the Judaizers of Galatians, replacing Christ with a political state. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:28:00] Nick Kupper: The COVID Shot Was Never Legally Approved — Pfizer Didn't Manufacture an Approved Version Until January 2022 DOD admitted in Kupper's lawsuit that nothing was fully approved until June 2022 — by which time the Air Force had already kicked people out for the unlawfully mandated product. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:38:00] Kupper's Base Immunologist Admitted He Had More Antibodies Than the Vaccinated — His Religious Accommodation Was Denied Anyway Kupper had natural immunity; his immunologist confirmed he had more antibodies than someone with both shots. Every single religious accommodation filed was denied. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:50:00] Kupper Was Given Separation Papers Three Weeks Before His 19-Year Mark — One Year Short of a Full Retirement A class-wide court injunction from attorney Aaron Siri covered Kupper the day after his separation papers arrived — but thousands of others had no such protection. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:02:00] $6 Billion Was Already Appropriated to These Service Members — the Military Used It for Something Else When It Kicked Them Out Kupper: every dollar was authorized in the NDAA but never spent on the personnel allocated — it could be repaid to the 8,000 dismissed without any new appropriation. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:12:00] A Technical Sergeant With Both Shots Died of Heart Failure in His Early 30s — the Air Force Stopped Updating Its COVID Death Tracker That Day The Air Force had listed 16 COVID deaths noting none were vaccinated — the day this man died with both shots on record, they stopped updating the tracker. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:22:00] 'Duty to Disobey' Documentary Releases in AMC Theaters June 30 — dutytodisobeyfilm.com Children's Health Defense produced this with service members from multiple branches; Ron Johnson appears alongside those kicked out for refusing the unlawful emergency use mandate. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:38:00] Dr. Michael Guillén: 95% of the Universe Is Invisible — Modern Cosmology Has Been in Crisis Since Hubble's Discovery in 1929 Dark matter and dark energy are completely unknown. The steady-state model was destroyed by Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding — the crisis has deepened since. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:55:00] Guillén: From Atheist to Christian Through Science — the Universe Had to Hit the Jackpot a Million Times at Every Level for Us to Exist The anthropic principle: from the quantum level to the cosmic web, everything was calibrated precisely for life — either infinite accidents or one designer. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.
Arizona state representative and Air Force veteran Nick Kupper (Kupper4Arizona.com) was handed separation papers three weeks before his 19-year mark — one year short of retirement — for refusing a COVID shot the DOD was legally required to admit in court had never actually been manufactured in its fully approved form until six months after the Air Force's compliance deadline. Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.
Our trauma surgeon ordered an ERA Shelby Cobra replica 4.5yrs ago, and it finally arrived. While not complete, it looks terrific in a very special (and personal) blue color with Air Force fighter pilot leather jacket brown interior. We're excited!Steve-0 has a rant about the Ferrari Luce, the iconic Italian automaker's upcoming four door BEV. He hates it of course, but unlike most observers he blames it on Nepo Baby Hubris--the nepo baby in question being the great industrialist Gianni Agnelli's great grandson John Elkann, Ferrari's Board Chair.Dr Moran's trauma surgeon safety segment involves child safety, and his message is restrain your children properly and never "double buckle", ie - put two kids in one seatbelt.Finally, Steve-0 spotted a Chris Bangle era BMW 645i coupe, and it looked really good. Bangle period BMWs were very controversial when they debuted 25yrs ago, but time has been kind to them and they look good today.#carsoncallpodcast #automobile #eracobra #cobrareplica #ferrariluce #ferrarilegacy #ferrarilucesucks #traumasurgeonsafety #banglebmw #bmw645i #autotrends
Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, an in-depth investigatory show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (6/11/26). As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant. !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble"); Rumble("play", {"video":"v78yzmk","div":"rumble_v78yzmk"}); Source Links (In Chronological Order): How Iran's Counter-Strikes On Israeli Bases Are Reshaping The Middle East TheLastAmericanVagabond TheLastAmericanVagabondChannel 06/01 12pm ET | The Fein Print - The Truth Is In The Fein Print How Iran's Counter-Strikes On Israeli Bases Are Reshaping The Middle East New Tab Exclusive: Political pressure threatens to undercut EPA science evaluating chemical safety for consumers, sources say | CNN Politics Exclusive: Political pressure threatens to undercut EPA science evaluating chemical safety for consumers, sources say | CNN Politics MAHA Bait and Switch? Trump's EPA Calls for Review of Fluoride Science While Ignoring Historic Ruling on Fluoride Federal Court Overturns Historic Fluoride Ruling as Trump Admin Fights to Keep Fluoride in the Water New Tab (9) Thomas Massie on X: "Hopefully, @TPUSA is still opposed to warrantless spying. A vote to extend the unconstitutional FISA 702 program *without warrants* will likely happen today in the House. I'll vote No." / X (9) Justin Amash on X: "“FISA is a critical tool that allows the U.S. government to spy on American citizens without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” —Scott Bessent, translated" / X (9) Justin Amash on X: "There are so many things to criticize Democrats over, but here you are slamming them for blocking unconstitutional spying on Americans. You absolutely suck at this." / X (9) Derrick Evans on X: "I no longer care that the left is stealing elections. I care about the fact that Republicans have done NOTHING about the left stealing elections. Zero consequences for their actions. We are at the point of having to ask, are the Republicans in on it? https://t.co/aZoUHpQhHC" / X (9) Acyn on X: "Trump: They rigged the election. It's been proven. We have things that you won't believe. When we release the full files, you're not going to believe how crooked election was. https://t.co/0eWtQgBYNs" / X New Tab (9) Drop Site on X: "The Defense Intelligence Agency has reportedly raised its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to “critical” — its highest level, now placing the U.S. ally above some adversarial nations. American personnel in Israel discovered spyware on their phones. Targets of the https://t.co/B6GGSJrg4d" / X (9) Ron Paul on X: "Just days after news broke that the National Defense Authorization Act for next year would virtually merge the US and Israeli militaries, we now are hearing that the Intelligence Authorization Act is doing the same thing with the US Intelligence Community! Introduced by Sen." / X Text - S.4615 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress New NDAA (Further) Integrates US and Israeli Militaries & The Ongoing Axios/Iran War Deception (12) Ben Freeman on X: "Key provision buried at the very end of the just released House Defense funding bill
Allen Nejah, CEO and System Solution Architect of SunMan Engineering, is driven by a lifelong passion for aerospace, invention, and solving complex engineering problems. From dreaming of becoming an astronaut as a child to working with major aerospace, defense, automotive, medical, robotics, IoT, and semiconductor organizations, Allen has built a career around turning ambitious technical ideas into real-world systems. We explore The Allen Nejah Engineering Framework — Live with Integrity, Be Intensely Curious, Get Organized, Plan Every Baby Step, and Learn from Mistakes — a practical mindset for building breakthrough technologies with discipline and resilience. Allen explains why integrity must exist not only in business relationships but also in the engineering itself, how complex projects must be broken into testable steps, and why curiosity, visualization, planning, and iteration are essential to solving problems across industries. He also shares the story behind InfiniGear, his AI-powered adaptive transmission system, and the healthcare technology inspired by his mother's experience in assisted care. — Building the Connected Car Before the iPhone with Allen Nejah Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Allen Nejah, the CEO and System Solution Architect of SunMan Engineering, dedicated to providing customers with high-quality, on-time engineering and on-budget solutions for their product development and prototyping needs. Allen, welcome to the show. Yes, that is correct. Great to have you on the show. And I’d like to ask you my favorite first question: What is your personal ‘Why,’ and how are you manifesting it in your business? So Steve, first I want to thank you for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate your time and interest. Of course. As a kid, for whatever reason, I always wanted to have an airplane manufacturing company, an aircraft manufacturing company—something I always wanted to have. And I always wanted to be an astronaut. As a matter of fact, I studied aerospace and mechanical engineering with the dream of being an astronaut, going to fly and all that. So that’s kind of something that’s still in my pocket and that I still want to do. From there, it kind of pushed me in this direction. And yeah, now I work with a number of different companies in the aerospace industry. I work with the Air Force. I’ve worked with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and a number of others. And I work on both space and aviation projects that really kind of bring my dream to life. So I still haven’t gone to outer space yet, but I still have a little more time. Yeah. Elon Musk is promising a million people, and his bonus is linked to putting a million people on Mars as the first colony. So there may still be room there. They need a lot of us to go there, trust me. Well, actually, we’re going to do a lot of activities on the Moon first, and then from there, I’m sure they’re going to be looking for older people, older men, to do some tasks over there. And I’d volunteer to go. You may be familiar with the Mars trilogy—Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars. It talks about people moving to Mars and how they terraform it. And then they figure out how to extend life to 150, 200 years. So if that works out, then maybe there’s another lifetime to be lived on Mars. Yeah. I definitely believe that we will end up living on other planets, for sure. I see that very clearly. It could be 50 years or more before we actually become a space-based civilization. But the Moon has already started, right? We’re going to be there in the next 5 to 10 years, trust me. So anyway, I’m very excited about that. Yes. Yeah, it is very exciting. What I’m looking for on this podcast—what makes it kind of unique—is that I am a junkie for frameworks and mental models. We are almost 400 episodes in, and every episode has a different mental model that our guest comes up with or shares. So think about something that helped you build your business, or maybe helped you develop your products, or how you work with your engineers, or how you work with clients. So think about something that has three to five steps or three to five aspects that create a result. That’s very clear to me. Those are the key things for any successful person. First of all, honestly, you have to be interested. You have to be in “go” mode. You cannot push somebody to start building something, like a building or actual construction, if their mind is not into it. The very first thing is, it’s got to be you. That’s number one, right? And you know it. Definitely organization is a very key factor for me. Being organized, being detail-oriented—that’s something that is super, super important. Planning and organization make a huge difference in whatever you do, right? And most importantly, integrity. I mean, that’s number one. That’s number one, number two, number three, number four—all of it. So integrity is all of it. No matter what you do, if there’s no integrity, people will walk away from you. At the beginning, every business makes mistakes, and they learn and so on. So don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay. You make a mistake, you learn from it, and then you don’t do it again, right? Learn from it. So yeah, I would say those are at least three. If anything else comes to mind, I definitely will share it with you. But the most important things are integrity, organization, and clear planning based on knowledge. Not just planning for the hell of it, but planning based on understanding what you’re doing. That’s important. Integrity comes into your personality. It comes into the quality of the work you do. It comes into the engineering you do. It comes into all of that, right? Even in engineering, it’s not only on the personal level that integrity has to be there. On the engineering level, integrity has to be there too. Whatever you do, you’ve got to make sure it’s working. One of the things we learned the hard way after 35 or 36 years is that it’s very important to have the knowledge base and to do things in a very organized way. And that’s kind of part of my personality. If I’m not confident about the end result, I don’t even commit to it. I’ve got to see it in my mind. Whatever problem comes up, if I don’t see the solution in my mind, I won’t even commit to it. It comes back to quality, integrity, and all of that. And I guess what I was going to say earlier is that everything that we do—as part of, again, the quality and integrity I mentioned—is that we have a lot of baby steps built into the process. That’s what I wanted to say earlier. So for every step, the whole plan is split into, I don’t know, tens, hundreds, or thousands of different steps and branches. Because technology is not one thing. It’s usually a combination of different sciences. So mechanical engineering, electronics, material science, firmware, AI—those are all different types of expertise. And you’ve got to bring them all together. And for all of those baby steps, you’ve got to have some sort of test at the end of each step before you move on to the next one. Iteration. Yeah. So, okay, what I’m hearing is integrity is number one. And then curiosity, perhaps. So curiosity is this driving force. Visualization is important. I’m thinking about Einstein, who said that imagination is more important than knowledge because imagination is infinite, while knowledge encircles the world. I think it was something like that. So visualization is important. Get organized. Do thorough planning. And learn from mistakes. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. That’s great. So what do you call this? Is this the Allen Nejah Framework, or what’s it called? One more thing. One more thing. Again, that’s kind of under the umbrella of integrity. So I have two families. It’s one family. I have a family at home, and I have a family at work. And believe it or not—and you already know this—we all spend more time with our family at work than with our family at home. That’s true. It’s true for me. It’s true for a lot of people. You go to work, I don’t know, from 8:00, 9:00, or 10:00 in the morning until 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, or 9:00 at night. That’s almost 12 hours. And by the time you go home at 5:00, 6:00, or 7:00, what? You spend two hours with your family, maybe three hours at most, and then it’s back to work. So the team is part of my family, and truly it is part of my family. Those are the first group of people, the first group of associates, that you have to take care of. You have to be a brother to them, be a friend to them, be a father to them, be a mother to them. Seriously, it’s all about human interaction. It’s all about, “I like you, I don’t like you,” and it goes from there. “I feel good about you. I don’t feel good about you.” And so it’s very important to have those relationships in your business, or whatever it is you do. For me, all our people, all our employees—even from 35 years ago—are still in touch with us. I have kids who came through as junior-high interns, then high-school interns, then university students, even master’s degree students. Now they’re 40 years old. And we’re still in touch. So I’m in touch with hundreds of engineers and people that I’ve worked with over the past 35 years. And that’s a lot of value. That’s the biggest asset. Yeah. Basically, they call it a school. You create a school, right? Your own professional school. That’s wonderful. So tell me about this special gear called InfiniGear. How is it special? How did you come up with it, and how is it being used? It’s an interesting question. First of all, let me explain to you very quickly what I-Gear is. So I-Gear is an AI robotic adaptive gearbox, or transmission, and that’s a mechanical transmission. It’s not an electronic transmission. It’s an actual mechanical gearbox that goes into any machinery or equipment. I mean, obviously, the one that everybody can relate to immediately is cars. Every car—not EV cars, but every car—has a transmission. A transmission usually is bigger than the engine. It’s heavier than the engine. It’s the guy that goes through all the center of the car, takes all that center, okay? That’s it—a transmission. It’s big, it’s heavy. By the way, it’s amazing how it works. It’s absolutely amazing how it works if anybody gets into a transmission and sees all of it. There are about 300 to 400 gear sets in there. There are about six or seven clutches. There’s about 3,000 to 4,000 parts in a standard transmission. So that’s why it’s so big and so heavy. The efficiency is so low because all these gears have to be interacting with each other. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, the transmission efficiency is only 50%. So it’s actually as low as you can get. But you have to have a transmission in the car. If you have no transmission in the car—I’m talking about ICE cars with an engine—they’re not even able to drive because the engine has no initial power and no initial RPM. The AI transmission, the robotic transmission that I have invented, and that we have developed over five to seven years— Since 2017 or ’18 we’ve been working on it. It’s a gearbox that has only two gears versus 200 to 300 gears, and it’s one-fourth or one-fifth of the size. And also, while your standard transmission has five or six or seven or eight gears in your car, this has unlimited gears, okay? And it’s AI, so it can see what’s going on with the road, what the weather is, and all combinations of conditions. If you’re going onto a hillside, it’s already going to shift for you, so it saves energy. So that’s what we have developed. It’s a robotic transmission. Right now, we’re actually talking to the U.S. Army, and they have some interest. We are at a very initial stage with them. And it’s kind of difficult to bring it into the market because it’s a safety factor, and there are a lot of requirements and tests that have to go into it before we can actually get it into trucks and cars. To summarize the benefit, if you put that transmission into an EV, we can increase the range by 40%, which is huge. A company that can improve a battery by 1% gets millions of dollars thrown at it. Once we can prove that this is working and pass some tests and so on, it’s going to be very huge. Wow. When do you expect this to happen? I’m hoping within the next two years. Hopefully, by the end of those two years, we make it home and get it into cars and trucks and commercialize it. Then you will turn into a unicorn—a big unicorn, right? Yeah. Again, EVs are only one application. There are wind turbines, tanks, boats, some aircraft, and helicopters. A helicopter’s transmission is half the size of the helicopter itself, so the weight and everything else become very significant. So if we can eliminate that weight and size, we can gain a lot. Especially in vehicles, it makes a huge difference and all that. Wow. That’s probably something that drones would benefit from too. Yeah. It’s mind-boggling. So what drives growth in your business other than your inventions? So at SunMan Engineering, we have two arms. One arm is that we provide engineering services, product architecture, and product development to other companies—small companies, mid-size companies, and bigger companies like IBM, Sony, Samsung, and Apple. We have about 300 or 400 of those clients. And we also work with government agencies and contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Kaiser Electronics, just to name a few. We have also had contracts directly with the Army and the Navy in the past. And that’s what we’re trying to do now—to gain some of those projects again. And InfiniGear, the I-Gear, could be a project that, fingers crossed, we’d be working on with the U.S. Army. So that’s one arm of what we do. The other arm is that we develop new technologies. We develop them, work on them, and then license them, or let our clients utilize them in some of their projects through partnerships and so on. So you’re a service company as well as a product company? Yes. We are a systems and product company. We’re considered a systems and product company, yes. Now, do you call this systems integration? In the IT world, they used to call it systems integration when you had different systems and— We are more than systems integrators. Systems integrators buy different technologies and put them together. It’s still engineering, don’t get me wrong. Yeah. You still have to engineer everything and put it together. But what we do is actually customize things from the ground up. Sometimes we do integration because it’s faster, easier, and sometimes cheaper. Some of the components and some of the functionality can be integrated. But generally, we customize every project from the ground up. And generally, for your information, we cater to aerospace, robotics, and IoT. IoT is communication—all sorts of wireless and different types of communication: Wi-Fi, 5G, Bluetooth, all sorts of stuff, right? And also medical. So medical, robotics, aerospace, IoT, and also semiconductors, which also serve these different industries. So how is it possible? I mean, you have a relatively small team, right? Fifteen people or so? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight people. Twenty-seven. Okay, sorry. Yeah. With a small team.That’s exactly the very first question you asked me. That’s exactly how it affects and how it comes into the picture. Being organized—I mean, we’ve done this so many times. It’s like we make things so efficient because we already have a plan. Every project we do, in concept, is the same thing. The process is the same. The application is different, but the process is the same. So going through that process and having a very reliable process in place that we follow very religiously makes us super, super efficient. And also, being small, we don’t have to go through a number of different layers. Everything comes to one or two people, gets approved, and we get it going. Everything happens the same day. Nothing waits until the next day here. Are you involved in every project? Fortunately and unfortunately, I’m involved in every project. And one of my goals is to eventually focus on fewer projects so I’d be more effective and efficient. So that’s one of my goals for the next few years. I-Gear is one of them, and we’re also working on another project. It’s for healthcare, it’s for the elderly and infants. Eventually it’s going to be a robot, but right now we’re making the device that is the brain of the robot. So it gets to know the person, it gets to know their habits, it gets to know everything about the person, about their family, about their health, about how they behave. We can remind them of different things. We can assist them with different things. We can watch them. We can emotionally work with them. There are so many different applications that we’re working on now. We can even do preventive diagnostics. What “preventive diagnostics” means is that before the patient or the person gets sick or develops some sort of disease, we can actually identify it before that happens. That’s great. And that’s the most important part of this device. It has so many different applications and different ways it can help and assist an elderly person. And within the next two or three years, my goal is to integrate this into a robot. So we’re going to have a robot that physically helps you as well. My mother ended up in one of those care centers, and I saw how much she was declining on a daily basis—not weekly, not monthly, but daily. And there was nothing, unfortunately, that I or any member of our family could do. I mean, we were there every day, don’t get me wrong, but that’s all we could do for her. We’re all busy. We all have lives. I mean, we were there almost every day, but really, she did not get the care that she needed. And that’s what kind of put me in that frame of mind—how can I help someone like my mom? And that’s how it started about two years ago. And as a matter of fact, now it’s one of the biggest markets. Yeah. It’s one of the biggest. So that’s fascinating. So how can you have so mental bandwidth that you can cover different industries, go deep into different industries, and innovate and invent stuff? How does that even happen? Honestly, I personally work pretty much 12 hours a day. Even on my vacations, I work. Don’t get me wrong, I have a very good life. I work hard and I play hard. I am a very active person. I played as a semi-professional soccer player until I was 58 years old, believe it or not. Actually, next week I’m going to be 65. I still can play. I still can go and compete with 25- and 30-year-old kids, and I still do good, I think. So I keep myself in very good shape. I do mountain biking. I do about 10 to 15 hours of heavy-duty exercise on a weekly basis, and that kind of balances what I’m doing. To answer your question, yes, it’s too much, but yeah, we have to spend more time. There is no magic to it. Sometimes it gets to be too much, but I like what I’m doing, so I enjoy it. Yeah, it shows. Elon Musk is also an example of being able to run six big companies in different areas and be a groundbreaker. But you’re doing something very similar. You are breaking ground in different industries. Yeah. Actually, as I mentioned, I have established different startups and sold them. I have worked on a number of different companies and technologies. As a matter of fact, back in 2005, I brought a whole bunch of different technologies to cars. Any type of car you drive—I don’t care what it is—almost everything in the dash belongs to technologies that we developed from 2005 to 2008. There are some videos and some information on my LinkedIn. I invite people, including yourself, to look into it. The stuff we did back then was in 2005. The iPhone only came out in 2007. We came out with these technologies between 2005 and 2008. Back then, we had Genie. Today they have Alexa and I don’t know what everybody else calls theirs. Yeah. We had Genie. Genie would talk to you. I mean, I’m not just saying it. Please go watch the videos. We have them. So you would just talk to the car, and the car would do everything for you. We came up with a device that initially you could install as an aftermarket stereo in the car. Basically, it would connect all the sensors in the car to the outside world. This was the very first time. As a matter of fact, internet connectivity in the car is my technology. Every single car in the world since 2014 has been connected to the internet, and that’s my technology, my patent, and my license. Of course, I’m not getting much money from it. Unfortunately, I’ve kind of been robbed on that. But at least I can brag about it—that’s our technology. So yeah, we brought a whole bunch of technologies to market. My vision back then was to make the car robust enough to drive without a driver. That’s happening now. It’s happening now. As a matter of fact, we had a car that we put our system into, and we were demonstrating it. And again, there are hundreds of videos about that technology that you can find on the internet. As a matter of fact, we were on PBS for nine months in 27 countries talking about future cars, and that video is also out there. So that was in 2010. They had a half-hour program with my company and with me about future cars. And everything we said, we had the basis for it, and it happened. So, Allen, if you had a magic wand and you could wish for anything to happen in your business, what would that be? So as I said earlier, I like to be more focused now. I’m very spread out with the business—not only with the technical side of things, but also with the business side of things. I really want to get away from the business side and just focus on the technology. That’s what I enjoy more. I do the business side because I have no choice. That’s part of the work, right? But I would like to get to the point where I can focus only on technology, and other people can worry about the other things. So that’s my goal. Okay. So if someone is listening to this and they would like to be like you, what would you advise them? Let’s say they are 20 years old and they want to grow up and be an inventor, come up with solutions, work in different industries, and solve big problems. What’s the path? What would you tell them? So first of all, don’t be like me, that’s for sure. Honestly, you’ve got to enjoy life more than I do. And I do enjoy life. Again, I have different hobbies. I do different sports. I ski, I bike, and those are my hobbies, right? Most importantly, again, we talked about this at the beginning. You’ve got to like what you do. And doing business is not easy. Don’t expect to get into it and have everything work out. Usually, by default, everything goes wrong. So that’s normal. It used to bother me. It used to make me upset, nervous, and all that. But over the last seven to ten years, I learned that things happen, and you just have to resolve them and go through them. Bad things can happen. Good things can happen. It’s all part of the mix. You’ve got to have a very strong personality. Generally, a good percentage of people go paycheck to paycheck, and it’s mental—it’s in their mind. They make a lot of money. They make $100,000 every paycheck. But if you get a paycheck, your mind is like, “Okay, my next paycheck is coming two weeks from now, then another one two weeks after that,” right? And if those two weeks come and you don’t get your paycheck, they go nuts. They go crazy. So if you’re like that, you cannot go into business. In business, it’s all about failure and success. If you’re lucky, that’s a different story. I can go buy a lottery ticket, and only one person out of millions wins. That’s luck. That’s different. But then they lose it all. Lottery winners tend to lose it. Within a year, they’re broke. Yeah, that’s a different story, of course. What I’m saying is that, yeah, some people get lucky. That’s the exception. Don’t compare yourself to that. Don’t go after that. Don’t count on it. Doing business is usually a challenge, no matter what. So you’ve got to have a very strong personality. So yeah, resilience is everything. Well, that’s wonderful. So if someone would like to learn more about SunMan Engineering, or they want to connect with you, what should they do and where should they go? Yeah, the best thing is to please visit the website, which is sunmantechnology.com. There is a contact form there, and you can contact us. We’d be happy to get in touch with you and see how we can help. Okay, fantastic. Well, Allen Nejah, the CEO and chief engineer of SunMan Engineering, and the inventor of many products in different industries, including InfiniGear, which is going to revolutionize transmissions. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your insights and wisdom. And those of you who are listening, if you enjoyed this, make sure you subscribe and follow us because every week I bring on an amazing entrepreneur to talk with you. Thanks for coming, Allen, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Allen's LinkedIn Allen's website
Are you looking for a way to empower your child to become a change-maker in their own community? In this episode of the Home School Yo Kids podcast, we dive deep into the vision behind EverRoot Academy, a unique virtual school that goes beyond traditional academics. Join us as founder Katelynn Stone shares her journey from the public school system to creating a space where students lead with global consciousness and civic action.In this conversation, Jae and Katelynn discuss the realities of the modern education system and why many families are seeking alternatives. Katelynn shares her extensive background as an educator across multiple states and how those experiences shaped her mission to provide a safe, inclusive, and empowering environment for learners. From addressing curriculum censorship to fostering community-based projects, this episode is packed with insights for any parent interested in raising conscious, proactive children.Key topics include the importance of student agency, how to integrate global news into daily learning, and the specific ways EverRoot Academy supports military and world-schooling families. You will also hear about the power of teaching kids to use their voices in local government and the impact of community-centered education.https://www.everrootacademy.com/Katelynn Stone is the founder of EverRoot Academy, an educator, coach, consultant, special education leader, and administrator with 18 years of experience. She has empowered children, educators, counselors, military leaders, spouses, and policymakers across a wide variety of communities. As an Air Force spouse and mother, she is committed to expanding access to high-quality education for mobile learners and students underserved or excluded by traditional systems, offering a consistent, learner-centered program accessible from anywhere in the world. She holds a Master's degree in Educational Leadership, a K–12 administrative certification, and 6–12 ELA certification with an ESL endorsement.Video edited by: Nexus Novanzmedia1234@gmail.comFB: https://www.facebook.com/share/16DwALXWFa/?mibextid=wwXIfrDo creative video edit, youtube video editing by Zzaman123 | FiverrChapters0:00 Intro and Welcome2:30 Katelynn Stone's Journey in Education5:15 Experiences in Public vs. Charter Schools8:45 Teaching in Denver and Texas12:20 Navigating Education Culture in Florida16:10 The Inspiration Behind Everroot Academy19:45 Global Critical Consciousness and Daily News23:30 Bridging the Gap Between School and Community27:15 Empowering Students to Find Solutions31:00 Teaching Kids to Use Their Voice35:45 Support for Military and World-Schooling Families39:15 Flexible Programming and Tutoring Options43:00 Preparing the Next Generation of Leaders46:30 Final Advice and How to ConnectVisit homeschoolyokids.com to learn more about our upcoming expos and resources. If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode. Let us know in the comments how you are empowering your kids to make a difference today!#homeschooling #educationreform #studentagency #communityengagement #everrootacademy
A discussion on the press conference held Tuesday by members of the House UAP Caucus, UFO whistleblowers, including former Air Force official David Grusch, and UFO researchers Leslie Kean and James Fox. Links/Sources:UAP whistleblower David Grusch accuses agencies of hiding billions | Fox NewsGiorgio A. Tsoukalos on X: "SHOW THE EVIDENCE or shut up already. What is this verbal diarrhea of "irrefutable evidence" WITHOUT any receipts? What IS that? NONE of the folks today on that stage actually take this topic serious, nor want Disclosure, so much is clear. Instead, with your horse and pony show" / XSupport Extraterrestrial Reality/Quirk Zone on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/c/Extraterrestrial_RealityCheck out my YouTube channel:Quirk Zone - YouTubeExtraterrestrial Reality Book Recommendations:Link to ROSWELL: THE ULTIMATE COLD CASE: CLOSED: https://amzn.to/3O2loSILink to COMMUNION by Whitley Strieber: https://amzn.to/3xuPGqiLink to THE THREAT by David M. Jacobs: https://amzn.to/3Lk52njLink to TOP SECRET/MAJIC by Stanton Friedman: https://amzn.to/3xvidfvLink to NEED TO KNOW by Timothy Good: https://amzn.to/3BNftfTLink to UFOS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, VOLUME 1: https://amzn.to/3xxJvlvLink to UFOS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, VOLUME 2: https://amzn.to/3UhdQ1lLink to THE ALLAGASH ABDUCTIONS: https://amzn.to/3qNkLSgUFO CRASH RETRIEVALS by Leonard Stringfield: https://amzn.to/3RGEZKsFLYING SAUCERS FROM OUTER SPACE by Major Donald Keyhoe: https://amzn.to/3S7WkxvCAPTURED: THE BETTY AND BARNEY HILL UFO EXPERIENCE by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden: https://amzn.to/3tKNVXn#ufos #aliens #vegas aliens #ufo podcast
A discussion on the press conference held Tuesday by members of the House UAP Caucus, UFO whistleblowers, including former Air Force official David Grusch, and UFO researchers Leslie Kean and James Fox. Links/Sources:UAP whistleblower David Grusch accuses agencies of hiding billions | Fox NewsGiorgio A. Tsoukalos on X: "SHOW THE EVIDENCE or shut up already. What is this verbal diarrhea of "irrefutable evidence" WITHOUT any receipts? What IS that? NONE of the folks today on that stage actually take this topic serious, nor want Disclosure, so much is clear. Instead, with your horse and pony show" / XSupport Extraterrestrial Reality/Quirk Zone on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/c/Extraterrestrial_RealityCheck out my YouTube channel:Quirk Zone - YouTubeExtraterrestrial Reality Book Recommendations:Link to ROSWELL: THE ULTIMATE COLD CASE: CLOSED: https://amzn.to/3O2loSILink to COMMUNION by Whitley Strieber: https://amzn.to/3xuPGqiLink to THE THREAT by David M. Jacobs: https://amzn.to/3Lk52njLink to TOP SECRET/MAJIC by Stanton Friedman: https://amzn.to/3xvidfvLink to NEED TO KNOW by Timothy Good: https://amzn.to/3BNftfTLink to UFOS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, VOLUME 1: https://amzn.to/3xxJvlvLink to UFOS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, VOLUME 2: https://amzn.to/3UhdQ1lLink to THE ALLAGASH ABDUCTIONS: https://amzn.to/3qNkLSgUFO CRASH RETRIEVALS by Leonard Stringfield: https://amzn.to/3RGEZKsFLYING SAUCERS FROM OUTER SPACE by Major Donald Keyhoe: https://amzn.to/3S7WkxvCAPTURED: THE BETTY AND BARNEY HILL UFO EXPERIENCE by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden: https://amzn.to/3tKNVXn#ufos #aliens #vegas aliens #ufo podcast
Send us Fan MailPeaches goes scorched-earth on the latest Air Force drama: illegal home inspections, dog-sitter snitches, dumpster-level leadership decisions, and the glorious return of morale shirts. He calls out stupidity, hypocrisy, and anyone pretending the military isn't a three-ring circus wrapped in OCPs. If you're thin-skinned or currently writing a memo about sideburn length… this one's going to hurt. Strap in, nerds — Peaches is saying what everyone else only screams into the group chat.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Solo Peaches: you're welcome 01:30 – Morale shirts: the war for Friday begins 04:45 – Call signs only? Rank can sit down 07:30 – Boots: apparently height matters now 10:10 – Mustaches: the Air Force fears greatness 13:00 – The illegal dog-sitter raid (WTF) 19:30 – Pentagon “Signal-gate” is a nothing burger 23:45 – “Kill them all” outrage vs reality of combat 31:10 – Operation Allies Welcome: not welcome behavior 41:00 – Culture clash vs keyboard warriors 47:30 – Peaches drops the truth and walks off
Derek Jones was following in his father's footsteps when he pursued military service after high school. His father had been a prominent and highly respected musical leader in both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marine Corps. Derek chose Air Force ROTC at Samford University in pursuit of becoming a fighter pilot. He succeeded and became an elite, Top Gun-winning pilot in the F-111. When that plane was shelved by the military, Jones started flying F-16's. But two decades into his Air Force career, Jones felt a new calling - the ministry.In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Jones takes us through the triumphs and tears of pilot training, choosing the F-111, an air show manuever in Europe that nearly landed him in very hot water, and a particularly rough mission over Iraq.Jones also explains how his faith became far more serious while in the Air Force and what eventually led him away from the cockpit and towards the pulpit. He also explains the work he does now to defend religious liberty inside and outside of the military.
Air Force wrestling doesn't buy transfers and doesn't play the NIL game — yet they're keeping pace with the top 5 programs in the country. Head coach Sam Barber sits down with Mike Malinconico to explain how.Guest: Sam Barber, head wrestling coach at the United States Air Force Academy (12th season), former head coach at Upper Iowa and part of three NCAA DIII title teams at Augsburg.Topics: building a developmental program, Carter Nogle's All-American run, the "Camp Bruiser" COVID experiment, the move to the Pac-12, NIL and the transfer portal, and why culture beats money in recruiting.
I'M RICK JAMES, NICK! This week, we had the distinct pleasure of hosting New York's Own, Nick James, but not that New York–until recently, anyway. Nick has a “chaotic” CV, to hear him tell it, so we get into it: joining the Air Force when he was 17, Meteorology, Lab Science, Moving to The Big Apple, racial ambiguity, WESTSIDE GUNN, Buffalo, Birding, Military LARPers, lacrosse, thrifting, skate culture, his intro to the menswear community, and, as always, way more!
In this episode of Reading With Your Kids, Jed welcomes back one of preschool media's most influential creators, Angela Santomero, to celebrate her new series, "Princess Penelope's Purse of Preposterous Things." Angela explains that Princess Penelope is a brave, kind-hearted kitten who doesn't realize how small she is. When Mother Nature grants her a magical purple purse filled with "preposterous things," Penelope must use creative and critical thinking—not just magic—to solve problems and stand up for her friends. Angela shares how this "engine" of the series helps kids learn to think, reason, and be kind, skills she believes are essential in an age of AI and constant media. Drawing on her background in child development and her groundbreaking work on Blue's Clues and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Angela talks about "cuddle TV"—those precious moments when parents and kids watch or read together, ask questions like "What do you think will happen next?", and model deeper thinking. She highlights research showing that just 15 minutes of daily reading-for-fun can expose kids to a million new words a year and profoundly shape their futures. Angela also compares the Princess Penelope books and YouTube episodes, explaining how each medium deepens the experience in different ways. Later in the episode, Jed chats with David Gillespie, retired Air Force veteran and author of "Floo Flocky Doo to the Rescue." David shares the 26-year journey from his daughter's imaginative play to a lively, rhyming picture book that celebrates family stories, risk-taking, and nurturing a lifelong love of reading in young children.
In this episode of Careers Over Beers, I sit down with environmental health and safety experts Kristen Meghan Kelly and Tammy K. Clark to discuss the rapid expansion of AI and hyperscale data centers into small communities across America.We examine who is driving these projects, the enormous financial interests involved, how land acquisition and permitting processes often unfold outside of public view, and why many local residents feel they are learning about projects only after critical decisions have already been made.Kristen and Tammy bring decades of experience in occupational, environmental, and industrial health and safety. Kristen is an Air Force veteran, a whistleblower, senior industrial hygienist, and environmental specialist with more than two decades of experience evaluating environmental and public health risks. Tammy is an OSHA environmental health and safety professional, expert witness, and industrial safety specialist with more than 20 years of experience in occupational and environmental health.In this special episode we discuss:• AI and hyperscale data center expansion• Water consumption and impacts on local resources• Noise, light pollution, and quality-of-life concerns• Potential impacts on agriculture and livestock• Power demands and infrastructure challenges• Community organizing and citizen opposition efforts• Cases where residents successfully influenced project outcomes• Alternative technologies and approaches that could reduce environmental impacts• Western Sedgwick CountyWhether you're hearing rumors of a proposed data center in your town or simply want to understand the infrastructure powering the AI revolution, this conversation offers a perspective rarely covered in mainstream discussions.
Show Summary On today's episode, we're having a conversation with Licensed Clinical Social Worker Amanda Noyes, the founder of Finding Freedom Therapy and member of the DFW First Responders Support Network. We talk about Trauma therapy and mental health networks for service members, veterans and first responders Provide FeedbackAs a dedicated member of the audience, we would like to hear from you. If you PsychArmor has helped you learn, grow, and support those who've served and those who care for them, we would appreciate hearing your story. Please follow this link to share how PsychArmor has helped you in your service journey Share PsychArmor StoriesAbout Today's GuestAmanda Noyes is the founder of Finding Freedom Therapy. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker–Supervisor with over 25 years of experience, she has had the opportunity to work in numerous crisis situations where she witnessed firsthand the gravity of trauma and grief. It was in these situations that she realized there were not enough opportunities to heal from trauma and loss after the initial crisis. With this knowledge, she formed Finding Freedom Therapy, PLLC, in 2014 with the vision of providing specialized treatment to those who have endured (or are continuing to endure) horrific traumas and unspeakable losses.After earning her degree in psychology and international studies from Texas A&M University, Amanda pursued her Master of Science in Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout her career, she has had the unique opportunity to gain notable hands-on experience, much of which was working in conjunction with the military, first responders, and frontline workers. She has worked alongside probation and parole officers in the field, with police officers on-scene, supported doctors and nurses in the ED and ICU departments of level-one trauma centers, counseled families of the recently deceased at the moment of loss, and worked next to the U.S. National Guard when assisting during Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike, and Harvey.Amanda's experience with veterans and military service members began early in her career with her graduate internship at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Hospital, and later continued with her work as lead trauma therapist for an inpatient military program, Freedom Care, where she worked with active-duty combat military and veterans suffering from PTSD. She is trained in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), and Written Exposure Therapy (WET). Each and every step of her career has shaped and strengthened her ability to better assist clients through the most difficult times in their lives.Links Mentioned in this Episode Finding Freedom Therapy WebsiteDFW First Responders Support NetworkPsychArmor Resource of the WeekThis week's resource of the week is the PsychArmor course Trauma Informed Interactions with Veterans. This course defines trauma and how it presents itself and is specifically designed to help volunteers interact with Veterans dealing with trauma that affects their health and/or ability to function.You can find the resource here: https://learn.psycharmor.org/courses/trauma-informed-interactions-with-veterans Episode Partner: Are you an organization that engages with or supports the military affiliated community? Would you like to partner with an engaged and dynamic audience of like-minded professionals? Reach out to Inquire about Partnership Opportunities Contact Us and Join Us on Social Media Email PsychArmorPsychArmor on TwitterPsychArmor on FacebookPsychArmor on YouTubePsychArmor on LinkedInPsychArmor on InstagramTheme MusicOur theme music Don't Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families. You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com
A devastating injury nearly ended her dreams of becoming a pilot. SUMMARY Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jannell MacAulay '98, Ph.D., says the accident was merely the first chapter in a career defined by perseverance, service and leadership. Listen to this inspiring story on Long Blue Leadership. SHARE THIS EPISODE FACEBOOK | LINKEDIN DR. MACAULAY'S TOP 10 LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS 1. Choose your hard: You don't escape difficulty in life or leadership, you intentionally pick the hard path that aligns with who you want to become. 2. Let vision — not other people's verdicts — define you by holding a clear internal picture of your future that outvotes external “no's.” 3. Train your mind to eliminate the noise — unhelpful thoughts, doubts and narratives — to stay focused on what truly serves your goals. 4. Aim to harmonize your roles (leader, parent, partner, professional) across seasons of life rather than chasing a perfect work-life balance. 5. Be the calm in the storm by regulating your own stress response so your presence stabilizes your team instead of amplifying chaos. 6. Stop glorifying exhaustion and competitive stress and instead model healthy, high performance built on sleep, focus and quality over quantity. 7. Use simple daily mental skills — like mindfulness reps, the waterfall technique and a mindful minute at transitions — to protect clarity and compassion. 8. Replace “How are you doing?” with “What's going well for you today?” to surface real insight, build hope and better detect those sliding toward hopelessness. 9. Practice present, personalized recognition, because small, intentional gestures of appreciation can forge lifelong trust and loyalty. 10. When you hit a crucible moment and feel unsure you're ready, choose to commit and let the challenge grow you rather than hesitate. CHAPTERS 00:00:00 – Introduction, Jannell's Academy injury, broken femur, and redefining “no” as possibility 00:05:54 – Her father's influence, early visions of command and flight, and limitless expectations 00:09:26 – “Choose your hard,” setting vision, eliminating noise, and turning barriers into options 00:12:22 – Air Force career breadth, strategy path, and introduction to the Syria chemical weapons mission 00:16:31 – Saying yes to Syria as a mother, family conversations, and the weight of the mission 00:19:00 – Syria as a crucible moment, inner critic vs external “no,” and committing through discomfort 00:22:17 – Identity beyond the uniform, family strain, rare eye disease, and pivot to mental performance work 00:27:06 – What stress really is, burnout, competitive stress culture, and leaders as calm vs storm 00:36:35 – Mindful leadership in action: no-email Fridays, recognition calls, and the “waterfall” technique 00:52:16 – “Breathless,” stories of Syrian mothers, legacy, and final advice to young leaders ABOUT DR. MACAULAY BIO Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jannell MacAulay, Ph.D. '98, is a combat veteran who served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force, as a pilot, commander, special operations consultant, international diplomat and professionalism instructor. With her innovative leadership style, she was the first leader to introduce mindfulness as a proactive performance strategy within the United States military. Throughout her career she gained experience leading and building teams, designing and implementing complex organizational change, and creating innovative solutions to optimize the human weapon system when operating in rugged and high-stress environments. With over 3,000 flying hours in the C-21, C-130 and KC-10, and extensive education in performance and wellness, she specializes in high-performance under stress with a holistic approach. Dr. MacAulay currently serves as a leadership and human performance consultant for the Department of War, government sector and corporate America. She is the co-founder of Warrior's Edge, a high-performance mindset training program she developed with Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks and high-performance sports psychologist, Dr. Michael Gervais. Dr. MacAulay is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, has a master's degree in kinesiology from Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. with work in the field of strategic health and human performance. She is a certified wellness educator, yoga instructor and holds a certificate in plant-based nutrition. Dr. MacAulay is a TEDx speaker, military spouse and mother of two. CONNECT WITH JANNELL LINKEDIN | WEBSITE CONNECT WITH THE LONG BLUE LINE PODCAST NETWORK TEAM Ted Robertson | Producer and Editor: Ted.Robertson@USAFA.org Send your feedback or nominate a guest: socialmedia@usafa.org Ryan Hall | Director: Ryan.Hall@USAFA.org Bryan Grossman | Copy Editor: Bryan.Grossman@USAFA.org Wyatt Hornsby | Executive Producer: Wyatt.Hornsby@USAFA.org ALL PAST LBL EPISODES | ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE AT USAFA.ORG/LONGBLUELEADERSHIP AND ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS FULL TRANSCRIPT Guest, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jannell MacAulay, Ph.D. '98 | Host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz '99 Lt. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:00 Leadership begins the moment someone tells you what you can't do, and you decide they don't get to write the rest of your story. Lt. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:00 I'm Naviere Walkewicz, Class of '99. Long Blue Leadership starts now. Well, Dr. Janelle McCauley, Class of '98 welcome to Long Blue Leadership. This is an amazing time for us. Excited to have you. Lt. Col. Jannell MacAulay 0:19 Thank you so much for having me. I know this has been a long time coming, so I'm excited to be here with you to start a conversation. Lt. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:24 Absolutely, you know, I do want to highlight some of the things you've done. It's probably true that the list is shorter for me to say what you haven't done, but pilot, combat veteran, you're a leadership strategist, you're a mother, a wife, author — we'll talk about that later. You know, also really getting into the space of a human performance specialist, a commander, all of these things that you've done and, gosh, 20 years in the Air Force, and now having been out, so excited to talk today. Lt. Col. Jannell MacAulay 0:51 Thank you so much for that amazing introduction. I don't know if I could live up to even what you just said, in some ways. But yeah, I just would love to share with your listeners how amazing the Air Force Academy can be for the potential and the possibilities for someone's future. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 1:07 Absolutely, so let's actually jump into a time early in your cadet days, so we'll tie it right to the Air Force Academy. There was a moment in time where you literally broke your femur. I'm curious, did it break your dreams too, of being a cadet at the time? Col. Jannell MacAulay 1:21 It almost did. And there's a story to that, so I'll go into that a little bit. So, during basic training, I developed a stress fracture. You know, running in combat boots, especially the old black version that we used to run in. Lt. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 1:35 Yes, I remember. Col. Jannell MacAulay 1:36 Not a good thing for your body. And so I had developed this pain in my right quad to the point where I could not even stand on my right leg to put my left pant leg on, during, you know, as you're rushing to — banging on the doors, we'll be dressed, like, “Open the doors, you will be dressed,” yeah, and I would be, you know, Welcome to the Jungleplaying — Lt. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 1:55 I remember that. Col. Jannell MacAulay 1:56 I'm putting up my pants and I'm in pain, and my roommate's like, “What is happening?” Like, “You need to go to the doctor,” and I refused to, at first, of course, right? Push through it, right? And then when I finally went, they were like, “Here's the Ace bandage and some vitamin M, you know, Motrin. And, of course, I didn't know anything different, so I kept going. And then it was three days after basic training had finished, and I was at cheerleading practice, and I was doing a back flip, and my femur, like, literally snapped in half. It sounded like a tree branch. It was — I just collapsed to the floor, and this was before we had cell phones, right? So, if you can imagine, I'm 17 years old, so I hadn't turned 18 yet, and so they couldn't give me any pain medication, you know. The emergency — the ambulances rushing into the emergency room at the Academy hospital, which was not equipped to deal with what just happened to me. So, they sent me up to the Army hospital in Denver at the time, was Fitzsimmons. They couldn't understand why a 17-year-old's femur would just snap, and no one wanted to really address the fact that maybe it was a stress fracture at the time, so they actually told me I had cancer. So, they did — a bone type, a bone type of cancer, and so they did a biopsy on the bone. I lived in traction for 10 days while all my classmates were continuing on with their freshman year. So I was about — they eventually determined that this was not cancer, this was actually stress fracture, and so the two choices they gave me was a cast from my hip to my toe for about six months, or they were going to put a rod and four screws. So a rod the length of my femur, two screws of screws on my knee, two screws in my hip. And then the doctor said, “Either way, you're never flying airplanes,” Col. Naviere Walkewicz 3:36 And that was your dream? Col. Jannell MacAulay 3:38 That was my dream. Yes, my uncle had flown Marine 1 for President Reagan, so I grew up watching him fly helicopters in the Marine Corps, fly the President, and just he was the coolest person ever, and I wanted to be just like him. He took me to the air shows, so yes, it was a crushing moment. You know, it was something where I thought I could either let what people were telling me, the doctor saying, “You're never gonna bend your leg like this, you're never gonna be a runner, you're never gonna be a pilot,” and I could let that define me, or I could choose to define myself and what I was going to be capable of, and what the possibilities would be for me in the future. And so it was very hard for 17-, 18-year-olds to process all of this, but my dad used to give, tell me a quote, and it was, “Vision is the art of seeing the invisible,” and he would always tell me, “If you could see it for yourself, you can make it happen,” and so when it came time for being pilot qualified, I actually chose to get all of the metal removed out of my leg, just so that there was no reason for them to not allow me to go to pilot training. And so I went through that, which was — Col. Naviere Walkewicz 4:49 Another surgery, wow. Col. Jannell MacAulay 4:50 Yes. So through all of that, I have learned that was the first experience where I learned a lot about myself and what I was, what I could focus on, how I could set a vision for myself in the future, and how I could start to eliminate the noise — that's what I call it now. I didn't have language for it at the time, but it's eliminate the noise that does not serve us in pursuit of our passions, in pursuit of our dreams. And that was what I had started to do, which it's kind of full circle that that is now my career, to help other people do it. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 5:26 I want to peel that back a little bit. There's so many things. I mean, your dad's quote: “Vision is when you can see the invisible. I think I paraphrased that a bit. One more time. Col. Jannell MacAulay 5:33 It's actually a Jonathan Swift quote, and that “vision is the art of seeing the invisible.” Col. Naviere Walkewicz 5:39 OK, so were you always that way growing up because you had, you know, your dad in your life sharing that kind of thought with you, or has it been a series of experiences that you've had that have kind of really made you that way? Col. Jannell MacAulay 5:54 So, my dad has always been a very positive role model in the sense of eliminating barriers and dreaming big. So, when I was 7 years old, and I was a ballerina, he used to tell anyone that — and I distinctly remember this as a little girl — he would tell anyone that would listen that I was going to grow up to be a submarine warfare commander or a combat pilot. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 6:16 Oh, wow, not a swan, no ballerina, you know — Col. Jannell MacAulay 6:18 And I would literally be in my tutu, and he would tell strangers at the grocery store, right, “This is my daughter, Jannell, she's gonna grow up and do these amazing things.” And in the '80s, women couldn't do it, right? We weren't there yet, right? We were not allowed to — and so I didn't know that. I didn't grow up thinking that there were barriers on what I could become, and I think that's a, we have this role as parents to help our children see what's possible, because you know they can either be told where the limits are or they could be told where the possibilities exist, and I think my dad did a lot of that for me, and so that I think is a lot of my story is, like, journeying through challenge and trauma to figure out that I didn't have to listen to that voice. I could create a new one, and my dad taught me how to do that, and then I've kind of developed, what I think, are skills and training, because it's hard. It is very hard to do, and so I like that's been what my Ph.D. work and my research has been focused on, is how can I help other people who don't have maybe that those resources or their parents in their life that have taught them those things. How can I give them those tools? Col. Naviere Walkewicz 7:27 So you were a cadet when you made the decision that you still wanted to be a pilot, and you didn't want there to be anything that said you couldn't, so you made the decision to have the metal removed from your body. As we think about decisions that we have to make in life, that could be dream-opening decisions or dream-closing decisions. How did you come to that decision? And you know what would you share to someone who's at a similar crossroads in their life? Like, how do you navigate? That's a tough decision you made. Col. Jannell MacAulay 7:54 It was a huge decision. I think part of it is understanding what are you passionate about? Who do you want to become? And not just about what you want to do, what type of person you are. That's a lot of what I think mental skills work is as well, is like, who's the person underneath, because once you figure that out, then the doing follows, right? Like, you could do anything, and I was the type of person underneath it all that did not like to be told no, right? Or I loved it when someone would say, “You can't do that,” right? It's like the challenge is what inspires me and motivates me, and so when they were saying you will not be a pilot, it was like, OK, well, then how do I get to yes? And part of that path was I had to have the metal removed. Now, there were some arguments, like, “Maybe you'll be fine.” I don't want to take the risk, right? I was like, “Nope, I don't want to give anyone an excuse to take something away from me.” That was kind of the mindset at the time. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 9:00 So, I think that really dives into this idea of, you can, when you said yourself: The no in front of you is kind of like, “How do I turn that into a yes?” You know, clear out the noise. How did that play into your life as an Air Force officer? Because I'm sure that you came across a lot of what we're seemingly no's. What did that look like? Col. Jannell MacAulay 9:22 So, here's, but, and this goes back to the Academy as well. I tell young people today, my greatest gift is to tell them, “Choose your hard.” Col. Naviere Walkewicz 9:34 Choose your hard. Col. Jannell MacAulay 9:35 Choose your hard, right. Anytime I'm asked to speak to a college, you know, high school audience, like, I do mental skills, but a lot of times the theme is “choose your hard,” because I think people are — young people are always in pursuit of the easy button, and then when they encounter hard, like, “Oh, there's got to be a better way.” The lesson is, it's all hard, right? It's all hard. So, determine what you want to do, or who you want to be more, and how you're going to get there, set the vision, and then navigate through the hard. And I would argue you need to equip yourself with the mental skills to do that, and in pursuit of that, there is going to be no right, there are going to be challenges, and part of it is accepting the challenges instead of being afraid of them, because it is through those challenges that we're actually going to accomplish great things, and we're going to get to reach our dreams and our goals. And I think that that is something I struggled with, but I found a way and a path through it. So, I think that there's always going to be no in your life, and I like to create opportunities, so then I have, I get the choice instead of just having to default to someone else telling me no, like even when I left the Academy, I applied for pilot training for grad school, for physical therapy school. Because I wanted to have opportunities, so then I got to choose which path I wanted in the future, which hard I was going to choose for myself in that moment. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 11:03 I just — I'm thinking about you, went into the Air Force as a pilot, and you talk about choosing your hard, and you also are a mother. Let's talk about that piece. I think just navigating the and in being a mother and a leader and an Air Force officer and a combat veteran, a pilot, etc. I mean, that's a lot. Col. Jannell MacAulay 11:23 It is a lot, but I think underneath it all, the person that I am is one who not balances my life but harmonizes it and all the roles that I get to play. I think that's the greatest thing about the Air Force. You list all those things that I've done. I was watching the cadets yesterday, I was one of them, with just a bright future and so much possibility. And under one organization, I got to fly multiple airplanes, I got to go back to school numerous times, study a lot of interesting topics, from my degree in exercise physiology, from Penn State to my Ph.D. in strategy. So I got to study all these different things. I got to work in chemical weapons, which I know we're going to talk about later. I got to fly around the world, I got to lead people all under one team, right, one organization, and that is the greatest thing I think the Air Force can give people if they take those opportunities that are in front of them. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 12:23 Yes. Well, let's, let's jump into a time — you actually brought up Syria. And so let's go there, because I think I would like to hear more about the story, and how it kind of unfolded around the chemical weapons there. Col. Jannell MacAulay 12:36 So, I got sent to — it's post… So I went to the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies — SAASS time, and my husband and I were actually the first married couple to go through SAASS together. And stayed married at the end. There was one other married concept that it were exactly that. There was one other married couple with us at the time, which is really unique, but I took — you know, through SAASS, you get a strategy focus, and you have to go do a strategy job somewhere for your staff to work. OK, and so my husband really wanted to go work at the Pentagon, so he was on the joint staff working on the Israel-Palestine desk for the chairman, and I was like, “What else can I do in DC to keep my family together, that would be interesting?” And there was this job at this little organization called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and DTRA, as they're known, is the brain trust for everything weapons of mass destruction, so chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, planning, research, execution of mission, that is all run out of DTRA, and so I was like, “That sounds interesting, I've never done anything in any of this space, but it'll be an easy job,” is what I thought, because I was about to have my second baby, and every time I call them, no one ever answered, like, past 3 o'clock so I'm like, “Great job.” Exactly. Like, I got my staff tour done, and I get to do something new. But I was a fish out of water, you know, like former pilots, like going into this situation, the WMDs. They gave me that job also, because no one wanted it, it was almost asking people who are experienced in the world of chemical weapons to do an impossible task, right, to handle an impossible problem. And so, at the time, nobody really wanted to put their name to it, because there was a no-win. We don't have diplomatic relations with Syria, like this — a bad civil war was happening there with an evil dictator, right? Like, how were we going to solve that problem without any type of relations? And then, you know their proxy of Russia, right? So then it's like we don't even have — we didn't have the greatest relations with them. So when August of 2013 occurred, and Assad used chemical weapons against a civilian population, 1,400 people died almost instantaneously from sarin gas. Sarin gas is one of the most awful chemicals, immediately, right? It's like paralysis. It makes your eyes water, like you become — it's a horrific way to die. And when that happened, my life changed, because all of a sudden it was like, “Oh my gosh, this is real. And, “Who's been studying this problem?” And at the time, it was you and your team. And so we kind of got thrust — I got — I went to London almost immediately to start briefing our international partners on what we had been building and studying, and luckily we had been, for the better part of six months, working on this problem. And then shortly after that, I went to the Hague, because Syria did turn over their chemical weapons to the international community, and there's a whole story behind that. Obviously, we got the Russians to help with that. And then I got sent to the Hague to work at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — the OPCW is who has all the inspectors and the teams who helped destroy and inspect the status of these chemical weapons — and so I got sent there to work with them and negotiate directly with the Syrians and the Russians to build the plan. And I remember my boss was like, “You have to go, and I don't know when you're coming back, we need someone over there to be running point on this mission,” and yeah, he sent me, and he said I didn't have to go writing my little kids, Andrew just turned 1, but he said, you know, “We need you, and this is what I picked you for, this mission, and this is what it's for.” So, yeah. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 16:31 Wow, what did you — what went through your mind when you were asked to go, and you had the opportunity to make that decision? What do you mind besides the fact that you have young children? Col. Jannell MacAulay 16:44 Well, of course, like, I think, like most mothers, you never are like, “I still want to leave my kids,” right? I want to go, but I knew it was the right thing to do, because I had the ability to make an impact and a difference, because I knew the mission inside and out. I was the right person at the right time, and I was ready. I distinctly remember I went home to talk to my children. Well, Ally, she was 6 at the time, and I remember talking to her, and I said, 'Mommy has to go away to handle this mission. And what I'm going to do while I'm away is there's some really bad stuff that some really bad people have, and I'm going to work to take that stuff away from them, so that they cannot hurt anyone anymore, and she looks up, and she's, you know, crying. We're both crying, and she said, “Mommy, like a superhero?” And, I just, like, kind of nodded, and she's like, “You can go, Mommy,” like, “You can go.” And it was in that moment that I realized, like, that's why we do these jobs. It was to protect her, to model to her that, like, I can be a mom, I can be a strong mom, and I can also go do things in the service of my country and the service of my nation and it was important for me to go, and then — so that was a driving force, like knowing that my family was going to be OK and supportive, but the other driving force was thinking about the mothers in Syria who lost their children, and thinking, here I was holding mine and they will never get to hold their children anymore. I mean, hundreds of children died and were put in mass graves after this, and mothers didn't get to say goodbye, mothers didn't get to hold their children, and they suffered immensely in those moments. And so I kept thinking about the Syrian mothers, and how if I could do anything to help prevent something like that from happening again, then I had to go, right, I had to do that for them. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 18:44 Would you say that that mission, or that part, that time in your career, was something that was so impactful in your life it changed you, or it maybe shifted your focus on things you were going to do later, or was it just at that time, this is where I need to be doing and making an impact? Col. Jannell MacAulay 19:01 There's a whole story behind it, where we were dismissed, and we came up with the innovative idea of how to solve this problem by destroying these chemical weapons on a boat, ship — sorry, Navy — on a ship in the middle of the Mediterranean. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 19:12 Was that because you were told it couldn't be done that way? Col. Jannell MacAulay 19:14 Yeah, exactly. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 19:15 Oh, interesting. Col. Jannell MacAulay 19:17 We had to actually start a whisper campaign within the Pentagon, and the State Department and the National Security Council to get our idea heard. And eventually, it was. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 19:28 So I'd like to take a little bit of time in that space of when you recognize that need to keep pushing for, right, the choosing your hard. How do you navigate that? What would you recommend to somebody who has been no, no, no, no, no, no, no. How do you work your way through that? Col. Jannell MacAulay 19:45 Well, I would first ask, where is the no coming from? Because if the no is coming from your inner critic, right, I know how to get rid of that and eliminate that, and that is actually what most people — like, that is what prevents most people from doing great things. I like to say that we all have these crucible moments in our life, a moment where we're asked to do something that we really don't think we could do, right? Like, we're kind of like, “Oh my God, deep down you're like, “Oh, I don't think I'm gonna do this. Can I do this?” And in that moment, we have the opportunity to either hesitate or commit. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 20:24 Was Syria your yes? Col. Jannell MacAulay 20:26 It was very much a crucible moment. You could either hesitate and say, “Oh no, I can't do this, it's too big for me,” like, “I can't take this responsibility,” or “I can't make this decision,” or “I can't believe in my idea,” because the voice in your head says so. But sometimes it could even be real people telling you and dismissing you and saying, like, “You can't do this.” So, “Where does the no come from?” is always the first question. And if it's an internal no, you can train your mind to eliminate that noise. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 20:54 Yes. OK, I like that, because then you — it opened up your eyes to the possibilities of who you might connect with that can then help navigate through some of that challenge. Col. Jannell MacAulay 21:03 And here's the reason why we, as humans, love this: What happens when you step into discomfort, right? You're at that moment, that crucible moment, and then you decide to commit, and you step into discomfort, and you navigate through it, and you get to the other side. How does that feel? Col. Naviere Walkewicz 21:18 Amazing. Col. Jannell MacAulay 21:18 Right? You throw your arms up in the air: “I'm a badass! Look at what I just did.” And even you're like, I didn't think I could do that, and I did it. That is what we live for as humans. I don't think people realize that, right? Like, we want those moments, but we don't want the discomfort that comes in getting them. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 21:35 We want to be at the other end, right? Col. Naviere Walkewicz 21:37 We just want to be at the other end of that, because we love that moment where you throw — so you're not gonna throw your hands up if you're like, “Oh yeah, that was so easy.” Col. Naviere Walkewicz 21:43 That's a good point. Col. Jannell MacAulay 21:44 Right. You wouldn't be like, “I feel so good about it.” I'll come— Col. Naviere Walkewicz 21:45 We wouldn't share with people if everybody could do it. Col. Jannell MacAulay 21:47 Right? Exactly, so we do love those moments as humans, and I think that is part of what — I teach people how to not be afraid of discomfort, to get more opportunity and more times, more reps of those throw your hands up in the air and be a badass. Right? Like, and that's really what I think it's about, is being ready for that moment, and the more often you're ready for that moment, the more often you step into discomfort, the more throw your hands up in the moments you get.. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 22:18 So, if humans are chasing that, and that feeling of, like, you know, commit, raise your hand, get through it, and you know, kind of bask in like that, that moment, because you loved it so much. There's probably a desire to seek more of those opportunities. How did you navigate your career after that? I know you served 20 years. Was there a point where you're like, “It's time for me to move into this space,” or did you just happen to really decide to commit to this new world of mental performance and toughness? Col. Jannell MacAulay 22:49 So, I, like, most military members, I went through a phase where I got really caught up in my identity as an Air Force officer, Air Force pilot, and it can be scary to leave that identity with the one you've always known, the one that you've been comfortable with, and even though I'm successful in — and even though I do enjoy challenge and discomfort, it was scary, right? It is scary, and I think that, well, first, part of my story was, I don't know that I was necessarily completely ready to leave, but the Air Force was making it really difficult for my family. My husband and I, he was a maintenance officer, pilot, you would think maintenance and pilot, very like cohesive, compatible. We would be able to be stationed together. We spent six years apart, and two of the last three that I was in the Air Force, we did not live together. OK, and that was hard. Our kids are getting older, and I distinctly remember I was in New Jersey, commanding a squadron. My husband was in New Mexico, commanding a group. Note to the Air Force: New Mexico and New Jersey are only close in the alphabet, right? These are not close locations, not at all. And full disclosure, I had the kids with me and an au pair, because I couldn't have done it otherwise. And I remember my husband flew home, you know? He thought he would get in at like 2 a.m. on Friday night and have sleep for 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, right? Get back. I remember we woke up our son, he was four at the time, and he looks up and he goes, “Mom, Dad, you're together,” and I was like, “No, this is not OK.” Like I don't want my children to just wake up or just be grateful when their parents are in the same room, like, that's not what I want for their childhood experience. And so I actually gave up my command six months early, and that was one of the hardest things I've ever done, because I loved being a commander, but I was at a point in my life where I realized my squadron will get another commander who cares so much about them, just like I do, but my kids only have like one mom, yeah, and they had one dad, and they needed us together. And so that was a hard decision, but it did set me like on a trajectory to think about retirement, to think about, you know, what I could do on the outside, and actually it was like divine intervention, I actually lost my pilot qualification. I have a rare eye disease, and so I've gone very blind to my central vision, like 80% blind to my right eye. So I was going to get my pilot qualification taken from me, and so I think that was God's way of saying, “It's time, this is not your path anymore. You have a different gift,” right? Flying was a great gift, leading in the Air Force was a great gift. “There's a different path for you.” And so that's when I retired, and then kind of realized there were so many people that wanted to hear this information. There were so many people that were struggling with this idea of “How do I perform? How do I manage stress? How do I get those badass, like, throw my hands up in air moments?” And I started by working with high-performing teams, the military, first responders, hospital workers, you know. Then COVID hit, and I realized everybody, everybody needs it, stress, like psychological disorders, like they're on the rise, anxiety, and if I knew how to help people, why would I keep that to myself, right? Like, it's just became something I'd be passionate about. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 26:29 Goodness, that's probably something that people don't know just by looking at you, that you actually have an eye disease that you battle through, and I'm curious on when you started into this work, like you said, COVID hit, and you realize everybody needed this. It almost is a bit of, maybe reinvention is not the right word, but you literally change your trajectory completely, even though you had all that schooling. So, my question is, how did you actually, how do you determine who you work with, because the land is so vast of who needs it, you know? I mean, how do you actually do that? Col. Jannell MacAulay 27:06 There's only one of me. It has been hard. My tribe is always the military, and even though I do spend a lot of time in the private sector working with, you know, companies from Amazon, NBC Universal, like, hotel chains, different industries — which I love — anytime a military commander reaches out and says, “We need help,” whether it's burnout, whether it's just not optimizing performance, whether it's stress-management, because if you look at the majority of DOCS today, people are burnout and stressed out, and— Col. Naviere Walkewicz 27:47 Oh, the organizational climate service. Col. Jannell MacAulay 27:49 Yes, yes, the climate service. And so most of the time, how do you, how do you manage that as a commander? Because, and here's the thing about stress and burnout: Stress is a perceived emotion. People don't think about it, but the actual what stress is, is your perception as to whether you have the mental resources to meet the demands of a given moment. So, your brain, when you're faced with a stressor, something comes at you, and it's a stimulant, right? And your environment, whether it was like a contentious conversation, traffic, it was like a big decision, like flying a plane in combat, right, whatever that is coming at you, your brain does a like split-second calculation as to whether you have the mental resources to meet the demands of that moment, and if your brain says, “Oh hell no,” it becomes overwhelming, it becomes stress, it be it sends you into this like spiral of like anxiety, which is like — what anxiety actually is, it's your mind's creation of what you think is going to happen in the future. It actually hasn't happened to you. Anxiety is a complete creation of the mind, right? It is. Our minds are fantastic at mental time travel. They will take us in catastrophizing about the future. I like to tell people, the majority of the catastrophes you will experience in your lifetime, they will only happen inside your head, right? They will feel very real, because our minds are fantastic at this time travel. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 29:11 Then it turns physical. Col. Jannell MacAulay 29:12 Yes, then it becomes like part of our physiology. So that's what this is, what leads to chronic stress. It leads to preventive illness that sets in, because we live our lives in this chronic state of stress, and stress again is a perception. So you could also be stimulated by that stressor, and instead of getting overwhelmed, you could say, “Bring it on.” Like, this is a challenge and I've got the resources to meet this moment. It's a choice. Again, I get people, “It's not as simple as that.” It is as simple as that, but it's hard in practice, and most of that is because we have spent 20, 30, 40 years training and wiring our brains for one direction, which is to strat for stress and survival, right. And so when I do ask people to flip it, you can't just flip it over, but these are not soft skills. This is why what I teach is very hard, because you're rewiring your brain. The good news is it's called neuroplasticity. We can rewire our brains, but it does take work and deliberate commitment, and that's why, you know, I see this all the time with spouses. They're like, “I don't see what is the big deal. My wife is freaking out,” or vice versa, like in a cockpit. Like, I'm calm, and I'm like, “Why is my co-pilot freaking out?” It's that perception, and how our brain deals stressors. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 30:27 So, we have a lot of listeners that are leading people. How do you navigate their ability to help others through that, or is it really more dependent on the individual themselves? Like, do you need the individual to do with the work with you, or can you work with the leader and help them navigate that with their folks? Col. Jannell MacAulay 30:46 You can absolutely work with the leader, and as a leader, you can role model the behaviors. So, there's some real science behind this. For example, how often is a leader creating a storm instead of being the calm in the storm, right? Col. Naviere Walkewicz 31:02 More often than people realize. Col. Jannell MacAulay 31:03 Right, it really is, and it's almost one of those things where later can be the calm in the storm, right? But when they're not, they embody the stress that then pervades through the organization, right? Like they create that culture, and so if you have a boss that comes in every day stressed out, you have a boss that's not sleeping. I absolutely, this is what drives you crazy about leaders in the Air Force, who will say things like, “I only sleep three, four hours a night,” and like, you are bragging your suboptimal, right, from someone who studies performance and psychology, and like, you are literally telling people, “I am not ready to make decisions on your behalf or be your leader today.” Col. Naviere Walkewicz 31:42 I like how you said that: “You are bragging your suboptimal.” That is right, there, those words, that's fantastic. Col. Jannell MacAuley 31:48 Right, but we — it's part of our culture, right, to even kind of be like proud of it. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 31:51 How much did I actually, you know, keep myself up to get more done? Col. Jannell MacAulay 31:55 Yes, yes. And so here's another example. I'll tell a quick story. I was a commander, sat down Monday morning meeting with my peers, and one guy says, “Oh, I worked all day Sunday on performance reports, like, I have a sick kid at home, so I only got like two hours of sleep, like barely had time to grab coffee, you know, but I'm here to be a badass.” And then the next guy goes, “Well, let me tell you something. I worked Saturday and Sunday on all my performance reports, and, oh, by the way, two sick kids at home, so I didn't sleep last night.” Wow, you know, “I didn't have time to grab coffee, but like, I'm here to be a badass.” And then they turned to me, like, expecting me to one up them on my stress. It's a culture of competitive stress that we live in. And instead, I said, “Well, my husband doesn't live with me. I had to get all my work done last week, so I can spend the weekend with my kids,” but mind you, I had the OSS, the flying squadron, so I had triple the size squadron, “but I got all my work done last week because I was more focused in my work. Then I hung out with my kids, everyone slept great, like no one's sick, we're all good. I've got my yummy green smoothie to start the day,” and instead of anyone at that table saying, “Oh my gosh, how do you do that?” The sentiment was, “Well, she's obviously not working hard now.” That's our culture, like our culture is one of, if you're not stressed, if you're not showing how busy you are, you're not valued, and actually that is not the path to performance. The path to performance is quality over quantity, it's sleeping, it's demonstrating to stay calm, it's making good decisions, it's, you know, so we as leaders can either set that tone that we're in this competitive stress, which then makes our captains not want to be us, like that's a huge problem, right? But if you're the type of leader who stays calm, if you're the type of leader that they see, “Oh, they go home every night on time, they do spend — they do leave early sometimes to go to their kids' soccer game.” That could, should be OK, but it never — I never didn't perform my job right, I was still working hard and doing the things I needed to do every day, I just was more efficient. Here's the stat: We mind-wander half our waking moments. Do you know what that means? Like, we've all read a page in the book, back to the bottom. Yep, don't know what I read. Drove in your car someplace, don't know how I got there. Yep, Col. Naviere Walkewicz 34:06 Yep, autopilot Col. Jannell MacAulay 34:06 That's when you have an off-task thought, your brain, your attention system goes off task during an ongoing task or activity. I'm telling my brain to pay attention to driving or reading, it goes elsewhere. It's unintentional, and when our brain does that. t mind-wanders towards stressors, worries, catastrophes, Col. Naviere Walkewicz 39:41 To-do lists. Col. Jannell MacAulay 34:22 To-do lists, exactly. All of those horrible things that then make you more angry and distraught and unhappy, right? So, what if we could get control of that, stop spending so much time in that distraction and be more focused? Well, you do that by not having your phone all the time, you do that by looking at people and actually listening, because this is where leadership comes in. If we're having a conversation and I'm telling you something important, you're my, you're my commander, and I look at you and I'm like, “She's looking at me but not listening.” You can feel that as you can see. And so leaders can be mindful and focused and pay attention. It doesn't take that much, but it takes awareness. That's really what we're training when we train our minds. We are training our awareness. I'm not saying that I am perfect at being focused, I am not perfect at staying calm. The difference is, is when I start to get out of control, I recognize it quickly, and I redirect. When I notice myself not paying attention to our conversation, I redirect very quickly. That's the skill, and that's what we're not teaching enough leaders, I don't think. We're getting there, because I think leaders can set the talent, leaders can set the example, and when I was a commander, I collected data, and we found that, you know, 60, over 60% of the leaders I was interacting with on a daily basis changing their life based on the things I was teaching them, based on the way I was modeling behaviors, and then a greater squadron, it was like 35% and that's — I didn't even teach them anything, I just demonstrated an example. So imagine once you start teaching people how much more those stats will grow and how people's lives will change. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 36:04 Right. well, one of my favorite stories, I think, that you know, and I'm thinking about our leaders that are listening in here as they, as they think about how they can be better leaders. One of the stories you shared previously was actually recognizing someone by calling someone important in their life to share their good news, and it took like two minutes. I think what a wonderful lesson, like being a great leader and championing someone does not have to take a long time, but the impact lasts — could be forever. Do you mind sharing that story? Because I just think that's such a wonderful one. Col. Jannell MacAulay 36:35 I love that story. So, I had an airman who got below-the-zone senior airman, and I used to do a thing where, you know, whether it was a coin or whether it was an award or whether it was just a job all done, and we wanted to celebrate someone in the squadron, you know, you could send someone an email. I hate email, which I did — also as a commander, No- Email Friday. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 36:56 Really?! Col. Jannell MacAulay 36:56 Did not check my emails on Fridays because I wanted one day where I wasn't chained to my desk, like I was like, in fact, you know how my wing commander found out I was doing No-email Friday? Col. Naviere Walkewicz 37:06 Because they emailed and you didn't email back? Col. Jannell MacAulay 37:08 He got my out-of-office response. Welcome to No-email Friday. “I'm not checking my email today. If you really need to get a hold of me, call me. There's my phone number.” Col. Naviere Walkewicz 37:15 I love that. Col. Jannell MacAulay 37:16 So I did that to ensure that I could spend more time with, like, how do you lead people if you don't know them? Col. Naviere Walkewicz 37:23 Right, you can't. Col. Jannell MacAulay 37:24 And if you're sitting behind your desk or you're checking emails, like, you can't know people. So I would spend Friday down and about, and we used to do this thing where I would call someone special first for someone, if maybe they had a big event or whatever we were celebrating. So one day, this gentleman got below the zone, and I asked him to pull out his phone, because I used to call people, and people don't answer strange numbers anymore. So that stopped working. I was like, “You pick — pull out your phone, let's call someone special that you pick, and because everyone's gonna answer their kids, right? And I actually talked to, like, spouses, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, like brothers, sisters of people, yeah, over the course of my commands, and I asked him to pull out his phone, called his dad. I got to brag on him a little bit, saying, like, “Hey, this is what your son is doing,” and most of the time kids don't even tell their parents what they're doing in the Air Force, so it was an opportunity for that. At the end of the conversation, I remember it just like it was yesterday. The dad said, “I'm so proud of you, I love you, son.” And I looked up, and my airman just had tears streaming down his face, and I was getting choked up, and my airman said, my dad has never said that to me before. So we're busy as leaders, like we are, go, go, go, we are in a competitive stress environment, whether we want to be or not, and I'm just asking leaders to pause, right, and it doesn't have to take a lot of time, right, just pause. Those types of interactions you have with an airman, the next time you need them to work late, the next time you need them to take the hill, the next time you need them to go deploy, or whatever it is, you've built a level of trust that only happens when you're paying attention, and that's what the future fight is about. The future fight is about connecting as human beings and focusing when we're doing those hard and challenging things, and the way we do both of those is by training our attention system. You know, we have to pay attention to each other, and we have to pay attention to our job, so that we can be high performing when it's hard. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 39:25 This has been excellent. I didn't — wow. Got me… Tears. Eyes are sweating here in the studio. No, this is wonderful. I'm curious, with all the work that you do in helping others, what is something you're doing every day to stay sharp yourself in this space to be better as a leader, what's something you do? Col. Jannell MacAulay 39:46 I am really big on continuously challenging myself, like I always want to have a goal or something hard in my future, like I think that that, especially as we get older, I think it's really important. And so, on a personal front, I just signed up to run 50 miles. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 40:04 Oh my goodness. Col. Jannell MacAulay 40:04 I got five friends to do it with me, so I'm like excited. Yeah, it's not all in one day, it's like you run a 5k, 10k, half-marathon, marathon over the course of four days. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 40:14 And so the longest race at the end. Wow. Col. Jannell MacAulay 40:16 At the end. Yes, that's why it's a big challenge. And so that's my next one. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 40:22 When is that? Col. Jannell MacAulay 40:23 That is in January. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 40:24 Oh my goodness, so yeah. Col. Jannell MacAulay 40:25 Just about. And again, for someone who was told you will never be a runner, I think that's also why I want to do it, you know, just to prove to myself that I can, so that's kind of a personal challenge, but on the leadership front, you know, I challenge myself every day. Writing a book was scary, right? You know, when I go and work with each team, whether it's someone in the, you know, like a company or whether it's a military unit, I try to take my time to like customize exactly what they need. It's not just going to be like cookie cutter for everyone, and so that's like my continuous challenge is, can I go into an environment and lead and instruct and educate and train in a way that's meaningful to that group, and that's, you know, what I would, I do for my job, but most importantly, I love this sentiment that you can be everything to someone or you can be someone to everyone. Sometimes in my job I get on a stage, I talk to thousands of people, and I'm someone to a lot of people, right? I can give them a little piece of what I teach, but I also have two young people in my life, my children, that my role to be everything to them is also very important, and so I try to harmonize that the best I can, because it's easy. They get caught up in, like, I'm just gonna go out there and keep sharing this message and forget that there's people closest to me. You know, leadership is about influence, right? Your 3-foot circle, which one of my classmates at the academy, Ronnie Buller, taught me, right? Your 3-foot circle is who you interact with, whether it's your family, your team, your neighbors, your community, and so you have the ability to continuously lead, and that's I want to continuously lead by example and teach people that we need to train their minds. It's not a whoo whoo thing, it's a hard thing that requires deliberate and consistent practice, and it will pay dividends if you give it the focus and time it deserves. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 42:28 I appreciate that you use the word that you like to harmonize things in your life versus balance. I think that's a very distinct difference. It's really impressive. If you could go back in time and talk to Janelle, young Janelle, or maybe it's even just talking to your daughter once you're young girl. What advice would you give her in the space of leadership? Col. Jannell MacAulay 42:48 Well, I would say to choose your hard, and I wish somebody would have imparted that a little bit more on me. I had that sentiment, and I had a lot of grit, and I had a lot of determination, and that's why I did accomplish a lot when I was younger, but it was more difficult than it needed to be. I'm not here to say, like, it makes it easy, it can be easier when correspondingly, like, you're, you're, you have great, you have determination, you're repetitively challenging yourself, that builds mental strength. But if I had known that I could also train my mind in a deliberate way, in parallel, just to make it a little bit easier, and to also find the joy in the journey. There's a picture of me when I got back from a KC-10 deployment, and I'm holding my daughter. She was 15 months, so it was like the first time I had deployed when she was young, and that was a hard deployment. And I remember, like, I look at that picture, and I can see in my face and in my eyes, that I was always already worried about the next thing. Like, instead of being joyful that I was holding my daughter, I was like, in this great moment— Col. Naviere Walkewicz 44:04 That's what I was expecting you to actually explain, that's crazy. Col. Jannell MacAulay 44:07 I wasn't there, like, my mind was already like, “OK, gotta go again,” like, “When's the next thing?” like, “When is was my next three-week trip that I have to leave her, when is the next thing that I'm gonna miss in her life?” And, you know, we spend a lot of time living our lives, stressful moments, a stressful moment to stressful moment, and I wish that I could have learned earlier to embrace the moments in between, to see them, right? I mind-wandered through many of them, I was just worried, I was catastrophizing. I mean, how many of us spend time in the military? As soon as you get to your first, your next assignment, you're already worried about what your next one is, right? You're like, OK, what do I need to do? Like, like, yes. And you're for me as a joint-spouse couple, there was no protections for us back then. Like, I love that they're finally gone, and I better know, yes, right? I'm so grateful for that, because we did not have those protections. It was like, here's where he's going, here's where you're going, and unless you had a commander or a leader that cared enough to make a phone call, you're going separate ways. And so I wish that somebody would have told me then to stop worrying so much about the next thing and just live more in the moment, I would have saved myself a lot of extra stress, a lot of extra angst, and I would have had more joy. And so that's really what I want for this generation, and that's why I work so hard, and I'm so passionate about this, is because if I could do it again, that's what I would want to remember. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 45:31 So, with so many listening and watching, this is your opportunity to be, you know, something for many. What is the thing that they might do? A small thing they could do, just in their lives, to be a little bit better in their mental space and their mental capacity or performance. Col. Jannell MacAulay 45:48 Gosh, I have, like, an 8-hour course. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 45:51 I know. That's why I was like, “Here's a nugget everybody, pay attention.” Col. Jannell MacAulay 45:56 OK, I'm going to give you — can I give you three? Which ones to pick? The first one is to start practicing mindfulness, to start doing mental pushups. You cannot layer in productive thinking, you cannot pivot your mind unless you eliminate the noise. Like, that's the first thing you have to do. You have to be able to see the thoughts inside your head and make a conscious choice not to follow them. Because a lot of them are not providing value to you, right? And the skill set that does that is mental pushups, is mindfulness, and it's this idea of the definition of mindfulness is being in the present moment without any emotional reactivity or judgment. Like, just be here now without judgment, that's what it means. And it's a deliberate practice of continuously being here now without judgment, so that when you are in a moment with lots of judgment, you can filter right, and especially that's where greatness comes from. It's not because of a great moment, it's because of what you do in the moments you're given. Second thing is, for leaders, stop asking people, “How are you doing?” I want them to rephrase that question and ask, “What's going well for you today?” And the reason we do that is for those two reasons: The first one is when you ask someone how they're doing, you're gonna get — most people are just gonna give you like, “Busy,” right? “Good,” “Fine,” “Liiving the dream,” whatever, right? But did I, as a leader, get any information from you when you say any of those in response? No. And then what we do as leaders? We get, “How are you doing?” “How are you doing?” “How are you doing?” And then we— Col. Naviere Walkewicz 47:36 Check the box, check the box, check the box. Col. Jannell MacAulay 47:37 Yes. And if you happen to have someone who's like, "Oh my gosh, let me tell you,” you're almost like, “Oh my God, good for you.” I didn't mean for you guys to tell me, because that's our cluster again, right? So I want leaders to start asking people what's going well for you, and that does two things. Now I'm going to get information from you based on your answer, and that information is also going to start training your mind and your psychological framework toward optimism and hope, because do you know the biggest problem for leaders today? I think is missing the hopeless people. We think that there's this binary of optimism and pessimism, and so the optimistic people, we can find them easy, and the pessimistic people, we can find them easy too, right? They're usually, I'm usually focused on the pessimism, because they're noisy and they're loud and they're annoying and they're bothering us and they're bothering the whole unit, right? And sometimes we're like, “Oh my gosh, Bob is so negative and angry,” like, “We should worry about Bob.” But the thing is, is that actually Bob's not your worry, because people who are pessimistic understand they're on a sliding scale. A pessimist thinks that there's a genuine belief that things could get worse, but if you believe things can get worse, you know they can also get better, right? Which is what optimism is. I genuinely believe things will get better. So, a pessimist — it's not binary. I want people at leaders to open up the aperture. There's optimism, pessimism, and then there's hopelessness and hope. That's the second thing. And then the last thing is leaders suffer from what I call compassion fatigue. OK, it's a very real thing. How many of us spend all day at work — it's kind of a combination of decision fatigue and compassion fat. You spend all day at work making decisions for other people, you make, you spend all day at work taking other people's problems, and if you're an empathetic person, like you take it on, right? You're like, “Oh my god, feel so bad, like airmen that are struggling with all these things.” Then you go home and someone at home says, “What's for dinner,” and you flip out about what's for dinner, right? And it's like, oh my gosh, where did that come from? Like, I didn't mean to snap, or someone in your — it's very important to you, and your whole life comes to you and needs you, needs your attention, and you're like, I have no more attention to give you, I have no more compassion to offer, because I am done, like I am burnt, so it's a very real thing, and it's not an excuse, I might have given people a label for what's happening, like it's this thing— Col. Naviere Walkewicz 49:57 I have compassion fatigue. Col. Jannell MacAulay 49:59 Which is very true, and it's a very real thing, and I'm not giving you an excuse, I'm telling you, you need to fix it, and here's how you need to every time, like the whole time you're at work during the day, you need to shed all the mental distress that happens. You need to shed the empathy, right? Your empathetic, the empathy that you use when you're in an interaction with someone builds like extra stress into your. It's actually in your like body, yes? Right? Like, exactly. you take on those physical, and it becomes a physical manifestation. You need to shed that. So, what I have is called a waterfall technique. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 50:36 Waterfall? Col. Jannell MacAulay 50:38 So when you're, yeah, yep, so when you're engaging with people, remember we don't want to be distracted and not paying attention. So, put your phone away once you invite someone in your office. I don't have it. It distracts you by 20% if you have it on your body or in your view, right? Just have it put away. So now you're more attentive. Then I'm going to listen to you when you tell me whatever's going on in your life, and I'm going to envision we're at the top of the waterfall. Visualization is very powerful for our minds, so we're going to visualize that waterfall, and I'm talking to you, we're having a conversation, I'm fully present. You might have some stuff going on in your life, like I might have to take a note, I might be OK, follow up, I might give you some mentorship, but when we're done, your problems go down the waterfall, right? Like, we want to feel, “Oh, I'm their commander.” No, it's still not your problem, right? The problem goes down the waterfall, so then the next person can come in. Now you're at the top of the waterfall again. I'm fully present with my next person that's coming in. I'm paying attention, I'm not thinking about the other conversation. Then when we're done, your problems get to go down the waterfall. It will protect your energy, it will protect your compassion, and so that when you go home, it'll just offer, you know. And then the other technique is before you walk in the door, do a mindful, mindful minute. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 51:48 Mindful minute right there. Col. Jannell MacAulay 51:49 Right. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 51:49 Well, I'm glad you shared three, because I think you know, I think that's what it's about when you're on your leadership journey, and I think leadership is a lifelong journey, and I think anything we can do better, not only to help others but to help ourselves as well, is really important. So, thank you for sharing that. Well, I want, before we close, I want to go into this moment, because you said yourself is a little bit vulnerable, you've written a book. Let's talk about Breathless, and this journey you've now undertaken. Col. Jannell MacAulay 52:17 So, Breathless is the story of mothers, and it's my story. And one of the women that worked on my Syria team with me, she was an Army officer, and we were both mothers of very young children at the time, and we also have two mothers in Syria that are sharing their stories with us, and they lost their children in a chemical attack. And so it's a story of mothers persevering through unimaginable odds, us working breathlessly to solve this problem, and basically having kind of this weight of the world on us to come up with a solution that would work and solve the problem, and then these mothers living in this horrible genocide, right, in this horrible time of a civil war, and under a ruthless dictator, and so they, the only reason why we're able to share their stories is because Assad, right, the liberation happened. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 53:16 I was like, I was going to say they're actually featured in your book. Gotcha. Col. Jannell MacAulay 53:20 Yes, and we originally started writing this book without their stories, and then once Assad fell, like we reached out and we got two mothers to share their story, and one of the mothers, her children were just slightly older than my children, and she lost both of them. The other mother lost her daughter, and her daughter was in prison during the Arab Spring. Her son traded out with her daughter because she was afraid of the conditions and what was going to happen to her daughter in prison. So the brother traded out with his sister, and the mother didn't find out until — her name is Amsaeed — she did not find out that her son Saeed had died, executed with 25 other prisoners before Assad left the country, so she didn't find that out till after liberation, so she lost a son, she lost a daughter, this other mother had two children taken from her, and so the story is about both of our struggles. Sarin literally takes her breath away, and we were working breathlessly, you know, to help them, and just the story of what it means to be a mother, like what a mother's love, what a mother's heart will do. And I just talked to Amsaeed last week, we coordinated a Zoom together, and I got to hear her story firsthand. She got to meet me and understand my story, and it was very evident to me that she said something that was very pertinent. She , “The world has a short memory, and people have probably already forgotten about Syria,” right? Like, oh yeah, something with chemical weapons, bad dictator, like it's another part of the world. And so part of writing this book also is to keep her story alive, to not let the awful things that happened to these women, I mean, to the whole community of Syrians, right, civilians, but especially the mothers who had to not even get to bury their children, and to help their stories surviv
This podcast delves into the profound experiences of RJ Rowe, a distinguished United States Air Force veteran and co-founder of the Veterans Transition Resource Center. We explore his motivations for enlisting in the Air Force, which stemmed from a desire to take responsibility for his education and future. Throughout our discussion, RJ shares his remarkable journey from piloting helicopters to his pivotal role in supporting veterans' transitions to civilian life. We also examine the critical need for advocates and resources to assist veterans and their families in navigating benefits and services. Ultimately, this conversation underscores the importance of community and support systems in enhancing the lives of veterans and their loved ones. The podcast delves into the profound narratives of veterans and their journeys, with a particular focus on RJ Rowe, a retired United States Air Force pilot. RJ shares the motivations behind his enlistment in the Air Force, tracing back to childhood conversations that influenced his decision to pursue a military career. His experiences in flight dynamics and the responsibilities associated with being a pilot are articulated in a manner that elucidates the complexities and challenges of military aviation. The discussion transitions to RJ's tenure at Edwards Air Force Base, where he was intricately involved in flight test support, detailing the high-stakes nature of his missions and the rigorous training required to operate in such an environment. The episode encapsulates the essence of service, sacrifice, and the unique camaraderie shared among those who have donned the military uniform, culminating in a reflective exploration of how these experiences shape their lives post-service.Takeaways:This podcast episode emphasizes the importance of sharing personal veteran stories to foster understanding.Veterans Transition Resource Center plays a crucial role in assisting veterans with their transitions.The discussion highlights the significance of education and training in military careers and their implications.Listeners are encouraged to understand the various benefits available to veterans and their families.The podcast stresses the need for volunteers to support veterans in need of assistance and resources.It is essential for veterans to communicate their benefits knowledge to their spouses for better support.
For decades, military personnel, pilots, radar operators, and aerospace insiders have reported encounters with mysterious craft displaying capabilities far beyond known technology. Are these sightings evidence of classified aerospace programs, advanced human technology, or something even more extraordinary?In this episode of the Michigan UFO Sightings & Paranormal Encounters Podcast, Wayne and Michelle welcome back renowned researcher, illustrator, and military UFO historian Michael Schratt for a fascinating discussion on military UFO encounters, hidden aerospace projects, defense contractor secrecy, and some of the most compelling cases in UFO history.Michael shares insights from years of research into military witness testimony, classified aviation programs, declassified documents, and reports involving unexplained craft observed by Air Force personnel, pilots, and defense industry insiders.Topics discussed include:• Military UFO encounters and eyewitness testimony• Secret aerospace programs and black-budget technology• Defense contractor involvement in UFO secrecy claims• Historical military UFO cases that deserve more attention• Radar-confirmed UFO incidents• Advanced craft reported by military personnel• Reverse engineering allegations and hidden technology• The current state of UFO disclosure and government transparencyWhether you're interested in UFOs, UAPs, military history, aerospace technology, or the ongoing disclosure movement, this episode offers an in-depth look at one of the most intriguing aspects of the UFO mystery.Subscribe for more conversations exploring UFOs, the paranormal, cryptids, consciousness, ancient mysteries, and unexplained phenomena.Michigan UFO Sightings & Paranormal Encounters PodcastHosted by Wayne & MichelleKeep your eyes to the sky.Email us your encountermi.ufo.podcast@gmail.comYouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/@michiganufosandparanormalInstagramhttps://www.instagram.com/miufospep/X / Twitterhttps://x.com/mi_ufoWebsitehttps://michiganufopodcast.netlify.app/Support the ShowDonate via PayPalhttps://paypal.me/miufoSupport us on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/miufospep
Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.comHow is Christian nationalism showing up inside the U.S. military chaplaincy, and why does it matter for religious freedom?In this episode, Will talks with Leigh Larson, a theologian, Air Force veteran, public scholar, and founder of Follow the Leighder. Larson's research focuses on Christian nationalism in U.S. military chaplaincy, giving her both personal experience and academic grounding for this conversation.Military chaplains serve at one of the most complicated intersections of church and state. They are religious leaders inside a government institution, but their job is supposed to protect the spiritual care of every service member, including people of different faiths and no faith at all.Larson explains how chaplains are trained, why endorsing bodies and faith codes matter, and what happens when spiritual care shifts toward proselytizing or political theology. The conversation covers religious pluralism, Wiccan and humanist recognition, Cold War civil religion, post-9/11 evangelical influence, and the growing concern over Christian nationalism inside military culture. Relevant Links & ResourcesFollow the Leighder: https://www.followtheleighder.com/Follow the Leighder Substack: https://followtheleighder.substack.com/Guest BioLeigh Larson is a theologian, veteran, and public scholar, and the creator and host of Follow the Leighder, a multi-platform society and culture brand reaching 245K+ followers across five platforms.She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Phillips Theological Seminary, where her thesis examined Christian Nationalism in US military chaplaincy through original research including 22 interview subjects and a 116-response survey. She is a 2025–2026 Disciples of Christ HELM Global Theological Fellow (one of nine selected nationally) and a 2025 Stone-Campbell Journal Graduate Essay Finalist. During her first year of seminary, she served in the United States Air Force Reserve as a Chaplain Candidate and Second Lieutenant. She holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was both a Presidential Scholar and Jefferson Scholar.When she is not recording or writing, Leigh is somewhere on the road with her dog, Professor Huckleberry.Support the show
Most fundraising problems aren't fundraising problems. They're board problems.Elise Woodworth — VMI alum, Air Force veteran, and author of Business Not Battle — joins Trevor to unpack why so many nonprofit boards stall out, and what to actually do about it. She came to this work through a back door (the VMI Foundation made her their first female and youngest-ever trustee), and her approach is unusual: instead of teaching EDs how to manage their boards, she teaches board members how to be effective in the first place.In this episode: the 20-minute Champion's Elevator Pitch exercise you can run at your next meeting, the four thoughtful questions that move a stuck organization forward, why Elise refuses to say the word "fundraising" with new boards, and her four-month blueprint for turning around a burned-out board.If you've ever said "I can't get my board to fundraise," this one's for you.Chapters:00:00 Intro00:55 Understanding Strength and Strategic Mindset05:45 Journey into Nonprofit Leadership11:14 Empowering Board Members14:53 Embracing Change for Growth18:37 Aligning Mission and Leadership19:19 The Champion's Elevator Pitch24:11 Transforming Fear into Invitation30:35 Passion for Nonprofit ImpactHave a question or topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know https://hgafundraising.com/ask-your-questions/
In this inspiring episode of I Am Refocused Radio, host Shemaiah Reed welcomes Dr. Robert Yonover — Ph.D. geochemist, volcanologist, North Shore big-wave surfer, and the brilliant mind behind the patented See Rescue Streamer. What started as a terrifying “what if” moment during a single-engine flight over the Pacific — when engine trouble made him realize how nearly impossible it would be to spot someone lost at sea — sparked one of the most practical and powerful survival innovations of our time. Dr. Yonover shares the full story behind the See Rescue Streamer: a simple yet brilliant bright-orange segmented streamer (personal version roughly the size of a cell phone when stowed) that dramatically increases visibility for search-and-rescue teams from miles away, day or night, on land or water. No batteries. No electronics. No chemicals. Just pure, passive, military-grade visibility that stands out against any background. You'll hear how this technology went from a Shark Tank pitch (Season 8) to being adopted by the U.S. military — including the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy, and Marines — and is now protecting astronauts aboard SpaceX missions. Real stories of lives saved in combat zones, snowy backcountry, and open ocean will move you. Dr. Yonover also opens up about the deeper personal journey: 19 years as a primary caregiver to his paralyzed wife while raising young children and building his company from the ground up — often inventing late into the night. His story is a masterclass in perseverance, purpose-driven innovation, and turning personal adversity into something that saves lives. Whether you're an entrepreneur, inventor, outdoor adventurer, veteran, first responder, or someone navigating your own challenges, this conversation will refocus your mindset on what's possible when you refuse to let obstacles silence your vision. Key themes:Turning fear into life-saving innovationResilience through caregiving and entrepreneurshipThe power of simple, practical solutionsLeaving a legacy that protects othersConnect with Dr. Robert Yonover and get your own See Rescue Streamer at seerescuestreamer.com.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/i-am-refocused-radio--2671113/support.Subscribe now at YouTube.com/@RefocusedNetworkThank you for your time.
Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Johnny Lynum.
Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Johnny Lynum.