Podcasts about alamo

Darkness Radio Presents: United States of Ghosts: A History of America's Hauntings with Paranormal Researcher/Author, Richard Estep!Richard Estep plunks you into the middle of the unsettling action of captivating true ghost stories and encounters with the supernatural from throughout American history. From 1776 and Boston's Granary Burying Ground to the spirits that arose after the brutality of the Civil War, the whispered voices heard in the White House, and eerie tales of dead celebrity sightings, United States of Ghosts: A History of America's Hauntings delves into the true eerie tales from both historical documents and personal accounts, including … Ghosts of the American Revolution found in the Boston Common, the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia, and elsewhere Poltergeist outbreaks, a brutal murder in a haunted house, and other extraordinary events before and after the Civil War The lingering specters of Gettysburg, the Battle of Antietam, and other Civil War battles Ghostly encounters with famous men and women, including John Belushi, Harry Houdini, Rudolph Valentino, and Mark Twain Spirits from the Wild West that continue to wreak havoc on the jails that incarcerated them and the mines that buried them The brutal mutilation mystery of the Roaring Twenties' Black Dahlia First lady and president apparitions that haunt the White House Davy Crockett and ghosts of the Alamo Haunted hotels, cemeteries, and burial grounds … and much more! On Today's show, we discuss the wonderful concept of this book! We talk about of the amazing history and ghost stories from such locations as the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. The White House, The Alamo, Virginia City, NV, and more! Get your copy of "United State of Ghosts..." here:   https://bit.ly/4ACJ2gRFind out more about Richard here:  https://www.richardestep.net/Want a new spot to hang out, have that perfect dinner, and see some great entertainment? Look no further than Jellybean and Julia's in Coon Rapids, MN! https://jellybeanandjulias.com/How does Halloween at Dracula's castle with Dacre Stoker sound? Mysterious Adventures Tours is offering a Vampire Ball that, for the first time ever, offers a dinner and costume ball INSIDE Bran Castle in Romania! Get the details here: https://mysteriousadventurestours.com/draculas-vampire-ball-at-bran-castle/Make sure you update your Darkness Radio Apple Apps!And subscribe to the Darkness Radio YouTube page:  https://www.youtube.com/@DRTimDennisThere are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store on our website! Check out the Darkness Radio Store!   https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/#paranormal  #supernatural  #paranormalpodcasts  #darknessradio  #timdennis  #richardestep #unitedstatesofghosts #ahistoryofamericashauntings #visibleinkpress #paranormalauthor  #paranormalbook  #ghosts  #spirits  #hauntings #hauntedhouses #paranormalinvestigation #ghosthunters #revolutionarywar #gettysburg #expirationdateonghosts #thewhitehouse #abrahamlincoln #winstonchurchill #thequeenmary #thealamo #virginiacity #washoeclub #hauntedhistory 

This is Part Two of our conversation.The Alamo may be San Antonio's most famous piece of history, but the streets surrounding it have witnessed generations of life, death, tragedy, and change—and some believe not everyone who became part of that history ever left.Lauren Swartz was born and raised in San Antonio, and her love of its history and the paranormal led her and her husband, James, to create Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours, which combine documented history with ghostly experiences still being reported today.There's the legendary Menger Hotel, with stories of Sallie White, Captain Richard King, and even Teddy Roosevelt; the spirits of the historic City Cemetery No. 1; the old Bexar County Jail, where executions once took place inside the building; and the Emily Morgan Hotel, a former medical building with its own long list of unexplained encounters.From famous figures to forgotten prisoners—and the spirits that may still be checking into their favorite hotel—San Antonio has plenty of ghost stories beyond the Alamo.Today on The Grave Talks, Beyond the Alamo: The Ghosts of San Antonio , with Lauren Swartz of Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours.For more information, visit their website: sistersgrimmghosttour.com.#TheGraveTalks #SistersGrimmGhostTours #LaurenSwartz #HauntedSanAntonio #SanAntonioGhosts #MengerHotel #EmilyMorganHotel #BexarCountyJail #HauntedTexas #GhostStories #Paranormal #HauntedHistoryLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

Darkness Radio Presents: United States of Ghosts: A History of America's Hauntings with Paranormal Researcher/Author, Richard Estep!Richard Estep plunks you into the middle of the unsettling action of captivating true ghost stories and encounters with the supernatural from throughout American history. From 1776 and Boston's Granary Burying Ground to the spirits that arose after the brutality of the Civil War, the whispered voices heard in the White House, and eerie tales of dead celebrity sightings, United States of Ghosts: A History of America's Hauntings delves into the true eerie tales from both historical documents and personal accounts, including … Ghosts of the American Revolution found in the Boston Common, the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia, and elsewhere Poltergeist outbreaks, a brutal murder in a haunted house, and other extraordinary events before and after the Civil War The lingering specters of Gettysburg, the Battle of Antietam, and other Civil War battles Ghostly encounters with famous men and women, including John Belushi, Harry Houdini, Rudolph Valentino, and Mark Twain Spirits from the Wild West that continue to wreak havoc on the jails that incarcerated them and the mines that buried them The brutal mutilation mystery of the Roaring Twenties' Black Dahlia First lady and president apparitions that haunt the White House Davy Crockett and ghosts of the Alamo Haunted hotels, cemeteries, and burial grounds … and much more! On Today's show, we discuss the wonderful concept of this book! We talk about of the amazing history and ghost stories from such locations as the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. The White House, The Alamo, Virginia City, NV, and more! Get your copy of "United State of Ghosts..." here:   https://bit.ly/4ACJ2gRFind out more about Richard here:  https://www.richardestep.net/Want a new spot to hang out, have that perfect dinner, and see some great entertainment? Look no further than Jellybean and Julia's in Coon Rapids, MN! https://jellybeanandjulias.com/How does Halloween at Dracula's castle with Dacre Stoker sound? Mysterious Adventures Tours is offering a Vampire Ball that, for the first time ever, offers a dinner and costume ball INSIDE Bran Castle in Romania! Get the details here: https://mysteriousadventurestours.com/draculas-vampire-ball-at-bran-castle/Make sure you update your Darkness Radio Apple Apps!And subscribe to the Darkness Radio YouTube page:  https://www.youtube.com/@DRTimDennisThere are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store on our website! Check out the Darkness Radio Store!   https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/#paranormal  #supernatural  #paranormalpodcasts  #darknessradio  #timdennis  #richardestep #unitedstatesofghosts #ahistoryofamericashauntings #visibleinkpress #paranormalauthor  #paranormalbook  #ghosts  #spirits  #hauntings #hauntedhouses #paranormalinvestigation #ghosthunters #revolutionarywar #gettysburg #expirationdateonghosts #thewhitehouse #abrahamlincoln #winstonchurchill #thequeenmary #thealamo #virginiacity #washoeclub #hauntedhistory 

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The Alamo may be San Antonio's most famous piece of history, but the streets surrounding it have witnessed generations of life, death, tragedy, and change—and some believe not everyone who became part of that history ever left.Lauren Swartz was born and raised in San Antonio, and her love of its history and the paranormal led her and her husband, James, to create Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours, which combine documented history with ghostly experiences still being reported today.There's the legendary Menger Hotel, with stories of Sallie White, Captain Richard King, and even Teddy Roosevelt; the spirits of the historic City Cemetery No. 1; the old Bexar County Jail, where executions once took place inside the building; and the Emily Morgan Hotel, a former medical building with its own long list of unexplained encounters.From famous figures to forgotten prisoners—and the spirits that may still be checking into their favorite hotel—San Antonio has plenty of ghost stories beyond the Alamo.Today on The Grave Talks, Beyond the Alamo: The Ghosts of San Antonio , with Lauren Swartz of Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours.For more information, visit their website: sistersgrimmghosttour.com.#TheGraveTalks #SistersGrimmGhostTours #LaurenSwartz #HauntedSanAntonio #SanAntonioGhosts #MengerHotel #EmilyMorganHotel #BexarCountyJail #HauntedTexas #GhostStories #Paranormal #HauntedHistoryLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

Colorado State got off to an extremely quick 14-0 lead over UTSA, but the Roadrunners hardly flinched, using a 35 point run to defeat the Rams 59-45 in the highest scoring game in program history. Jeff Traylor's squad seems well positioned to make a run at the conference title this year, starting with the Rice Owls in Houston. 0:00 UTSA Wraps Up Non-Conference Play at 3-1 4:25 Listener Voicemail: End of Non-Conference Play 9:13 Roster Depth and Keeping the Culture Healthy 12:01 The 35-Point Unanswered Run 22:05 Defense Gives Up 500 Yards 26:56 Why Isn't the Pass Rush Getting Home? 28:38 Busted Coverage and Explosive Plays 30:14 Alamodome Crowd Gets Loud 34:25 UTSA vs. Rice: A Long Series History 38:06 Rice's Option Offense 44:07 UTSA Offense vs. Rice Defense 49:46 Rice Players to Watch 57:19 Score Predictions 59:43 Tailgate at Rice Stadium (West Lot 3) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LETHAL MULLET PODCAST #327 - ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976) No demands. No negotiation. Just siege. At 3:03am, the phones go dead, the lights go out, and a decommissioned police station becomes the Alamo. This week we're breaking down John Carpenter's lean, mean, $100k masterpiece that proved you don't need money, you need nerve. It's Rio Bravo meets Night of the Living Dead, with a synth score that invented dread. In This Episode: The Film: Assault on Precinct 13 - 1976 - Written, Directed, Scored and Edited by John Carpenter. 91 minutes. Made for $100k in 20 days. Starring Austin Stoker as Lt. Ethan Bishop, Darwin Joston as Napoleon Wilson, Laurie Zimmer as Leigh, and Henry Brandon. What We Cover: Why Carpenter originally called it THE ANDERSON ALAMO and wrote it in 8 days as "John T. Chance" - John Wayne's character in Rio Bravo The ice cream truck scene - how killing little Kathy changed the MPAA forever and almost got the film an X rating How to make $100k look like a million: Panavision anamorphic 2.39:1 projected on a bedsheet, real Venice cop shop locations, and a cast of USC mates and neighbours The siege mechanics - silenced rifles, no demands, faceless gang, and the most isolated precinct in LA "Got a smoke?" - Wilson, Leigh, and why Napoleon Wilson steals the whole movie The score - written in 3 days, drums + synth + electric piano. The blueprint for Halloween Why it bombed in the US in November '76 and then exploded at the 1977 London Film Festival Original vs 2005 Remake - why explaining the gang ruins the whole point Lean, mean, and 91 minutes of a guy in a tan uniform who really should not be in charge. The ultimate single-location siege movie. Without it, no Die Hard. Directed by: John Carpenter Music by: John Carpenter Influences: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo + Romero's Night of the Living Dead Fun fact: Tony Burton (Duke from Rocky) got cast because he'd actually done time. Where to Watch: Prime & Blu-ray from Shout! Factory. Talk to us: What's your favourite Carpenter deep cut? The Fog? Prince of Darkness? They Live? DM us @thelethalmullet - best Bishop vs Wilson takes get read out next week. #JohnCarpenter #AssaultOnPrecinct13 #LethalMulletPodcast #CultFilm #70sHorror #SiegeMovie #AustinStoker #DarwinJoston

Tony Alamo Program 272: Roman Canon Law, the Wisdom of Proverbs, and a Warning to Bill Clinton Over Waco World pastor Tony Alamo devotes program 272 of his teaching series to Roman canon law and what he calls Satan's seat in Rome, the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, and a pointed rebuke of former President Bill Clinton over Waco, with scripture readings led by his co-host Sharon Alamo. Program 272 Opens With Roman Canon Law Tony Alamo greets listeners as world pastor, opening part 170 of his series How to Have God's Life Living in You, program 272. He tells listeners Sharon will give four ways to request a free copy, along with a free Messiah book, other literature, or a Bible for anyone who cannot afford one. He turns to his recurring theme, comparing Roman canon law, which he says the United States adopted upon joining the United Nations, with the law of God, calling the two exact opposites. He argues that joining the World Council and the United Nations cost America its wealth and manufacturing, transferring it to Japan, its former World War II enemy. He places the seat of Satan, whom he calls a great red dragon, in Rome, the city of seven hills, and says Rome itself authored democracy, a system he calls rule by an untrustworthy mob, no better than the crowd God drowned in Noah's flood while sparing only eight people. Democracy, Rome, and the Generals Removed From Power Alamo continues his critique of one-world government, warning that God scattered the nations' languages precisely to prevent them combining under a single law originating from Satan's seat in Rome. He claims that during World War II, conspirators secretly built NATO, brought in Russia, and removed the two generals, Patton and MacArthur, he says could have won the war outright, installing General Eisenhower, whom he calls Casper Milquetoast, in their place because Eisenhower favored NATO and one-world government. He tells the congregation he watched a History Channel program confirming democracy originated in Rome, the city of seven mountains, and argues the media functions as the mouth of Satan, shaping opinion until the mob believes lies about Jesus having relationships with women or never truly dying on the cross. He insists God alone should govern, citing Moses as ruler of both church and state, and says he supports dictatorship only when God is the dictator. A Prayer and Jesus Loves Me From the Life Choir Alamo leads the studio in prayer, asking the Father to open hearts and minds so listeners reject what he calls the abominations taught by Satan's government, church, and media, and prays that the 144,000 Jews he expects to be saved receive God's mark before the four angels of the end times destroy the earth. The congregation answers amen. He then teaches that Jesus, as the Word of God, embodies wisdom, power, and mercy, tying the familiar song Jesus Loves Me to that idea before introducing a recording of the Life Choir performing it under the direction of arranger HB Barnum, whom he calls one of the top five arrangers and producers in the world. During and after the performance, Alamo interjects short exhortations about the Word of God leading believers into heaven, telling listeners to raise their hands and praise the Lord for His power, wisdom, and knowledge. Colossians, Proverbs, and the Hidden Treasures of Wisdom Alamo brings in his co-host, Sharon Alamo, to read Colossians chapter 2, verse 3, walking her line by line through its description of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ, and teaching that love means keeping God's commandments rather than affection or physical intimacy. He turns to the Book of Proverbs, explaining that its key word is wisdom, tracing it to Christ as described in Proverbs chapter 8, and crediting Solomon, whom he calls the principal author, with 333 Old Testament prophecies pointing toward Jesus. He describes Proverbs as God's practical instruction for relating to God, to parents, to children, and to neighbors, and argues temporal life is not real life until surrendered to the Lord. He also mentions his own literature titled The True Believer's Sabbath, teaching that every day, not just one day a week, is Sabbath rest for a born-again Christian, since Christ said the Sabbath was made for man. Solomon's Wisdom, Sin, and Unconditional Love Rejected Alamo continues teaching that Solomon asked God for wisdom rather than riches and became the wisest man in the world until he disobeyed the Lord's instruction to marry only godly women, falling into idolatry in his later years. He warns the same fate can befall anyone who grows careless, insisting love for God is conditional, not unconditional as he says many preachers falsely claim. He rejects the idea that a believer can keep sinning, naming lying, stealing, and sexual sin, and says preachers who promise otherwise are weak and destined for the lake of fire alongside those they mislead. Sharon then reads from Proverbs chapter 8, and Alamo interprets each line as wisdom, meaning Jesus, calling out to sinners in the highest places and at the city gates. He describes his own appearance, joking that his sunglasses, worn because of glaucoma, make some think he resembles the Mafia rather than a conventional preacher. A Warning to Clinton, a Testimony, and a Closing Prayer Alamo turns his warning toward former President Bill Clinton, referencing a news article in which Clinton reportedly called sending troops to Waco his worst mistake, and tells Clinton that what happened there was sin, not a mistake, naming Janet Reno alongside him and urging both to repent and be washed in the blood of Jesus. Running low on time, he has Sharon read a testimonial from a listener named Brother Martin in San Diego, California, describing his eight-year-old son's recovery from a serious virus in Mexico after prayer with the ministry's prayer-line volunteer, Brother Rick. Alamo credits the healing to prayer and invites listeners with illnesses to call or write for prayer. Sharon then reads from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and Alamo leads the congregation in a spoken sinner's prayer confessing faith in Jesus's death and resurrection. Sharon closes with the ministry's website, Texarkana post office box, phone, and fax numbers before Alamo signs off performing his recording You Can't Take It with You.

Tony Alamo Program 271: The Book of Proverbs, Roman Canon Law, and Letters From Texarkana to Ghana World pastor Tony Alamo devotes program 271 to the Book of Proverbs and a running case against what he calls Roman canon law and the Vatican's seat in Rome, reading listener letters from Texarkana to Ghana with co-host Lydia. Program 271 Opens With Free Literature and Ministry History World pastor Tony Alamo opens program 271, part 169 of his series How to Have God's Life Living in You, with his standing offer of free literature, cassettes, CDs, Bibles, and his Messiah book, all sent with postage covered, and an invitation for listeners to become distributors or open their own churches. He recalls how the ministry began in his house, grew too large, and moved into what he calls an actual dope den after members invited him to preach and everyone there got saved. From there the congregation outgrew several buildings, expanding from Hollywood, California, into Saugus, Newhall, and Valencia as crowds kept multiplying. Alamo frames the day's teaching as a comparison between the Bible and what he calls Roman canon law, describing a world government and a world church he identifies with Satan's seat in Rome, working alongside much of the news media. He tells the congregation not to fear these forces but to fear God and keep His commandments, calling that the whole duty of man. Prayer, Song, and the Book of Proverbs on Wisdom Alamo leads the studio in prayer, thanking the Lord for people responding to the ministry's teaching even on their deathbeds and asking that lukewarm members of the church be filled with the Spirit and set on higher ground; the congregation answers with an audible amen. He then performs a recording of Lead Me, Guide Me with J.D. Sumner and The Stamps Quartet. Returning to the microphone, he turns to the Book of Proverbs, calling it God's detailed pattern for living and naming wisdom, the ability to live skillfully in an ungodly world, as its key word. He tells listeners that no law or word other than God's can lead them rightly, quoting Christ's claim to be the way, the truth, and the life, and warning that anyone trying to reach heaven by another path is a thief and a robber who cannot enter the kingdom. He then turns the broadcast to co-host Lydia to begin reading listener responses. Listener Letters From Texarkana to Ghana Lydia reads a letter from Texarkana, Texas describing how sisters Theresa and Emily brought Alamo's tract That's What It's All About, containing the testimony of a woman named Bessie Haskell, to an 88-year-old stroke patient dying in a nursing home; Theresa read it aloud as the woman lay silent, then led her in the sinner's prayer as her eyes filled with tears. Alamo explains the tract's origin, an elderly woman in a Chicago rest home whose testimony his witnessing crew recorded decades ago with her permission to distribute worldwide. Lydia continues with letters from Easton, Pennsylvania, praising an article called Brace Yourselves printed in the New York Daily News; from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, thanking Alamo for teaching heard on KAAY 1090 AM; from Minneapolis, Minnesota, admiring a full-page prayer printed in the Star Tribune; and from a man named John in Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, who says a newsletter passed to him by a friend led him to salvation and asks for more literature to distribute. A Newspaper Campaign and the Power of God's Grace Alamo tells listeners the ministry has placed pages of testimony and prayer in newspapers across the country, including the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, and five weeks of ads in the New York Daily News, spending what he says was a quarter of a million dollars on a single Sunday's placements two weeks earlier, and appeals for volunteers to help answer the flood of mail and email the campaign has produced. Returning to Proverbs chapter one, he teaches that the King James word grace was originally power, a change he attributes to Shakespeare's editing, and insists that by God's power believers can do all things in Christ and will be raised from the dead on the last day. He describes receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the source of that power, recalling that Jesus blew the Spirit onto the disciples in a locked room and later commanded them to wait in Jerusalem for it to descend with power for ministry. Proverbs Chapter One and the Story of Susie and the Rabbi Alamo tells the story of his late wife Susie, who died in 1982, witnessing to a rabbi identified as Sonderling and beginning to speak in an unknown tongue she had never learned; the rabbi, alarmed, later confessed that during the Bataan death march he had seen a vision of Moses on a hillside with the Messiah, Yeshua, dying on a cross behind him, a secret he says he had never told anyone. Alamo offers the episode as proof that true tongues carry real meaning rather than meaningless noise. He then has Lydia continue reading Proverbs chapter one, verses eight through eighteen, warning against sinners who entice the innocent, and interjects that such enemies of the ministry are laying a net for their own destruction. He recalls Sennacherib's army, 185,000 of whom, Lydia notes, were struck dead by God's angel in a single night after boasting against Him, and warns present-day critics of the ministry that they risk the same fate. Roman Canon Law, the Vatican, and a Closing Prayer Alamo turns to what he calls Roman canon law, having Lydia read from Vatican Council II's statement that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church under the successor of Peter and the bishops; he rejects the claim, insisting Peter was a Jew, not an Italian, who preached in the Book of Acts and never sanctioned praying to Mary or worshipping idols. He calls the Vatican the seat of Satan in Rome and the organization behind a one-world Antichrist government that he says has tried and failed for forty-two years to stop his ministry. Running low on time, he promises to continue the teaching the next day and leads listeners in a spoken sinner's prayer confessing belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, raised from the dead, and asking forgiveness for sin. Lydia gives the ministry's website, Texarkana post office box, phone, and fax number, and Alamo closes singing So High with J.D. Sumner and The Stamps.

Join Dursin and Clay as we break down Episode 6 of Larry's brand-new historical sketch comedy series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America. From Kyle Mooney's flaky Paul Revere warning colonial barrel-maker Larry about British troops just to hang out with cool guys, to Keegan-Michael Key's Davy Crockett guarding his secret Alamo defecation spot, Susie Essman tossing Larry out of a temperance dinner as Susan B. Anthony, and Paul Rudd's Neil Armstrong wrestling Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface over launch gifts and stolen moon rocks, we examine what happens when monumental American moments collide with pure social anxiety.

The Roadrunners' defense showed up in a big way under the bright lights in Austin, frustrating Arch Manning and the #1 Longhorns with a stingy secondary. While Owen McCown and the offense couldn't click into gear, UTSA fans have to be feeling good about their chances this year coming out of this contest. Up next is a home match-up against a CSU team who may have just lost their starting quarterback. Can UTSA capitalize? 00:00 Recapping the Trip to Austin 05:27 Asaad Chapman Locks Down Texas' Top Receivers 08:21 Cleaning Up the Run Fits from Texas State 09:51 Pressuring Arch Manning: The Pass Rush Review 12:18 The Green Dog Blitz & a More Creative Defense 14:13 Owen Peewee's Move to Money Backer 18:42 Offense Struggles: Penalties and Third Downs 23:41 DeAndre Marshall's Scary Offseason Health Battle 25:35 Missed Red Zone Chances & Receiver Concerns 28:52 Listener Voicemail: Time to Spread the Ball Around? 35:16 Cumbia Break & the Fiesta Hispanic Heritage Jerseys 37:05 Colorado State Preview: Attendance & the Betting Line 38:59 CSU's Quarterback Injury Situation 46:01 Scouting CSU's Offensive Weapons 48:13 Is Colorado State's Defense Actually Struggling? 53:35 CSU's Tackling Woes & UTSA's Screen Game 56:01 Score Predictions vs Colorado State Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A strong story can do more than sell a product. It can change how people see a brand, a problem, and even themselves. I talk with advertising and brand storytelling expert Park Howell about why our brains respond to simple problem-and-solution stories, how trust shapes buying decisions, and why your story should focus on your audience instead of you. Park shares the ABT storytelling framework, lessons from decades in advertising, and how one campaign helped drive major growth for Goodwill. We also explore AI storytelling, brand identity, human creativity, and why the best use of AI still requires a human voice. I believe you will find Park's ideas useful whether you lead a business, market a brand, speak to audiences, or simply want to communicate with greater impact. Highlights: 01:19 - Why every strong story starts with a problem that needs solving. 14:46 - How shifting the story away from yourself makes it more relevant to your audience. 19:55 - What one advertising campaign taught Park about the power of story structure. 30:25 - How the ABT framework turns a message into a clear, compelling story. 44:39 - How storytelling helped Park make a major career shift at age 55. 53:50 - Why finding key moments in your life can reveal the story worth telling. About the Guest: Park Howell is known as The World's Most Industrious Storyteller, having helped purpose-driven brands grow by as much as 600 percent through the power of strategic narrative. With over 40 years in brand creation, including 20 years running his own advertising agency Park and Co, Park was named Advertising Person of the Year in 2010 by the American Advertising Federation of Metro Phoenix. The following year, his agency was recognized among the Top 10 Impact Companies in Arizona by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. Park is an EMMY Award-winning storytelling strategist and the founder of the Business of Story, a proven platform based on his 10-step Story Cycle System to clarify your story, amplify your impact, and simplify your life. His popular weekly Business of Story podcast is ranked among the top 10 percent of downloaded podcasts worldwide, and Feedspot.com named it the number one business storytelling podcast for 2022. In 2020, Park published Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand, which teaches readers how to use three proven narrative frameworks to captivate audiences and convert customers. He followed this with The Narrative Gym for Business in 2021, a practical 75-page guide on using the ABT framework—And, But, Therefore—to make all business communications compelling and persuasive. Most recently, Park launched the StoryCycle Genie, an AI-powered platform that helps business leaders craft lucrative brand story strategies in minutes rather than months, using his proven Story Cycle System that has grown brands by as much as 600 percent. The platform democratizes strategic storytelling expertise, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes. Park consults, teaches, coaches, and speaks internationally, having guided hundreds of brands and developed thousands of leaders in organizations including Dell, The Home Depot, Hilton, Cummins, Walgreens, Banner Health, and the United States Air Force. A graduate of Washington State University, he combines his degrees in communications and music composition to help leaders excel through the stories they tell. Ways to connect with Park**:** StoryCycle Genie™ Linkedin.com/in/ParkHowell Twitter.com/ParkHowell Facebook.com/Park.Howell Instagram.com/ParkHowell YouTube/BusinessOfStory The Business of Story About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everybody! Wherever you happen to be welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host Mike Hingson, and our guest today is Park Howell, who has been in advertising for quite a number of years. So he's going to talk about a lot of that kind of stuff, and I think it'll be fascinating. He's been Advertiser of the Year in the Arizona area, and he's just done a lot of different kinds of things over the years that will be interesting to hear about. I suspect that you'll all find what he has to say pretty fascinating, and he has done a lot with helping people and companies improve their brands, as you'll see. Anyway, I'm not going to give it away. Where would the fun be in that? So, Park, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Well, Mike, thank you so much for having me. It's a true honor. Well, thank you. I'm I'm honored that you're you're here as well. Well, why don't we start? I'm I'm going to start. I usually like to start by asking people to talk about their their kind of early life, and I'll do that in a minute. But I want to start with something else. What is advertising? I'll ask for an opening question. Park Howell  02:08 The desperate act of selling something. How about that? It if you've got you know if you're going to sell something out there, you got to let the world know what that is. Of course, I had a mentor of mine, Sandy Peterson, when I was just growing up in the ad world, and he often said to me, "He said, 'Hey, Park, even 2000 year old churches ring their bells every Sunday morning to let their people know that the doors are open, and that to me is advertising that you've got to be able to communicate and tell stories, share stories about your brand and your world that connects from your target audience's point of view to solve a problem they have. You know, every story is about a problem. Without a problem, without conflict, you have no story, and that is the essentials of advertising: is what is the problem you are solving for whom, and how do you do it better than anyone else? Yeah, and I think the the key to that is stories, and and so many people just don't understand why storytelling and having stories is such an integral and important part of everything that we do. Yeah, well, if you think about it, you know everyone is is fearing this existential crisis of AI, the most remarkable technology our brilliant brains have been able to create. But if you think about it, and you go back 75,000 years when our ancestors were navigating and surviving the savanna. They were using the technology of storytelling in the way of rebel storytelling, cave paintings, and so forth, to be able to not just evolve but become you know the Homo sapiens storytelling apes we are today. So that particular structure, that technology of storytelling, speaks specifically to our very primal limbic brain, where all of our real decisions are being made, and that brain has not changed appreciably in 75,000 years, even though our neurofrontal cortex has enabling us to create what we have today in technology, and that's why I get asked this a lot. You know, they'll say, "How is AI changing storytelling? And I said, "Well, it's not. Storytelling is fundamentally the same. It is changing the storyteller and how we share those stories with the world. And I think we need to be careful with AI because right now we're sort of on a cusp. So part of AI can be very accurate. Sometimes it's not, but the reality is that AI is not going to replace the human being storyteller and. Michael Hingson  05:00 So it's really important that although we can use AI to help, we still have to be the ones that are in charge and tell the stories. Park Howell  05:08 Well, the fundamental structures or algorithms of storytelling are the exact same as they always have been: setup, problem resolution. That is your, you know, Kurt Vonnegut, famous American writer, said, you know, a story is about a man falls in a hole, a man gets out of a hole. It needn't be about a man, and it needn't be about a hole. People love that story. Yeah, that is so true. So that's something that is innate in us human beings. You can certainly teach, and we have AI how to use those frameworks, but AI can never replace the actual human experience that you're talking about. Michael Hingson  05:50 How often do we refer to the TV show Lassie, and everybody keeps thinking that sometime Timmy fell into the well, and he never did once, Park Howell  06:00 and Lassie was there to pull them out, right? Yeah, Michael Hingson  06:03 but but Timmy never did fall in the well. But anyway, whatever. Well, well, Park Howell  06:08 Mike, our our brains are problem solution brains. I mean, again, that primal limbic brain of ours is all about survival. That is our survival center, and whenever we're buying anything, it yeah, a lot of times it's driven by ego. But emotionally, first and foremost, it's driven by what problem are you solving? How are you going to help me survive this problem and get me out of this mess faster than anyone else? Just the other day, went in for a haircut. My hair was atrocious. The longer it got, the worse my original haircut was, and I had a problem. And I went in and sat with a young guy by the name of Ray down at V's Barber Shop in North Phoenix, and in you know in under 30 minutes he got me cleaned up, looking my best again, and he solved a basic primal problem. I want to look good. I want to be socially acceptable. I don't want to look like a jerk. That's the problem solution dynamic, right? It Michael Hingson  07:09 is. You know, one of the most interesting and compelling stories I can think of, and I think people mostly forget about it today, but was back in the early 1980s when we had the Tylenol crisis, when somebody planted cyanide in one bottle of Tylenol in a restaurant in a in a drugstore, and the thing that that happened was that within like a day, the president of the the company that manufactured Tylenol went on the air in public and said, "We are going to pull every bottle of Tylenol off the shelves until we verify that there are no other problem bottles of Tylenol. And by doing that, I mean he first of all he he taught us a basic business lesson that we really ought to take more to heart, which is you confront problems and you are very upfront with with the with the problem and what you're going to do. But it was just such a compelling thing that he did. He said that, and then they did, and eventually, then of course everything went away, and because there were no other bottles, but still, he just he handled it in such an incredible what an incredible way! What a what a great feat of advertising, if you will. Park Howell  08:31 Well, Mike, if we don't have trust with our target audiences, then we have nothing. Yeah, and so yeah, they had a major problem of trust when that happened, it wasn't their fault necessarily. Some lunatic planted that, but the fact that they didn't have you know secure caps and so forth, it revealed a problem in the industry. But he was very smart in taking immediate action and doing what he did to help maintain that trust for Tylenol, and hopefully build on that trust over time. That we are here for you, and we will protect you in every possible way we can, Michael Hingson  09:09 because that's who we are. And and of course, it did lead to changes. Now we do have more secure caps and and other things like that. So there were changes in the industry. It's unfortunate that they had to happen, but understand it, and so we now have what we have. But but it still is just kind of one of the most dramatic business cases and and if you will advertising cases that I can think of. Park Howell  09:36 Well, it's interesting too because it underscores a fundamental way we storytelling Homo sapiens make sense to the world, and we will tend to remain in status quo as the over-the-counter pain reliever industry was, and not securing those caps because they never had a problem. So why change them? They never anticipated that to be a problem, and then what happened? A problem happened. You know, a big hole. This, you know, Tylenol fell in, as did the entire industry, and that's what shakes people out of status quo. Status quo will kill us faster than anything if we are not continuing to evolve and move forward. Michael Hingson  10:16 No one anticipated that there would be a group of people who would deliberately fly fully loaded with jet fuel airplanes into the World Trade Center until it happened, and I still, having read all the reports, I am not at all convinced that we would have been able to figure it out, even if every government department was communicating together, which they still don't know how to do, but the bottom line is that we didn't anticipate it. We did make buildings that were flexible. We did a lot. I think we did all that we could do at the time, but by the same token, nobody anticipated it until a bunch of people got together and worked and and did what they did and brought the world almost to its knees, and and I hate to say it, but I talk about trust and teamwork a lot, and talk about teamwork. The 19 hijackers kept their mouths shut. They they did what they set out to do to a large degree, although I don't even know whether they thought that they were going to cause the buildings to collapse. But still, they they did what they did, and it also has caused so many other positive things to happen since. But nevertheless, again, nobody thought it was going to happen, and so we had the situation that we had, yep, yep, that's exactly right. And I mean, you lived through it, thank God. But boy, being right in the heart of all of that, what an impact it had on your life! It certainly caused me to to change what I do. So now, instead of selling computer hardware and managing a hardware sales team, as I tell people I get to sell life and philosophy and and travel the world and be a keynote speaker and it's a lot of fun and it's not the and it's not the story of getting out of the World Trade Center nearly as much as it is the story of how I got there all the things that led up to it and the things that I learned that allowed me to be able to survive getting out of the World Trade Center, and unfortunately, one of the the challenges that that I continue and blind people in general continue to face is that sighted people think that you're less of a person if you can't see, and it is really a challenge to get people to recognize that's not true, and you're really misassessing the situation. But it is what we face. Park Howell  12:45 Yeah, no doubt. And you are a great voice and advocate for your community to go and demonstrate that to people. It's like, all right, so I've lost my sight, but now let me re, you know, reframe my life and my message to the world, or just look at the impact you're having on people. Michael Hingson  13:02 Well, and and you know the reality is, I was I've been blind my whole life, and and the the the idea is that it is important that we learn that blindness isn't the problem; it's the misconceptions that so many of us face at the hands of others that that tends to be the real difficulty. So we ought to maybe get your help to do better advertising. I don't know. We'll have to see. Well, tell us a little about. I will go back to it now. Tell us a little about kind of the early part, growing up and all that. Park Howell  13:30 Yeah, I grew up in the Seattle area, just north of Seattle, in a place called Bothell Woodenville area. Ah, one of seven kids, and we were all born within nine years of each other, so we were quite a pack of of crazed Northwesterner little kids. We had a lot of fun. Great parents took us on lots of adventures and always encouraged us to do what we always wanted to do. And one of the things I wanted to do at a very young age was learn how to play the piano because my grandmother Mabel, who played the piano like nobody's business, and it just always blew me away, and so they gave me piano lessons, and I, as a little kid, just started writing these little ditties, these little songs, and whatever, and kept writing more of them, and just had fun with it. Ended up getting a degree in music composition in theory, but figuring Mike that I probably starved to death as a composer. At the same time, I also got a degree in marketing in you know communications, and it's really you know blessed me. My whole musical background has played a very important role in me over my 40 years in the branding world on writing, finding the theme to a brand story, introducing interesting characters and twists to the plot that you do in music writing, just as you do in storytelling. And here I am, you know, 40 years later, I ran my own ad agency for 20 years in Phoenix, but. I pivoted away from that 2016 just to simply coach, speak, and teach people leaders how to use stories to have the impact in the world that they want. So I find it ironic. I come full circle where I studied music composition in theory, and now I teach brand storytelling composition in theory, wow, and and clearly it is it's a it's an interesting challenge. Do you find many people who, at least at first, resist this whole concept of telling stories that they're just not used to it and they resist it? Not as much anymore, and a lot of people will ask me, you know, how do you sell people on storytelling? And I tell them I don't. The people that hire me are already sold on story. They know how powerful it is. They just don't know how to do it. And when I come in and find someone very resistant to storytelling and whatever, I'm like I respect that. That's cool. Keep doing your features lists and your you know functions lists and that sort of thing, and see where it gets you. Because Mike, one of the two true story truths that I talk about is number one is your story is not about you. It's always about your audience and what's in it for damage. Story truth number two is your story is not about what you make, but what you make happen in people's lives. So those that are resistant to storytelling are focused on themselves and communicating about what they make, and just assume you will arrive at the marvelous conclusion that gee, what you make is for me, where storytelling is what you make happen, and that word happen is so important because it speaks to the outcomes, the activity, the momentum of the story that you tell that that describes the impact you have on them, and I think you said something that's really key. It's not about you; it's about what you make happen, and and it's about the audience. I know as a speaker, I learned really early on, fortunately, that it's not about me, and that's also partly why I say it's not so much about escaping from the World Trade Center, it's all the other things that that led up to it and have happened since. But it isn't about me as a speaker. It's about Michael Hingson  17:30 what I do to connect with the audience and what the audience needs from me. And I have to learn that so that I can best tell my story in a way that will be relevant to Park Howell  17:42 them. Yeah, Mike. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got is if you are speaking, and before your presentation could be to a small group of people, could be a large auditorium. If you are really stressed out, freaked out, major butterflies. A few butterflies are normal to keep you on your toes, but if you are really stressing out, it's because your ego has taken over and you're making that presentation about you. As soon as you make that shift to say, no matter what happens on that stage, if I totally forget where I am, if I fall off the front of the stage, if I go into a coughing attack, it doesn't matter because I am in service to them. As long as I can impart wisdom to my audience that they can leave with at least one takeaway, then that makes all the difference. Your your butterflies go away, and you're like, I'm just here to help. Michael Hingson  18:36 And and that's exactly right. And I tell that to people when I'm discussing coming to to speak at events for them, is it's not about me. My job is to be a guest, to be a servant, and I need you to tell me the kind of messaging that you need if you have anything like that, and we'll put it together. But I'm here to do what you need to make your conference more successful than it might otherwise be, and that's that's my job, and I can do that, and I know I can do that because I know how people react to the story, and the reason I love to give in-person presentations more than virtual presentations is that when I'm telling the whole story, including growing up and all that, I've learned how audiences typically react to different things that I Park Howell  19:30 say, and if I'm not hearing the reactions that I expect, then I have to change something around to deal with it because I want to draw them in. But at the same time, I I do know that typically audiences are interested in what I have to say, and as long as I make that interesting for them, then we're good. Yeah, without a doubt, and you know it goes back to even your first question about what. Is advertising. Advertising is that storytelling that you make it about your audience, whether they're reading a Facebook ad, or watching a TV commercial, or listening to a radio commercial, or reading a white paper that you wrote. If you take the approach of making it about them, and I've got a framework, I'd be happy to share with you and your audience on how to do that, then the impact of all of your communications goes through the roof. If Speaker 1  20:32 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show, your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset community. Michael Hingson  21:04 When did you realize? Was there a moment that you kind of had this aha moment that said storytelling is wasn't just a creative technique, but was really part of the whole fundamental process? Park Howell  21:17 Yeah, it you know something that I had thought about early in my career, I just was intuitive about it, innate, and all the great ads I loved always had story. But I never thought to myself, "Boy, that's a great story. I think that's a great ad. And something happened in 2003 when I was running my ad agency, Park and Co. in Phoenix. We were working with Goodwill. Now, Goodwill Industries-they're a bunch of franchises all around the country-and we were working with the Phoenix franchise. They had 24 stores at the time. It was a big account. They were going to spend spend well over a million dollars with us to help them with their marketing. And we went out, we toured all their stores, and we said the first things you need to do is clean it up. It just they don't smell great. You got to have more inventory out there before you do any marketing. Get your operations together, and they were smart. They listened to us and they did. And then we created an advertising 32nd commercial campaign. Two spots in that campaign. One of them polled unbelievably well, Mike. I mean, same store sales a month after the campaign started running went up 42% with this one commercial in the campaign. The second commercial in the campaign didn't poll at all. It just didn't work. It fell flat, and I sat there at my agency, scratching my head, and said, "Why did this ad work so well, and this other one, Buckus, got nothing out of? In fact, the very first ad we created, we won an Emmy award for because it was so well produced and worked so well. Well, when I started studying true story architecture and storytelling, I'm like, oh my goodness! That first spot is a perfect setup, problem resolution story. We had fun with it, kind of you know sharing a real world experience. And in fact, the goodwill said you were you were telling the story that we feel like you were going to be making fun of our customers when in reality we weren't. We were calling them out. We were saying, "Listen, we know you're a closet shopper, and you might even be embarrassed to shop at Goodwill to go and find your treasures, but don't let that stop you. That played and pulled in. You know, increased sales by 42% The other one was just kind of this creative, clever spot that we were very proud of as an agency, but it never ever landed with our audience because it wasn't speaking to them, nor did it follow a story structure. Now, again, that first one was just an intuitive, innate story structure in there, and when I started studying it, I'm going. Oh, let's follow this structure with all of our commercials, you know, all of our work moving forward. And then I did a deep dive with Hollywood to truly understand why does this structure work in our human brains. And when I started studying, then that took over my life. I was so fascinated by it. Again, I think it was my music composition theory background where I was fascinated as to why does music work on us and what are the algorithms that work better than others. That I was now enthralled with storytelling. What are the algorithms, the story structures that work better than anyone else. That was my awakening back then. Michael Hingson  24:45 What have you discovered about storytelling that traditional advertising doesn't do? That has in turn made you so successful. I think you're kind of alluding to it, but I gather that what you do is a little bit different than. Oftentimes, what we see in the advertising world. Well, I would say advertising world is in decline. Just watching the Super Bowl Park Howell  25:08 over the weekend, I could not tell you one of those commercials that I thought was any good at all. It just seemed like a bunch of creative noise out there, and yet our brains still fundamentally lean into and make meaning with the you know set up problem resolution story structure, and yet it seems like the ad world has completely abandoned it, and makes no sense to me. If you compare advertising today back to the 60 s, 70 s, 80 s, 90 s, even you will see a marked difference. And today, it's more wallpaper noise in abundance. Where back then it was much more curated storytelling. Fewer people were doing it, fewer channels to expose you to it, and they just had a much greater impact. So I always say, if you want to hack through the noise and hook into the hearts of your audiences that emotional center where they actually make their decisions, their buying decisions, then share a story in a structure that's been around for 75,000 years. That is what overcomes this technology that is just bombarding us with slop today. What I find really fascinating, in part, about what you just said, and I didn't get to watch the Super Bowl. I was flying back from freezing in Delaware on Saturday, but yeah, it was 60 mile an hour winds and it was 17 degrees. It was it was so cold that Michael Hingson  26:44 that my guide dog Alamo didn't even want to go outside and do his business when the wind was up so high. We walked out. We went 10 feet, and he just turned around. I'm not going out there, brother. You stay out here if you want, but I'm going in. But but later it worked okay. But still, I didn't see coming up to the Super Bowl any major discussion, as we've seen in past years about a lot of the Super Bowl commercials and so on. And there hasn't there hasn't been much discussion of it all this year about it, which I find interesting. And of course, what you're saying kind of verifies and justifies that. Yeah, yeah, they spent. big money producing big time spots that just left me, anyways, very flat. I'm like, what, Park Howell  27:30 what's going on here? It's you know, I, you know, it's ironic humor, goofy stuff, whatever, and that's fine, but it does not play to our meaning making limbic buying brain. It just doesn't. Michael Hingson  27:42 Have you ever done a Super Bowl commercial? Park Howell  27:45 No, never had one, huh? That would be fun. It's rarefied air to be able to do one of those, but no. Most of my work was in the B 2b world, coming out of Phoenix. Some some national accounts, a couple global accounts, but nothing to the level of Super Bowl. You know, Michael Hingson  28:01 well, maybe we need to advocate for a switch. Park Howell  28:05 Well, I'm kind of out of that world. I am much more of a story consultant now to work with teams and agencies and leaders and so forth. On all right, show me what you got, and let's figure out how can we make it better, if not way better. Michael Hingson  28:22 Yeah. Well, and and and hopefully you'll have some significant influences in that. You said that you've helped some companies increase their brand by 600% How do you measure that? Park Howell  28:36 Yeah. Well, they measured it, and so that was Clinica Adelante, a 33-year-old community health center in Phoenix, Arizona. At the time, this was back in 2009, 2010. They were their business model was coming under immense fire with immigration. With they were really working with farm workers out in the West Valley farms were getting bladed over with big subdivisions, and their their basic clientele was going away, and so they needed to attract and maintain their core mission of of making healthcare sustainable and available to anyone, regardless of your ability to pay, but in order for that to happen, they had to bring in regular insured patients to help pay the bills. Which means they had to attract even better doctors so that people would move from their traditional healthcare into Clinica Adelante. And we told that story. We changed the name because there was a fear that Clinica Adelante was a little bit too, you know, Hispanic for. I'll just be honest with you, you know, the white folks to come there, but we kept Adelante because that means advancement, moving forward, becoming, and you know, in in Spanish. So it became. Adelante Healthcare, and we branded it all around sustainable healthcare for all. And they were one of the first big community health community groups to really embrace green healthcare, sustainability in operations, sustaining the ability to get healthcare, and then sustaining the individual health of each one of their people that came in, and so how they measured that is they looked at the growth of their doctors, and they went from having just a couple clinics into 12 clinics, and the new ones that they added were all leed certified sustainable clinics. They then looked at the growth of the practitioners came in their administration, the growth of their actual patients that came in, and across the board over the course of six years they grew by 600% Wow! Avensate to Foya at the time when she's no longer their CEO, she was the one instrumental in building all this growth. She told me on my business of story podcast that she goes. We would never have grown that way had you not helped us get our overarching brand narrative in place and taught us how to tell the story to the world to attract those top tier practitioners, to attract the Anglo community that was ensured that we're going to come in, and then to attract national attention on their sustainable healthcare model that brought them even more cred. So yeah, they were looking at the measurement was purely by practitioners and then actual patients coming in. Michael Hingson  31:36 Well, and and clearly it worked. Park Howell  31:39 Yeah, yeah, very effective. Michael Hingson  31:41 Tell us about something that you talk about the ABT network framework. Park Howell  31:47 Yeah, and this is one of the most basic structures I teach. In fact, I call it the DNA of storytelling because you get this three-word structure down, and yeah, it sounds simple, but it takes a little practice. Then all of your messaging will be way more impactful, way more engaging, and it's called the and but therefore or NABT narrative framework. And here's the way it works very quickly. It's three sentences. The first one is your and statement of agreement. You want to identify your audience again, placing them at the beginning of the story. Describe what they want relative to your offering. They may not even know what you have to offer yet. You're foreshadowing that, and why is it important to them? So, who's your audience? Where they want, and why is it important to them? Raising the stakes with that. Why is it important to them? Then you introduce the but statement of contradiction, the problem. But you're frustrated, you're concerned, you're overwhelmed. You follow that with a negative emotion because you're speaking to their emotional heart, right? Because of this problem that's keeping you from getting what you want, therefore, then you follow that. Therefore, it's a positive emotion. Imagine what it's going to feel like when you get this by doing such and such with us. Your brand, your call to action doesn't come in until the second clause in the third sentence, which is your therefore statement of consequence, and if you like, Mike, we could build one really quick just to show all of your listeners how to do it, and let's do it for your show. All right, and I'm going to make some notes on my end because I'm going to ask you a couple questions. Do you want to do that? Michael Hingson  33:39 Sure, why not? Park Howell  33:40 It'll take about five minutes. Michael Hingson  33:42 I'm flexible, so my tell me who is your number one audience for this show. I think the the the the audience is is pretty eclectic overall because we don't have a specific theme that the podcast deals with. So I would say that the audience is is composed primarily of people who are curious, who want to get life lessons, to learn how to to to do things better, and to find ways to move forward in life without as much fear as we typically encounter in our world. Park Howell  34:25 All right, so let's dig down a little bit deeper. And you're in sales, so you know this: that it's great to have an eclectic audience, but the Pareto principle always comes into play. That means that 80% of your audience is usually made up of 20% of your listeners or one target audience. If that is true for you, and you are really even though it's eclectic, I get that. But who are you really speaking to? Even though you're attracting in a lot of others, who's your. Michael Hingson  35:00 Are they professionals? Are they, you know, non-professionals? Or is it for speaking gigs? What What is it? I would say that to a very large degree, it's professionals, and I know that that there are also a number of people who are curious to to hear me because I am a speaker, and some of them have have have brought us in as a result of the podcast. But I think we're dealing primarily with more of a professional-oriented audience that wants to hear ways that they can do things better, and they love the fact that we have a lot of general, different kinds of categories, rather than one specific thing that every episode goes towards. But it's all about trying to figure out how they can use the things that they hear each week to make themselves and their businesses or their world better. Park Howell  36:00 Okay, so that's the curious professional who want to learn how to do things better, and if they they listen weekly, they are going to be exposed to an eclectic group of guests that have all achieved a certain amount of success in their individual area. Michael Hingson  36:21 Right, Park Howell  36:22 that fair enough? Michael Hingson  36:23 I think that's fair. Park Howell  36:24 So that would that might be your statement of agreement. You know, you want to learn how to do things better, and if you tune in to the unstoppable mind, that we will, you will learn from some of the most eclectic leaders in the world, so that you can have the impact in your career and on other people that you seek. All right, science, Michael Hingson  36:48 good, right? Park Howell  36:48 Okay, but let's introduce a problem because I don't actually want to introduce your show quite yet. I just was kind of getting that sort of out in my mind. But what are they? What what's a negative emotion that that they are are experiencing because they don't typically have access to these you know sort of eclectic minds. Are they frustrated? Are they concerned? Are they? Michael Hingson  37:11 I think I think there is a a level of frustration and concern, but I also think that there is a lot of fear. We talk about subjects like disabilities. We talk about subjects like AI, and I think that, to a large degree, those are things that people don't understand very well, and so they're afraid of them. They're afraid of trying different kinds of things where they can use some of the the the concepts to improve what they do, so I think that there is there is a level of fear that more people have than than people who don't, and so they come into the podcast with the idea that well I don't know what I'm going to hear this week, and so something comes up on AI or disabilities, or or even advertising, and and people fear, oh, there are just too many problems, or it's going to be too expensive to fix, or it's not going to help me in what I do, which is something that, of course, you see. So I think that fear is is probably a good overarching concept that people deal with. Park Howell  38:22 Okay, so we've got the emotion, negative emotion of fear. Now let's add the problem that's creating that fear. Because of what? You're fearful because of lack of knowledge in these areas, or Michael Hingson  38:37 I would say so. I think it's more fear of a lack of knowledge, and societal norms have said do it this way, and a lot of times on this podcast we hear that that's not the way to that that isn't correct. But I think that a lot of it is societal, and a lot of it is just plain when societal is is guilty of that as anything, but it's a lack of knowledge. Park Howell  39:05 Okay. Then by listening, let's move on to the therefore. Just writing here the therefore statement of consequence. Therefore, what will be their positive state by listening to your show. You know, imagine what you're going to feel like, or what is the positive state? Michael Hingson  39:28 The positive state is that they're going to hear things and and encounter people who talk about a lot of the the very same things that they've been feeling, but who have learned how to overcome or deal with issues, and who have, as a result, become more successful and more confident in in their world. And and the reality is, I think that most everyone who comes on the the podcast has a story to tell about challenges they faced. And they talk about what they did to overcome it, and how it has helped them grow and improve themselves as a result. Park Howell  40:11 Interesting. Okay, so this is good, and this is the way an ABT always comes together. You just kind of formulate your thoughts. If you were to sum up this story that you're sharing with me right now, as we create the ABT, and you could give it one word that becomes your story theme. What would that word be? Michael Hingson  40:32 Unstoppable. Park Howell  40:34 Okay. So you want to become unstoppable, Michael Hingson  40:37 right? And I don't mean that in a negative sense or in an egotistical sense, it it it really is a a competence thing. But unstoppable, I would say, is a is a good term to use. Park Howell  40:51 All right, excellent. So now again, I'm just kind of you know I'm free, right? I'm freely working here. So I'm going to just say here, folks. This is how you do it. Mike has given us a ton of great information, and you've just seen how I've kind of pulled that out of him. And I've, for my mind, I'm the outside looking in because I don't know his business or brand that well. It gave me a number of different threads to work from, and when I have that, then I ask myself, what's the one story theme? You know, name of the show, so it's be unstoppable. So I'm going to want to introduce that right up top, and it's going to come down to what we call the conversational ABT first, just to get our singular problem solution set up. And this, when I say conversational ABT, it's very vacuous. It's very simple, just to make sure we've got the right problem solution lever in there, and in this case, you want to be unstoppable, but you don't feel unstoppable right now. Therefore, we're going to help you become unstoppable by listening to our show. Now, granted, that is very vacuous, but is that essentially the problem solution dynamic that we're dealing with, I think so. If you were standing in front of a group of 5000 people speaking as you do, and they don't know who you are or why you're there, what you're going to talk about, and you could just start your your speech with, "You all want to be unstoppable, right? But you don't feel unstoppable right now. Therefore, over the next 60 minutes, I'm going to show you how to become unstoppable. Yes, it's redundant, but boy, everybody in the room knows what you're talking about, and they're Michael Hingson  42:32 going to pay attention. Park Howell  42:33 They're like, "Thank you, I've got a theme. I've got a singular theme that I'm going to focus on. So now let's take that in and build out a little bit bigger, and but therefore, so it becomes more of a story, more of a talking foundation that you can build from. So you can say, as a curious professional, you want to learn new things so that you can be unstoppable in your career, in your life, and with the impact that you're making in the world, but you're fearful, maybe even frustrated, because there are so many things like, you know, disabilities and the existential crisis of AI and other things that you feel like are holding you back, because you don't have a place to go and hear from people that have overcome these sorts of things. Therefore, imagine your abundant mindset growing and your unstoppability taking over when you start listening to my show, where I introduce you to an eclectic array of professionals from around the world that have overcome great obstacles to to find tremendous success, and will show you how to do the exact same thing. There you go. So again, I was kind of vamping on that, but you can see you set it up. You identify the audience. What do they want to become unstoppable? But why don't they currently have it? Because they don't know where to turn to learn about how do you overcome things like disabilities and the existential crisis of AI. Therefore, put your mind at ease. Let's replace that fear with an abundance mindset and learn from you know the people that we we host on the show. So I would share that with anybody out there, and that's what I'd ask them to do. The breakout is write down who's your number one audience, what do they want relative to your offering, and why is that important to them? But why don't they currently have it? What's the problem standing in their way? Therefore, how are you going to help them achieve it? Yeah, and that's a great explanation of the ABT method, which I love. And I didn't invent it; I learned about it from Dr. Randy Olson back in 2013. He's a Harvard PhD evolutionary biologist. Gives up 10 years ago's to film school in his mid 30s at USC. Graduates, produces writes, directs, and produces three movies on climate change and global warming. But the body of his work is about taking this basic framework of the ABT and teaching scientists and academics how to make their complex messages simple and compelling, and what I've learned from Randy over the years of working with him directly on this is the ABT has been around literally since the beginning of storytelling. He didn't invent it either. We are just revealing it to the world and say this is how you engage with that storytelling monkey sitting across from you. Yeah, which is which is cool. Well, you've you have I'm sure had situations where you use the ABT method in your own life to kind of reframe a story that that help you become stronger or more unstoppable? Can you cite an example of that? Yeah, I can tell you. It was back in September of 2015, and I had been running my agency at that time for about 20 years, and I just did not enjoy the advertising agency world anymore. It was got overrun by technology and digital marketing, and I thought I was getting the creativity sucked out of it. And my first thing was like, how do I fix this? And I found that storytelling was really the way to go. And it was we were very successful with it for 10 years, and my agency was growing. But I didn't care to be in an agency anymore. I wanted to teach people how to do it. And I remember waking up one morning with a total pit in my stomach, and the ABT essentially was, Park, you're an accomplished advertising professional, and you've got you know an amazing agency and team, but you are looking to make a bigger impact in the world than you can just simply do with your agency. Park Howell  47:02 Therefore, at the age of 55, you have to take a leap of faith, wind down your agency, start the business of story, and follow your true passion of consulting, teaching, coaching, and speaking on the power of story the world over. That essentially was my new mantra. That was my ABT. And what did you do? I wrapped up my agency by the end of 2015, 2016, January one. I launched the business of story. It was nice because it was kind of an extension or an off ramp of what I had already been doing. It wasn't like I was completely changing careers and industries. I just saw a new way forward to have impact in the world through communication, not just being an ad agency, but now being a teacher. And I mean, I went on right after that, or actually leading up to that, while I was still running Park and Co. Arizona State University came to me in 2013, and they saw the success I was having as an agency in the sustainability world with storytelling and my structures. I wrote a book on it, and I've since co-wrote a second book with Dr. Randy Olson, and they invited me to come in and teach a master's course on sustainable storytelling. Now, Mike, I had never taught anything in my life at that level, and I wasn't even the greatest student back in my days at Washington State University. But what I had learned over the course of the 30 years leading up to that, I was became a professor of practice, and I spent five years teaching storytelling, and I realized that that was my next calling-not just an ad guy, but to teach people how to do that. Michael Hingson  48:47 You talk about the story cycle system. What is that? Park Howell  48:50 Well, back in 2006, when I was struggling with our agency, trying to figure out how do you operate in this new digital realm and and actually make it work for clients. Our son Parker was going to film school at Chapman University, which is a very prominent film school over in Orange, California. He really wanted to be a film director, and I said, "Yeah, that's great. Go for that, and you might want to get your minor in business too, because business drives everything, even filmmaking. Well, while he was going to school there, and he has since moved on and has has a very prosperous career in the virtual reality mixed reality filmmaking world. So his education did him well. But while he was there, I was saying, you know, Parker, send me your books and your recorded lectures when you're done with them, since I'm paying for them, because I want to know what does Hollywood know about storytelling that we don't know, and that's when I was introduced to Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey. And as soon as I saw The Hero's Journey, I thought to myself, "By golly, this is a customer journey. This is a sales representative's journey." This is an agency owner's journey. This is all of our journeys. Why don't they teach this in the advertising world? It seemed like it was such a blueprint to success. It blew my mind. So I took it. It's a between a 12 and 17 step story structure is the hero's journey, or as Campbell would call it, the mono myth. And I mapped it to business because I knew the business people would say that's woo-woo Hollywood stuff. So I created my 10-step story cycle system, and Climate Adelante was the very first brand I used it on, and looked at it. It was kind of a science experiment, Mike. I didn't know if it was going to work or not, and it worked beyond my wildest imagination. And that's when I said, "There's magic here. There's incantations here. There's algorithms here that I need to understand much better. And by the way, it was Joseph Campbell who famously said, "Follow your bliss. You know what do you really love to do? And doors will open where there were only walls before, and in doing that, well, number one, we started having tremendous success in branding. Arizona State University shows up and says, "We want you to teach a master's course in this. I got a chance to sit down with the legendary screenwriting coach Robert McKee in his home in Connecticut and interview him for three hours for my podcast, even before I had a podcast. And I'm like, this stuff works. The magic of story works, and that's really what got me going. Is I had to take that leap of faith several years later and say, all right, you know, at 55, most people don't make that change, but I thought everything else has been telling me this is the way forward. I need to respect that and have the courage and the curiosity and go for it. Michael Hingson  51:51 And it worked, Park Howell  51:52 and it's worked fabulously. I've been able to travel around the world, teach people all over the place how to do this stuff. We have embraced AI. I think, by the way, I got to laugh because artificial intelligence is like the worst brand name you could ever advance for our most dynamic technology ever created. Think about it, though. It plays to one of the story truths I talked about earlier, right? The technologist that created AI named what they made artificial intelligence. Yeah, I reframe it as to what can artificial intelligence actually make happen in your life to artful intelligence because it doesn't work very well without you, and it can absolutely amplify your ability to create, to connect, to to have a tremendous impact in the world, and so I think about a little bit like emotional intelligence (EI) plus AI, artificial intelligence equals a whole new kind of ROI, and to me, that's your return on intelligence because it can make you smarter, it can make you faster, it can make you a better writer. I've experienced it myself, and that's why I look at artificial intelligence as artful intelligence when used right. Michael Hingson  53:17 And I think the key is when used right, and and the the operative part of all that is, it isn't going to do the writing. It isn't going to do the creating, but it's going to give you tools and assets that you can use to make you a much better writer and creator. Park Howell  53:36 Yeah, to me, it replaces the blank page and the blank stare with a right piece of content that you can now become the chief copy editor and writer on, Michael Hingson  53:48 right? Which which is fine. Yeah, I I don't think you're ever going to be able to take the human out of the creativity, no matter how good artful or artificial intelligence becomes. There's still that human element that that really is going to be part of it and should be part of it, Park Howell  54:06 yeah, without a doubt. One of my favorite piano players, Ben Folds and writer, you know, songwriters. He was a guy that back in the '90s, I was listening one of his first albums, and it was the first artist I had ever heard that left mistakes in his recording. He didn't go back. He didn't auto tune. If he missed a note on his piano playing, he left it. And there was such an authenticity to his singing, songwriting, and music because of that, there was nothing artificial about it. You knew you were hearing from an artist, warts and all, very endearing. And as AI gets better and better and better, it's going to erase those warts and it's going to give you synthetic pablum that is going to give you a toothache. Is it is not going to feel feel human unless you know how to use Michael Hingson  55:05 it, right? Which is which is the important part. So there are a lot of entrepreneurs and and people who have great stories. How do you help them learn to tell those stories? What do you do today? The Park Howell  55:21 best thing, the best tip I can give to anyone to that excellent question, is when you're telling a story, don't think about some big epic arc of a story. Those are like impossible to tell. Forget about it. And actually, your audience pretty much doesn't care about it. Think about a moment in time when everything changed for you, that woke you up, that set you on a new trajectory, tell that story. Have you noticed with a lot of the stories I've told, I've always given you a timestamp. I woke up in September of 20. What was it? September of 2015 with a knot in my stomach. Well, you do that. I purposely do that because if I start with a timestamp, it triggers my limbic brain to say, "Oh, something must have happened. Park started with a timestamp. I'd better pay attention to hear what happened to him, so I know what to do in case it ever happens to me. That's the essential sort of biology around it, as we believe. Then I followed up with a location stamp in bed in Phoenix, Arizona, with a knot in my stomach. Well, everyone's woken up with a knot in their stomach. They can relate to it. They can picture it. They can feel it. So now, opening up the theater of the mind. Oh, I can see it. You know, and then what happened? I loved my advertising world, you know, and I was really good at it. Got ad guy of the year in Phoenix in 2010, but there's the plot twist. But I no no longer liked it. Didn't want to be an ad guy anymore, and I was 55 years old. Let's raise the stakes a little bit more. So what did I do about it? I wound down my agency over the course of the next four months, launch business of story, and I've never looked back. That is a story about a moment in time for me that everything changed, and I share those with you. And how did I learn about storytelling? Gave you a timestamp, 2006. Gave you a location stamp, Chapman University in Orange, California gave you an individual, Parker, our son. Everyone you know that has kids have been in and out of college. They can relate to that. So I tell everybody, don't look for your story. Find your scenes. Those moments when things change in your life that you did not anticipate, or those moments of overcoming something that informs who you are today, knit together those scenes, and your story will find you. Yeah, Michael Hingson  57:50 what is the story cycle genie? Park Howell  57:53 Well, what we did, and then we took two years to create it. So we've got our story cycle system. I wrote a textbook on it, and I've taken numerous brands through it, and it typically takes 345, months to actually do. After all the due diligence, research, and creative brainstorming, whatever, one of my clients who had been through it and built it for his agency and a content management system ended up selling both of them after we rebranded. Came to me and said, "I love the StoryCycle system. We can make it way more efficient through AI. We're going to build it. And I said, "Okay, you build me a prototype, and away we go. Well, he did. I was blown away. We spent next two years. We launched it in July, and now anybody can use my process through the StoryCycle Genie at StoryCycleGenie AI, and all you have to do is give it your brand name, give it your website, and if you want to add a couple of other documents to it, you can. You don't have to. The genie is going to go through your website, give you a brand assessment on how you're currently showing up in the world with your story, and then it's going to create with you your overall brand narrative strategy. So you are interacting with the genie through that artful intelligence engagement to really dial in your foundational brand story. It finishes creating your overall brand brain with audience stories in your content playbook, and then from there you can build any sort of marketing strategy that's going to be on brand because it knows all about your brand and what you do, and every piece of content it will write for you with you, and it's always on brand. And with every iteration you make, every change, every instruction you give to it, it gets smarter about how you show up in the world. So we just took months of brand development and boil it down to you can do it in a couple of hours. What used to cost 50, $60,000 to do might cost you 200. Let's all send them to build that brand brain out, and then from there it becomes your brand content agency in a bottle. You can use. With your people for all kinds of sales and marketing, from producing videos, it doesn't do images yet. It does all the content strategy around those, and so it's just taken our human invention of the story cycle genie based off of foundational narrative frameworks and makes it available to anybody that wants to build a world-class brand. What's the biggest mistake that you see that most people make when they're trying to share and tell their story and so on? What's the biggest storytelling mistake they usually make? They make it about themselves, and even if your story is about you, which is fine, we tell a lot of stories about ourselves because it's a great example of what we experience, what you can learn from our experience. But always tell it from the point of view of your audience. Why does Mike care about this story? Well, he he asked me, so you know that question about you know what'd you do as a young kid. So I want to tell that story, but I want to try to get it to be relatable to you, you come from a sales background, right? You have to get hardware, computer hardware, and so forth. And so, a lot of the things that I was talking to you about, and hoping that your audience would be triggering in on, was from your perspective through my experience. Michael Hingson  1:01:17 Right. Park Howell  1:01:19 That makes sense. Michael Hingson  1:01:20 It does. So, Park Howell  1:01:21 and then be brief. You know, one of the best copywriting tips I got was out of an old, old, old direct mail copywriting book. Said, you know, in this case, it was about writing. So, write with vigor. Brevity is vigor. Yeah, storytelling is the same way. You want to be specific and have specifics in the story, but you got to balance it with brevity. If to your point, Michael Hingson  1:01:47 yeah, people oftentimes take way too long. They have to explain too many things, or they think they have to explain that that they don't, and they take way too long to get to the point. Park Howell  1:02:00 Yeah, yep. The only way to overcome that is start your story with the end. You know, you could might it's sort of like a moral of a story. Like, gosh, Mike, have you ever been in a situation where you did something that surprised the hell out of you, and you found kind of a whole new calling? Yeah. Well, what are you talking about? Well, let me tell you what happened to me. Time stamp, location stamp. I was trying to do this, but then this thing happened to me that opened my eyes to this whole new world. Now I'm doing this. Makes perfect sense. So for listeners who want to develop their unstoppable mindset through clear storytelling and so on, how and what would be the best way for them to start? Well, like you, I also have a podcast. There you go. 10 years, and it's always story artists from around the world. It's called the Business of Story. We talk a lot about storytelling in every aspect of business: sales, marketing, branding, and personal development, and in fact, I end each show with the simple thought of remember that the most potent story you'll ever tell is a story you tell yourself. So make that a good one. So that's that unstoppable mindset, right? So go there. You can find me too on LinkedIn, Park Howell. Let me know. You know, reach out. Let's let's connect. Tell me you heard me on Mike's show, so I know where you're coming from. And then, of course, if you want to check out the Story Cycle Genie, you can even test the strength of your brand story for free. Just go to StoryCycleGenie.ai. You're going to click on a button that says "Give me my brand story grade. It's going to ask you for your name, an email, and your website. That's all. No credit cards. No nothing. And in under a minute, it's going to give you a grade from A plus to F minus, and a 14 point storytelling assessment that will validate what you're doing well, reveal gaps that you can easily fix, and even inspire you with new ways to tell your story. Michael Hingson  1:04:03 So there you are, and I hope people will reach out to you. I think that you have offered a whole lot of very relevant and useful stuff, which I'm not surprised at. I figured you would, and I personally really appreciate the time that you've taken with us. Maybe we should do more of this in the future. We'll have to discuss it and plot. Park Howell  1:04:23 I love it, Mike, and I got to have you over on my show if you're open to coming on the beach. Absolutely Michael Hingson  1:04:28 love the feature there. Absolutely, I always start my stories with a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Do you think anybody? Nobody's used that, right? You know, fair enough. Park Howell  1:04:38 Fair enough. I like it. There should be a movie out of that. Michael Hingson  1:04:41 They really should. What would they call it? Star something. Anyway, I really, I really Park Howell  1:04:48 unstoppable Star Wars. Michael Hingson  1:04:49 Unstoppable Star Wars. Right. Well, thank you for being here. I want to thank all of you for listening and watching. I'd love to hear from you. Hear what you think about today and. Everything with Park that we went through. Love to get your ideas. Feel free to email me at speaker at michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com. Wherever you're observing our podcast, please give us a five star rating. But even more important, give us a great review. People love reviews when they're considering what podcasts they're going to devote their time to, so we really appreciate reviews. And of course, as I also always say, if you know anyone who ought to be a guest on our show, Park, including anybody you may know, we're always looking for people you would introduce us to who can come on and tell their stories. So with that, I want to thank you once again, Park, for for being here and working with us and and putting us through some great exercises

In this episode of From Waterloo to the Alamo, Traci Wilson Turnquist sits down with John Garrett, Founder and CEO of Community Impact, for a conversation that moves between risk, reinvention, and the stubborn power of local news. From a first issue built in his game room to 2 million Texas mailboxes, this episode unpacks how nerve and trust built it.We dig into the 2005 launch, the bet John made with his wife and best friend, Jennifer, and the decision to mail every copy free

What if changing your attitude starts with changing the questions you ask yourself? Stephen Shaner has taken a remarkable path through music, the military, firefighting, air traffic control, technology, leadership, magic, and public speaking. Along the way, he became fascinated with how people respond to life and why some people remain positive when things go wrong. Stephen and I explore how attitude becomes a choice, why focusing on what you can control can reduce fear and frustration, and how simple changes in vocabulary can shift your outlook. We also talk about gratitude, energy, service, leadership, passion, and discovering who you are beyond what you do for work. Stephen shares lessons from Stephen Covey, Toastmasters, his own leadership experiences, and everyday moments when one different question changed everything. I believe you will find some useful ideas here for building a more positive attitude and making choices that help you move forward. Highlights: 02:58 – Follow Stephen's unusual path from music and the military to leadership and speaking. 10:21 – Discover why knowing who you are matters more than defining yourself by your job. 13:44 – Learn why attitude is a choice, even when circumstances are difficult. 22:42 – See how changing your words can shift the way you experience everyday challenges. 30:21 – Hear how gratitude can quickly change your focus and mood. 52:30 – Learn how one different question can turn a negative situation into a positive one. About the Guest: Stephen Shaner has been studying the concept of “attitude” for more than 35 years. Specifically, his interest has focused on how attitude affects people, and the people around them. He has incorporated learning experiences from a multitude of sources, research, and training relative to behavior, attitude, ethics, and business and personal relations. Stephen, as a facilitator of Stephen Covey's “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" for 15 years, was able to gain powerful insight. These opportunities led him to design informative and relevant presentations. Coupled with his contagious attitude, his extensive experience has made him a popular resource for keynotes, seminars, workshops, private sessions, newsletters and articles. He is a sought-after mentor for business professionals and individuals seeking for meaningful and lasting improvement. In his professional life, after 20 years of employment with HealthPartners, Stephen recently retired as the Manager of the Regional Technology Center in Duluth, Minnesota. He has been an active member of Toastmasters International for over 23 years, where he has held many leadership positions, including District Director for a membership base of approximately 5,000, and Region IV Advisor, with responsibilities covering six U.S. states and four Canadian Provinces. Stephen currently lives with his wife in Tennessee. Stephen continues to incorporate his leadership and communication skills to help professional and private entities meet their specific demands and goals.  His success is based on delivering personalized training, guidance, and entertaining messages, and his passion for teaching and sharing his knowledge for the benefit of those around him.  As an award-winning international speaker, his presentations have reached around the globe to businesses including England, Germany, Canada, the Philippines, and India.    Stephen is also building a successful podcast titled, “Are You Awesome Today?” He will soon be releasing his 200th episode, all featuring a truly international cache of professionals, covering a myriad of relevant, interesting and dynamic topics.   Stephen has developed presentations that reach to the core of what attitude is and how having the right one can dramatically change lives professionally and personally. You are invited to explore all Stephen has to offer, or contact him to discuss a presentation that fits your needs. Ways to connect with Stephen: Website: www.awesomeattitude.net LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenshaner/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi there, everyone. Wherever you happen to be, welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host Michael Hingston, and today we get to chat with Stephen Shainer. And Stephen is a person who's going to talk a lot about attitudes. So we ought to have a great discussion about cats. Then we'll see. Anyway, Stephen, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Stephen Shaner  01:23 Well, thank you so much, Michael. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Michael Hingson  01:26 Actually, my cat does does pretty well. My cat has developed this habit that she likes to be petted while she eats, and I'm the one that has to pet her since now I'm the only one in the house. But literally, she'll yell and won't eat until I go in and pet her while she's eating, it's it's really funny. Stephen Shaner  01:45 Ours was abused in two homes before we got her by both people and animals, and we got her from the shelter. She had very little fur from the anxiety. They told us she was a medium-haired tabby, and we got her home, and she just went poof, and just this giant fur ball. And it turns out she's part Norwegian forest cat, but she's just a little angel. She just her favorite place to be is on one of our laps, and she she doesn't get into anything. She doesn't scratch furniture. She has no interest in people, food. She just wants to be held and likes to purr. Michael Hingson  02:14 Well, and that's what counts. Well, we rescued this one. We rescued Stitch 11 years ago. Now it's actually getting 11 years and almost a month. And people lived in the apartment next to us, and the the wife died, and it was the wife's cat basically because the husband decided to go live in an assisted living facility and had absolutely no interest in the cat. Just told his caregiver and his sister who were moving out his furniture, take the cat to the pound. I don't want anything to do with it. We learned about that, and we said, "Well, we'll find it a home, because we didn't want a cat at the time. We was all we were living in apartments and had two golden or two Labrador Retriever dogs, a guide dog, and the dog's mother, who was also a service dog for my wife. And so we said, "We'll find it a home, and as I love to say, I then made the mistake of asking what the cat's name was, and they told me the cat's name was Stitch, and I realized that this cat was going nowhere since my wife had been a quilter since 1994. Stephen Shaner  03:15 That's a great story, Michael Hingson  03:16 and Stitch has been now with us for over 11 years, and it's and it's great. And my wife has passed away, but you know, Stitch and my current guide dog Alamo keep an eye on me. And I'm sure my wife is monitoring from somewhere, so I got to be a good kid, or I'm going to get in trouble. Stephen Shaner  03:32 Yep, good. Michael Hingson  03:33 So you know, it kind of works. Well, tell us about kind of maybe the early Stephen growing up. Let's start there. It's always great to start at the beginning. Stephen Shaner  03:41 Wow, way back there. I know Michael Hingson  03:43 a long time ago. Stephen Shaner  03:45 Yeah, early. My my dad played guitar professionally for many years, and he's done some other things as well. But that was his primary love, his passion. And growing up, I learned guitar a little bit, and then by the time I got to elementary school, I had picked up trumpet and did well with the trumpet. Had fun with it in high school. By my 10th grade, I was playing in the the college jazz band, and then when I graduated from high school, I joined the army and I went through the Navy School of Music and graduated from that. I played trumpet and guitar in the army for three and a half years. The Michael Hingson  04:17 boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B Stephen Shaner  04:20 did a lot of funerals. Yes, I did. I was a bugler and got out of the army and didn't do much with music after that. But I I got a job at the mines, copper mines there in Arizona. Worked there two weeks and we had a cave in one night. And okay, that's the end of that. Were you out near Bisbee Michael Hingson  04:37 or where were you? Stephen Shaner  04:38 I was out near Superior. Michael Hingson  04:40 Superior. Okay. Yeah, Stephen Shaner  04:41 that that area. So then I became a full time firefighter EMT, and did that for a couple years. I left that job through something less stressful. I became an air traffic controller. Michael Hingson  04:53 Yeah, that was less stressful, right? Stephen Shaner  04:55 It was, yeah. Good job. So that was in San Diego, and did not like. The job and ended up going out to Florida, Daytona Beach, Florida, and it was in San Diego. I started picking up Magic a little bit, and went to Florida and went to Embry-Riddle Air Natical University for a year. Didn't care for that. I got hired by GE to do some computer type stuff and worked with them for a little bit. Then I was accepted to Magic College, and they only take so many students a year, and I was accepted. They were in Los Angeles, you know. So I went San Diego, Florida, then went back to L.A. I went to Magic College, spent some time Michael Hingson  05:31 at the Magic Castle, of course. I Stephen Shaner  05:32 worked the Magic Castle for a few years while I was out there, and just had a good time and left L.A. Went up to Washington State and got back into computers, and continued to do the magic, and then I ended up getting a job at the Nevada Tuss Site. So I worked there for five and a half years, along with Area 51, a little bit, and then. So, are there are Michael Hingson  05:52 there any aliens out there? No, Stephen Shaner  05:53 it's it's a great subterfuge, though. I know people think that's it. They don't know what's really going on out there. So, I was out at Michael Hingson  06:03 Roswell several years ago speaking somewhere, and it was fun to to make jokes about the the aliens. And I'm sure that they stored them out there somewhere. Stephen Shaner  06:12 Yeah. So, and then when I when that job, they stopped doing nuclear testing about three four months after I got there, and so my company went from a little over 10,000 employees, and over the next five and a half years, they were doing, you know, reduction in forces every six months, and we got down to about 1800. And I was like, you know, there's no future here. So we went to Minnesota, and I took a little time off, figure out what I wanted to do. When I grew up, at that point, I had I had two Oracle certifications, Oracle programming language, and so I got to Minneapolis then and got a job with the U.S. Postal Service as a contractor and helped them develop a national training database. And then I went to work for a healthcare company when that project was done, and I was with them for 20 years. Michael Hingson  06:58 Wow! Stephen Shaner  06:59 And they eventually moved me up to Duluth. They asked me to go relocate up there. They're going to open a new IT facility up in Duluth, Minnesota, and they asked me to consider relocating up there and managing this new facility. So did that, and I ran that place for about 14 years before I retired in 2019. Now I'm down here in Tennessee, speaking and doing magic, and I've got the podcast. I just published my third book and doing a lot of emergency communications on radio and that type of stuff and having a good time. Michael Hingson  07:27 I, when I was doing computer sales, especially the last few years, worked for Quantum Corporation, so we were the manufacturers of a lot of the digital linear tape technology and tape libraries and so on, and it was fascinating to to see all the things that the companies were doing. Wall Street used a lot of Sybase much more than Oracle, and I guess it all had to do with the fact that they were not formatted fields so much in Sybase. And I'm not quite sure what the advantage of that was, but people seemed to like Sybase at least for a while. Stephen Shaner  08:02 Yeah, I I knew some people that did both at at I don't remember what companies were at, but they were doing both Oracle and Sidebase, and there were some you know pros and cons for both. Michael Hingson  08:13 Yeah, is Sybase still around today? Stephen Shaner  08:16 That I don't know. Michael Hingson  08:17 Yeah, I don't either. I mean, Oracle certainly is, but yeah, Stephen Shaner  08:20 Oracle. It's been Michael Hingson  08:20 a long time since since I was involved with it all. It kind of really ended a few months after September 11th for me, so I've never really checked. I should go back and check and see if Sybase is around. I know it it was it would it would definitely be a problem for for blind people to do a lot with with Sybase when they were not formatted fields, but there are some technologies that even can handle that today, which which is kind of cool. Yes, but Oracle definitely certainly made life great for Larry Ellison anyway. Stephen Shaner  08:52 Yeah, it did. I met him. We were at a. It was a different company. It was a company that manufactured the computerized maintenance management software that we use at the Nevada test site. We was having a user group meeting in Dallas, and he came in during the last day and talked to us for a few minutes. It was when they were promoting Oracle Personal Seven, ah, and so he came in. So I did get to beat Larry Ellison. He's a he's a different guy. Michael Hingson  09:18 Well, that's cool. So so now today, what do you do exactly? Stephen Shaner  09:23 Well, along the way, along through all of those travels, I really became a people watcher. I just loved watching people and and how they acted, how they reacted, how they proacted, and the vocabulary they use, and just how they how they interacted with other people, I was fascinated by that, and that's how I kind of got caught up into this this attitude stuff, and learned quite a bit along the way just by watching people. I got involved in Toastmasters about 24 years ago, and kind of went up through the ranks there, and and was a what they every club is in an area. Are in a dis in a division. Every division is in a district, and the districts are pretty large. And the top three people in in the district are what they call the district trio. And I ended up serving in those three positions. First, I was the what they called the lieutenant governor of marketing. So I spent a year marketing Toastmasters. I created 16 clubs, new clubs for our district. Our district was most of Minnesota, North Central Ontario. It was big, and had over 5000 members, almost 300 clubs at that point. And then the next year, I was Lieutenant Governor of Education training, so I was working on you know training district leaders and club officers and those those programs. And then I was elected district governor. As district governor, I had 10 division governors, 58 area governors, and a leadership team of about 30. Did that for a year, and just loved it. What a great experience! And then I was immediate past district governor for a year, and then the board of directors, Toastmasters, appointed me to be a region advisor, and I did that for a year. And I had I had Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, part of Wyoming, part of Nebraska. I had Montana, I had Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Western Ontario. Michael Hingson  11:06 Wow! Stephen Shaner  11:07 Yeah, so and that was a fabulous experience. Yeah, then after that, done a lot of mentoring. Been mentored by a lot of people. I served as a past region advisor on the past region advisor council, where we looked at the past the Regent Advisor program, then I spent two years serving on the International Disciplinary Committee. So I've done done a lot of things in that organization, but my whole focus has been you know speaking on attitude and and those types of topics. I I do I have a real passion for helping people find their passions. Too often you know, ask somebody who are you, and they'll say things like, "Well, I'm a computer programmer. I'm a lawyer. No, that's what you do. Are you? And they don't know how to answer that question. Or, or you ask them, "What are you passionate about? And you get a blank stare. So, I I developed a program called Find Your Peace, which is your passion, your purpose, your potential, and your personal mission. And it's a month long, and it just takes these people through a exercise of self discovery, and they discover really who they are and why they do the things they do and think the way they think. And it's just it's really a lot of fun watching them go through that that transformation. Michael Hingson  12:10 Stephen Covey been a pretty significant influence for you. Stephen Shaner  12:14 I met him, and that that was yeah. I I was a facilitator of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits when I got to the healthcare company I worked, they that was a mandatory class for all new employees, and I had been using it for years before that, and had taught some of it to a few people here and there. Nothing formal, but after I took the class, they had they had six certified instructors there at the company, and the head guy came to me and he says, "You know this stuff better than we do. Would you be willing to help us teach this stuff? I said, "Sure. Shortly after that, four of the other instructors left the company, so it was him, me, and one other person. Then the other person left, so it was just him and me. And then he said, "I'm just too busy take it over. So, so I was running that program for a while until the company dropped it. But in I don't remember what year it was was when Stephen Covey released the Eighth Habit. He was doing a seminar in Minneapolis, and I and I went to that, and there was about 250 of us in attendance, and they brought in box lunches for us. And so I ate lunch, and I walked out to the lobby. This was at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and I walked out to the lobby, and was throwing my lunch stuff away, and I turned around and he was walking up. So I stuck my hand out and I shook his hand. I said, "Thank you. And he smiled. He says, "What are you thanking me for? I says, "Your seven habits have changed my life in so many ways. And I thought that would be the end of the conversation. It wasn't. He put his arm around me and he pulled me over to the corner, and he said, "Tell me your story. And so I told him, you know, about my life, pre-seven habits, and some things I've been doing since. Then he asked me a question I wasn't expecting. He says, "Which habit do you think is most important? I says, "Well, for me, habit one, be proactive. He said, "Really? Why one? I says, "Well, I think if you master habit one, you'll have huge successes with the other six habits. I says, and if you don't, you may have some successes, but nowhere near the level, you know, that you could. And he he smiled and he says, "You get it. Then he then he says, "What's your name? I says, "Stephen. He goes, "Oh, great name. But the the lesson for me was, if somebody like Stephen Covey can make me the most important person in his life for 10 minutes, you know, how should we be treating the people we that we interact with. Michael Hingson  14:23 Yeah, where does attitude come from? Stephen Shaner  14:25 You know, this is a this is this is a thing that when I when I talk about it, I get a lot of you know people looking at me like no, no, no. So, but here's here's here's the way we feel, and I felt this way for a long time too. It's okay. I'm this way because of my parents or because of my grandparents. Okay, I have a negative attitude because it's Monday, or because it's you know the sun isn't shining, or because so and so is in the White House, or whatever. So many people feel like attitude is placed upon us. I'm this way because of what's going on around me. When the fact is, attitude is a choice that we can make. And that's the whole habit. One be proactive, you know. He, Stephen Covey, teaches us that between stimulus and our response, there is a space, you know, where we can choose what our response is going to be, and we're the only animal that can do that. I mean, if I if I'm hiking through the woods and I accidentally walk between Mama Bear and her cub, she's not going to be proactive. She's she's going to react, and so so those those or she or Michael Hingson  15:25 you can say she's going to be proactive and get you out of the world. But yeah, I hear you. Maybe Stephen Shaner  15:29 yeah. So but and I was working for a guy when I when I first started looking at some of the stuff. I was working for a guy who took credit for everything I did, and he wasn't shy about it. We'd be sitting in a meeting, and I'd be sitting next to him. He'd go, "Yep, I did this, and I did this, and I did this, and I just sit there quietly. And one day, he, the whole day long, is over there typing on his computer. Finally, he's the printer, and he he comes over and he hands me. He had just he had just redone his resume, and he handed it to me. And I'm I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, you know, I could put my name at the top of this resume. It would be perfect, and it got to the point. So you imagine the emotions. I mean, those negative emotions come in-the frustration, the anger, and those types of things. And I decided it was time to move on. But before I did, I took some time. I went out into the wilderness, and I took Seven Habits book. I took Tony Robbins' Awaken the giant within. I took my scriptures and I took my journal and I took some food and water and I just went out there and and so I'm reading Stephen Covey and he's telling me that if I'm having a bad day, it's because I decided to, not what I wanted to hear. Then I'm reading Tony Robbins and he's telling me frustration is a good thing and it's also not what I wanted to hear. But then as I read my scriptures and and was writing my journal, I kind of came back to this concept of being of service, and I came out of that weekend with a huge breakthrough. And it was like, so what? So what if he's taking credit for what I do? Is it my job to make him look good? You know. And so my attitude completely changed because I asked different questions, and I and I decided that, you know, I can have good attitude anyway. Went back to work. He continued to do that. Didn't matter. I I had a better attitude. I was more energetic. I had fun at the job, and it was because you know it was all on me. I had to make a decision and decide. So so I've learned, and I've helped a lot of other people realize that you know if you're having this, and Stephen was right, if you're having a bad day, it's because you decided to, and yeah, bad things do happen, okay, to us. But it's still, if we decide to be in a negative mood, that is because we decided to. I know people have gone through divorce, have been thrilled, you know, and it's just it's it's how you look at it. The questions you ask are so important. Michael Hingson  17:38 Well, I know everybody talks about September 11th. What a horrible time it was! How stressful it was, and so on. And yeah, it was a bad thing. On the other hand, as as I point out to people, people ask me all the time, "Well, you survived. What do you think about that? And I said, "Well, I know there were people who who did not, and I am I'm sad about that. But by the same token, the very fact that I survived really means what I need to do is decide how I'm going to live my life and what I'm going to do with that. And we were very blessed. I think almost immediately the media got a hold of of my story. That happened because we we started by talking with the person who was in charge of information at Guide Dogs for the Blind, where I've gotten all of my dogs, and she wanted to put out a story, and that got to the media, and I chose to start to answer questions that people wanted to ask from the media. What I learned was that was much more therapeutic than in going to any kind of counseling sessions would be because you never knew what they were going to ask. Some people asked really good questions. Some people asked really dumb questions. But the point is that that allowing myself to be subjected to all of that taught me how to how to think and deal with all of it. And and the reality is, what I learned was ultimately for me, it's what am I going to do with my life because I survived, and then phone calls started coming in from people saying we'd love to have you come and speak and talk to us about what we should learn from the World Trade Center, which over the years has evolved to a lot more than what happened on September 11th, but why I got to the World Trade Center in the first place, and the the lessons to be learned from all of that, and the bottom line is that that I learned, as as you pointed out, how much of it is really choice, and I could be negative about the World Trade Center or not. Certainly, it was a not a very very positive thing, but how I deal with it is really the issue as far as my personal life is concerned. Stephen Shaner  19:47 Yeah, you get it. That's that's exactly it. We have we have that opportunity to make that choice. I Michael Hingson  19:53 met someone who had a brother who was a police officer. And died at the World Trade Center. He was a fireman, and he switched and decided he wanted to become a police officer because he wanted to go kill terrorists and he wanted to capture them and put them in jail and maybe get a chance to kill them. That was his choice, and that always struck me as that's not going to help. On the other hand, I can certainly talk to to people here and anywhere about the World Trade Center and how we deal with our lives, and we can talk about God and where God is in all of it. People always ask me if you know if I think that God just really blew it that day, and and again, my my point is, why do you think that? You know, the reality is, everyone has a choice in the world that they can make at any given time, and and we need to make those choices, and we need to live by the choices that we make. Stephen Shaner  20:54 Yes, absolutely. And there's some other things we can do when we find ourselves in those negative places. Number one is ask different questions. Sometimes negative things happen, and we're asking the wrong questions. You know, why me? You know, those those types of questions. And guess what? We'll get the answers. So, and it seems a funny one. I had a when I was working up in Duluth. My my direct report manager was down in Minneapolis, so we were about 160 miles away, and every now and then my team would make a mistake of some kind, and there was a senior director down there that every time that happened, he would immediately go to my boss, you know, and and question this, and then I get pulled in later, and I just I would get so frustrated that he wouldn't come to me with this stuff, you know, and this went on for a long time, and one day we had we'd made a mistake, and so he sent an email to my boss. Look what they did this time. So my boss forwarded to me, and he just simply typed in Stephen question mark. You know, of course, as soon as I saw it, you know, I was like, I was so frustrated, and I kept asking, does he go to my boss? Why doesn't he come to me? Why did you know? And it was just these negative anger, frustration. And finally, I calmed down. I said, "Okay, why am I really upset here? Am I upset because my team made a mistake? No, they make mistakes. They're exceptional at fixing problems and making sure they don't happen again. That wasn't. Was I upset that my boss knew? No, I'd already told him, you know, he needed to know. Okay, so that wasn't it, and I kept coming back to this. Why does he go to him? Why did he come to me? And then finally, I changed a little bit, and I said, Why would he go to my boss? And I thought, I was, well, they've known each other for years, they have a relationship, they have trust, and I said, maybe he doesn't even know he can come to me. I was just thinking that. Stephen Shaner  22:42 Yeah, all of a sudden, I was like, "Okay, I'm in control again. So I called or I replied to the email. Here's what happened. Here's what we've done to fix it. It won't happen again. And I said, "If anything like this happens in the future, please let me know. Okay. I set that off. I then called this this gentleman and I and I set up a one-on-one with him that we could meet every two weeks, and I could start building that relationship with him, build the trust. And after a while, he didn't go to my boss anymore. He came to me. But by changing the questions, Michael Hingson  23:10 yeah, Stephen Shaner  23:10 you know, we'll get different answers. If Speaker 1  23:16 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week. We've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Stephen Shaner  23:48 Well, and and then there's you know the vocabulary we're using too. Michael Hingson  23:52 I was Stephen Shaner  23:52 sitting at a Toastmasters conference one night, Friday night dinner, the round table. There's I think eight of us at the table. So it was me, my wife Nancy was next to me, and my former boss was next to her. He he and I joined Toastmasters at the same time, and and this was right when I was getting ready to become the district governor. And I and I looked over at at my former boss. I says, "Are you going to be an area governor next year? And him being him and his sense of hearing, he says, "Well, why would I want to do that? So I replied, "It's the best job in the district. You get to visit clubs, you get to give presentations, you get to organize speech contests. It's a lot of fun. And at the same time, then a lady across the table I just met, she she piped up. She says, "Well, a lady in my club is an area governor, and she hates it. And I said, "Really? Why? She says, "Well, she has to go visit clubs, and she has to organize speech contests, and she has to give presentations. And you see the difference. I was saying you get to do these things. She was saying you have to have to do these things. Yeah. How do you feel when you have to do something? You know, versus get to, and we can change our vocabulary just that simple, and it it makes a. Huge difference. If I say, "Oh, this is devastating, what am I going to experience? Devastation, whatever that means to me, you know. And I used the words like that. There's something bad happening. I'd use those negative words, and now I've just I've switched it up. So something like that happens. I just I just go, okay, this is entertaining because that changes me instantly because being entertained is a completely different experience than being devastated. Okay, so I can look at whatever is going on completely differently from an entertaining standpoint, and it takes me in a completely different direction. So vocabulary is huge. The the words we use, and I and I always tell people: take if you're in a negative place, what do you what are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you reading? You know what were you with? You know, take a look at those things. For years, I would watch the news programs on Sunday, you know, and I just scream at the TV. And I haven't watched news on on television now probably in going on 20 years. You know, I don't need that because most of it is negative, you know. And I can get my news into, you know, as much as I need where I want to get it from, and and do it that way. So I watch Michael Hingson  26:11 I watch the news, but I also recognize something, and you're you're alluding to it certainly, which is it's it's all about how you choose to deal with what you see. When I was running from the collapse of Tower Two, the first thing I thought of when I started to run was God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And as soon as I thought that, I heard a voice in my head as clearly as you hear me that said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And I also had this absolute perfect sense of conviction that if I and my guide dog Roselle worked together, we would be fine. And I have lived by that concept for now the last 24 and a half years, which really is one of things happen. There are a lot of things that we don't have control over. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't necessarily be aware of them, but it does mean that we don't need to let those things be things that we worry about because we're not going to have any control over them anyway. And that's 90 to 95% of what comes across in our lives, so it's it's for me. I don't mind watching the news. I I expect not very much from all of it, and I know they're going to come through every time. So it works out really well. But but the fact is that it's one of the ways that I have to get the news since I don't read newspapers directly. I can read. I can get the L.A. or the New York Times online, but still the news is is there, and I'll take what I can learn from it and move forward. But it is it gets back to again. It's a choice, right? Stephen Shaner  27:53 Yes. And you just you just nailed habit one. Be proactive. Yeah. There's a lot of things going on in the world. Okay. All the things of all the things we want in the world, some things we don't care about. Okay, but there are some things that concern us. Okay, so we we we pay more attention to those. There are a lot of things out there. They have no concern about that. And then inside all those things that concern us, there are things that we can influence and things that we can't. Okay, so proactive people focus on the things they can influence, the things they can control primarily themselves, okay, right? And yeah, reactive people. Where do they focus? They focus on the things they have no influence over, and they yell and scream and gripe and and do all those things like I used to do, and and that's the difference. That's really habit one in the nutshell. Yeah, focus on the things you control, and I and I work with people all the time, and I had one here recently. The guy was very frustrated about some things other people were doing, and and was just you know upset and frustrated. And I said, "Look, I says you have no control over those people. Don't worry about them. Focus on the wonderful things that you do every day for people, you know. And immediately his demeanor changed, his attitude changed, and and it really can be that simple, you know, just by changing, you know, asking different questions, using different vocabulary, and and especially if you focus on the things you can control, primarily yourself, it's huge. Michael Hingson  29:13 Yeah. Well, and and the reality is that just so many people just seem to enjoy worrying about all these things, and all they're doing is creating fear in their lives, which is which is so unfortunate, and we fear so many things, and and there's nothing that we're going to be able to do about most all of them because they're not really affecting us, or are touching us in any way. So it doesn't do us any good to to go off and continue to fret, but we do, and we we need to learn not to do that. And it's one of the the things I talk about in my my latest book, "Live Like a Guide Dog, which is all about learning lessons from dogs. You know, dogs don't do what ifs when something happens and it's over. It's over for the dog. They don't they don't go back. Well, what if. This had happened instead. They don't do that, and and it makes such a big difference. There's so much we could learn from observing our dogs. I don't know about cats. No, I do. Cats are good too, but but you know we we can learn so much from the way dogs behave. Dogs are are open to trust. I'm not going to say they're trusting all the time. I do think that dogs love unconditionally, but I don't think that they necessarily trust unconditionally. But they're open to trust, and that's the thing that we have forgotten how to do: is to be open to trust. Stephen Shaner  30:33 Very true, very true. Michael Hingson  30:35 And it is something that we really need to learn to deal with it, and hopefully, over time we will we will do more to catch on. I mean we've got all the stuff going on with politics today, and yeah, it doesn't matter what side of the the spectrum that you're on with with all of that. The bottom line is deal with what you can control, and don't worry about the rest. It makes such a big difference. So the problem is negativity is so much all around us. How do we get ourselves out of a negative mood? I think I kind of know where you're going to go with this, but I think it's a relevant question. How do we how do we get ourselves out of feeling negative all the time? Stephen Shaner  31:15 Touch on some of them. You know, change your vocabulary. You know, take a look at what's going on around you. See if you can eliminate what's causing that negativity, gratitude is huge. Michael Hingson  31:24 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  31:25 and in any given situation, there have been times when I've you know been okay, I've been down or there. But if I just take a breath and say, okay, what am I grateful for right now? You know that that can turn you around instantly. And in my workshops, I'll I'll ask that question. We'll go around the room, and people say, "Well, I'm grateful for you know my health, or my family, or my wife, or my creator, or whatever it may be. There's all these different things, but I take it a step further, and I say, "Okay, all of those things that you said you're grateful for have a relationship associated with it. Okay, so if you say you're you're grateful for your health, well, that's a relationship with yourself, perhaps your doctor, perhaps your creator. If you're grateful for your family, that's a relationship. Your employees, there's these relationships behind that. And then the next question I ask: Okay, so all those things that you're grateful for, all those relationships you're grateful for, do they know? And we miss that part sometimes. We miss Michael Hingson  32:19 that part. Stephen Shaner  32:19 Yeah, and if we if we are truly grateful for a certain thing in our life, and there's that relationship with it, let that person know, and that includes you know being grateful for yourself. You know, give yourself a pat on the back from time to time, and be grateful for that. In my book, I have the line, you know, every day above ground is a great day. Yeah, and and I was at a seminar, and there was a the guy in attendance that was you know three piece suit, Italian suit, you know the fancy shoes, and and the seminar leader asked him. He says, you know, do you consider yourself to be successful? He says, well, no. He says, well, how do you know when you're successful? The guy says, well, when I have a you know four and a half million dollar home and a and you know a $200,000 car and and all this stuff he listed off he says well how much or and he made and he he wanted to make an income of you know it was like you know 5 million a year or something he says well how much you make now he says well I'm at about 3 million a year you know and how much is your house well it's only about 2 million you know but he didn't consider himself successful and then there was another guy there in jeans, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and and the the some earlier asked him. He says, "Are you successful? He says, "Absolutely. And he asked him. He says, "How do you know you're successful? He says, "Every day above ground is a great day. And there you Michael Hingson  33:33 go. Stephen Shaner  33:33 And it's just and it's so true. But gratitude is huge. Just taking, like I said, take a step back, take a breath, and okay, what am I grateful for right now? And you can always be grateful for something, and that can change your attitude instantly. Michael Hingson  33:48 Well, and I think there's a lot of merit to that. I know for me, I'm grateful because I get to do what I think I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to be a teacher. I didn't get to teach for the longest time directly, but since September 11th, that's really what I do. I teach about life and philosophy. I get to teach about disabilities and help try to educate people. And most of the time, I think it probably goes over most people's heads. But every so often, you just never know when you might strike a nerve or you might say something that somebody just goes off and thinks about, and you've you've scored points and you've helped, and so I think that's that's extremely important. I I hear what you're saying. Every day above ground is a is a good day. There's no question about that. Stephen Shaner  34:32 And I don't want to make light of people that you know life through any illnesses and stuff like that. But again, in those situations, Michael Hingson  34:38 if Stephen Shaner  34:38 you if you think about what you are grateful for and have a positive attitude, you'll get through those situations a lot easier. That's for sure. Michael Hingson  34:46 I had a situation last year. Actually, it started in 2023, but I had a a or 2024. I had a a pain in my left arm, and it turns out when we finally. Dealt with it, and and and I had to take some blood tests, and discovered that we had a very elevated heart enzyme called troponin. I had a bad heart valve, and I knew immediately I have two ways to deal with this. I can be scared, fretful, why me? Or I can say, okay, we're going to fix it. And for me personally, I choose the positive way. I'm going to we're going to deal with it and all that. And and we did. I went into the the hospital for an operation to to replace the valve, which they did, And so this operation was supposed to take like two hours or two and a half hours, and it actually only took about an hour for me because, as I love to tell people, I have good veins and good arteries, so no problem. So they they went in, they replaced the the valve, and I wake up and I've had colonoscopies before, so I had some experience with this. I wake up, I'm listening to them, and so I I figure I had to to deal with these guys a little bit. So I started kind of moaning, and I said, "Gee, Doc, do you ever think I'll be able to play the violin? Unfortunately, somebody knew that one, and they said, "Probably. I said that's good because I never play it before. But but then I said, but you know what the doctor said is he sewed himself up, right? Suit yourself, and and you know they said you came right out of that anesthetic, didn't you? And I said, yeah, I told you I was going to come right out of it. But but you know it's been great ever since the valve got replaced, and and I was told that if I hadn't done it, I would have lived anywhere from six months to at most two years. But the valve was replaced, and I still get to to be around my guide dog Alamo and and my cat Stitch. So you know, Stephen Shaner  36:54 yeah, my wife Nancy here is a little over a year ago now. She had an episode where her her blood pressure was going up, but then it would come back down. So we're about there. There's a hospital about a half hour from us, but they don't have all the the fancy facilities and stuff. the The nearest big hospital is is about an hour from here. So I called the paramedics, and they came in and they got her hooked up the KG and were kind of monitoring everything. He says we're going to take her down to Cookville because they've got a good cardiology cardiology department at that hospital where they don't have one here locally. So halfway there, her blood pressure just dropped, and she went unconscious. Michael Hingson  37:40 So Stephen Shaner  37:41 they got her stable license, sirens rest the way in. So she was in that hospital for four days, had every heart test known to man, and you know I would go visit her and and spend a little time with her. And one of the visits, one of the nurses cornered me in the hallway, and she says, "Can I ask you a question? I said, "Sure. She says, "How can you be so positive during all this? And Alex Troy says, "Okay. I says, "Suppose I was very negative and very grumpy about all this. How would that help the situation, right? And I says, "Or if I was grumpy and in a negative mood, how would that help Nancy? And she just said, "You know, I never thought about it that way. And when they were checking her out, the the doctors and all the nurses came in and thanked both of us for for being so positive and friendly and nice with everything that was going on. So little things. And what did they finally decide? Nothing was wrong with her heart. So she has since now this year she had some more heart problems. She started having AFib issues, so they put a watchman in, and that kind of you know plugged that hole in the left ventricle so that she won't get the blood clots. So she doesn't have to be in a blood thinner. And about six days after that, her heart was kind of not working so well with it, so they put a pacemaker in. So she had two heart surgeries in about six days. But now, sounds like what what's going on is all of these problems are being caused by the COVID shots. Ah, and so because her heart was fine, you know, before, but now all of a sudden she's got these. But right now she's doing great. In fact, she had an appointment last two weeks ago, right before the ice storm, and the Cardia says everything's looking good. We'll see you in a year, so so things are going well now. Michael Hingson  39:32 Interesting. Well, you know, I've I've heard that some people have had reactions to the COVID shots, son, but I've never bought into the concept that they're just injecting you with a bunch of trackers to follow you wherever you go. I remember the first few times we had vaccinations, they did it in our in our cars, and so we drove up, and they would come out and they gave injections, and after they gave the injections, I'd reach over with my left hand. I go wait a minute, and I'd hit my right shoulder where they did the injection. I said I was just getting one of them little things that tried to get away, and you know, and the and the nurses finally say, "You don't really believe in those trackers, do you? And I said, "Heck no, I'm having too much fun, you know. Stephen Shaner  40:15 No, it's a Frank Stein monster you stuck in there that scares me. That's right. Yeah, Michael Hingson  40:20 but but you know, and you know, I I I do get vaccinations. I get the COVID vaccinations, and I asked someone when I I think it was November that we went in and had one. I travel enough that I'm always going to take no chances, so it's better to get vaccinated, and I don't have any reactions to them. But I asked if people still come in and talk about the trackers and all the the horrible things, and she said, "You just wouldn't believe how many people still buy into that. It's crazy. Stephen Shaner  40:49 Yes, indeed. Michael Hingson  40:50 If you really want to scare them, then you can tell them that AI helped develop the vaccinations and see what they do with that because it's true. But yeah, I Stephen Shaner  40:58 know everybody's loving AI. I said, yeah. Just go back on what 2001 of Space Odyssey and see how you feel about it. Yeah, right. Michael Hingson  41:05 Open the Pod Bay doors, Dave. You know what are you doing, Dave? Oh gosh, people are amazing, aren't they? Stephen Shaner  41:13 Yep. Yes, they are. But that's what makes life fun. You know, it's just the fact that people are different. It makes life fun because if everybody was the same, it'd be a boring place. It Michael Hingson  41:23 would be a boring place, so it's more fun to have people who are different and people who are not necessarily thinking the same way you are and intend to be negative. And maybe sometimes you can change some of those people, which is good. And it's always fun to to try. That's the Stephen Shaner  41:38 goal. Yeah, that's the goal. You know, be an example and show there's a different way. Michael Hingson  41:42 So, do questions matter? Asking questions matter. Stephen Shaner  41:44 Absolutely. Like I shared, you know, with the questions I was asking about this this this manager that was going to my boss, you know, just by asking different questions. And another thing is is I've had a lot of fun with this word, awesome. My company is awesome attitude, and I'm the bottom of all my emails, you'll see a "You are awesome, and I type that in every time. Michael Hingson  42:07 It's Stephen Shaner  42:07 not part of my signature, so I might say, "You know, thanks, you are awesome, or you know, you know, whatever message. I've gotten Michael Hingson  42:12 those. Stephen Shaner  42:13 Yeah, you are awesome, and people don't realize I type. In fact, I misspelled "awesome" one time when I sent the email, and the guy, the guy wrote back says you need to fix your signature. Awesome is misspelled, and I replied, "Oh, I says that's not part of my signature. I typed there time. And he was like, "Wow, personalized awesome messages. But it's amazing because people will respond to those emails, go, "Well, thank you so much. I wasn't expecting that. And barely a week goes by where somebody doesn't send me a text or something that they saw the word "awesome" somewhere, like recently, the guy was walking his dog, and he came across on the sidewalk where kids with chalk had had written "You are awesome" on the sidewalk, and he took a picture and he said, "Thought of you, and this happens all the time, and is another one of those vocabulary things, and and I'll share how the question changed that. In my first book, I talk about you know how are you today, and you think about all the different responses you can get to that question, and some are like I'm fine, you know I'm or I'm good. They're just pretty routine answers. I had one guy ignore me completely, just walked past me, you know. Then I had a guy one time. I was like, "Well, I'm alive, you know. So you get this variety of answers. And I had a guy one time. He asked me, "How are you today? And I said, "I'm awesome, thanks. And I kid you not, he looked at me and says, "That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. And and I smiled, and and he realized what he had done, and he says, and he apologized again. I was not sorry. He says, "I'm so used to hearing negative responses. I automatically assumed you said awful. Michael Hingson  43:47 Oh, okay. So, Stephen Shaner  43:48 so, and again, we asked that same question over and over. How are you today in this video? How are you? How's it going? What's up? You know, what's new? We we asked that same question. So I changed the question. The question is, "Are you awesome today? Michael Hingson  44:05 I know, and that's oh yeah, Stephen Shaner  44:07 that's it's unexpected. People don't expect that, and they think, "Oh, you know, yeah, I am awesome. That's the the title of my podcast: "Are you awesome today? And when I answer the phone, you know, it's, "Are you awesome today? Or if I call somebody and they answer the phone, I'll say, "Are you awesome today? And it's completely different. It gets them thinking differently, and it gets them. Yeah, I am awesome today. You know. So rather than the the same old, how are you today? I'm fine. It's yeah, I'm awesome. Thanks for asking. You know. So questions do matter. Michael Hingson  44:35 When people ask me how I am, I just say I'm lovely, and I learned that from a friend, and I love it. It's great, you know. And and I've had some people who go, "What? But but you know, awesome. Yes, absolutely. But I do love to say I'm lovely, and I love Stephen Shaner  44:52 that. And it's different. People don't expect it, and no, it'll make their day. Believe it. It has an effect. Had a young lady on ham radio, teenager. And I'd always, whenever I talked to her on the radio, they said, "How are you today? Or this was, you know, this back when I was asking that question, and she would reply, "Dandy, thanks. You know, there you go. Yeah, and it was just, it was so much fun. It was like that's the kind of things we like to hear. Michael Hingson  45:14 You still a ham operator? Stephen Shaner  45:15 Oh yeah, yeah. I've I'm the emergency coordinator for Macon County, and I'm the district emergency coordinator for 13 counties here in Middle Tennessee for Aries Amateur Emergency Services, and president of our local club, and so very active. I just did some some Poda before I got on on here with you. Parks on the air got three contacts: a guy at Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Michigan. Michael Hingson  45:39 If I got industrious, I would get an antenna and connect my Kenwood back up. It's been a while since we moved down here, and I haven't had this running at all down here. And I really need to get it get it back up on the air. I've been a ham operator since 1964. I got my novice license in '64. My dad could have gotten his at any time. He wanted to wait until I could get mine, so we got them at the same time. Nice. And then in '65, got technician, and then soon after that, general class. Nice. And we we set up rigs at opposite ends of the house, and we would talk to each other and drive people around the whole town crazy because we would be talking about the weather. You know, I'd say, "How's the weather over there? And he'd say, "Oh, it's raining over here, and people knew that we were at opposite ends of the same house. I say, well, it's really nice and sunny here, and just drove people crazy. Stephen Shaner  46:27 I bet, but yeah, Nancy's got her. She's a she's an extra amateur extra, and we've got our VE credential, so we give the tests, and we just have a blast with the hobby. It's a fun hobby, and then when you can do the committee service too, it's it's great. Michael Hingson  46:39 I used to do things with races and also with Mars. Stephen Shaner  46:42 Yeah, Michael Hingson  46:43 and it's been a while, but I really need to get the antenna up and get an antenna in here and get back on the air. I think it'd be a lot of fun to do. Stephen Shaner  46:53 Contact a local club. I'm sure some people help you get that. Yeah, Michael Hingson  46:55 I just really need to do that. Yeah. So, how does energy affect attitude, and how do I get more energy? Stephen Shaner  47:02 Ah, boy, you know that's such a great question. That's a that's Michael Hingson  47:05 a that's a detailed one, isn't Stephen Shaner  47:07 it? It is, and I awesome Michael Hingson  47:09 question. It Stephen Shaner  47:10 is. I watch people; those people that are positive all the time. You you know, we meet them. They're just no matter what's going on, they're always positive. They always seem to have a lot of energy, and and I found that if we we want more energy, what we need to do is give energy. What I mean by that is is movement. Okay, if we find ourselves kind of low on energy, the battery is a little low. Just get up and move. And it doesn't have to be anything, you know, strenuous. Just in my office, I had a sit stand station, which meant I could take my whole computer and to monitor everything, raise them up. I could stand for you know, and I would stand for hours during the day. They gave me energy. Take a five minute walk, you know. And music is huge. If you know, play some music, dance in your cube. You know, sell tickets, have a little concert in your cube, fight your coworkers, and have a good time. But but just get up, move. That's really all it is. I get up at four a.m. every day, and I do an exercise program called the Five Tibetans, and then I do Tai Chi, and then you know read or work on the computer, whatever, and do until Nancy gets up around seven. And but that those two things give me energy throughout the day. And if I find myself in a slump, just getting up and taking a short walk will boost my energy level up Michael Hingson  48:18 every time. Stephen Shaner  48:20 Yeah. So I Michael Hingson  48:21 we didn't design our house this way, but we have a long island, but separating the family room living room area from the kitchen. And now, since it's just me, I will do I will put an audio book on and just do laps around the island, and I can get up to 15,000 steps without any great difficulty, just reading a book and and doing it, and it's a great way to get energy. And to I Stephen Shaner  48:45 bought Nancy a walk pad. These are these are fairly new. It's like a little miniature treadmill. There doesn't have the big handle thing sticking up. It's just a flat treadmill for walking. They're designed so you can like sit it under your desk and you can you know take some steps while you're at your computer or something. Yeah. But but because it's you know a little rough for her. It's pretty hilly out here to to get us up. So she's got a nice level place that she can just you know walk for 2030 minutes every day in the house. Where especially when it was our ice storm going on a couple weeks ago, you know, stay in and stay warm and not slip and fall. And but there's there's ways to do that. And like I said, even just standing up, I did a presentation at the local chamber of commerce this morning, and when I was in my presentation, rather than go back and sit down, I went to the back and stood the whole time. And at church on Sunday, I stand through the entire service in the back and just keeps my energy up. So Michael Hingson  49:36 I don't always do that, but I oftentimes stand, and I've been to to many meetings, and I'll just stand in the back of the room. And frankly, given some of the speakers, it's better to stand and get a little bit more energy. But but a lot of times, it's just good for me anyway to to do that, which is cool. Stephen Shaner  49:54 Yeah. Michael Hingson  49:56 So, do you think? People generally tend to truly understand gratitude, or is that still a hurdle that a lot of people need to work to get through? Stephen Shaner  50:09 I think they, like I said, I think they say the word, you know, and I say, you know, I'm grateful for this. But what does that mean exactly? I don't think they take it down to the the detail. Okay, and like I said that there's relationships there. So if I say you know I'm grateful for my health, what does that mean? Okay, well you know I'm I'm grateful that and and I come from a every male on my dad's side and every male on my mom's side has had heart disease, died of heart disease. My dad had his first bypass surgery at 48. He had a second. He died of a heart attack. You know so I'm 67 and I take no medications. Okay, so I'm grateful for my health. You know, so and the relationship there, me, my family is affected by my health. You know, my friends, my coworker, everybody that is is in my life is affected by my health. I'm grateful for. I don't go to the doctors very often because I don't need to, but I'm grateful that you know you had a heart valve problem, and our medical system for those types of things is second to none. Michael Hingson  51:11 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  51:12 you know. So and even though I'm an hour away from a big hospital, I'm grateful that that is there if I do need it in in some way. You know, exactly, exactly right. Michael Hingson  51:21 Same thing for me. Stephen Shaner  51:23 Yeah. So we don't. I don't think we say, "Yeah, I'm grateful for that. But what does that really mean? And I think you're right. We don't. We don't take it deep enough and really think about. Okay, what does this really mean? And and again, with those relationships, okay, I'm grateful for my wife. Does she know? I hope so. You know, because I I do tell her frequently. I say Michael Hingson  51:42 telling her helps. Stephen Shaner  51:43 Yeah, it does. It really really does. So, Michael Hingson  51:48 and likewise, I'll bet she's grateful for you. Stephen Shaner  51:51 I think so. I hope so. So we've been we've been married. It'll be 45 years in July. So Michael Hingson  51:56 we were married 40 years before Karen passed. Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life, and the body just eventually slows down. I I learned from her sister that I've I've never heard this from my wife, but her sister told me, oh, they never thought she was going to live live past 30. Well, she lived to be 73, and the reality is, I I'm not sure. I totally buy that that that what her sister said was true because I've never been able to to verify it anywhere else. But Karen Karen lived a good life, but as I said, the body eventually does slow down, especially dealing with a wheelchair and all that, and things happen. But I know that we have 40 years of wonderful marriage memories, and as I said, she's out there monitoring. And if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. So I don't even chase the girls. Stephen Shaner  52:48 Yeah, I would Michael Hingson  52:49 point out they don't seem to be chasing me either. No, no reference to anything on the podcast, folks. Just saying. So, Stephen Shaner  52:56 and I think attitude plays a huge role in your health too. And I know there's a lot of literature out there that would back that up. Michael Hingson  53:04 So clearly, a positive attitude is a wonderful thing, and I'm sure that that given all that you do with a positive attitude, you you by definition affect a lot of other people as well. Stephen Shaner  53:16 It's it's amazing how many people just make comments. You know, comment I'll make. Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Thank you so much, or anything like that. I was in a, I was out running errands one day for work at lunchtime, and as I was heading back to the office, I got rear-ended, and pretty substantially. And so I got to the side of the road and and kind of shut everything off. I took inventory. I was okay, but those negative emotions, you know, the frustration, the anger, and those things started to creep in, and I finally just I took a breath and I said, and I asked a question. The question

Join Dursin and Clay as we break down Episode 6 of Larry's historical sketch comedy series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America. From Paul Revere backtracking on midnight ride rumors and Davy Crockett hiding Alamo defecation spots to Susan B. Anthony hosting a dry dinner party and Neil Armstrong brawling with Buzz Aldrin on the moon, we explore historical milestones mixed with pure social anxiety.

INTRO (00:00): Kathleen opens the show drinking an Austin Lager from Twisted X Brewing Company in Dripping Springs, TX. She reviews her weekend in San Antonio and Austin, visiting the Alamo and having Mexican margatinis at Matt's El Rancho. TOUR NEWS: See Kathleen live on her “Flying Cats & Marching Armadillos Tour.” TASTING MENU (1:12): Kathleen samples Herr's Jalapeno Popper Cheese Curls, Cheez-It Chili Dog Crackers, and Cheetos Cheddar Smartfood popcorn. QUEEN NEWS (44:19): Kathleen shares news that Nashville's BNA Airport is being renamed after Dolly Parton,Dolly's SongTeller Hotel is opening September 29th in Nashville, and Taylor Swift participated in an Emmy sketch with Mariska Hargitay. HOLLYWOOD HAPPENINGS (29:57): HollyBobby provides the latest news in Hollywood. UPDATE (57:34): Kathleen updates on Elon's underground Music City Loop in Nashville, Harry and Meghan have issues with their children's new UK school, FABULOUS LIVING BY AMY (1:12:17): Kathleen and her sister-in-law Amy talk about wardrobe capsules and how to build your capsule. HOLY SHIT THEY FOUND IT (1:30:47): Kathleen reports on the birth of a Przewalski horse for the first time in 200 years in Kazakhstan. SPORTS NEWS (48:12): Kathleen reads about the Buffalo Bills including the Canadian national anthem to acknowledge Canadian fans before the home opener at the new Highmark Stadium. NEWS (1:33:28): Kathleen reports that Barry Manilow has released new 2027 Vegas residency dates, the Alamo has an official cat named Bella, Oprah is set to headline the Vegas Sphere with her show “Aha,” Norway has unveiled a new Northern Lights train tour, Celine Dion begins her Paris run of shows,  Apple unveils their new foldable iPhone Duo,leading AI creators are warning the need for safeguards, 4 Renoir paintings are stolen in France, and polka dot artist Yayoi Kusama dies in Tokyo. SPANISH PHRASE OF THE WEEK (2:03:51): The Spanish phrase to learn this week is “qué deportes te gustan” or “what sports do you like?” in English. PATRON SAINT OF THE WEEK (2:06:21): Kathleen reads about Saint Januarius, patron saint of blood banks and blood donors.

Tonight on America At Night with McGraw Milhaven, Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason University and member of the Advisory Council for the Society for the Rule of Law, discusses his essay “Democratic Socialists and MAGA Share a Dangerous Flaw” and the arguments surrounding political movements and the rule of law. Chris Tomlinson, columnist for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News and author of the New York Times bestsellers Tomlinson Hill and Forget the Alamo, examines the current divisions within the Texas Republican Party and asks what is driving the conflict. And writer Claire Stapleton joins McGraw to discuss her book Don't Be Evil and the story behind one of the most recognizable phrases associated with the technology industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Cara Santa Maria joins us for a movie that's almost scientifically designed to piss her off as much as possible.---Check out more from Cara on the Talk Nerdy podcastIf you'd like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawfulCheck out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus.Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you'd like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/

The lessons I carried away from September 11 did not begin that day, and they certainly did not end there. In this solo episode, I reflect on how my parents taught me not to accept the limits others placed on blindness, how my guide dogs taught me about trust and teamwork, and how September 11 confirmed so much of what I already believed about fear, leadership, change, and possibility. I share why I work hard not to worry about things I cannot control, why I believe we can never truly go back to “normal,” and why strong teams are built through trust rather than control. I also challenge some of the ways we think about blindness and disability, because different does not mean less capable. I hope these lessons help you think differently about fear, change, leadership, and what it really means to live with an unstoppable mindset. Highlights: 00:46 – Why the lessons of September 11 began long before that day. 08:56 – How Michael learned that blindness is not the real barrier. 17:13 – Why focusing on what you can control can reduce fear. 24:28 – Why getting back to “normal” is not always the answer. 32:30 – What guide dogs taught Michael about trust and teamwork. 1:01:37 – Why disability does not mean a lack of ability. About the Host: Michael Hingson, blind since birth, was born in Chicago to sighted parents who believed in raising their son with a can-do attitude. Treated like all other children in his family, Michael rode a bike did advanced math in his head and learn to read and write – Braille that is! Michael's family relocated to the warm Palmdale area of California when he was five years old. It is here that Hingson had his first adventure with Guide Dogs for the Blind and received his first guide dog. He later went to college receiving a bachelor's and master's degree in Physics along with a secondary teaching credential from the University of California at Irvine. Michael then enjoyed a nearly-30-year career working for high tech companies spending most of his time in management roles. Michael Hingson's life changed dramatically on September 11, 2001 when he and his guide dog, Roselle, escaped from the 78th floor of Tower One in the World Trade Center moments before it collapsed. Soon after, Michael and Roselle were thrust into the international limelight where Michael began to share his unique survival story and 9-11 lessons of trust, courage, heroism, and teamwork. Mike has served as The National Public Affairs Director for one of the largest Nonprofit organizations in the nation: Guide Dogs for the Blind; He has served as the vice president of the National Association of Guide Dog Users; Michael has held a seat on the Fort Worth Lighthouse for the Blind. He is the chair of the board of directors of the Earle Baum Center for the Blind  and is the vice chair of the Colorado Center for the Blind; Michael is The National Ambassador for the Braille Literacy Campaign of the National Federation of the Blind. Until October 2019 he worked as the CEO of the Do More Foundation, the non-profit arm of Aira Tech Corp, a manufacturer of assistive technology which makes a revolutionary visual interpreter for blind people. In January 2021 Mike joined accessiBe as its Chief Vision Officer to help advance the company goal of making the entire internet fully inclusive. He held this position through June of 2026. He is the author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller: “Thunder dog –The True Story of a Blind Man, a Guide Dog & the Triumph of Trust” – selling over 2.5 million copies Worldwide. In 2013 Mr. Hingson published his 2 book “Running with Roselle”- which Is the first of its kind- A story for our youth shedding light on one of Americas Darkest Days. Mr. Hingson's third book, “Live Like A Guide Dog”, was released on August 20, 2024. This book shows readers how they can learn to control fear and not, as Mike would say, “become blinded by fear in the face of crisis”. Aside from his talents and advocacies, Mr. Hingson has traveled the Globe from Japan to New Zealand, the Netherlands to his hometown, Chicago. Speaking to some of the world's most elite: from former President, George W. Bush to Larry King, to Fortune 500 companies and colleges and Universities Nationwide. After sharing his story of survival on hundreds of TV and Radio programs, Michael is now an Expert hired by many of today's major corporations and organizations. Speaking and consulting on the importance of Teamwork and Trust, Moving from Diversity to Inclusion, as well as offering Adaptive Technology Training – spearheading innovation for ALL! - Thus, bringing organizations to the forefront of the ever-changing competitive modern world. In June, 2024 Mike was inducted as an alumni member into the honors Fraternity Phi Beta Kappa. Currently Michael lives in Victorville, California with Alamo, Michael's eighth guide dog and his rescue feline, Stitch. More information on Mr. Hingson is available on his website. Here also is a link to Mr. Hingson's press kit: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/q8uxu9u7pap4puj5de7rg/h?rlkey=22bziy0wmghf8111kad73685y&dl=0 http://www.michaelhingson.com/live-like-a-guide-dog www.michaelhingson.com www.michaelhingson.com/podcast Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/mhingson https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://www.facebook.com/Roselle911GuideDog/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568642850718948 https://www.facebook.com/?paipv=0&eav=AfZNi2VDR2R4nC6SveyCvZIyKtyi9VOLOzOKcG-v0Hk1glaVssEHwdR920w1_u-8B-k&_rdr https://www.facebook.com/?paipv=0&eav=AfZNi2VDR2R4nC6SveyCvZIyKtyi9VOLOzOKcG-v0Hk1glaVssEHwdR920w1_u-8B-k&_rdr Twitter, https://twitter.com/mhingson LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCx2L9OVN38Dv4mX6udP8g Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hingson. I am your host on Unstoppable Mindset, and this happens to be episode 475. Yeah, we've done a lot of these, and most all of them have been conversations with people who said that they wanted to come on the podcast and talk about one thing or another. And I was really pleased to have them. This episode is going to be a little bit different, as the last few have been. Episode 472, which we published on September 4, was a talk I gave in April of 2024, which told my story of being in the World Trade Center on september 11, on episode 473 on the eighth of September, Michelle Abraham interviewed me, and we talked about a number of things around september 11 and so on. Episode 474, which was published on the 11th of September, 2026. was a conversation with Bob Ellis, who was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, an escape, and we hear his story, and we got to chat and kind of talked about notes from both of us. Now it's episode 475, and it was suggested that I ought to talk about things that I learned from September 11th and how my life has changed, and I'm going to do the best I can to talk about all that. So you're just going to be hearing me today. I hope you won't go away. I hope that you'll enjoy it. I just returned from speaking all week from September 9th through September 11th in Kilgore, Texas, at Kilgore College, they did an incredible job of doing some things to help people become aware of September 11th. They actually had in the library and around the library at Kilgore College a monument to September 11th. They had some columns or portions of columns from the World Trade Center. They had a list of all of the names. They had flags in a in a in several rows with the names of all of the people who were lost on September 11th. They had a timeline from my book Thunderdog: The Story of a Blind man, his guide dog, and the triumph of trust at Ground Zero-a timeline of what I experienced, and they also had, I think, a timeline of just the World Trade Center events in in general. Well, okay, so all of that happened. I got back last night, and now here it is, Sunday. It is the 13th of September, and I'm recording this so that we can publish it on Tuesday, september 15. So that's a little bit of a long way to get to where we are. But as I said, people asked me to talk about what I learned that day, and how I proceeded and progressed from that day, but I have to go back to long before September 11th to really do everything justice and to put it all in context. So let me start this way. I believe that I have said a few times on this podcast, and certainly in some of the speeches that I've given, that I was born two months premature, and I was given a pure oxygen environment when I was born, because I was born early. Medical science had started to hear that even too much oxygen might not necessarily be a good thing, but the doctors in Chicago where I was born didn't buy into that concept yet, and so the result was I was given a pre-oxygen environment, and my retinas didn't develop as they should, and I became blind. So was I born blind? If you're very technical, no. But for all intents and purposes, yes. The doctors told my parents to send me to a home, to send me away, because no blind child could ever. Michael Hingson  04:59 Grow up to amount to anything, and all I would be would would end up being a drain on my family, sucking up all the love that my parents might have had for their older son, two years older than I, my brother Ellery. But the reality is, my parents said you're wrong. He can grow up to do whatever he chooses, and we're going to give him that opportunity. And I grew up with that idea. I grew up with that concept. My parents told me at some point when I was still fairly young about what the doctors had said, and they said, "You know, we think that you can do whatever you want. We want you to have that opportunity. Well, they did a number of things to help the process along. For example, we lived in Chicago until I was five, but at the age of four, typically children in in Illinois start or in Chicago start kindergarten, and I did as well. My parents worked with other parents and the school district to start a kindergarten class for children who were blind, and there were a number of preemies in the Chicago area. In that class, Miss Lapree, my teacher, taught me Braille. See, I remember her name. Taught me Braille. Taught me other skills. Taught the other blind kids because it was a kindergarten class for blind children. Taught us all a variety of different things that we could use, and then unfortunately, in a sense, I guess after kindergarten at the age of four, and it was over, my father had gotten an offer and took a job out in California, and we moved to California. Well, in California, kindergarten starts at five, and even though I had had a course in kindergarten already, I had to go through a second year of it, but we didn't have any kind of facilities to teach us or teach me about Braille going forward, getting me Braille books and so on. So kindergarten, first, second, and third grade, I didn't have access directly to textbook material. My parents helped me though. My father taught me math. He was an electronics and electrical engineer. I was doing algebra in my head by the time I was six. My mother read other assignments to me, taught me the spelling words because in first, second, and third grade you learned to spell, and in theory beyond third grade as well, of course. But what happened for me was that I learned about spelling by my mother teaching me how to spell the words, and then she would say the words, and then I would spell them. Well, that ended up going even further because typically in classrooms, what happened was that when it came time to take the actual spelling test, which happened on Fridays, the teacher would say the words. All of us or all the children in the class would write down the answers. Then we would exchange papers, and the teacher would then write the correct spellings on the board. Not in my class. I had to. Well, I got to get up. I. I don't want to say I had to. That's a lesson that I want to get to. wasn't that I had to get up. I got to get up, and actually spell the words out loud. I remember once missing a word, at least starting to miss a word, and somebody made a noise, and I realized, oh, that must be wrong, and I corrected it. But I learned how to spell words, and I learned to spell them out loud for the whole class, and not be afraid of them, and that way students could grade each other's papers. And so, in a sense, I could say that's where I started to learn how to be involved in doing public speaking, and I learned not to be afraid of standing up and and saying things as long as they were the right kinds of things. Well, between third and fourth grade, I got access to Braille books. Cora Hershberger was hired by the school district to come in. She was a resource teacher with training in dealing with blindness and blind kids and so on. Michael Hingson  08:56 And there were a number of us, and she she was able to get us books, she was able to work with each of us and prove our Braille skills and my Braille skills especially, and so on. So I tell you all of that because I want to put things in perspective, and I think that the most important thing is the doctors told my parents that I couldn't do anything. My parents said, "Of course he can, and they brought me up believing that I could. So I rode a bicycle to school. Everybody still thinks that's amazing. One of the important things that I have learned over the years, and I've learned to articulate it even more effectively. I hope, certainly, I believe better since the World Trade Center, and I became a full-time keynote public speaker, which I've been doing for 25 years, I have learned to discuss this whole concept of blindness and accept the fact that there are going to be a lot of people who have eyesight who get it wrong. They think that, like the doctor said, blind people really can't do anything. You can't absorb the same material, or at least you don't get the same. As sighted people do, so you really aren't going to be able to do the things that we can do. And I have learned that I can't be angry at that. I've learned that in reality, I need to articulate the fact that blindness isn't the problem. The problem happens to be the misconceptions and poor attitudes that people have about blindness. It would be so easy just to be upset every time I hear some comment that talks about what I can do and what I can't do. You can't really ride a bicycle. That's amazing that you could do that. I can't imagine anybody else doing it. I know lots of blind kids who rode bikes, and I'm sure that they still do. Blindness isn't the problem. The reality is the problem consists of the misconceptions and poor attitudes that sighted people have about blindness. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. Blindness isn't the problem. We can learn to do the same things pretty much that you can do, and we can learn to do things that you can't do, and we learn all of that and use that knowledge to help us move forward and be more effective. What can I do that you can't do? Try walking around in the dark. You can't do it. You don't know how to do it. You don't have the techniques to do it. One of the things that has cropped up over the past significant number of years is restaurants do something called dining in the dark. Dining in the dark, and there are organizations that promote that, and they say, "Oh, you get to learn how blind people eat and how much of a challenge it is. That is so disgusting that people do that because dying in the dark isn't going to teach you anything about blindness. You don't get the training that you need in order to function as a blind person. Just like I don't get the training to learn how to function as a sighted person. Although I've spent a lot of time observing sighted people, and I understand a lot about eyesight, and I understand what you can do, and I accept that. But I expect, and I think it is reasonable for you to understand and accept that I can do lots of things. That it's not about eyesight. I wrote a book in 20, and it was published by Thomas Nelson Publishing in 2011. I and Susie Florey wrote the book. It's called Thunderdog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dogs, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. And there is a section near the end of the book called Guide Dog Wisdom. And number two in Guide Dog Wisdom includes a sentence that says, "Don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. You all strictly deal with eyesight, and if it's not something that you can see with your eyes, or you don't really separate eyesight from vision, you tend to really misunderstand so many things. But the reality is, don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. Recognize there's a whole lot more to life than eyesight. Michael Hingson  13:01 SEAL Team Six, other military teams, so many other people learn how to use those other senses, and that's the same thing that we as blind people do. We learn to use our other senses. They're not magically enhanced simply because we go blind, but rather we learn how to use those senses? I hope, or we try to, and by doing so, we improve them and we develop them. And those of us who truly do that are a lot more better off, and we're able to do so many things that people think are amazing, but they're not. They're not really amazing. They're certainly not amazing to me. Anyway, I grew up believing all of that, and of course, I was also very fortunate to have a number of jobs throughout my career. And the final result of all of that was I ended up getting the opportunity to open an office in the World Trade Center for Quantum ATL, the company that hired me to open an office in New York, and there we were on September 11th when everything happened. The night, as September 11th ended, was spent by me and my wife Karen. By the way, Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life. We got married in November of 1982, and we were married through into November of 2022. We were married 40 years. Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life. It was a great marriage, as I love to tell people. She read, I pushed, worked out well. How do I push a person in a wheelchair? Well, she used a manual chair, and when we got to curbs and so on, she would stop, and she would hold the wheels, and and I knew that she had stopped. And I would tip the chair back. She might say, "There's a curb. I would tip the chair back onto its back wheels. We'd roll down off the curb, put the chair down. We'd cross the street, tip the chair up. Front wheels go up on the curb on the other side, unless there was a ramp to go up. And we continued on our way. It's not that magical. It is just what I learned to do, and I enjoyed it. and And I enjoyed Karen's company and so on for 40 years. We were locked down during the pandemic and so on. We'll get to some of that in a bit. But I learned overall that in reality, what my parents taught me was true. Blindness wasn't going to be the problem; eyesight was going to be the problem. And that night after September 11th, we kind of tried to make sense of it. It was me and Karen and a friend of Karen's who I also got to know, and who became a friend of mine. Tom Painter had come down. Tom and Karen went to the same high school, but we all ended up in New Jersey. And Tom came to visit us, actually visit Karen after September 11th started. When he heard about the terrorist attacks, he just came down, not knowing whether I was in the office or not. But I was, and Karen and Tom, well, Tom stayed with Karen and and drove her to pick me up at the Westfield, New Jersey train station at about 7p.m. on september 11. We went home with my guide dog Roselle. When we got home, I took Roselle's harness off because I was going to take her outside. She would have none of it. She ran off. She grabbed her favorite tug bone and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog Linnie. Well, that was kind of fun, and I didn't think a lot about it. But I went. That was interesting. The next day, I contacted Guide Dogs for the Blind because several people from there had visited us in the World Trade Center, and among others, I spoke to the head of the veterinary department, and I said, "So, tell me, how is all this going to affect Roselle? Because everybody's talking about how it's going to affect everyone and all that, and and he asked me, "Did anything threaten directly Roselle? Did anything really threaten her? And I said, No, not really. Nothing directly affected her. And he said, Well, there you go. Dogs don't do what if. They live in the moment. Michael Hingson  17:13 And when you took the harness off, it was over for her, and she was ready to go play. She wanted to relax. She wanted to play, and she did. Oh, and yes, we did eventually get her outside. But the bottom line is, I think that's one of the most important things that I learned coming out of September 11th, and I, I kind of knew it beforehand, but I really got to understand it afterward. We what if everything to death? We what if anything that comes into our lives, well, we're we're in a war with Iran. Well, what if Iran bombs us? What if Iran does this? What if the Hooties do that? What are we going to do? What if our government takes us to war in the first place? Well, they have. The bottom line is, though, we don't have control over all of that. We do have control over some things in our lives, and those are the things that we should worry about. We should stop worrying about everything else. And people say, "Well, it's natural to worry. No, it's not. Not any more natural to worry than it is not to worry. We learn to worry because we're taught that. But the bottom line is, if we learn only to focus on the things over which we truly have control, and be aware of the other things, but don't let them worry us. Don't let them cause fear in our lives. We will live much less fearful and much more stress-free lives than in any other way. If you want another example of why I believe this, on September 11th, David Frank, my colleague who had come in to be involved with the seminars, David had come in the night before, and he came to our office about 8o'clock in the morning on the 11th of September. When we were escaping from the towers, we ended up downstairs and outside. David saw fire in Tower Two, and the way we happened to walk took us very close to Tower Two. We were at Broadway and Vessi Street, maybe 100 yards away from Tower Two. And when David stopped, he said, "You know, there's fire in Tower Two. I want to take pictures of it. And and I also wanted to try to call my wife Karen to let her know that we had gotten out of the towers, I couldn't get through. The circuits were busy because, as we later learned, people were calling and talking to loved ones. But anyway, David had just started putting his camera away. I had put my phone away, and a police officer yelled, "Get out of here! It's coming down right now! And we heard this sound I describe as kind of a combination of a freight train and a waterfall. I could hear glass breaking, metal clattering, and then just the building collapsing straight down. We didn't necessarily know that it was going to do that, but it did. It did exactly what it was designed to do. Anyway, everyone turned and ran. David ran. I turned 180 degrees. With Roselle, and started running back the other way. And as soon as I started to run, I thought to myself, "God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And I heard in my head a voice as clearly as you hear me right now-a voice that said, "Don't worry about what you can't control, focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And I had this absolute sense of conviction that if we worked together, we would be fine. Well, we were. Where'd that voice come from? It was God talking to me. I grew up with my father very seriously believing in the concept of God. If you don't, that's fine. That is your choice. I've had people on my podcast who don't necessarily have strong beliefs and convictions about God. I do, but it's not my job to force people or compel people to believe in God. I will tell my story, and people can accept it or reject it as they choose. But that's what happened to me, and I've realized from that time on: don't worry about what you can't control. And I really, truly work very hard to focus on not worrying about the things that I don't have any influence over. Michael Hingson  21:16 I like to be aware of them. I hear from people all the time today about don't watch the news. I don't like to watch the news because it just makes me so angry and so fearful. And my response is, I'm going to watch the news because I want to know what's going on. And sometimes I'll yell at politicians through the TV, but I won't really overall get angry at them. I will hear it. I will either accept it or decide I don't have any influence over it, so I'm not going to worry about it, and I don't because it isn't going to help me to worry about it. It isn't going to help anyone else to worry about any of those kinds of things. Don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can and leave the rest alone, and that's one of the basic premises of the third book that I wrote, which was published in 2024, entitled "Live Like a Guide Dog: True Stories from a Blind Man and His Dogs About Being Brave, Overcoming Adversity, and Moving Forward in Faith. And that book was written by me and Carrie Wyatt Kent. The book was published by Tyndale House, and is out there for people to to read. The first book was published by Thomas Nelson Publishing, which is now part of Harper Collins, and a lady, Jeanette Hanscom, and I wrote the second book, which is called Running with Roselle, which is really a book more for children, teaching them about me growing up, Roselle growing up, and how we met. A little bit about the World Trade Center. That one was self-published, but all three books are available wherever you can find books, so you can get them always from Amazon, of course. And so I hope that that you'll get them and read them. They will help. Live Like a Guide Dog probably is the best book for me to talk about in terms of things that I learned over the years, but if I really summarize mostly what happened for me after September 11th, it is that what happened on that day validated everything that I've believed about me. Certainly, what I believe about God, but it validates everything that I've ever thought about blindness, blind people, what we can do, the challenges we face, some of the issues that other people have, and the validation is certainly something that helped what I learned. But I learned other things along the way, and you know I want to talk about some of those things. The first, as I said, is don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can, and let the rest take care of itself. Speaker 1  23:56 If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes, thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. One Michael Hingson  24:28 of the things that happened to me almost immediately after September 11th is I started hearing people say, "We got to get back to normal. If we don't get back to normal, that's a problem. We got to get back to normal. And I always reacted internally, at least pretty negatively to that. And I finally realized why I reacted to that statement about we got to get back to normal. The reason I reacted to that statement, and I still react to to myself to that statement, is normal will never be the same again. We can't get back to normal. If we get back to normal the way it was prior to September 11th, the same thing will happen again. We can't do that. We have to get back to a different normal, and and in fact, normal is probably going to be an ongoing, constant process of change. We ought to learn not to fear that either. Change is all around us. We always say that, but then we don't like change. It's kind of a paradox. But the reality is, change is all around us. And what we really need to do is to learn how to focus in change. And we need to learn that in reality, we can deal with change. And if we have any influence over it, then we should do something about that too. But the bottom line is, getting back to normal prior to September 11th isn't going to help any of us, and and it isn't going to happen. So that is an one thing that I will say definitely. I learned from September 11th: normal will never be the same again. As I said a lot earlier, I think I probably learned about public speaking at least the beginning of it by doing the spelling tests and so on. But after September 11th, the media got my story, and that happened because Joanne Ritter, the public and information services person at the time at Guide Dogs wanted to write a story, and I kind of agreed. And I said, "That's fine. And then she said, "I'll bet you'll be on TV. What television show do you want to be on first? So I kind of just sort of flippantly said, "Larry King Live. That was on the 12th of September when I talked with her. On the 13th, she called back and she said, "Larry King wants you on his show on september 14, which was a Friday, and they sent a car to pick me up, and and I recall Karen and and Tom one as well, and anyway, we went into the World Trade Center, not to the World Trade Center, but we went into New York, and I appeared on CNN, which was the first of five interviews with Larry. Larry also, by the way, at my request, wrote the foreword for Thunderdog. So when you read Thunderdog, you'll get to read Larry's words as well. But after being on Larry King, the media really got my story, and a lot of things happened after that. I started getting literally calls every day for interviews. People wanted to talk to me about September 11th and ask questions and so on. And one of the things that I learned was that talking to reporters could be a great therapy because they would ask virtually any kind of question you can imagine. And of course, a lot of people said things like, "Well, did you know what happened on September 11th when it was happening? And I said no. And they said, well, of course you didn't. You're blind, you know. And my response is, anybody who says that really needs to not let their sight get in their way or their vision to be polite about it. The fact of the matter is, as we were going down the stairs, no one knew anything about what was going on. When I got into the stairwell, I began smelling an odor, and it took me four floors to realize I was smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. I did a lot of travel for my company, and so I was in airports a lot. So I recognized that smell. People were speculating about what they were smelling. People were speculating about what was going on. Nobody had a clue. Michael Hingson  28:20 When I realized I was smelling jet fuel, I observed it to everyone around me, and they said, "You're right. That's what we're smelling. It's burning jet fuel. We must have been hit by an airplane. You see, no one knew. We had no clue. Superman and X-ray vision just aren't real. And the bottom line is, nobody knew what was actually happening on September 11th. Blindness have nothing to do with it. People want to feel more comfortable by saying, "Well, most people probably did know, but you're blind. You didn't know. We've got to get away from these habits of thinking that just because somebody is different than we are, that they're less than we are. That's just not true. In any case, the bottom line is that we we really deal with those kinds of things, and that helped me as as time went by recognize and realize that normal would never be the same again, and it validated more my belief that blindness isn't the problem; it's the misconceptions and poor attitudes that people have about blindness that tends to truly be the problem that we face. So, as I began to talk with reporters, I didn't think about what was actually happening. But later, I realized when people started saying, "Well, did you ever get counseling or therapy, and I said no. And then it just popped into my head to say I probably had the best therapy around. I got interviewed by hundreds of reporters that asked basically any question that you can imagine, and I learned to answer those questions without being upset, especially when they were asking pretty derogatory questions or making derogatory comments. Your dog led you down the stairs. No, my dog did not lead me down the stairs. Guide dogs do not lead; they guide. And I understand the definition of lead, but it's a little bit different than what people were truly saying. What they were saying is you didn't know anything, and the dog took you all the way down the stairs because the dog could see. No, in fact, Roselle didn't lead me. Roselle's job wasn't, and no guide dog's job is to lead a person or to take charge. The dog's job is to make sure that we walk safely. I also have a job on the team. My job is to make sure that I know where we're going and how to get there. A lot easier now than it was 25 years ago, but the bottom line is that I'm the one that has to direct the dog and give the dog commands, and the dog needs to make sure that we carry out those commands safely. We are a team; we work together. I've always kind of known that guide dog schools didn't necessarily early in my guide dog career, express it that way, but it's it's a much stronger statement now. They recognize that truly we're a team. We each have a job to do on the team, and we have to work together to make the team work, which is true of any team. I've mentioned Seal Team Six earlier. They're a team. They work together. The firefighters in the World Trade Center and the other people who who were around there worked as a team, and they had to work as a team in order to develop a level of trust and a relationship where essentially each person knew what the others on their team were going to do, and it gave them more of a confidence to be able to function. Teamwork is so crucial in our world, and I learned, and and again on September 11th, it was totally validated how teamwork is so important. Roselle and I worked together well. The firefighters worked together well. Yes, we lost people, but the team really is so important, and we need to recognize that anyone listening to this ought to work in any of the things that they do to develop teams. Being alone makes no sense; it isn't going to work. You're going to have to and should learn to work with other people to make teams work better. I've seen companies where when they have award ceremonies, the leader of a team or the boss of a team gets an award, but the rest of the team doesn't really get the same recognition. Michael Hingson  32:30 If a leader is truly doing a good job at creating a team and being a part of a team, then that leader is really enhancing everyone else on the team, and that leader is the person who should help to make sure that when awards are given, that everyone on a team is recognized. We need to to learn and realize that a team is a bunch of people. It's not just one people, but they learn to work together, and that is also so important. And as I learned more and more about the events of the World Trade Center, I learned and realized more about the whole understanding of teamwork and trust and the value of it. I knew about it with me and Roselle, and I recognized the concept of teamwork. But certainly, September 11th again validated that a whole lot more effectively than anything else that I could think of, but I worked with eight dogs over the years, and working with eight dogs from my first guide dog Squire, who was a golden retriever, up through my current guide dog Alamo, I've learned probably I think more than I ever learned from experts and teamwork and sales and so on and motivation. I learned more from those dogs than I ever learned from the human experts because of the fact that one, I had to build a team with a creature who didn't think the same way I did, who didn't talk the same language that I did, and that expected things from me, and and as one of the things that I've learned is that dogs who are guide dogs really want the human to be the pack leader because it is the pack leader, it is the human who's supposed to tell the dog what they want the dog to do, and dogs take that so incredibly seriously. I mentioned Linny. Well, I didn't mention her, I think, by name. But Lenny was my fourth guide dog, and we were out in in San Diego at a company meeting one Friday in May of 1999, and we came home. It was a Saturday morning that we got home. I flew a red eye home, fed Lenny, and then rested and and all that. But Saturday night, when it came time to feed Linny, I called her. She wouldn't come. Karen even called her. She wouldn't come. We went. Upstairs and found her lying on her bed, kind of really not very responsive. We got her to a veterinarian, and it took a few days for the veterinarian to diagnose what she had as something called glomerular nephritis, which is a disease where the kidneys, the glomeria of the kidneys, which would normally pass out bad stuff from the kidneys but not the good stuff. They were passing out the good stuff as well, and Lenny was was not doing well. We were able to reverse that, but she had to retire from being a guide dog. In fact, we thought in late June of 1999 that we were going to lose her. We went off to a a meeting, not a meeting, but we went off to a hotel to say goodbye to Linny, if you will, on like the second of July. But Linny didn't pass away then, and she did get better. And then Roselle came into our lives, and Roselle and Linny became really good friends, but I mention all of it because I had no clue what was happening to Linny. Guide dogs love their jobs; they take them very seriously. And the fact of the matter is, as I learned, and especially after September 11th, I learned that these dogs will work till they drop. They will. They will do everything they can to please us, because they love what we do. They love us, and we need to bestow the same kind of love on them, which is all part of what teamwork is all about. Well, the bottom line was with Linny. She was with us for three more years, and she got to play with Roselle a lot, and so on. Michael Hingson  36:41 Of course, as I also mentioned after September 11th, but I again, especially because of what happened to Linny, but then afterward on September 11th, I realized how much it was important for me to do all I could to keep the team relationship a positive, strong one, to recognize that in reality these dogs work so hard on their own part to make the team's relationships work. They they deal with what they have to deal with. They get very stressed if we're upset. They take it very personally if we get upset, even if we're not necessarily upset at them; they still take it very personally. The more stress that a guide dog faces in their lives, the harder it's going to be for them, and frankly, the shorter their lives are going to be. So I learned, even before September 11th, but especially after September 11th, to do all I could to keep the stress away from the dog. As we were going down the stairs on September 11th, I constantly encouraged and praised Roselle. What a good dog! Keep going. What a good job! Good girl, Roselle. Even if I wasn't able to hold the harness because the stairs were so crowded that Roselle couldn't walk next to me and had to walk behind me at heel, and I would just hold the leash. I kept praising her because I wanted her to know for her I was okay, and I had to focus on not being afraid and letting that fear come out. Well, I was fearful like anyone was, and in fact, I love to tell people. Being a great fan of science fiction, I have a great imagination, and I was listening for the building to make creaks and groans, and you never knew what was going to happen. Fortunately, it didn't all the way down. But the bottom line for me was that doing so kept me focused. And I and I learned later that while I might have been afraid on September 11th, partly because I was encouraging Roselle and working to sound very calm and confident, I was able to also help other people, but help Roselle and keep Roselle from being afraid and and being stressed. And I work very hard to do that with my guide dogs that I've had since even more than prior to September 11th. My current guide dog Alamo and I travel the world speaking all over the place, if you will. We've been to Israel. We've been well, actually, Alamo didn't get to go to London, but we've been to Israel with my seventh guide dog, Africa. We went to the Netherlands, Alamo and I have been to Wisconsin. I've been to a variety of places, and of course, all around the the world, all around the United States, to Canada, everywhere. And again, I don't necessarily know a lot about where we're going in advance, but I ask a lot of questions so that I can learn where we're going to go, so that I can give the dogs the appropriate commands. I mentioned Wisconsin's. I've been all over the United States. It's been an honor, and I'm going to continue to do that. If anybody wants a public speaker to come and talk to their organization, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. My email address is really simple. It's speaker@michaelhinkson.com. We'll put that in the show notes, and love to hear from you. So anyway, I learned a lot about teamwork from working with eight guide dogs, and I continue to learn every day. I think it's very important for me to learn and to focus all that I can to make sure that I do what it is that's necessary to make a team work, and I believe it is all about the team. I've mentioned that I've written three books, and each one was a collaboration with someone else: Susie Florey with Thunderdog, Jeanette Hanscom with Running with Roselle and Carrie Wyatt Kent with Live Like a Guide Dog, and and the fact of the matter is those collaborations I think were very important. Michael Hingson  40:49 They made the books come out a lot different than I might have imagined them coming out by themselves and the way I would have written them without having collaboration, and probably Live Like a guide dog more than more than the other two, just because of the way it all went. But with live like a guide dog, we focused on each of my my guide dogs and the lessons that we learned. So I mentioned Squire, who I worked with in high school and then went to college with Squire, and Squire was was all around where wherever I was. One night in a dorm, I was with a roommate. Well, actually, a person who lived in a room next door to mine, and I was in his room. We were dealing with a physics problem. By the way, my master's degree is in physics. I have a secondary teaching credential, but I was in with Richard dealing with a physics problem. When I went back into my room, there was no Squire. I didn't realize that a couple of the students decided to play a trick and kidnap him. I went looking around the dorm. I even went into the bathroom and opened the shower door and called Squire, and nothing was totally quiet, and finally, I was getting a little bit concerned. And one of the people said, "Oh well, look, we took the dog. We'll show you. They went into the bathroom, opened the shower door, and out comes Squire. He was in on it. He didn't do a thing when I opened the door, but when the other people did, then then he came out. I wasn't mad at him. Sneaky dog that he is, he had a great sense of humor. But I got vengeance because that that person didn't tell the other people that they showed him where showed me where Squire was. I went and hit Squire somewhere, and then I went back out into the main part of the dorm and I started going, "Who took my dog? What's going on? Where is he? And all the other people said, "Oh, come on, he's in the bathroom. And they went in and opened the door to the shower. No Squire, and they were starting to worry about what happened to him. And Squire, of course, was again not making noise. But eventually, I brought him out and I said, "Okay, I found him. I knew where he was. We're playing a trick on you just like you played a trick on me. That'll teach you. I learned that dogs have a sense of humor that day, but I also learned how much I valued having Squire around, and so Squire worked with me up until and through my first graduate year in physics at UC Irvine, and then Squire retired and went to live with my parents. And in 1973, I got my second guide dog, Holland. Holland was with me through 1986. He worked for almost 13 years, and in fact, was two weeks from retiring when he collapsed in our backyard one day, and we took him to the vet. And the vet said, "I could probably bring him out of whatever he's got, maybe a stroke or a heart attack or both, but he won't have a good quality of life. And so we said goodbye to to Holland. Holland and Squire were both golden retrievers, but again, Holland so strongly reinforced all the things that that I had felt about teamwork, and I learned so much more from him about what I needed to do in order to to function well, not just with a dog, but in my whole life. Then I got Klondike, who was my third guide dog, who was also a golden retriever. Soon after I got Klondike, well, about a year after I got Klondike, suddenly one day he had a very strong grand mal epileptic seizure, and we took him to the vet, and they put him on some medication that wasn't really helping that. And we then kept trying to to deal with it, and finally, and during that same time, I was looking for a job. I had owned my own company for four years, but decided I wanted to go back into the workforce, and and I finally got a job with a company. Michael Hingson  44:52 And on one of the first days that I worked there, Klondike had four grand mal seizures in the. Period of time, and we thought we were going to have to say goodbye to Klondike. But I talked to our veterinarian, and he said, "You know, before we do that, I want to send him to a neurologist who did an electroencephalograph. And he said, "I didn't see much, but he said one thing he did was to take some blood tests, and he said I noticed that his Klondike's thyroid level is low, and low thyroid levels in dogs like Klondike can make them more susceptible to have seizures, just like it can for children. Well, we put Klondike on synthroid, synthetic thyroid, as well as on phenobarbital to control the seizures. The synthroid had much more of an effect than the phenobarb did, Klondike actually became a much more active and playful and interactive dog, and did not have from that time on for the next seven years that he worked for me as a guide dog never had a single seizure. So the thyroid theory was a good one. Again, with with Klondike, it was about developing a team and recognizing that we had to work together. Well, then I got Linny, and again I mentioned Linny only worked for three years. Linny had glomerular nephritis that was really probably from a tick bite where the tick had Lyme's disease, and we didn't know any of that was happening until that night that Linny didn't wake up at all or didn't get up from her bed, and we finally got it diagnosed. And then I got Roselle. Now Roselle was a a wonderful dog. One of the things that I've always said is that when I get a new guide dog and I tell the trainers I want a dog with an on-off switch. That is, I want a dog that knows when the harness is on, it's time to work, and when the harness is off, then they can play. Clearly, Roselle had that when she was in harness. She was very focused. She did develop a phobia of thunderstorms, but there were a few times that we had thunderstorms, and she was able to continue to guide, even though she would shake and she would shiver a little bit. But she continued to guide. She focused. In fact, there was a thunderstorm the morning of September 11th, about 12:30 in the morning. But there was no thunder when we were going through what we did in the World Trade Center, so none of that caused her to be fearful. But again, Roselle was a dog that that taught me a lot about observation, learning what the dogs do, what what they fear, and how to help keep them focused and calm. And so I did that. My sixth guide dog was Meryl. Meryl only worked for about a year. Roselle retired in 2007. Merrill worked from 2007 to 2008, but Merrill became very fearful of guiding, and so ended up not being a guide dog very long. And I I'd never experienced that, although I had heard other people who had issues where dogs didn't work very long. Lenny only worked for three years, but a dog that didn't work for more than a year-that was unusual for me. However, poor Meryl wasn't able to do well as a guide, and so she retired. And then we got Africa. Now Africa was my seventh guide dog. Africa's mother was Fantasia. In January of 2006, we were working. I was working at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and we applied to be what were called breeder keepers. That is, they were the the people who would keep a breeder dog in their home because the guide dogs for the blind bred their own guide dogs and so on. And breeder keepers would keep dogs in their homes so that the dogs weren't just cooped up in kennels all day, and we volunteered to do that. And the director of breeding, Marina Hall, called us and said, "I've got four dogs for you to look at. I think one's better than the others for you, but I want you to come and meet these dogs. So we went down, and and she made the comment again. I think one dog is going to be better than the others. Michael Hingson  49:02 And and I said, well, if you think so strongly, but which one is it? Well, she finally sort of told us. She said, I didn't want to tell you, but I'll tell you. So she did. But anyway, the first dog who came in was a dog named Fantasia, and it works sort of the same way that when people get guide dogs, you're in a room. The dog is allowed to come in, and you see how the dog reacts to you. When I met Squire for the first time, I was sitting in a chair. They let Squire in. He came over and started sniffing me all over. Didn't leave me. He just started sniffing. And Bruce Benzler, who was the apprentice instructor at the time, later became director of Guide Dogs for the Blind, CEO anyway, anyway. Bruce then said, "Looks like you found a friend already, and we became friends. But anyway, when when Fantasia came into the room, she took one look at Karen and leaped into Karen's lap. She had no fear of the power wheelchair that Karen was using by that time. The other three dogs, we still looked at them, and they all expressed one level of fear or concern about being around this wheelchair. But Marina said Fantasia was the one that we thought you'd like best and would like you best, and she was. So anyway, in 2006, we got Fantasia in January, and later that year, she had a litter of puppies, and then in early or mid 2007, she Fantasia had her second litter. I guess it was late in 2006 she had the second litter, but anyway, by the middle of 2008, when we had to retire Meryl because she wasn't working out very well, we were notified that they found a dog that they thought would be a really good replacement for Meryl, and that's a dog named Africa. And Karen and I realized Africa was a name that we suggested as as breeder keepers that they could name one of their puppies if they had puppies who came from an A litter. And the way it works, by the way, is when a litter is born, they're assigned a letter of the alphabet, and they got a big book, and they go into that book and they get the next names that are available. They don't use names of current guide dogs, so when a dog retires, then they can start using that name again. But anyway, Africa was a name that we suggested, and as soon as we saw the email that said Africa, we knew Fantasia was Africa's mother. Well, Africa came and joined us, and mom and daughter did really well, and Roselle was still with us. So the three of them have a lot of fun together, but again with Africa, I learned about teamwork and doing the things that I needed to do. Every dog is different, and one of the things that I developed over the years was an understanding that to truly develop a relationship with a dog takes probably close to a year by the time we really are totally comfortable with each other, but I worked with Africa. We became good friends. Africa became good friends with Roselle. Of course, Africa liked her mom, and all worked out really well. Developing those teeming relationships is so important, and you can learn a lot more about them if you get live like a guide dog. I think you'll find them all very interesting to to read about. So in 2017, I noticed that Africa was starting to slow down and not do as well. She wasn't able to see as well at night. Sort of typical signs of a dog getting older, even though I work to to keep stress out as much as possible, but I applied and in 2018 on the 9th of February, Africa's puppy raisers, Bill and Peggy Sproul from San Francisco or San Diego rather, came to visit us in Victorville, and we had offered them the opportunity to take Africa because we had Fantasia, and we had Africa. And if we kept Africa and Fantasia, and I got a new guide dog, Karen would have a hard time taking care of two dogs when I traveled, because I was doing a great deal of travel by then as a keynote speaker, and so the Sprouls came and got Africa. Michael Hingson  53:26 Left our house, Africa didn't even look back. She was gone. We had visited her several times since then, and and in in the Sprouls home, Africa died in 2020. But we we got to visit Africa several times and it was a lot of fun and and she she loved us and all that and remembered us anyway on the 11th of February two days later I went to Guide Dogs for the Blind and I met Alamo who was my first black Labrador and I met him we we met in the room and he kind of sniffed me a little bit and walked around the room. But then came back and sniffed me, and then I took him on leash back to our our dorm room at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and I decided I'd sit on the floor to to visit with him. And the next thing I know, this big, huge, 60 pound Labrador is in my lap. Alamo was and is a lapdog, but he doesn't know a stranger, which is great. I mentioned earlier that I always said that when I get a guide dog, I want a guide dog that has an on and off switch. Another thing that I require is that guide dogs that I get be raised by cats. I have known of animals who of guide dogs who don't like cats, and I would not want that because we always have had cats. And by that time, when we got Alamo, we had Stitch, who we rescued in January of 2015. So now here it is, February of 2018. So I knew that we needed to have a dog that wasn't going to be. Be afraid of cats. Well, so Stitch and Alamo kind of walked around each other a little bit when we first went home, but they got to like each other pretty well pretty quickly, and they have been together ever since. Alamo has been on a number of aircraft, as I've mentioned over the years, he went to Israel with me. He didn't go to England when I spoke in 2024, but he's been to other places and will continue to travel with me. I work really hard to keep the stress out of his life. I don't want him to become any more stressed than he ever has to be, and he feeds off of how I behave, as as I've learned guide dogs do. So that's one of the most important things that I've learned is to keep that stress out of his life. I would point out that is just as much true for human teams. Don't stress out your team. If you are a leader, your job is to enhance what those leaders, what the team does. Your job isn't to boss them around. If you're doing that, you're only causing more stress, and you're going to find you're going to have a big job turnover, much more than you really should. I've always felt that my job isn't to boss people around when I hire them, my job is to enhance their abilities by using the skills that I have and learning to work with them to give them the benefit of what I know and to use the benefits of what they know to learn myself as well, so that we become more effective. And the people who really get that do very well. The people who didn't get that tend not to last very long at the company because they don't perform very well. Because I know that in reality, I add value to the team by working to add value, not bossing the team around. I think there's a big difference between leaders and bosses, and I've learned that over the years. That leaders are people who can enhance what other people do, who work to make the whole team effective and not just try to boss people around. In late 2020, I discovered a company called Accessibe, A C C E S S I capital B E. Website is accessibee.com. Was a company that made products to help make internet websites more inclusive, and at first, they had some challenges because they were using a lot of AI stuff to make their products work, and they sort of did. But there were there were challenges. But one day in January of 2021, the founder of the company, Sheer Eckerling. Michael Hingson  57:41 contacted me and said we're interested in you joining the company. I had been looking at possibly selling their products because the pandemic had hit, and I thought I could sell them from home because we were locked down. And and he said, well, you know, we we'd like you to not sell as a partner, just on your own, we'd like you to join the company. Well, he asked what I was doing, and by that time I had started to learn about podcasting because I couldn't travel and speak all over the world. So what I decided to do was to look at using podcast as a revenue source. And Shear said, "Well, you know, we we're really interested in having somebody do a podcast for us. And I said, "What do you want? And he said, "I want to just get somebody who will do a podcast to show that we're part of the world. And you join the company; you could do that in part. I joined the company, and he didn't have any specific agenda for the podcast. So, in August of 2021, I began Unstoppable Mindset, and soon it became unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. And I'll explain all of that in a moment. But the point is that we started the podcast. I created the title. I recreated the description, and I wanted the podcast to be conversations. And as anyone who has been on the podcast knows, we don't do interviews as such. We do conversations, and I ask people to send me materials to help me prepare to be able to do the conversation. And so a number of times we've had diversity experts on people from the DEI world, and when I ask them what they do, they say, you know, we focus a lot on diversity, and I say, what does that mean? And they say, well, we deal with race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. And we chat for a little while, and then I say, but you haven't talked about disabilities. And they say, oh, disability is not a minority. And I say, what do you mean? He said, well, disability is a social justice thing. It's not like race, gender, or sexual orientation. And my response to that is balderdash. I like to use balderdash. I could go back and use what Colonel Sherman Potter did on Mash and say monkey muffins. But anyway, balderdash because diversity should include disability because it is a minority. Even the Center for Disease Control says that. Adversity, or that that people with disabilities are a minority of about 25% of people in the United States. Well, so the bottom line for me is that I would say to them, "What do you mean you're you're not including it? And they say, "Well, it's a it's a disability, but it's social justice. It's always about being a lack of ability, and as I have learned, especially since September 11th and and beyond, disability does not mean a lack of ability. You might want to think it does. You might want to try to make that fit, but it doesn't. And I learned that most effectively in March of 2023 when I went to something, by that time Karen had passed, and I was working with a person who had been Karen's caregiver, who decided to work for me. Very grateful for Josie doing that. Josie entered my name in the contest to be a guest at the Kelly and Ryan Oscar after party, which was going to be held the Monday after the Oscars at the Dolby Theater, well, I didn't even know she entered me, but I got a call the Tuesday before the Oscar after party and the Oscars, and I was and I picked up the phone and they said congratulations, and I said for what? Oh, you won an invitation to come to the Kelly and Ryan Oscar after party, and I went really well. Anyway, I went down with my niece and nephew, Tracy and Charlie Green. The there wasn't room for taking Josie, her husband, and her mother and her five kids. So it was just me, Tracy, and Charlie. Michael Hingson  1:01:37 We got up to our room about 3o'clock in the afternoon on the Saturday before the Oscars, the day before the Oscars, we put our luggage in our room and we were coming back down the main stairwell staircase actually from the third to the first floor in the Hollywood Roosevelt. It's a very open staircase, and all of a sudden I heard people screaming, and it took me a while to to try to understand what's going on, and finally I couldn't figure it out. I said, Tracy, what's going on? And she said, Oh, we just lost power and lighting on the stairs, and and power and lighting in and around the entire hotel. Now it didn't bother Tracy. Tracy had known me for a long time, but people were panicky because they weren't getting all the light they expected, even though the windows were open, the the shades were up on the first floor in the lobby, and so on. Lots of light, but it wasn't all that people expected. And I thought about that, and what I learned from that was, it proves that disability isn't a lack of ability; it proves that disability is a characteristic that we all have. Thomas Edison and others worked on the light bulb, and Thomas Edison is credited with developing the electric light bulb back in 1878. But in the 148 years since the light bulb was developed, all society has done in that regard is worked very hard on coming up with better ways of providing light on demand, so that you sighted people could have all the light you want when you want it. Nowadays, we have smartphones, we have flashlights, we have other ways of getting light on demand. But as the Americans with Disabilities Act would describe it. The light bulb is simply, or any piece of technology that produces light on demand, is simply a piece of technology that provides light on demand to light-dependent people who otherwise don't function well without it. The bottom line is, disability is not a lack of ability. We got words like discrete, discern, disciple. What is discern? Is it a lack of discern? What is it? What is disciple? A lack of viple? No. Disability is not a lack of ability. Disability is a character

Curbcast is Back for LifeLarryAmerica! We are diving into Larry's brand-new sketch comedy series exploring the daily absurdities, petty grievances, and social anxieties of major historical figures. Welcome to Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America, tracked online via the official show hashtag #LifeLarryAmerica. Executive produced by 44, Larry's show completely flips the script on what you think you know about the past. In Season 1 Episode 6, titled "Buzz," Larry delivers four eras of historic awkwardness. Dursin and Clay break down the colonial panic where Kyle Mooney's Paul Revere second-guesses his midnight alarm to Isla Fisher's cast-iron skillet finale, Keegan-Michael Key's Alamo stand as Davy Crockett hoarding bathroom secrets from Oscar Nunez's scouts, Susie Essman's temperance showdown as Susan B. Anthony opposite Jane Krakowski, Wayne Federman, and Toby Huss, and Paul Rudd's slow-motion zero-gravity throwdown on the moon as Neil Armstrong trades blows with Larry's Buzz Aldrin. Stream Episode 6 now! See you at the club!

Chris Burgard is the director of Remember the Alamo, Don't Sharia My Texas. He livesin Texas and is an award-winning filmmaker who made his 1986 Hollywood debut as Matthew Broderick's dance double in Ferris Buer's Day Off. He quickly landed reoccurring guest roles on the popular 90's shows Growing Pains and Tour of Duty and then appeared in numerous television and movie roles over the next several decades. He directed the precient films, Border which screened for Congress in 2007 and Death County and the River of Broken Dreams that screened for Congress in 2023...Show, Bruce and Chad Bio on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_D...The Bruce Collins Show is “A modern old-time variety show for people who like smart comedy and serious conversation.”FACEBOOK PAGE- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?...TAMPA BAY OBSERVER- https://tampabayobserver.com/former-a...The Insider Weekly- https://theinsiderweekly.com/former-a...

This week The Boys pour out some cold coffee for a real one as they discuss chapter fourteen of The Subtle Knife!*Apologies if anything sounds wonky. It's our first episode with our new recording and editing program*Join our Patreon and get access to our Patreon exclusive show "Films Cool!" for as little as $3 a month!https://www.patreon.com/twodustyboysEmail us at twodustyboys@gmail.comDon't forget to rate, review, and leave a comment for us on the platform of your choice. Thanks! We love you!Content warning: Not Safe for work or children... unless they're coolIntro and outro music provided by, respectively:"I Got a Stick Arr Bryan Teoh" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"I Got a Stick Feat James Gavins" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Support the show

It's Episode 303 of Alamo Audible, and it's Texas State Hate Week. Jared and Adrian dig into the I-35 rivalry ahead of Saturday's showdown in San Marcos: Jeff Traylor's rivalry-week tone, a brutal afternoon heat forecast, why this might be the biggest game of Owen McCown's career, and whether UTSA can finally shake the "boogeyman" that is GJ Kinne and the Bobcats. Plus a UTSA broadcast-history pop quiz, matchup breakdowns on both sides of the ball, and final score predictions heading into the I-35 Showdown. 0:00 Intro 2:28 Reading Jeff Traylor's tone and energy this week 6:27 Attendance, the Alamodome, and program momentum 12:36 Dangerous heat forecast for Saturday's kickoff 15:48 Depth, rotation, and injury risk in the heat 17:04 The stakes: Traylor, Owen McCown, and program trajectory 20:30 Owen McCown's "legacy game" 25:44 Revisiting the tight 2025 loss 30:09 Cumbia Break 30:35 Texas State's uneven 2025 season 35:36 Texas State's coaching staff and roster continuity 43:01 Can UTSA's secondary slow down Brad Jackson? 46:45 Texas State's growing tight end usage 49:53 Key matchups to watch Saturday 53:07 Special teams could decide this one 55:41 Final score predictions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crime thriller author Jeff Kerr joins me to talk about Deadly Relic, the sixth book in his Adam Cash mystery series, featuring a sheriff's deputy investigating crimes in the rugged Texas Hill Country. We discuss the fascinating inspiration behind Deadly Relic, which begins with the theft of a historic rifle connected to the Battle of the Alamo. Jeff also talks about his journey from writing nonfiction Texas history to crime fiction, creating the fictional town of Pinyon, his writing and research process, and his move from self-publishing to Vinci Books. We also talk about Author Nation, where Jeff and I first met, his approach to plotting, what's next for Adam Cash, and his advice for aspiring writers. Learn more and browse the Meet the Thriller Author archives at ThrillingReads.com.

Twenty-five years after September 11, I still believe that day has important lessons to teach us about fear, preparation, and leadership. This time, Michelle Abraham from AmplifYou takes over the hosting seat and interviews me about my experience escaping the World Trade Center with my guide dog, Roselle. We talk about why knowing the building and its emergency procedures mattered, how I worked to keep fear from taking control, and why focusing on what I could control helped me keep moving. I also share how September 11 changed the direction of my life, led me into professional speaking, and helped shape the Unstoppable Mindset philosophy I continue to share today. Highlights: 02:30 – The ordinary morning that became September 11. 08:04 – How preparation shaped Michael's response when the tower was hit. 18:34 – How Michael and David helped keep panic from taking over. 27:15 – Why trusting Roselle mattered during the collapse. 31:38 – The lesson of focusing only on what you can control. 41:52 – How September 11 helped shape the Unstoppable Mindset philosophy. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Everyone, I am Michael Hingson, the host of Unstoppable Mindset. You've heard my voice for the last 471 episodes, but I'm calling you all out today and asking you to listen to this because we're going to make a special announcement now regarding the next four episodes, starting with 472. We're going to help commemorate the historic events of September 11, 2001. Yes, they're definitely historic, although not necessarily the most positive things that have ever happened. But as many of you may know, I was in the World Trade Center working on September 11, 2001, on the 78th floor of Tower One, and escaped with my guide dog. I've delivered a speech about that, which we put in the first episode of this podcast series back in August of 2021. But this Friday, episode 472 is going to have an updated speech that I delivered just a few years ago at the Marshfield, Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival. That festival is a yearly event celebrating different kinds of things that have happened in American history, and I was invited to come and speak, which I did. I'm going to put that speech up for you as episode 472. I think you'll find it enlightening. It'll teach you something about blindness and blind people. It'll tell you my story, and it'll give you some inspiration that I hope you will find helpful. Next Tuesday, september 8, Michelle Abraham is going to interview me. Michelle is with Amplify You, the company that does all of our back office stuff and helps me with the editing and other things regarding the podcast. Michelle owns her own podcast, and she is going to interview me about September 11th and other kinds of things relating to what I've learned and things that have happened over the past 25 years. She's also going to be putting this up on her podcast Amplify You, so you can find us in a lot of different places. On September 11th, I'm going to chat with Bob Ellis. Bob was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and had literally just walked out the door of the Pentagon when the plane crashed into the Pentagon and did the things and the damage that it did, and of course generated all the things that occurred at the Pentagon. On the 15th of September, I'm going to come back and have a conversation with all of you about lessons that I've learned over the past 25 years, and just reminisce a little bit about all of that. While the podcast is occurring on September 11th, I will be actually in Kilgore, Texas, doing a speech about September 11th. So lots of things going on, I hope you listen to these episodes. I hope that you'll tell everyone that you can about them. I really enjoy all of the support that you've given us over the years, and we're going to continue to do things with Unstoppable Mindset. And of course, as always, if you'd like to come on or know anyone who would, please let us know. We're always looking for guests. Thanks very much. We'll see you on Friday with the first of these four episodes. What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. When and today is a little bit different than what we normally do because I'm going to be the guest on the podcast, Michelle Abraham from Amplify You, who is also putting this particular podcast episode on her podcast, but Michelle is going to mainly be interviewing me. As many of you should know, this is the 25th commemoration or remembrance of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and we thought it would be very relevant to to spend some time on a few podcast episodes talking about that a little bit. Michael Hingson  04:46 For those of you that listened to the last episode before this one, you heard me deliver my speech talking about what happened to me on september 11. I used. A speech that we we delivered just a couple of years ago. So it's a little bit different than the one that, if you listen to the initial episodes of Unstoppable Mindset, you heard way back 472, 473 episodes ago. But this one still tells the the same story, which is which is kind of cool, and so we're going to talk about that, and we'll talk about our next episode, which will be delivered on September 11th, and that one will be a conversation between me and Bob Ellis, who was in the Pentagon on September 11th, and so that'll be a little bit fun, and then we'll talk about some other stuff as well. But I'm going to turn this over to Michelle because she's the the interviewer, the the boss, and I'm just a guest today. So hi, Michelle. Amplifyou   05:50 Hey, Michael. Well, thanks for being a guest on your own show today for us. It's great to be here with you, and we've been with you all along the Instoppable Mindset Show. It's been really fun to work with you on this show, and so I know we've had we've recorded episodes around your story, and our listeners would have just listening to your keynote. But I would like to tap into Michael 25 years later. When you think back of the morning of September 11, 2001, what comes to your mind? It Michael Hingson  06:23 was a typical day. We we did have a thunderstorm about 1230 that morning, and Roselle, my fifth guide dog, who was my guide dog at the time, was afraid of thunder. She had developed this phobia. The theory, basically, about dogs being afraid of thunder is it's not just the thunder sounds, but it's also the fact that the dogs have a static charge that builds up on their fur, and that gives them a tingly and kind of a strange feeling, and between that and the thunder, they learn to equate the two, and that just causes a lot of angst. And in Roselle's case, at 1230 in the morning, we weren't even hearing a thunderstorm, but she started getting really nervous, and so I took her down to my office. And as I was going downstairs, we started hearing thunder, and the storm actually came right over our house. So I love to say God clearly has a sense of humor of some sort because the thunder-I had never heard thunder like I heard That morning, that is, literally, it came right over our house, so we heard what were explosion sounds. It was it was different than I had ever heard before, but I didn't have any message that said you shouldn't go into the World Trade Center or go to work that day, and I had been planning on going to work that day because we were going to be conducting some sales training seminars, teaching about 50 people from a bunch of resellers under the auspices of Ingram Micro, our major distributor. We were going to be teaching them how to sell our products, so I was going to be there. David Frank, a colleague from our corporate office, was going to be there. He was flying. He flew in to deal with the pricing and distribution models that the Ingram Micro salespeople and resellers would be dealing with, but I was going to be doing the majority of the seminar. Well, anyway, at 1230, I took Roselle down and we stayed there in my office at home until 2o'clock, and then the thunderstorm had passed away and Roselle had calmed down. So we went back up and got to sleep, and woke up at five in the morning, which is what I originally planned on doing. I'd actually planned on going in a little bit earlier than usual, just to be able to spend more time preparing. And I got to the New Jersey train station in Westfield, the New Jersey Transit train station, at somewhere around 615, and I had been planning on taking a 6:18 train into the city. And at about 6:20 or 6:21, train having not arrived, an announcement came over the PA system that there was a problem with the train, and another train would be coming. The next train would be there in a little bit, and we could get on it, and and all that. The day was a calm day. It was a nice autumn day. was great. No indication of of anything to worry about. And I didn't read anything into trains not working, much less the thunderstorm before. So when the train finally arrived, I got on the train and we went into Newark. Then I caught the train that takes me directly to the World Trade Center. It's called Path Train. Path stands for Port Authority Trans Hudson, and that train went straight in from Newark Penn Station with the well to the World Trade Center, and so I got there. And by the time all of a sudden done, I got there at the normal time I would get there rather than getting there 20 or 25 minutes earlier. Go figure, but I went upstairs and I went to the office and there was a person standing outside the door with a big cart. We had ordered breakfast for all the early arrivals, and so I took him in and showed him where to set up, and then I went in. And got my laptop projector and other things that I needed to be able to set up to do the presentations, and went in and set all that up. And then David Frank, my colleague from our corporate office, got there about 8o'clock and helped do the final things, like making sure the projector was totally appropriately aimed. His aim is better than than mine was, anyway. Michael Hingson  10:21 So again, everything was proceeding just as we expected it to do. David came with some early arrivals from Ingram Micro, and we put them in the in the conference room where we were going to be doing the presentations, and the the cart was all set up so they could have breakfast. As I love to tell people, best ham and cheese croissants in the city-they're still good, as far as I remember-but all was was going well, and so we we were getting prepared. And the last thing we had to do before the seminars were to start was to create a list of all the people who would be attending that day and put it on letterhead. We had a spreadsheet with all the names, but we had to put it on letterhead and then fax the list on letterhead to the Port Authority security people so that they would have a list that they would recognize was legitimate. And then when people came into the World Trade Center, they'd go up to the security counter, they'd show their ID, and their names would be compared with a list, and if their name was on the list, then they would just be given a badge with a a barcode where they could go to the appropriate elevator and come up to our floor. So that was kind of the last thing we had to do before the seminars were to start. Amplifyou   11:34 Kind of sounds like business as a norm and business as usual kind of morning for you. It Michael Hingson  11:40 was. It was a total business as usual morning, by every stretch of the imagination. No clue about anything else. Amplifyou   11:48 So, did you guys begun your seminar when the the troy towers were hit? Michael Hingson  11:55 No, the seminar was supposed to start at 9o'clock, and literally, I was reaching for letterhead to print the list at about 845, 846. When suddenly we heard a muffled kind of explosion, the building sort of shuddered. And then, if you imagine my hand as the tower, literally as I'm tipping my hand towards the camera, that's exactly what the tower did. It started tipping and tipping and tipping, and we moved maybe about 2025 feet before the building stopped. Now the thing is that I had spent time learning all I could know about the World Trade Center, learning what to do in an emergency, learning what the fire department did, learning what the police would do, learning where the emergency exits were, learning about all the emergency evacuation procedures, and the reason that I learned all of that was I had opened this office for Quantum Corporation, and I was the Mid-Atlantic region sales manager. I was the leader. I was going to be the person who would be running the office, and I knew that I needed to do what any other leader would do difference being I didn't see stuff, so I needed to learn rather than rely on signs and other things that most sighted people would do. I actually had to learn everything to be able to function. But the difference is that by doing that, what I didn't really realize was I was creating a mindset that says you know what's going on, you know what to do. I knew why the building tipped because tall buildings like that are built with expansion joints. They're made to be buffeted in windstorms, and I had felt that happen many times at the World Trade Center. If there were a wind, we could feel it sort of shake a little bit. But who would have ever thought that somebody would fly into the building with a plane load of jet fuel, 36,000 pounds of jet fuel? But nevertheless, I knew all that I could learn about everything. I learned where different offices and built and and organizations were in the World Trade Center. I had explored the kiosks on the first floor and the shopping mall, so I knew where all the phone kiosks were and where other things were. I knew where the restaurants were, so that if we ever had guests in and we were doing demonstrations and then we were going to be negotiating contracts, we decided to take a break for lunch. I could say, "What kind of lunch do you want? "Oh, you want a deli sandwich? There's this great restaurant downstairs called Fine and Shapiro. Let me take you there, and I would take them. I would lead the way because I couldn't very well say, "Oh, I don't know how to get anywhere. I'm blind. Someone's going to have to lead me. How's that going to work a couple of hours later if we're negotiating multi-million dollar contracts? I needed to literally work, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but from a position of strength. I needed to know all of this in order to be able to do my job as the appropriate leader of the office, and so I learned all of that and put all of that together for whatever was going. On in the World Trade Center at any given time, and so when the building was struck and and the building was tipping, I was standing in my doorway, the doorway between my office and the other parts of of our facility, and the building tipped. David was holding on to my desk as it was tipping. Roselle was asleep under my desk, and finally, David and I were speculating about what was going on. He thought maybe it was an earthquake, and I said no because the building's not shaking around; it's going in one direction. I thought maybe it was just some sort of an explosion, which in a sense it was. But he said it didn't sound like it, and it didn't. But the issue was that we were 18 floors on average below where the tower was hit and on the other side of the building, but that was a calculation that came later. But the bottom line is that the building tipped and then it stopped, and it came back the other way and got vertical again. Amplifyou   15:54 That's incredible! Wow. Michael Hingson  15:56 And as soon as it got vertical, I went back into my office. I met Roselle coming out from under my desk. I took her leash. I told her to heal, which meant to come around on my left side, which she did. She sat down, and about that time, the building dropped straight down about six feet. Amplifyou   16:10 Wow! Michael Hingson  16:10 Now, the reason it dropped is because tall buildings like that are constructed with expansion joints, which is why that it tipped in the first place, and the building didn't break off, but then when it got to be vertical again, after a few seconds, literally the expansion joints contracted and the building went back to its normal configuration, which is exactly what happened. Amplifyou   16:32 Gosh, interesting like technology that that's built in there. I know you you never really I would never known that. Had you not explain that in the story? That's very interesting. That expands like that, and then the six foot drop was then it contracting Michael Hingson  16:47 again. The expansion joints were going back to normal configuration. Amplifyou   16:50 Interesting. If Speaker 1  16:55 you enjoy unstoppable mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week. We've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Amplifyou   17:28 And so there's so then what happened? So take us to the next steps. Michael Hingson  17:32 So the building dropped about six feet, and then David turned from holding onto my desk and looked out the window, looking south toward Battery Park, and he started shouting, "Oh my God, Mike! There's fire and smoke above us! There are millions of pieces of burning paper falling outside our window! And I could hear stuff going by our window, and I was wondering what it was because normally the sound was sort of like what window washers would do if they were on their tracks washing windows, but that wasn't what was going on. It was debris falling, and David was describing it: millions of pieces of burning paper falling outside our window, and he said, "We got to get out of here right now. And I said, "Slow down, David. We'll get out, but we're not going to rush. No, we got to get out of here right now. Slow down, David. We'll get out. Don't worry about it. And finally, I I said several times, "Slow down. He kept saying we got to get out of here right now, and then he used what I call the big line: "You don't understand. You can't see it. Well, first of all, I knew everything that David was seeing and saying because he was telling me about it. So I knew we had millions of pieces of burning paper. Clearly, he said, "There's fire and smoke above us, so the building's on fire. I had all that information, but the problem was that it wasn't what I wasn't seeing that was the issue; it was what David wasn't seeing. David wasn't seeing that sitting next to me was my guide dog Roselle, yawning and wagging her tail, going, "Who woke me up anyway? I was sleeping real good here, sports fans, and and Roselle was not reacting. I wasn't smelling anything that gave me an indication that we were in such peril that we had to run for our lives, and so I kept telling David to slow down. And finally, David did. He stopped. I said, "David, get our guests to the stairs. Do not let them take elevators, because I had learned, of course, that if the building's on fire anywhere, if fire gets into elevator shafts, then anybody in elevator cars is probably going to perish, which did happen. And so David took our guests out of our office, got them to the stairs, and I made it really clear: do not let them take elevators, because there could be fire in the elevator shafts. Well, he got them to the stairs, and then he came back. Meanwhile, I called my wife Karen to let her know that something had happened, or an explosion, or something. But we didn't know. People tell me all the time, even today. Well, of course you didn't know because you couldn't see it. You know, I think all these people who tell me I didn't know because I couldn't see it need to get a. The problem is they really don't know a whole lot about blind people. The airplane hit, on average, 18 floors above us. It hit between floors 93 and 99, so I just say 96, which is 18 floors above where we were in on the 78th floor. But it also hit on the other side of the building. It hit on the north side, and we were on the south side. The last time I checked, Superman and X-ray vision are fiction, and people can't really see through buildings, see through rebar and steel and concrete. The fact of the matter is that they no one knew what was going on. I didn't know, but other people did, and I'll prove that in a moment, but the fact of the matter is, you can't see through all that stuff. Blindness had nothing to do with it, but people keep saying, "Well, you didn't know because you couldn't see it. Well, yeah, well, we'll get to that. Anyway, David got our guest to the stairs. I called Karen. I told her that something had happened. We didn't know what. She wanted to know more, but there was nothing else I could tell her, and so we we parted. I just said, "I'll call you back as soon as I can, and by that, you know, the media hadn't even gotten the story yet. Michael Hingson  21:12 So I love to joke around and say that I beat Charlie Gibson in Good Morning America by eight minutes, but I still haven't gotten a Pulitzer Prize for it. But it's very disappointing. But anyway, so I disconnected with Karen. David came back. We swept the office. We went to the stairs, and we started down. Almost immediately, I began smelling an odor, and it was a familiar odor, but I couldn't quite place it. And it took me a while to realize I was smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. I did a lot of traveling for my company, and so I was very used to what was in airports and the smells and the odors. But it took me like four floors to figure out that I was smelling burning jet fuel. Other people were speculating, wondering what happened, why were we evacuating, what was the building doing, why did it shake, and all that. And then I observed that I was smelling burning jet fuel, and other people said, "You're right. That's burning jet fuel. We must have been hit by an airplane. But you see, we didn't know. We had no clue. Eyesight had nothing to do with it. The fact is that we only figured out we were hit by an airplane because the blind guy realized he was smelling burning jet fuel, and so anyway, we went down the stairs. A couple of burn victims passed us along the way, and a woman, when we got down about 10 floors, stopped and she said, "I can't go on, and we're not going to make it out of here. And I literally just stopped and turned around and gave her a hug right there on the stairs. Roselle gave her some kisses, and other people stopped and joined us. And we all said, "Come on, you can keep going. You can do it. Let's go. And she was able to keep going as we went down the stairs. But we knew instinctively we had to make sure that panic didn't ensue on the stairs. Amplifyou   22:56 Right. Michael Hingson  22:57 We got to about the 50th floor, and then David suddenly said, and he had been getting quieter, but suddenly he said, "Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here. And I said, in my best sharp voice, "Stop it, David. If Roselle and I can go down these stairs, so can you. And he told me that that brought him out of the funk that he was singing into. And he said, "I want to walk a floor below you, if it's okay, and I'll tell you whatever I see on the stairs. But I got to do something to get my mind off of worrying about all this stuff. Is that okay? And I said, sure. If that's what you need to do, go ahead. Did it really matter? Well, you know, it did to David, and that's all that really counted. But anyway, David walked a floor below us, and so when I got to the 48th floor, for example, I heard, "Hey, Mike, I'm on the 47th floor. All's good here. Going on down the stairs. We went down, and finally I got to the 45th floor. And David said, '44th floor is where I am. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is. Not stopping. Going on down the stairs, and he did that all the way down the stairs. Why is that important? And why do I even mention it? Because we all did everything we could to keep panic from taking over on the stairs, and by definition, because David was just speaking up, "Hey, Mike, 42nd floor, all's good here, and just shouting up to me what he saw on the stairs and sounding confident. By definition, anyone who was in the sound within the sound of his voice heard someone who was sounding okay and just able to go down the stairs and wasn't seeing any problem, and so they focused on him, and that certainly had to help keep panic from ensuing on the stairs as we went down, and it's so often not even mentioned, but David had to do that for maybe hundreds or 1000s of people who could hear him all the way up and down the stairwell, and I think that's just one of the most important things that I remember about the day that David had to, by definition, help keep panic from going on on the stairs. Now, meanwhile, I was up. Encouraging Roselle, what a good dog, good girl, Roselle. Keep going, let's go, good dog, doing that all the way down the stairs. And I've had people come up to me at speeches that I've given ever since. For example, one in Kansas City, and a woman came up afterward, and she said, "I came into the stairwell on the 54th floor just as you passed by, and I heard you praising your dog and encouraging your dog and sounding very confident, I and other people just followed you because you sounded really good and you didn't sound like you had a problem at all and weren't afraid. We just followed you, so you know that's why I also know that what David was doing was so important because people focused on his voice. Amplifyou   25:42 How fascinating! Someone that was right behind you that day in the stairwell, too. Michael Hingson  25:46 Yeah, yeah. So we continued down. We got to the 30th floor, and that's where we met firefighters coming up. They wanted to help me go down the stairs, and I didn't want their help. I didn't need their help, first of all, but I didn't want their help because that would have meant we were always walking at least two abreast, and they were going to grab my arm and try to lift me as we were going downstairs and do other things that sighted people think you got to do if you're helping a quote a blind person go down the stairs. But there was a more important reason that I didn't want their help, and you know when the firefighter, the first guy, came up and he said, "We're going to send somebody with you. I kept saying, "No, don't do that. We don't need that. What I knew because of all that I had learned was that they were a team. They had to carry all their equipment up the stairs with them. Why? Where would you store it? Let's say you decided to store it on the 34th floor, and fire broke out on the 33rd floor. You'd never get to the equipment. They had to carry all their equipment up with them. They were a team, all 50 of those firefighters, and so I was not about to want to break up the team when, especially, I didn't need it anyway. And I I worked at getting them finally to focus, and I said, look, I got my guide dog here, and they started petting Roselle, and it wasn't the time to give them a lecture about don't pet a guide dog in harness. And by the way, don't pet a guide dog in harness. If you see a guide dog in harness, you can ask me if you can pet the dog, and if I have time, I will stop and I'll take the harness off because Roselle likes to relax, Alamo, my current guide dog, likes to relax. The dogs all love to relax, but if I don't have time, I'll say, "Look, we're kind of in a hurry, so sorry, but we just don't have time. But the firefighters were petting her, and it wasn't the time to give him a lecture about don't pet the guide dog and harness, and it wasn't the time to give him a lecture about don't worry about the blind guy just because he can't see and you can. The reality is that blindness isn't the problem; it's your attitudes about blindness that are more of the problem. But anyway, they finally agreed. When I finally said, "Look, I got my friend David over here who can see, and David and I are going down the stairs together, and they turn to David and they go, "You're with him. And David said, "Yeah, Lee Malone, he's fine. And mention all the hundreds Amplifyou   28:06 of people that are following you. Michael Hingson  28:08 Yeah, and and they all had to stop as we're talking to the firefighters. But anyway, so they eventually started going up the stairs, and I continued down. David reassumed his scouting position, and we followed David by a floor down the stairs, and and did what we needed to do, and then we we finally got to the first floor. Well, David did, and he said the water sprinklers are on. You're going to have to run through a curtain of water to get out of the stairwell, and the the reason there were sprinklers on is if there was fire in the stairwell, the water sprinklers would be keeping the fire from getting into the lobby. But if it were in the lobby, the sprinklers would be keeping the fire from getting into the stairwell. That's part of what was supposed to happen. Well, it it all worked perfectly. So David went through the curtain of water, and I got down to the first floor, and I took Roselle's harness and said forward and hop up and let's go. And we went through this curtain of water and came out the other side into the lobby of Tower One. There was a guy with a bullhorn going, "Go this way, no, no, don't go over that way, go this way, go to the central part of the building, don't go outside, no, no, don't go that way, go this way. And that was because that if they had gone outside, they would have been below where people were jumping, and you know who knows what else, so they didn't, and and they went to the central part of the building. We got out, and I was hearing the guy with the bullhorn. This guy comes up to David and me, and he said he's with the FBI, and he'll take us where we need to go. And I asked him what's going on. He said, "There's no time to tell you. I wish he had, but he didn't know me. He didn't know that information was what I really valued more than anything else, and I wasn't going to panic just because I heard information. But he took us through the complex and eventually up an escalator by the borders books, as far away from the towers as we could be, and then we got out. And as soon as we got out, David saw fire in Tower Two. We had no idea where that came from. We speculated that maybe our building, which had been tipping toward Tower Two, had its fire sort of jump across, maybe somehow. But we didn't know what was going on, and so we were told to leave the area, which we did. We went over to Broadway, which is again what we were told to do and told to get away from the complex, so we went over to Broadway and started walking north on Broadway. So as we were walking north, on my left side was the building, on my right side was Broadway. We're on the west side of Broadway as we're going north, and we passed several streets, and then after we passed all the well, we passed a number of streets, and we finally got to Vessi Street. And David said, "You know, we're very close to Tower Two. I want to take pictures of this fire I see in Tower Two. I said, "Okay. I took out my phone. I tried to call Karen. I couldn't get through. The circuits were busy, as we now know. Of course, people were saying goodbye to loved ones, but for me, I couldn't get through, so I put my phone away. And David was putting his camera away when a police officer yelled, "Get out of here! It's coming down now! And we heard this sound, as I describe it, as kind of a combination of a freight train and a waterfall. What we heard was Tower Two collapsing like 100 yards away from us. You could hear glass breaking and shattering, you could hear metal clattering, and then the white noise of Tower Two just collapsing straight down, which is exactly what it was supposed to do. David and everyone turned and ran. I lifted Roselle by the harness, turned her 180 degrees, and started running back the way I came. David was long gone. Michael Hingson  31:36 I got to the next street back that we had crossed a little while before, and that was Fulton Street. Turned right on Fulton to get more of a building between us and what was collapsing, and we ran about 25 yards and caught up to David. It turns out that we had gone the same way he went, but he had stopped realizing that he had left me and was going to come back and find me. But I found him first, and he apologized. I said, "Don't worry about it, David. Let's keep going. And we kept running. We got caught in all the dirt and the dust and the debris from Tower Two's collapse. As David said, he couldn't see his hand six inches in front of his nose. For my part, I couldn't. With every breath I took, I could feel debris going down my throat into my lungs and settling. It was crazy, and we ran, and eventually, I decided we got to get out of this. So I started telling Roselle right, right, giving her hand signals. I don't know whether she could hear me over the noise of the building collapsing, or whether she could see my hand signals. But I kept telling her to turn right because I wanted her to, because there was a building on my right. Now that we were going the other way, I wanted her to go into the nearest opening that she could find. As we ran, I suddenly heard an opening, and Roselle obviously knew what I wanted because she turned right. She took one step. She stopped. She wouldn't move. Come on, Roselle, keep going. She wouldn't move. Come on, Roselle, you can do it. Keep going. She wouldn't move, and I realized, wait a minute, she's a guide dog. She's doing what she's supposed to do. She stopped for a reason, which she had. I checked. I stuck out my foot, stuck a hand out along the wall, discovered we were at the top of a flight of stairs. Roselle had done her job perfectly. She stopped. So when I gave her the command to go forward, she went down the stairs, and we went down into what was the Fulton Street subway station, and we were there for about 15 minutes or so. Then a police officer found a bunch of us together and said, "The air is clear up above. You need to leave now. And didn't wait for a response; just turned, and we all followed him back to the stairwell, up the stairs, through the little arcade that we had we had passed through part way down the stairs before, up the rest of the stairs and got outside. David looked around and he said, "Oh my God, Mike, there's no Tower Two anymore. And I said, "What do you mean? He said, "All I see are pillars of smoke, hundreds of feet tall. There's no Tower Two. It's gone. Are you sure, David? "Yeah, it's gone. It's not here. We stood there for a moment, and then we continued to walk west on Fulton Street. And we walked for about 10 minutes, and then we were in this little plaza area when suddenly we heard that freight train waterfall sound again, and we figured it was probably our tower collapsing. David looked back and he saw another dust cloud coming our way, and in this plaza where we were, there was a small retaining wall, probably a planter or something, but anyway, there was a retaining wall. We got behind it, we ducked down, and we just waited till everything passed us by and stopped. And then we got up, and David looked around and he said, "Oh my God, Mike, there's no World Trade Center anymore. And I said, "What do you see? And he said, "All I see are fingers of fire and flames, hundreds of feet tall, and pillars of smoke. It's gone. The towers and everything are gone. And we stood there a moment, not able to fathom it. Then I tried to call Karen again, and this time I got through because all the circuits freed up from all the loved ones saying goodbye. Needless to say, and after, as I put it, tears on both sides of the phone line. Michael Hingson  34:59 Karen was finally the first one who told us how two aircraft had been crashed deliberately into the towers of the Pentagon, hijacked aircraft towers at the World Trade Center. That is, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth was still missing over Pennsylvania at that moment. And so that's kind of what happened. The rest of the day we spent getting up toward Midtown Manhattan, and eventually was able to get trains back to New Jersey and so on. And David walked up to where he was staying with his sister, who lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Amplifyou   35:30 What an experience, Sue! Thank you for going through that with us again. And you know, there's there's a lot of things that I want to well, there's something I want to ask you. It's like we often talk about preparation of that day, like all the things you did to prepare for what what you actually were able to do during that day. What mattered on that day from all that preparation? Michael Hingson  35:55 That I knew what to do in an emergency. Also, although I really started learning to verbalize it more later, what I learned was how to control the things that I could and not worry about everything else. We what if everything to death as human beings? Yeah. And we what? Well, what if what if you were in the build in the World Trade Center and it collapsed? Well, okay. What could I have done about that? So it's no sense worrying about it, because I, you know, I didn't have access to something to hold the building up, you know, and so many different things. Well, what if Roselle had panicked? Well, that's why I encouraged her and praised her so she wouldn't. But the bottom line is, I didn't have control over that, other than the fact that I encouraged her and and worked with her so well. Well, what if other people panicked on the stairs? I didn't have control over that, other than doing all I could to try to keep panic from happening. And you know, I and other people did a number of things like what David did to keep people from panicking on the stairs. But the bottom line is, there was no sense worrying about those things because we had no control over them. And when we got home that night, I took Roselle's harness off and I was going to take her outside. She ran off. She wouldn't. She wouldn't go outside right away. She grabbed her favorite tug botobone and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog Linnie. And they were having a good old time just playing. When I talked to the veterinarians of Guide Dogs for the Blind the next day, I asked them, "What's it going to be like for Roselle going forward? And they asked, "Did Roselle have anything that specifically threatened her? And I said, "No, not really, because nothing hit her, nothing threatened her in any way, shape, or form, and the veterinarian who I spoke with said, "Well, there you are. She wasn't threatened. Dogs don't do what if about everything. They live in the moment. It was over for her. She wanted to play, and that's what she did, which was great anyway. But we what if everything to death, and we need to learn how to stop doing that and worry about just the 5% over which we really have control, and not worry about the rest. That's one of the lessons that I learned. I learned about don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can and leave the rest alone. I learned about what if you know and things like that. Amplifyou   38:18 You and Roselle really understood each other in those moments. So what she realized what her job was, and you you were a leader in keeping everyone else under under control from you know reacting. Did you ever? You seem to have been very positive right from the beginning. Were there other moments that you were not sure that you or guys were going to get out of there. Michael Hingson  38:44 No, and my response is there wasn't time to worry about that for me. I was focused on Roselle. I was focused on listening because if people started to panic, I wanted to deal with it. There was a time on the 37th floor where people just started not talking. They were getting very quiet, and I went, "Oh, they're going to be like David was, and so I said, "Hey, everybody, whether you can see me or not, my name is Mike, and I've got my guide dog Roselle here. I'm blind, but I don't want anybody to worry, because if the power and lights go out in the World Trade Center, we're offering a half-price special to get you out today only. You know, and and that's exactly what I wanted them to do was to laugh, and I got people to laugh, which, which I'm sure helped. But those are the kinds of things that that I could focus on dealing with. But I I didn't worry about what I couldn't control, even though that was sort of an instinctive thing. But the mindset kicked in. All the things that I had learned that led up to September 11th kicked in that day, that allowed me to be able to function and and also help other people, and that's the the important part about it is that they all did kick in the mindset kicked in and it all worked well. Amplifyou   39:54 You've told this story so many times. Has the meaning of the story ever changed for you over 25 years? Michael Hingson  40:00 No, I got to say that it hasn't. Well, in some, yeah, I guess in some senses it has. Maybe some of the reasoning has changed. For example, speaking today, I'm speaking to oftentimes a generation of people who have absolutely no memory of the World Trade Center because they weren't even born yet, or they were too young to remember it. Probably, if you're under 30 years old, you really don't have any memory of it. And if you're under 25, you weren't even born at the time. My job, I believe, and so I've expressed this more lately than I have in the past. But my job is to take people in as I speak to the building with me, and take them down the stairs. Take them through the experiences that I had and went through, and why I went through those experiences, and the lessons to be learned from those. And then bring them out when we get to the bottom and outside. Take them all the way through and out, so that they get the full sense of what I experienced. And I've had so many people tell me we were with you every step you took down the stairs. You tell the story so vividly and so well, and and you just you just had us with you all the way down the stairs, which is exactly what I wanted, because I want them to understand that in reality you can learn to deal with things that come along, there are going to be things that you can't deal with because you don't have the skill or whatever. But we all have a lot of skills that we don't think we do, and one of them is that we can learn to control fear. We can learn that fear is around us, but we don't have to let it overwhelm, blind, or paralyze us. We can learn to use fear in a very positive, constructive way to keep us focused and going down the stairs. Amplifyou   41:45 What made you to decide to keep using your experiences each other's? Michael Hingson  41:49 Well, after September 11th, we and and the media got the story, and then people started calling because we got very visible in the media, and people started calling and saying we'd like to hire you to come and talk to us about what we should learn from September 11th. Learn about teamwork. Learn about what happened that day. Learn the lessons of World Trade Center, and so I decided that I would would do that and teach people what they could remember and and take away from it, and people started calling and saying, "Gee, would you come and let us hire you to tell the lessons of September 11th? And by the beginning of 2002, I had so many of those kinds of requests that Karen and I decided that selling life and philosophy was a whole lot more fun than selling computer hardware and being a computer hardware sales manager, and so that's what I turned to doing full time, and learning to help people understand that the reality is that you are a lot better than you think you are, and you need to learn that. But you really can do in a more strong way what you think you can do than than a typical way. Amplifyou   43:02 That's what I was just going to ask you: is if September 11th changed the direction of your life, and it did, from the career you had into now being a professional speaker. Interesting. Michael Hingson  43:13 Oh, yeah, it's helped a lot. And you know, I I also there are other things that that helped me in terms of dealing with public speaking, I love to tell the story that when I was growing up, before I had access to braille, I had braille in kindergarten in Chicago, but then I didn't have braille in California until the fourth grade, and my parents helped me learn things, and I learned all the spelling words that you know you had every every week you had to learn words, and then on Friday you the teacher would tell you the words, and you had to write them down, and you change papers, and the teacher would write the words on the board. Except in my class, in my class the teacher didn't write the words on the board. The teacher would say, "Mike, you have to spell the words out loud for everybody. So I learned how not to fear crowds and learned that I could spell the words. I know one time I messed up a word, and I don't even remember what the word was, but I heard somebody go, "Uh-uh, and I and I went, "Oh, I must have got it wrong, and I figured it out, and then I spelled it right. But that that only happened one time that I can recall. But clearly, that helped me learn not to be afraid of audiences. And today, I don't even understand why people are afraid to speak publicly. The fact of the matter is, audiences don't come to hear you so they can joke at you, make fun of you, yell at you, and so on. They come because they value what you're you're going to talk with them about, and they want to hear it. They want you to be successful, and they'll help you be successful if you let them, Amplifyou   44:41 I think you were always destined to be a public speaker, but it seems like the September 11th really just the universe conspired to make that happen. Maybe sooner than it would have. Did you ever see yourself before that becoming a public speaker? Michael Hingson  44:57 I never thought of being a public speaker before that. Neither had I ever thought of being an author. I I was used to it because working at Quantum on any given day I could be speaking to anybody from the board of directors of a Wall Street firm to IT people to other management people and so on. So I got used to doing it, and I and I learned all about selling and being articulate in sales, so I kind of learned a lot about public speaking from that. But I never really thought I would just be speaking for a living. But given what happened on September 11th, and that I get the opportunity to talk with people and help them see that in reality, what happened on September 11th is a day of lessons that taught us, or can teach us about resilience, can teach us about dealing with things that we don't expect to happen, and that we can learn how to control fear and so on, rather than letting it overwhelm us. So it it is it's really been pretty good. Amplifyou   45:57 Yeah, and when you hear the phrase "unstoppable mindset, how much of that philosophy do you think was shaped on that day, september 11? Michael Hingson  46:05 Oh, I think a lot of it came from from that day and and beyond. You know, the mindset kicked in on september 11 because of what I knew. But I think also that when it came time to start this podcast, which someone asked me to do as part of being involved with the company. I heard a lot of people talking about resilience and so on, and I just thought of unstoppability, unstoppable mindset, because the reality is we all are more unstoppable than we think we are, and so the podcast is literally an opportunity to converse with anyone who wants to come on, and it is a conversation more, much more than an interview, but it's a conversation about them, their lives, what they've done, and including what did you do that made you realize that you're more unstoppable than you think you are, and maybe you didn't realize that, but you are, and here's let's talk about this, and so those are those are things that I talk about. But I believe that everyone has a story to tell, so I'm always looking for people to come on the podcast and tell their stories and talk with with me about their experiences and so on, and that's how you know we found Bob Ellis, who's going to be with us on the Pentagon. I had actually contacted him about speaking to his organization, and I always mentioned the World Trade Center in initial introductory letters. And he wrote back and said that he would love to help, but he also wrote back and said, you know, I was in the Pentagon on September 11th, and that opened our dialog. And the result was that we finally set up for him to come on Unstoppable Mindset. And when when we did our conversation, I learned, for example, that he walked out the door, and it just he was supposed to be in a meeting that was right near where the plane actually came through the window, and in Bob's case, he had literally just left because the meeting ended up not happening, and he had just walked outside the door when he heard the plane, and he didn't really understand what was happening. But the plane sped up, and then it just crashed right into the tower, into the Pentagon, and he ran from the area, but he was very much involved with with talents that allowed him to help acquire things to help other people survive and so on, and did that for a couple of days or four days. But Bob will tell his story on September 11th. But he was literally just out the door when the plane hit. Amplifyou   48:42 Wow! Well, your guests can look forward to that interview. Will be the next up after this one. And I want to thank you, Michael, for sitting down with me today. I oh, it's always a pleasure, and thanks for allowing me to take over the hosting seat for today on your show, so we can hear more of your story, and thank you for sharing all the lessons you've learned from this experience. Michael Hingson  49:07 Well, well, thank you, and and I hope people will take them to heart. And I would say, if anyone wants to be on the podcast, we would love to have you send me an email at speaker s p e a k e r at michael hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com. If you know of any speaking opportunities that need a keynote speaker to come in, not only to tell an inspiring story, but I want to make it very clear, but to teach also lessons about resilience, business continuity, and other things like that, email me at speaker@michaelhingson.com. Would love to talk with you about that. My website is www.michaelhinkson.com, or you can go to www.michaelhinkson.com/podcast. But we'd love to hear from you in in any way and and get to know you better and you know go from there. Amplifyou   49:57 Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Michael, for today. We'll take care and see you soon. Michael Hingson  50:02 Sounds good. Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

In this episode of From Waterloo to the Alamo, Traci Wilson Turnquist sits down with Chris Krager, founder of KRDB and Ma Modular, for a conversation that moves between design, development, and how Austin grows. From Detroit banker to more than two decades leading one of Austin's most original design build firms, this episode unpacks how pragmatism, craft, and conviction make modern design attainable.We dig into why KRDB develops, designs, and builds every project itself, why "modern" is a methodology rather than a style, SOL Austin earning Project of the Year, the Heywood Hotel, and the "surgical incisions" that reshaped Austin neighborhoods.

A strong visiting crowd helped UTSA enjoy a crowd of over 33,000 as the Roadrunners took care of business against an outmatched UTRGV squad. While 45-16 looks good on the final ledger, the performance left quite a bit to be desired, leading to a muted response from fans, players, and coaches after the win. We break down the action and top performers from the season opener, stay tuned for our TXST preview later this week. 0:00 – Intro 0:57 – Alamodome Atmosphere 9:10 – Same Old Issues: Penalties & Traylor's Frustration 17:31 – Owen McCown's Return to Full Health 21:26 – Offensive Line Rotation & Grades 22:04 – First Look at the Rick Bowie Offense 24:08 – The Third-Quarter Lull Strikes Again 28:14 – Defensive Standouts: Cooper, Rogers & the Chapman Brothers 32:12 – Tackling & Discipline 38:00 – Special Teams: Punting, Kicking & Long Snapping 45:40 – Wrap-Up: Texas State Preview Coming Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Surviving September 11 took more than courage. It took preparation, trust, and the ability to manage fear. I share my experience escaping from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center with my guide dog, Roselle, and the lessons that shaped how I responded that morning. You'll hear how years of learning my surroundings, trusting my training, and understanding my role as a leader helped me stay focused during the evacuation. I also explore blindness, the limits society places on blind people, and the power of teamwork between a guide dog and handler. Most of all, this story is about focusing on what you can control, trusting the relationships you've built, and preparing yourself to act when fear shows up. Highlights: 00:10 – Why Michael is revisiting September 11, 25 years later. 11:45 – How Michael learned that blindness itself isn't the limitation. 32:50 – Why preparation inside the World Trade Center mattered when crisis hit. 36:40 – How staying calm helped Michael lead others toward safety. 44:46 – The lesson Michael heard while running from the collapsing tower. 51:59 – What Roselle taught Michael about fear, trust, and moving forward. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Transcript: Michael Hingson  00:04 Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host, Mike Hingson, and today we're doing something a little bit different. This is Friday, september 4, 20/26, and this is the first of four episodes commemorating all of the events that happened in and around September 11, 2001. As many of you know, I was in the World Trade Center working for a company. I had opened an office for them on the 78th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center, and on September 11th, I was in my office because we were going to be doing some special sales training for people, and I was there getting prepared to do all of that when the terrorists attacked the towers, and then later the Pentagon. And as you may know, a fourth aircraft was crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, because people on the aircraft took it over from the terrorists or tried to anyway, so one of the things that we thought would be helpful would be for me to give you again a taste of what I actually went through and what occurred on September 11, 2001, when we started this podcast back in August of 2021, I played a speech that talked about some of what happened to me in the World Trade Center. But today we're going to do a different speech. In April of 2024, I was invited to be a speaker at the Marshfield, Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival. Now that festival is a yearly event celebrating and commemorating different events in American history. In 2024, I was invited to come and speak and talk about my experience at the World Trade Center and to help put some of that into context. I thought it would be very relevant for all of you if we played that speech for you, so that you would again get a taste of what occurred with me, why I was able to survive and escape, and a little bit about the lessons that we should learn about not only September 11th, but frankly, from my perspective, being the fact that I have been blind since I was born in 1950, I want you to learn a little bit more about blindness. So we're going to present to you now my speech delivered in April on April 27, 2024, at the Marshfield, Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival. I hope that you'll enjoy it. I hope that it will teach you some things, and don't forget that we have other episodes coming up. We have another episode occurring on the eighth of September where I'm going to be interviewed by Michelle Abraham from Amplify You. Amplify You is the company that I work with to get these podcasts out twice a week, and Michelle has her own podcast, and she's going to interview me to talk about lessons we've learned, to talk a little bit about what happened on September 11th. But we won't give anything away for what's going to happen later in this series of episodes. On September 11th, I will be talking with Bob Ellis. Bob was at the Pentagon on September 11th and literally just walked out the door just before the aircraft hit the Pentagon. We're going to talk about that and again, hopefully, put some of things in perspective for you. Then on the 15th of September, I'm going to come back on episode 475 of our podcast, and talk a little bit more in detail about the lessons that I've learned, and talk about things that I hope people will take away and remember from september 11. I know many of you weren't even born when the World Trade Center terrorist attacks occurred, and so this episode 472, especially, I hope will give you a little bit better sense of what occurred, and from my perspective, why things occurred the way they did, and and how we proceed. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode. Hope that you'll enjoy what it brings, and we will definitely be moving forward to talk about some other things later on. Speaker 1  04:24 There are moments in American history that changed the national conscience. Yesterday, we heard about the assassination of President Kennedy. Some of you might be old enough to remember the attack of Pearl Harbor, and for most recently in American history, of course, the terrorist attacks September 11th. Today, you're going to hear a riveting account, a a heroic story of a man whose story I believe will really pull at your heartstrings. And to moderate that panel today, or that interview, to do is conduct our interview. Today is Mary Acher, who's no stranger to this stage, good friend, presidential historian, and a great interviewer. If you'll put your hands together for Miss Mary, Speaker 2  05:11 I just am so honored to met Michael Hinkson and Alamo. You know by what you see that he came down on the 78th floor of the North Tower with his guide dog Brosel, but I have a friend named Doug Weed who always told me, "You don't brag on yourself; you get somebody else to brag on you. And I want to brag on Michael before we start this. Before I ask him to tell this story, Michael was a premature baby, and at the time when he was born, they put the babies in pre in a the premature babies in a incubator sealed with 100% oxygen, and the doctors didn't know that then, but it blinded the children, and Michael was blinded at birth. So Michael was very fortunate that he had parents that refused to allow him to even think about being disabled. They mainstreamed him before mainstreaming was even known, and they taught him to ride a bicycle. They let him drive a car, and later in his life, he actually piloted an airplane. Is that amazing? He loved mathematics. He loved physics. He was taught geometry. He solved math problems in his head. He's got a master's degree in physics and another-not a master's, but a regular in in teaching. So that is why he is such an amazing man. He's never ever let this what enough people call a disability stop him at all? As a matter of fact, he has been such an amazing gift to the unsighted community in in the Braille and things that technology that blind people can utilize to be online and be all kinds of of things that they wouldn't ever have been allowed to do even 50 years ago. So anyway, I'm just so honored to have met you, Michael. It's just been amazing. I'm going to take him to Lambert's tomorrow. He says I have to catch the rolls, or somebody else will catch them and they'll eat them and he won't get it. I promised him I'd catch the rolls. All right, my dear Michael, would you start telling us about that horrendous day? I am Michael Hingson  08:00 going to not do what I said I was gonna do. I'm gonna stand up, and I'm gonna be very interested to go to Lambert's to see what they do with me, since normally they would throw the rolls, as I understand it. And I'm gonna point out that doesn't really work. So now, what are you gonna do? Because if they all fall on the floor and the dog gets them, and the dog gets sick, you guys are in trouble. So I'll be interested to see exactly what happens. No, I'm sure it will work out. Mary, thank you for those those kind words. I'd like to start by defining a couple things to help us in all of this. Mary is absolutely right about what my parents did in their position, the doctors told my parents when it was discovered I was blind at about four months of age that I should be sent to a home because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything or contribute to society. If you think that's bad, it was worse in other parts of the world where, when children were born who were blind, were just drowned in a bucket of water. So, in a sense, it wasn't as bad. Not every child who was born premature and put in an incubator did go blind, and it's unfortunate, in a sense, that at the time that I was born. Dr. Arnold Papps at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University had discovered that, in fact, oxygen could cause blindness, and even a few minutes a day of a non-oxygen environment would drop the incidence of blindness down to zero. But medical science didn't believe him because they said, "Well, too much oxygen can't be a problem. And what Dr. Arnold Pats essentially really proved is that too much of anything can be a problem. So it is it is an issue. I finally actually some time ago got to meet Dr. Pats. Before he passed, it was it was fascinating to talk with him about that. The condition at the time when I was born was called retroenterial fibroplasia. If you want to know how to spell that, I wrote a book called Thunderdog: The Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero, which we plan to have here, but the publisher messed up, so it wasn't. But you can go buy Thunderdog anywhere, and you can learn how to spell retrolateral fibroplegia. It is now called retinopathyoprematurity. I guess that's a little easier to spell. I don't know still why they changed the name, but they did. So fine, I don't care. I am blind. I don't care. Blindness isn't the problem. I've learned from my parents and growing up and being alive now for yep 74 years, blindness isn't the problem. The problem is our perception of blindness, what we believe blind people can and can't do, as opposed to what they truly can and can't do. If you want to really see a story or something about a blind person driving a car, there is a website www.blinddriverchallenge.org. Blinddriverchallenge.org. The president of the National Federation of the Blind in October of 2001 challenged private industry and universities to create a vehicle that a blind person could drive, not an autonomous vehicle, but truly a vehicle that would transmit to the blind person the information necessary for them to drive the vehicle. What you will see at blinddriverchallenge.org is a video of a gentleman named Mark Riccobono. Too many marks. Mark Riccobono driving a vehicle independently without any assistance around the Daytona Speedway, right before the 2011 Rolex 24 race, he will go through an obstacle course. He will pass boxes that are being thrown out of a van to try to block his way. He will pass the van and a number of things like that. The reality is, what is driving? It's all about you having the information necessary for you to control your vehicle, and as far as I'm concerned, given what Mark Riccobono did, and given the reality that the information is available to us, given the way most sighted drivers drive, I'll take me any day, especially where I live in Victorville. My gosh! But the the reality is, blindness isn't the problem. I grew up believing that I went to public school. I went to college. Michael Hingson  12:26 I did get a master's degree in physics. As I love to tell people, I'm as good as Doc Brown from Back to the Future in building reactors and nuclear bombs. The only difference between me and Doc Brown is I won't go steal fissionable material from some source that might come after me later. So you know, I think I was a little smarter than Doc Brown, but the fact is, again, it's not the problem. I was also the program director of the campus radio station for a while, and I worked at the campus radio station KUCI 89.9 on your FM dial for seven years. I did a show playing old radio shows every Sunday night from six to nine. Didn't even know what 60 minutes was. I heard about it, and one day finally somebody from the show or from the the Orange County Jail called and said, "We really got a situation. We want you to know about it here at the jail. People who heard about you, they've heard about 60 minutes, and on Sunday nights we have to divide the jail in half. Half of the people go up to a television room to watch 60 Minutes, and the other half, which is the bigger half, want to hear your show playing old radio shows on Sunday nights. So you know we must be doing something right. That even at the jail, they liked us. I went to work in 1976 for the National Federation of the Blind. It's the largest organization of blind consumers in the country. I was offered a position because I was in in the science world, one of the few at the time in that world. And the president of the federation, Dr. Jernigan, told me in late 74, early 75, we got a situation. There's a guy named Ray Kurzweil. You may have heard of Ray. He's a futurist. He's an inventor. He's invented the singularity. I'm not totally sure I agree with everything that Ray says. You know, Ray once said the only problem with God is we haven't invented it yet. I don't agree with that. And the other part about it is Ray says that we're really going to all become part of the world when chips are created that will allow us to directly interact with computers. Well, we'll see. I don't want to chip in my brain yet. But Ray at that time had developed a piece of technology that would actually look at a printed page. It actually had to build it up line by line, so it wasn't like snapping a picture. But it would learn to recognize all the characters on that page, no matter what their type styles or print styles were, and it would read it out loud, called the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the Blind. Just like with blindness and retro-entral fibroblasia, the government didn't believe he could do it because nobody else had been able to do it, and so they wouldn't help fund it. He came to the federation, and the federation said, "Tell you what we're going to do." Ray, I'm not sure they said it quite that way, but tell you what we're going to do, Ray. We're going to send somebody up there with a bunch of material, and if your machine reads what we bring up, not what you want to read, if it reads what we bring up, then we're going to help you get funding. And Ray, I'm sure again it wasn't quite the way he said it, but he said, "Bring it on. They did. It did, and a relationship began that exists to this day-a machine that literally would read print out loud. And Ray wanted the first application of omnivore optical character recognition to be a machine that would read print out loud for blind people. We created a project where we purchased several machines, and then for 18 months, from 1976, in October through June of 1978, I lived in suitcases or out of suitcases in hotels, traveling around the country where we put machines at places like the New York Public Library, the Iowa Commission for the Blind, the San Francisco Public Library, and some other agencies for the blind around the country. Michael Hingson  15:59 The idea being that we wanted blind people to come and use the machine, read whatever they wanted to read, and then give us information about what needed to go into a final production model of the machine. I wrote training curriculum. I wrote the the technical manuals for teaching people how to use the machine. I taught people to use it. I observed people using it. Sometimes grabbed my old soldering gun and fix things that broke on the machines. These were $50,000, 400 pound machines. They weren't little things like an app on an iPhone today, right? So anyway, we finally wrote the final recommendations, and then Ray said, "I want to hire you to come and do the same sort of thing within the company. So I went to work for Ray, moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Actually, I learned I moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, learned how to go from Winthrop to Cambridge every day, and we began a relationship. And I worked at Kurzweil Computer Products, in and that started in again October of 1978. In May of 1978, I was called into the office of the VP of Marketing, and Andrew Parson said, "We're laying you off. What? We're laying you off. Why? Oh, it's not that you're doing a bad job or anything, but unfortunately, like a lot of engineering startup companies, we've hired too many people who aren't revenue producers, and we have to have more revenue producers. And so, as important as your job is, it's not as important as making money for the company. So we have to lay you off. Then he paused and he said, "Unless you'll go into sales. Now, I'm a science guy. However, I thought about it for a micro nanosecond, and I said, "Sure, I'll go into sales. As I love to tell people, I decided I would lower my standards and go from science to sales, and did. I said I don't know anything about sales. He said we'll send you to a Dale Carnegie sales course and all that. Well, I started selling, but not the reading machine for the blind. Instead, I sold a new product they had called the Kurzweil Data Entry Machine, and unlike the reading machine for the blind that sold for $50,000, if you want one, we might be able to find one of the old machines for you for 49 995. Instead, I sold a new product called the Kurzweil Data Entry Machine, which was only $125,000. I guess they had confidence in my ability, and I was very grateful for it. The real reason that I didn't want to refuse the sales position is I knew that at that time, and it's still somewhat today, the unemployment rate among employable blind people is close to 70. That is seven 0% It's not because we can't do the work; it's because people think we won't be able to do the work and don't give us the opportunity. So the bottom line is, I lowered my standards and went from science to sales, and did that for a while. And then in 1981, while Xerox was considering and actually working toward buying the product, I was asked by Ray and the VP of Sales to move back to California, where I was from, to help integrate Kurzweil into the Xerox West Coast environment, including their research center called Palo Alto Area Research Center Park, and I did. And my thanks for that was that after the the whole sale was consummated and Xerox completely took over. I was the last salesperson in June of 1984 to receive a FedEx letter saying thank you for your service, but we don't want you anymore. Goodbye, because all Xerox wanted was the technology. They didn't want the people. Now I was confronted with the situation. How am I going to find a job? What am I going to do? 70% unemployment. and I went out and I wrote lots of cover letters, sent out lots of resumes, and I even got a headhunter who called me and said, "Love your resume. We're going to have you interview with this company up in San Jose, California. We'll send you a ticket. They sent me the ticket the night before the flight. The guy called. Back and he says, "You know, I was just looking at your resume again. I see you do a lot of things with blind people. Michael Hingson  20:04 Is there somebody in your family who's blind? You notice that? And I said, "Yeah, I'm blind. You're blind? Well, I'm going to have to call them. They're not going to want to talk to you. I said, "Nothing has changed. My resume is still the same, but you're blind. It's all changed. No, it hasn't. There were no laws to stand on. The reservation was canceled, and I didn't do the interview. Their loss. If Speaker 3  20:30 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  21:02 Eventually, not finding a job, I started my own company selling computer-aided design systems to architects. A blind guy selling CAD systems? Why the heck not? I didn't need to work the machine. What I needed to know was how to work the machine, so I could describe it to architects, and I could sit them down in front of a machine and talk with them and talk them through it. We also hired people to demo CAD systems, and I did that for four years. And then I went back into the workforce. And when I went back into the workforce, my wife and I were talking one day, and she said, "You know, I got this great job I just discovered in the newspaper. It's selling high-end, new, revolutionary, hot, pluggable disc technology. It's perfect for you. You should apply. And I said to my wife Karen, who I had married in 1982. By the way, Karen also had a disability. She was in a wheelchair her whole life. She reads. I push. Worked out well. I said, so do I say in my cover letter I'm blind or not? Because typically, if you say you're blind, same thing will happen with the headhunter. You won't even get a call back if you don't say you're blind. You might get a callback, but then they're going to have all their defenses go up when you show up for the interview. And she said, "You're an idiot. Wives can do that, gentlemen, and it's fine. You're an idiot. Why? What's the most important thing you always said to every salesperson you ever hired, well, I wasn't quite sure which things she was thinking of. I had several things that I always said to salespeople I hired. She said, "You always told every salesperson you ever hired turn here's the operative word perceived liabilities into assets. You ever watch those little cartoons in the newspapers and all that, where the light bulb goes on over your head. Well, that's what happened, and I went and I wrote a cover letter to send with this resume to this company. And here are the last two paragraphs of the letter. The most important thing you need to know about me is that I am blind. As a blind person, I have had to sell all my life just to be able to function and survive. I've had to sell to take my guide dog on airplanes. I didn't tell them that we had to sue one airline because they violated their own policy because they wouldn't let me go on an airplane with my guide dog. I've had to sell to convince people to let me buy a house, move into apartments, sometimes take my guide dog into grocery stores, and do anything else because I was blind, I've always had to sell. So, second paragraph: When you're hiring someone for this job, do you want to hire somebody who comes in and works for eight or 10 hours a day, and then just goes home because the job is over, or do you want to truly hire somebody who understands sales for the science and art that it is, and who sells 24 hours a day as a way of life. Sent off the letter. Waited for two weeks, wondering if I'd get a call or an email. Well, no, not an email, not back then. But in late June 19 or May 1989, I got a call. This is Doug Cooper, head of marketing for Articon. We love your letter. Would you come for an interview? And I said sure. Next day we were down there. I was hired and started on july 2, 1989. Love to start on the second of July, or actually the third of July, because then I got the next day off. It was great. So I went to work for them, and we moved from where we were living in Mission Viejo down to Vista, California. The company was in Carlsbad. I began selling to the East Coast, selling our technologies and other technologies, Sun Microsystems products, and so on. And then in 1996, the owner of the company asked me to move to New York for them because we were selling to Wall Street. Michael Hingson  24:37 Wall Street was always good at getting and demanding and getting what they demanded, and they always said, "If you are a manufacturer and you're selling products to us, we want a representative, not an agent, but we want the company in Wall Street Arena to be able to to hold responsible and deal with. So we moved to New York. And I went to work on the 23rd floor of Tower Two of the World Trade Center, and was there for about a year, and then was recruited away by another company, and it wasn't hard because Articon did not figure out how to support a branch operation. So I was recruited away, and then in 1999 I was recruited away by Quantum Corporation, and now we're getting to what Mary asked about. But I needed to give you the background. Hope it was okay. So in 1999, I was hired to open an office for Quantum Corporation on well in New York City. Quantum was a company that made products called tape libraries. They were big boxes that consisted of tape drives and lots of tape cartridges, and you would attach them to computer networks, and then you would use software like one called Veritas, which is still used today. And what you would do is you would back up all of your data over the network into these tape libraries, onto tape cartridges, and then you would take the tape cartridges out and store them off-site. Now I gotta stop and be spiteful because in New Jersey they love to say that they stored them in a town called Mountainside Under a Mountain. You ever see a mountain in northern New Jersey? I came from California where we had mountains that were eight, 910, 1000 feet tall. They didn't even have decent hills, but they still called it a mountain. That was fine, whatever. They still were able to store the tapes in safe places. But the point is that all the data was backed up off-site, which is what they needed to do. We opened the actual office on august 1, 2000. I hired a staff, and we had a staff that came in and and sold, and we also worked with resellers. And in August of 2001, our main distributor Ingram Micro said, "You know, we got a lot of resellers who are selling your products, but they don't really know how to do it. Can we hold some seminars to teach our your reseller partners, our customers, the resellers, how to sell your product? I said, "You bet. We worked it out with the folks at Quantum. David Frank, who was in charge of pricing and distribution, said he wanted to come back to be a part of the seminars, and we set up doing the seminars. The idea was that we would teach them. I would be their main point of contact since I worked and lived there. David would be the person that I or they would contact without with any pricing issues, but I would be the technical point of contact contact. Master's degree in physics helps, and so we set up the seminars. And wouldn't you know it, we set them up to be held on september 11, 2001. The evening before, or the morning of September 11th, about 12:30, Roselle, my guide dog at the time, woke me up. She was very nervous and fidgety. I knew what it was like when she was fidgety. It was usually because it was a thunderstorm. She didn't like thunder, and we went down to my office. And of course, a thunderstorm did happen, and the storm literally came right over our house. I've never been in an environment where bombs went off around me, but I got to say that in this case, the thunder claps were, as I said, literally right over us, and it had to be like what a bomb sounds like going off. Anyway, it went on till about two, and then we went back up and got a couple more hours of sleep, three more hours of sleep. I got up. We went in and got to the office at about 7:40 in the morning on September 11th. As I came to the door, somebody came up with a cart. It turns out it was a guy from the Port Authority cafeteria. Michael Hingson  28:33 We were going to be providing breakfast and snacks for the first and second seminarians. We had seminars going all day, so we went in. I showed him where I wanted to set up everything in the conference room. I went in, got my laptop computer out of my backpack briefcase. I got my PowerPoint projector, and I went into the conference room and set everything up because I was going to be doing a PowerPoint show that day to give people all the information they needed about the ATLP 3000, the ATLP 1000, and so on. Yes, blind people can do PowerPoint, folks. It's not magic. You sighted bigots. So I had a script, and my wife and I had created the script, and I'd used it many times. The script was in Braille. I knew what was on every slide. We put a couple of things in addition on the script. We put all the wording from the slides on the script, and we also put on the script descriptions of the pictures, as well as where the picture would show up on the screen. So I would, for example, when we showed this to other customers around the city, I'd blow their minds because I would be doing the presentation. My sales guys loved it when I went out and did PowerPoint presentations because I could just point over my shoulder. On the left side of your screen, you'll see the ATLP 3000 with 16 cartridge, 16 drives, 326. Cartridges, and you see the label that says Prism Technology. We could hook five of them together. On the right side of your screen, you'll see the ATLP 1000, which was a single unit with 30 cartridges and one tape drive. And people would come up to me afterwards, and they say, "You know, we're ticked at you. I go, "Why? Well, first of all, your presentation was not boring, which usually they are. But second of all, you never turned and looked at the screen. You kept looking at us, even though you were pointing right to where everything was with your laser pointer. We didn't dare fall asleep. We forgot you were blind. And my response was, "You don't get it. My dog was down here taking notes. If you'd fallen asleep, we would have got you anyway. But that was what it was about. My responsibility was to be the leader of that office, and I had to do what anyone else would do. One of the main things that I did was spend hours, days walking around the World Trade Center, learning what the kiosks were in the shopping mall on the first floor, learning where different offices were, consulting with the Port Authority police and the fire prevention people learning what to do in case of an emergency because sometimes I might be in the office all by my little self. There would be nobody else around. I didn't want my staff in the office. I wanted them out selling and working and supporting customers. Not being in the office, of course, they did usually come in at least once a week. And and so I learned never watched The Sopranos, but I got to tell you, I learned more about the Sopranos from all the Italian Americans on my staff who talked about the Sopranos constantly. Bada bing, bada boom, and I learned a whole lot about Tony Soprano without ever watching the show. But the point is that I needed to know all that stuff. I needed to know where the restaurants were. Customers come into the office. Oh, you want to go out to lunch? What kind of food do you want? There's a great deli downstairs called Fine and Shapiro. Let me take you there. How would it have looked if I didn't know how to do that, and I had to say to someone, "You're going to have to let me take your arm and lead me there because I don't know how to get there, and two hours later we're supposed to be negotiating multi-million dollar contracts? No, I needed to know it. I didn't have the luxury, and I don't regard it as a luxury. I regard it as a disability of reading signs. I needed to know all of that stuff. What I didn't realize is that was creating a mindset in me, which I'll talk about in a moment. Michael Hingson  32:15 Anyway, got all the laptop projectors and everything set up. The only thing I knew I didn't know how to do extremely well is to get it exactly aimed right, but about 8o'clock, David Frank came in and I said, "Say, David, this is all set up, but let's aim the projector just exactly where you want it on the screen. And we did have to turn it just a little bit, but not too much. But anyway, at 845, I was in my office and David was with me. We were creating a final list of all the people who were going to be attending the seminars, because the Port Authority police, the security people, needed to know who was coming. There were two ways you could get into the building: either we faxed on letterhead a list of people who were coming on any given day, and then the people coming in would show their photo IDs, and it would be verified against the list. And if they were allowed in, then they would be given a badge that they would put over their neck, and they would carry that, and they could scan barcode and go into the appropriate elevator to come onto our floor, or they'd have to call us every time somebody came in. And I didn't want a lot of phone calls coming in, so we were faxing the list. I was reaching for Letterhead to fax to to print the list on Letterhead when suddenly I heard and felt kind of a muffled thump and a vibration. And then literally, if you any blind people in the room, well, I'll do it anyway. I'm holding up my hand, and what happened was that literally, as I'm now tipping my hand toward you, the building began to tip. We probably moved about 20 feet. The building kept tipping and tipping. David and I said together, "What's going on? I don't know. What's going on? What do you think? Was it an explosion? I said. David said, "Didn't sound like it. Is it an earthquake? David was from New York, and now he's living in California. He didn't know about earthquakes. I said, "No, the building wasn't shaking around. It was going in one direction. And finally, and I went over and I stood in the doorway between my office and the the outside lobby of our our offices, and I stood there. Roselle was asleep under my desk. David was just on the other side of my desk, holding it near our windows, looking out over Manhattan, the south side of Manhattan. And finally, David and I both said goodbye to each other because we thought we had moved so far that the building was going to take a 78 floor plunge to the street. And then the building slowed down, and it stopped, and it moved back. As soon as it got vertical, I started walking back into the office. I met Roselle coming around from under my desk. I took her leash. I said "heel, which meant to come around behind me to sit and lie down, which is what I would normally have Alamo do, but he's comfortable, so we'll just leave him there. Roselle sat down, and about that time. The building dropped straight down about six feet. Why did it drop down? Because tall buildings like that literally are springs. They're made to flex in windstorms and other things like that. An Empire, an airplane hit the Empire State Building in the 1940s because it got lost in a fog bank. Tall buildings are flexible. They have expansion joints, and when the building was hit, the expansion joints took up all of the the things that were going on. And then when the building got straight again, the expansion joints dropped back down to their normal configuration. I knew that because I had talked to people about stuff like that. I'd forgotten it until later, but I knew it. What I hadn't realized is that what was happening when I was learning so much stuff was that a mindset was being developed in me that said, "You know what to do in an emergency. And as soon as the building dropped, David turned and looked out the window and started shouting, "Oh my God, Mike! There's fire and smoke over us! There were millions of pieces of burning paper falling outside the windows. Michael Hingson  35:59 We got to get out of here right now! Slow down, David. No, we got to get out of here. The building's on fire. I could hear things rushing and brushing outside our windows, and now I knew what they were. David told me millions of pieces of burning paper, right? And I didn't smell any smoke. Roselle wasn't doing anything to indicate any concern, and David kept saying, "We got to get out of here. The building's on fire. And I kept saying, "Slow down. Our guests began to scream. We had like five or six who were in our conference room. Early arrivals. They started coming out, but then they heard me say, "Slow down, stop, David. Just wait. And they waited to see what was going to happen. And finally, David used the big line: "You don't understand. You can't see Speaker 4  36:37 it. The Michael Hingson  36:38 problem wasn't what I wasn't seeing, the problem was what David wasn't seeing-a dog sitting next to me, wagging her tail, yawning, going, "Who the heck woke me up? I was comfy, not giving any indication of fear. And I eventually got David to focus, and I said, "David, get our guests to the stairs. Don't let them take the elevators, because I knew if there's fire, especially because if there's fire, the elevators could become fire traps. The fire could get into the elevator shafts, which it did, and anybody in the cars would be burned. David left with our guests, got them to the stairs. Meanwhile, I called Karen and told her that there had been an explosion or something. We had no clue. There was no way to know. I love it. Reporters, even today, and other people say, "Well, of course you didn't know you couldn't see it. Excuse me, you numbskulls. The last time I checked, Superman and X-ray vision were fiction, and the airplane hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building. No one knew. All the way down the stairs, we didn't know because no one saw it. No one knew. Anyway, I called and told Karen she wanted to know more. I said, "I don't know anything else. I've got to go because we're not staying here. We knew instantly that we had to leave, but we got our guests out. Then David came back. We swept the offices one last time. Went to the stairs and we started down. If I knew it was the last time I was going to be in the building, I would have taken a couple of things that I didn't take. Like I had a really neat talking scientific calculator that I couldn't replace. And if I had known that I wasn't coming back, I would have taken it. It would have been a little heavier, but I would have taken it anyway. We started down the stairs. There were other people, of course, on the stairs. We got down about four floors, and I was smelling an odor. I couldn't quite figure it out, and suddenly I realized I'm smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. I traveled 100,000 miles a year for my company. I knew what the odor of jet fuel was like. I knew the kerosene smell, but it took a while to associate it with the World Trade Center because no one would have ever thought you would have smelled it there. When I realized what it was, I observed to the other people around me on the stairs, "I'm smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. And they said, "Yeah, you're right. That's what it is. We must have been hit by an airplane. You understand? Nobody knew. We must have been hit because of what we're smelling, so we all accepted that that was what was going on, but we had no clue. We continued down the stairs, about 10 floors down. At one point, a woman stopped right behind me, and she said, "I can't go on. I can't breathe. We're not going to make it out. And I stopped and turned around and said, "Sure, we are. Come on, this is my guide dog Roselle. He's guiding me, and and she'll encourage you. Roselle gave her kisses, and this lady gave Roselle a few pets, and so on. And other people surrounded her, and we had a group hug, and the lady was able to keep going. A few burn victims passed us on the stairs as we went down. At about the 50th floor, David, who had gotten a little quiet. Suddenly said, "Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here. Now you heard that I have a teaching credential. What you don't know, and teachers won't generally acknowledge it, but I'm going to tell you anyway. There's a secret class we take called Voice 101: How to Yell at Students. Didn't know that, did you? And anyway, as soon as David. Said Mike, "We're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here. I just said as sharply and with a snap into my voice that I could, "Stop it, David! If Rosella and I can go down these stairs, so can you. And David told me later that that brought him out of his funk. Michael Hingson  40:12 What he then said is, "I got to keep my mind off this. I want to walk a floor below you and shout up to you what I see on the stairs. Is that okay? And I said, sure. Did I really need him to do that? No. Did it matter? No, but it did to David. However, what I came to realize over time was, David doing that was one of the most important things that I experienced on that day. So I'm going down the stairs. I get to floor 49. David, I'm on the 48th floor. All's clear here, Mike. Going on down. I get to 48 floor, 47. We keep going down. Finally, I get to the 45th floor, David. I'm on the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is. Not stopping. So David was obviously doing better, and he kept going down. Why do I say what I did about David and doing that? Because David became a focal point for anyone within the sound of his voice who could hear him say, "43rd floor, all's clear, everything is good. He had to have helped 1000s of people stay focused and not panic going down the stairs, and I think that was so cool that he did that all the way down 42nd floor, all good. We kept going down the stairs. We met firefighters on the 30th floor. They wanted to escort me down, and I finally convinced them that I was capable of going down without them. And I did it by playing the sight card. I said, "Look, my friend David is here. He can see we're good, and the firefighters let us go. I didn't want them to escort me. First of all, they don't know how to work with a blind guy and do sighted guide. But second of all, I didn't want to break up their team because I knew that each of those people were carrying the equipment that they had to use to fight the fire. You couldn't store it somewhere. Where would you store it? Oh, the 34th floor. And what happens if a fire broke out on the 33rd floor, you couldn't get to it. You had to carry the equipment, so we kept going down the stairs. Finally, got to the first floor. David got there, and I was at floor two. And he said, "Hey, there are water sprinklers running. You're going to have to run through a waterfall or a down torrent of water to get out of the stairwell. Why was there all that water? Because it wanted to keep fire either in or out of the stairs, if fire was around. David ran through. Then I got to the bottom. Roselle stood there, and I picked up her harness and said, "Rosel, forward, hop up, which is a command to speed up. We went through this torrential downpour. It was a waterfall, and we came out the other side, soaking. David was there, and there were voices. Hey, don't go outside! No, no, don't go that way. Go this way. A PA system, a guy on a bullhorn. No, no, no! Don't go outside. Don't go to the outside. Go this way. What we didn't know is, if they had let people go out, they might have been right below where people were jumping. And so that was one of the reasons they didn't want anyone out. They wanted people to go through the complex and get out at the far side, as far away from where everything was occurring that they could. This guy comes up to us and he goes, "I'm with the FBI. I'll get you where you need to go. And of course, I'm sitting there with my warped sense of humor, going, "I'm sorry, I only talked to McGarrett, and I didn't do it. I'm innocent. I just thought that I didn't say any of it out loud. Anyway, he got us through out to the outside of Tower One. We passed now the empty Ben and Jerry's ice cream kiosk that was there. Darn didn't get a chance for a scoop. Kept going. Finally, went up an escalator and got outside into the sunshine outside of Tower. Well, of the whole complex, as far away from the towers as we could be, we got outside. Michael Hingson  43:44 We were told to leave the area, but David looked around and he said, "Mike, I see fire in Tower Two. And I said, "What are you talking about? There's fire in Tower Two, really? What's that all about? We didn't feel a thing going down. We were in our own little cocoon, our own little cave. We had no clue. Anyway, we were told to leave, so we went to Broadway. We walked across the plaza to Broadway, turn left, going now north on Broadway. There was a building on my left. Broadway was on my right. We crossed several streets, crossed Fulton Street, finally got to Vetsy Street. David said, "I want to stop because I can see the fire in Tower Two really clearly from here, I want to take some pictures, and I said, "Great, I'll try to call my wife. I got out my phone. David was taking pictures, which I have today. I tried to call Karen. I couldn't get through. Later, of course, we learned that people were saying goodbye to loved ones, and that was why the circuits were busy. I had just put my phone away, and a police officer, and while David was putting his camera away, and a police officer yelled out of here! It's coming down now. We heard this rumble that became this deafening roar. I describe it as kind of a combination of a freight train and a waterfall. You could hear glass breaking and tinkling, and metal crashing down, and then this white noise sound as Tower Two, 100 yards away from. Pancake down. Everyone turned and ran. David ran. He was gone. I literally lifted Roselle by the harness, turned her 180 degrees, and started running back the way we came. And the first thing I remember saying in my mind was, "God, I cannot believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And as soon as I thought that, I heard in my head as clearly as you hear me now, a voice that said, "Don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. Who is God? Absolutely no question. Don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And so I also had this incredible sense of peace and calm that came over me. That said, you're okay if you work together. We kept running. We got back to Fulton Street, turned right on Fulton Street, and ran about 25 yards. And suddenly we caught up to David, who had apparently gone the same way. And David suddenly realized that he had left us behind and he was going to come back, but we caught up to him first, and he apologized. I said, "David, don't worry about it. Let's just keep going. The building's coming down, you know. And we both just started to run with Roselle, and suddenly we were engulfed in all the dirt and debris and the dust cloud from Tower Two. It was so thick that David said he couldn't see his hand six inches in front of his face, and all I can tell you is that every breath I took, I felt dirt and debris and junk going down my throat into my stomach, and we knew we had to get out of that. So I started telling Roselle, "Go right, right. There was a building on our right side, and I wanted her to find the nearest opening if she could even hear me, see my hand signals, or whatever. And I was also listening for openings. Yes, I can hear when I pass an opening, and I and I can tell it's there and deal with it accordingly. Like during a time when you're running away from a collapsing building, run into it. Suddenly, I heard an opening on the right, and Roselle must have known what I wanted. She must have been able to see my hand signals or something because she turned right, she took one step, she stopped, and she would not move. Come on, Roselle, keep going. She wouldn't move. Come on, Roselle. Nope, wouldn't do it. And I realized, focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. So I stuck out a foot. Michael Hingson  47:13 I trailed a hand along a wall, and realized that we were at the top of a flight of stairs. Roselle had done exactly what she was supposed to do, and I knew what I was supposed to do if I wanted to get her to move. But before I did that, I gave her a big hug, good girl, and then I said, "Roselle, forward! That's the command. And we went down the stairs into an arcade area that was the entrance to the Fulton Street subway station. There were a few other people down there. Then a guy came up from the subway system and saw about eight or nine of us there. He introduced himself as Lou, an employee of the subway system, and he took us down to an employee locker room where we could sit down and and kind of hack and cough and get the dust out of our lungs. There was a water fountain and there were fans. We were there about 10 minutes. Then a police officer came, and he said, "You got to get out of here right now. The air's clear up above. You can't stay here. And so we followed him. Of course, he probably had already been told that Tower One was going to collapse. the The officials knew that each building was going to collapse probably about a half hour before it actually did. At least that was their presumption, and that's what I've been told. Anyway, we followed him back up the stairs, through the arcade, up the last two flights of stairs. We got outside. David looked around and he goes, "Oh my God, Mike, there's no Tower Two anymore. And I said, "What do you see? And he said, "All I see are pillars of smoke, hundreds of feet tall. We stood there for a moment, and then we just turned, and we kept walking. Now west on Fulton Street, we walked about 10 minutes, and we were in this little plaza area when we heard that freight train waterfall sound again, and we knew it must be our tower collapsing. We saw a little retaining wall David did, and we got behind it and ducked down, and we waited until everything stopped, and then we stood back up. And David looked around and he said, "Oh my God, Mike, there's no World Trade Center anymore. And I said, "What do you see? And he said, "I just see fingers of fire and flame, hundreds of feet tall. We see, I see pillars of smoke. It's gone. Are you sure? Yeah, it's gone. It's not there. We stood there a moment, then I tried to call my wife Karen again. That was kind of my first thought. I need to tell her we're okay. This time I did get through because clearly the circuits were were free. And after some tears on both sides of the phone, she is the one who told us how two aircraft had deliberately been hijacked and crashed into the towers, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth at that time was still missing over Pennsylvania. Who would have thought? We spent the rest of that day getting up toward Midtown Manhattan, and eventually I got to Penn Station, learned that the trains were running, and went back. Out to New Jersey, David wanted to go back up to be with his sister, who he who he was staying with. She lived on the Upper East Side, so I got on trains and I went back over toward New Jersey. I called Karen and told her what was going on, and a friend of ours, a friend that Karen had known since high school out in California, Tom Painter, was also living in New Jersey, he had come down to be with her, not even knowing at the time whether I was in the World Trade Center or working from home that day or whatever. But he drove her to the station in our accessible van, and as I came off the train, I heard the van show up. I went downstairs, climbed and went up the ramp into the van, and got to hug Karen about 7o'clock that night, for the first time since leaving home, we got home. Tom drove us home. We all went inside. I was going to take Roselle outside because she hadn't been out since like five that morning. Michael Hingson  50:53 Well, I take that back about six that morning, and I took her harness off. But before I could do anything else, she was off like a shot. She went to her toy box, found her favorite tug bone, and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog Linny. Why? Because it was over for her. And I talked to the guide dog people later, and I said, "Will any of this affect her? And they said, "Was she threatened? Did anything hit her or injure her in any way, and I said no. They said then no. It was over for her because dogs don't do what if. It was over. It was done. She was fine. Lesson to be learned. Lesson you will learn more about if you buy our new book, Live Like a Guide Dog: True Stories from a Blind Man and His Guide his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity, and walking in faith. That that book is available for pre-order, and I've been signing bookmarks all day. I still even have a few with me. But the point is, you can pre-order it, and and it's about something that I learned later. I thought about during the pandemic. I've talked a lot about escaping and not being afraid because I developed a mindset that said you know what to do, but what I've not done is to teach others how they can learn to recognize that fear is not something that needs to blind or overwhelm you. You can use fear as a very powerful tool to guide you and steer you in the right direction if you know how to control it, and live like a guide dog is all about that. So I hope that you'll all get that when it comes out in August. But again, you can pre-order it now if you go to michaelhinkston.com. There's a link there where you can go to a web page to get information and to go to a link where you can pre-order it. And like I said, I have some bookmarked with a QR code on it, and and I'm and I yes I am plugging the book, but I'm also saying, look, folks, the bottom line is we operate in so many ways with misconceptions about things. I've talked about blindness. Anybody could have been in the World Trade Center, and and a lot of people were. The reality is, though, if you learn what to do and how to prepare for situations in general, when it becomes something specific, you'll know what to do. People have asked a number of times, "Well, wasn't your guide dog trained to operate in an emergency like the World Trade Center? How are we going to do that? No, the dog isn't trained to do that. The guide dog's job is not to lead. Guide dogs do not lead blind people. Guide dogs' jobs are to make sure that we walk safe. It's my job to know where to go and how to get there to give the dog direction. The dog depends and relies on me to give it direction. The dog's job, as I said, is to make sure we walk safely. It's a team effort. We each have a job to do, and we develop a trusting relationship when we learn to trust each other and respect the job the other member of the team is doing, which is what it's all about. Which is what happens on any team, trust is all around us. Trust is under attack in so many ways from our politicians, and in so many ways. But the reality is, trust is all around us. I think we all trust that the roof isn't going to fall in on the church. I think that we trust that the PA system is going to continue to work, and so on. Trust is all around us. The difference between dogs and people is that dogs, while they do love unconditionally, do not trust unconditionally. But dogs are open to trust unless some incredibly traumatic thing has happened to them where they lose that ability. But dogs are open to trust, dogs want humans to give them direction to establish rules, and all too often with our pets and so on, we don't do that. We don't really develop the relationship that we should and can with them. Michael Hingson  54:54 If we would, we would have so much stronger bond and relationships with them. It would be. Amazing for for all of us, but the bottom line is that's the relationship that I get with each guide dog. That's the relationship I have with Alamo. He trusts that I am going to feed him before too awfully long. He trusts that you guys are going to buy books, so he'll have kibbles for me to feed him. Just saying, but but seriously, the the trust has to be earned with a dog or with people or whatever, and if you find that you you discover you can't trust someone, don't wish them ill will, forgive them and move on. So you don't trust them, but you know what you have, and you go off and make new friends and learn other trusting relationships that you can develop. Focus on running with Roselle; the rest will take care of itself. The reality is, we worry so much about so many things. We are always doing what if we create most of the fears that we face in our lives, and we Don't need to do that. If we would focus on just the things that we have some control over and leave the rest alone, well, we might want to be aware of them, but we don't have to worry about them. We don't have control over them. Trust and deal with the things that you have to deal with, and let the rest take care of itself. And that was what I learned on September 11th, listening to the voice of God, absolutely, and that is something that I pass on to all of you, and I think that's the most important thing that I can leave you with. Hi again, everyone. This is Mike Hingson. I hope that you found that speech to be helpful and relevant and interesting. I hope that you learn some things from it. From a personal standpoint, I hope that you learn that blindness isn't really the big problem that I face. The challenge that I face really comes from the fact that people who have eyesight tend to believe that blind people are not capable of doing much because they can't see. Wrong thing to believe. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that because we did it during the speech, but I just wanted to thank you for being here today, for listening and watching this episode. I hope that you will also tune in for our episode on Tuesday, where I'm in conversation with Michelle Abraham on next Friday, the 11th of September, that you will tune in to hear the conversation with Bob Ellis, and then episode 475, which will occur on the 15th of September, where we will talk about lessons to be learned and and give you some things to hopefully take away that maybe you haven't thought about. Thanks very much for being here with us. I really very much appreciate all of your support. If any of you have any questions or want to reach out to me, you are welcome to do so. Please feel free to email me at speaker@michaelhinkson.com. That's s p e a k e r at m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com speaker@michaelhingson.com hope to hear from you and as you gather I do speak I continue to speak publicly I've been a keynote speaker since September 11 if anybody knows of anyone that needs a keynote speaker or you can use us in events that you have please reach out to me at speaker@michaelhingson.com let's talk about it. Let's see how we can help. I'm always looking for ways to inspire, but also to teach and help. And I'd like to be part of your world in that regard. Thanks again for being here. Thanks for listening, and come back next time for another episode of Unstoppable Mindset.

Welcome to the first game week of 2026! We have our first depth chart of the season and it features a few notable surprised. Tune in to hear which players surprised by earning starting spots, or falling into a backup role. The Roadrunners' new two-deep will debut this Saturday as UTRGV travels to the Alamodome for their first game against an FBS opponent. The Vaquero fans are talking a big game, can the Roadrunners give them a humbling introduction to FBS play, or will the Vaqueros play with a chip on their shoulder and give the Roadrunners a scare? Not yet a Patreon member? Follow this link to claim a free month of access. This offer expires at kickoff on Saturday https://www.patreon.com/alamodomeaudible/redeem/EDAA2 00:00 - UTSA game week finally arrives 06:07 - Initial reactions to the Week 1 depth chart 18:22 - What the depth chart says about ceiling and evaluation 27:35 - The moneybacker battle and Archie Chambers' absence 29:16 - Why UTRGV is the ideal Week 1 opponent 35:44 - Travis Bush and the UTSA connections in Edinburg 42:27 - San Antonio talent across the UTRGV roster 51:20 - Expectations from UTSA this week 56:50 - Score predictions Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV1_4YdD-q4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're taking another short break from a new episode this week, but we're pulling a Hot Take from our Best Tim Burton Film episode from Season 4!In this clip, our panelists are going head-to-head over two very different entries in the Burtonverse: 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure versus 2010's Alice in Wonderland.In one corner, we've got Pee-Wee Herman on a quest to recover his beloved bicycle, complete with dinosaurs, biker bars and a search for the Alamo's basement. In the other, we're falling down the rabbit hole into Burton's fantastical take on Wonderland, filled with the Mad Hatter, the Jabberwocky, and enough eccentric costumes to fill an entire season of Project Runway.So grab your red bow tie, pour yourself a big cup of tea, and whatever you do, don't say Large Marge sent you...it's time for the debate!We hope this Hot Take sent you down a wonderfully weird cinematic rabbit hole. If you enjoyed what you heard, be sure to check out the full Best Tim Burton Film episode from Season 4 in our podcast feed for even more Burton-esque debates, or visit greatpopculturedebate.com for dozens of other pop culture showdowns.We'll be back September 15 for Season 14, featuring 10 all-new debates. Make sure you've subscribed to the show so you don't miss any new episodes!CREDITS:Editor: Bob ErlenbackIntro/Outro Music: "Dance to My Tune" by Marc Torch#timburton #peeweeherman #peeweesbigadventure #aliceinwonderland #timburtonfilm #movies #filmsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jared and Adrian celebrate episode #300 and reflect on the community that has carried the show for nearly a decade. They also shift into UTSA football season prep, breaking down camp takeaways, Jeff Traylor removing/delaying single digit numbers, and the biggest questions heading into Week 1. Use this link to unlock a free month of Patreon access: https://www.patreon.com/alamodomeaudible/redeem/EDAA2 00:00 - Episode 300 celebration and opening gratitude 09:34 - Future goals: social events, higher-profile guests, and basketball coverage 13:22 - Fall camp takeaways: quiet, focused, and more serious 17:51 - Why national optimism and local skepticism do not match 21:34 - Offensive outlook: line stability, tight end questions, and receiver growth 24:47 - Defensive outlook: Owen Peewee at linebacker and front-seven roles 27:55 - Johnny Bowens injury and the cost to defensive line depth 32:50 - 2-1-0 number recipients revealed 46:28 - Week Zero scouting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SEASON 2 - EPISODE 208 John Lee Hancock - Writer / Director In this episode of the Team Deakins Podcast, we speak with writer and director John Lee Hancock (THE HIGHWAYMEN, THE ROOKIE, A PERFECT WORLD). John was born and raised in Texas and we learn how he made the transition from practicing law to screenwriting and what he stayed busy with to survive in Los Angeles after moving there. John later reflects on learning filmmaking from Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner during the production of A PERFECT WORLD (which John wrote), and he reveals how he came up with the idea of the film. We also learn how producer Mark Johnson (Season 2, Episode 97) accidentally set him up to direct his first film, and John reveals some of the benefits of being a writer while also working as a director. John also reflects on the grand-scaled production of THE ALAMO, and we discuss the historical and cultural backdrop of Texas at the time of the events of the movie. Towards the end, John shares some information with us about his next film, and we discuss the economic difficulties of filming within the United States that lead to productions shooting abroad.  - Recommended Viewing: A PERFECT WORLD

Two hundred feet from the Alamo stands a hotel that has never closed its doors. Presidents slept there. Theodore Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders from its bar. Gunmen died beside its mahogany counters. And for more than a century, guests and employees have reported that some of the Menger Hotel's former occupants never actually left. A murdered chambermaid still carries towels through the third floor. A cattle baron walks through a wall where his bedroom door once stood. Roosevelt apparently still enjoys the occasional drink. And a man in buckskin has one question for guests unfortunate enough to encounter him alone: Are you gonna stay, or are you gonna go? T onight, we check into the Menger Hotel...where somewhere between thirty and forty-five ghosts are said to have already answered. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Help Persecuted Christians TODAY: https://csi-usa.org/quickstart/ Christian Solidarity International On today's Quick Start podcast: NEWS: The U.S.-Iran ceasefire expires as Tehran threatens to shift to “fully offensive” operations, while Jared Kushner points to potential progress toward Hamas disarming in Gaza. FOCUS: Two directors reportedly walk away from HBO's upcoming Harry Potter series over J.K. Rowling's outspoken views on transgender issues. MAIN THING: Peaceful pro-life demonstrators are arrested outside the Alamo. Tré Goins-Phillips and Raj Nair break down what happened. BIBLE VERSE: Matthew 5:10 — “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” SHOW LINKS Radical Revelations with Raj Nair https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radical-revelations/id1888511250 Faith in Culture: https://cbn.com/news/faith-culture Heaven Meets Earth PODCAST: https://cbn.com/lp/heaven-meets-earth NEWSMAKERS POD: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/newsmakers/id1724061454

What happens when the career you built changes, disappears, or no longer feels right? I talk with content marketing leader Nicole Pytel about career change, burnout prevention, imposter syndrome, entrepreneurship, professional identity, and the growing role of AI in content marketing. Nicole shares how she moved from sports journalism into business, built her own agency, learned to shut work off, and later chose employment over entrepreneurship without seeing it as a step backward. We also explore what layoffs can teach us about identity, why confidence can exist beside fear, and how AI can support human skill instead of replacing it. Her story is a strong reminder to trust what you know, keep learning, and ask yourself one powerful question: Why not you? Highlights: 21:44 - The turning point that pushed Nicole to leave television. 28:50 - Why never shutting off from work led to burnout. 39:34 - How confidence can exist alongside fear and imposter syndrome. 45:35 - What a layoff can reveal about professional identity and self-worth. 50:24 - Why AI still needs human judgment, strategy, and creativity. 1:00:24 - Why trusting your gut can make career change worth the risk. About the Guest: Nicole Pytel is a content marketing leader who's spent her career translating complicated things into stories people actually want to hear — first from a newsroom, now from the executive table. Her career started in TV news as a sports reporter, where she covered the legendary Friday night lights of high school football and spent her Saturdays on the sidelines of Texas A&M's Kyle Field. She was eventually promoted to news anchor, and those days of turning complex topics into compelling stories still shape how she approaches content strategy today. Nicole then spent nearly a decade as the founder of Premier Content Source, a content marketing agency she grew to serve over 1,000 clients across multiple industries. She later worked as an embedded content marketing expert inside teams at Google Cloud, Chrome Enterprise, and YouTube. Most recently, Nicole served as Vice President of Content Marketing at Firebrand Communications, where she built the agency's content marketing line of business from zero and held a seat on the executive leadership team. Today, Nicole is focused on how AI is changing content marketing, building a four-chapter framework for how content teams should operate now that AI has fundamentally changed how buyers search, discover, and evaluate the companies they work with. Whether it's a thirty-second news segment or a company's entire content strategy, Nicole's guiding belief hasn't changed: if you can't make the audience care, you're just making noise. Ways to connect with Nicole**:** LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolepytelmarketing/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingston, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, hi again, everyone, and once again, it is time for another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. We are having a lot of fun doing these podcast recordings, and I really appreciate all of you being out there. Love to hear from you if any of you have any comments on any of the things that we talk about, or even if you don't comment anyway. We'd love to hear from you, but I really appreciate you all being here and and and interacting with us today. We get to chat with Nicole Pytel. My screen reader pronounces it Pytel, but you know we were just besmirching technology, and it deserves it because it should pronounce it right. But anyway, that's okay. But no help. Nicole has been very much involved in a lot of content marketing and in a variety of things. I think we're going to have a lot of fun chatting and talking about different business things, and who knows what else will come up in the course of the conversation. That's what makes it fun because it is truly and always is intended to be a conversation. And who the heck knows where things may go as we follow along? But we'll make it work. So Nicole, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Nicole Pytel  02:08 Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm so excited, and yeah, I can't wait to see where the conversation goes. Michael Hingson  02:14 I can't either. It'll we'll have a lot of fun with it. Well, I love to start this way. Tell us about the early Nicole, growing up and and all that. Let's get people to have a chance to get to know you a little bit. Nicole Pytel  02:28 Yeah, well, the the early Nicole is a a Florida native. I know people are always a little baffled by that. Not everybody in this state is from a transplant from New York or Philly or Boston or any of those places. Some of us are born here. And have you made Michael Hingson  02:43 and have you made friends with all the gators? Nicole Pytel  02:46 Ah, no, no. I stay away from the gators. Antisocial, Michael Hingson  02:50 aren't Nicole Pytel  02:51 they? They're yeah, they're they're a bit unfriendly. Yeah, I've I've never seen one in the wild, and I I'd like to keep it that way. Yeah, I hear you for sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, born in Miami, grew up in Fort Lauderdale. the The only daughter of two former Miami Dade police officers. So, yes, yes. My mom was actually an undercover narc in the days of the cocaine cowboys. So, she is incapable of being intimidated. And personally, I think she's amazing and also a little crazy for doing that. But yeah, grew up as an only child, had you know four-legged brothers. You know, just had a great childhood. You know, just really like as great as it could be. You know, dad worked from home, had his own business. Mom worked with dad a lot of the time and was in the PTA and running the Girl Scouts and the young astronauts and all all the things. So, you know, really great childhood and a lot of lessons that really kind of you know still stick with me today and kind of gave me that foundation to go and do all the really cool things I've done as a grown-up. A lot of lessons learned. So you know, it was a good childhood. Michael Hingson  04:06 What did your dad do, and what does he do? Nicole Pytel  04:09 He well, he was after he left the police force. He started his own business. He reconstructed traffic accidents. So he was an expert witness. His clients were personal injury attorneys in South Florida, which is probably the worst client you could have on the planet. Those are some demanding folks. He handled it really, really well. He had his own business for gosh, 30 years. So yeah, he was he was amazing. Michael Hingson  04:38 Did he ever consult for CSI Miami. Nicole Pytel  04:43 No, he did not. Just checking. Did not. The one that was the one cool thing he didn't do. No. Michael Hingson  04:48 Yeah. Well, talk about the potential for pressure, but that's okay. Sounded like he had a a good time and enjoyed what he did, and and it does sound very fascinating. It is. It is Nicole Pytel  05:02 indeed. Although you know, when you're learning to drive as a teenager and your father does that for a living, you know, you've you've seen all the terrifying accident photos and heard all the stories, and so it's a it's a little stressful learning to drive from somebody who sees the worst of the worst every single day, but you know, we made it. Michael Hingson  05:23 And did Dad work as a backseat driver for you every so often? Nicole Pytel  05:27 Oh, 100% 100% literally. I mean, till the day he died, he was the world's worst backseat driver. I, you know, I'm in my 30s, and he's like, "What are you doing? You know, so yeah, absolutely, 100% Michael Hingson  05:42 How about mom? Nicole Pytel  05:44 Oh, mom, mom is amazing, and yes, she's a backseat driver as well. Okay, I am as well. So, but you know, mom, mom is tough and and also amazing, and you know, such a a great mom to her fur kids and a good grandma to my fur kids, and you know, just just amazing the life that she's had. You know, just grew up as a State Department brat, lived all over the world, was cop, like just wild, just wild. So I I have I have some very cool parents. Michael Hingson  06:15 Do you have any kids of the two legged variety? Nicole Pytel  06:18 Not the two legged variety. I've got two of the four-legged kind. Yeah, Michael Hingson  06:22 that works. Yeah, they're they're demanding enough. Nicole Pytel  06:26 Oh, mine are little little tiny divas. Absolutely, and I'm proud of it. They were raised to be little spoiled divas. Michael Hingson  06:33 Well, I have my guide dog Alamo, and we have a cat who's now 16 and a half years old, named Stitch. She's the real demanding one, she she likes to be petted while she eats, and the only way to keep her from disturbing a podcast to get fed is to keep the door closed, which I do. But the the thing is that if if the door opened, she'd probably be in here, and she would be insisting pretty loudly if I didn't respond, that she needs me to go pet her while she eats. She loves it, and it's fine. There are just a few times that she doesn't get to do it, and mostly she's pretty quiet about it since the door's closed. But when we're done, I'll open the door, and I will hear from her pretty quickly that time for more food. Nicole Pytel  07:21 She's got you well trained. Very good. Have you well Michael Hingson  07:24 trained? Yeah. Now Alamo, Alamo, my guide dog, is a clock watcher, so he's going to get his his afternoon treat a half hour late, and and he's pretty quiet about that sort of stuff. He's pretty pretty nonplussed about it. He won't come over and bug me, even though he's here in the room during the podcast because he knows what's going on, but by the same token, as soon as we're done, he's going to be out there going, "It's after 130, Buster. Nicole Pytel  07:51 I hear you. Minnie, Minnie and Megs will be the same way. Don't you worry; it'll be time for their dinner when we're done here. So, yeah, they'll they'll be ready. Michael Hingson  08:00 Yeah, well, and Stitch also gets some treats in the evening. She gets them around 630 at night, but at five she starts demanding them, and she doesn't want to eat anything that's left over in her food bowl. She wants her treats, and she knows she's not going to get them until after 630, but she pushes anyway. Ah, it's fun. I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Nicole Pytel  08:23 No, absolutely not. They are just little rays of sunshine. Michael Hingson  08:27 They are. So you went to college, I gather. Nicole Pytel  08:30 I did. I went to the University of Miami. Both my parents did as well. Dad actually played football there back in the day. Yeah, actually, I mean, honestly, growing up, I pretty much lived at the Orange Bowl on Saturdays. We had season tickets to the Hurricanes, and you know, learned about football very, very early on. I was actually, I think I was like five, and I was sitting there on a Saturday playing with my Barbies, and Dad came in and was like, "All right, come on, put the Barbie dolls down. We're gonna go watch football. You're gonna learn about football, and I was I was hooked ever ever since. So you know, who needs copies? Michael Hingson  09:10 I got hooked more on on baseball. Of course, I still am of the opinion that for the longest time, we had the best announcers in baseball here in California. We had Vince Scully, we had Dick Enberg, and so many people. And I learned baseball from Vin Scully. I learned all about the rules and so on, because he could announce the game, and he could include stories, but never missed announcing what was going on on the field. So you you got both, and I don't think there are many announcers today who can do that. And they've got buddies, and they they kind of talk together, but they're yammering a lot and not announcing the game, which is all the more no fun. So yeah, what do you do? Nicole Pytel  09:54 Yeah, there's something special about those guys that can just do it solo for nine innings, especially with all the break. In between pitches and things like that, I mean that's it's a lot of air to fill. So yeah, I mean Vince Gully. There's there's nobody better to learn from. Michael Hingson  10:09 No, nobody better than Vinny ever ever in baseball. And and as I said, Dick Enberg was out here, and and then in basketball we had Chick Hearn who could talk faster than anybody in the world, which was pretty cool, and there were some other announcers. They weren't necessarily just announcers like Vinny. I mean, Harry Carey, who did the Cubs, and but he was well loved and had a great personality, and it was a lot of fun. But Vinny was definitely the best, and then Dick Enberg, who also did football, and I learned a lot about football from from him, which was kind of fun. But I've always been a baseball fan. Nicole Pytel  10:46 Same, I love baseball as well. There's just something so quintessentially like wholesome and American about baseball. It's just like the hot dog, and you know, there's just something about baseball where you just feel like just a pure good old fashioned American kind of thing, you know. It's just got this feeling Michael Hingson  11:08 to it. Yeah. Well, so you went and got. Did you do advanced degrees or just a bachelor's? Nicole Pytel  11:14 I did my bachelor's. Yeah. I I went into broadcasting. Actually, majored in in broadcast journalism and psychology. Ah, wow, that's a Michael Hingson  11:23 combination. Nicole Pytel  11:24 It is, you know, I the psychology part. You know, I've always been fascinated of like why people do what they do, and I wanted to be a sports journalist. You know, ever since I can remember, and I was like, well, what a great way to really understand people if you're going to interview them and talk to them all the time, and and tell them stories, you know, through the TV. Like, what a great way to understand them. Take take psychology, learn all about that. And and now that I'm in marketing, it's it's the same thing. Trying to figure out, you know, why'd they click on that ad and not this one? Why'd they open this email and not that one? Why'd they, you know, read this case study and not that one. So it's it that that major was kind of the gift that keeps on giving. Michael Hingson  12:07 Now you, so you got your bachelor's and then you went into broadcast journalism. Nicole Pytel  12:13 I did. I did. I I took off to College Station, Texas, to be a great reporter. Yeah, really no better place. I mean, you know, you start in broadcasting, and you're going to start in a small market. And there's all kinds of cities in in the country that I'm sure are lovely, but you've never heard of them before. Your God only knows what you're going to cover. But I was very, very blessed. I got to go to College Station, Texas, so that is the home of Texas A and M, and of course Friday Night Football, the local high schools. You know that the that was my job to cover that stuff. So you can't really ask for anything better than that for a first job out of school. Michael Hingson  12:55 So did you did you announce the games or what did you do? Nicole Pytel  12:58 I didn't. I was a I was a sports reporter for one of the local affiliates in town. So, and I was a one-man band. So I shot everything, edited everything, reported everything. I did, I did all the things, all the things. No photog following me around. No, no, nothing. It was all me. So I was the one, you know, on the sidelines shooting the games or standing behind home plate, and you know it was it was fun. It was it was definitely an adventure. We could probably do an entire podcast just on crazy stories about that. Well, Michael Hingson  13:29 how long ago was that? Nicole Pytel  13:30 Oh gosh, more years ago than I I'd like to think. My goodness, I went out there in 2006. So Michael Hingson  13:39 digital cameras had started to come into play. Nicole Pytel  13:44 Yeah, sort of. Although when you're working in a small market, they don't have the newest equipment, so the cameras were still big and heavy. You had this big bag of stuff to lug around. You had the big heavy tripod. You know, you're kind of going like carrying your weight in stuff. Yeah, you know, and and I'm doing it, you know, depending on where I'm going, you know, in in like dress clothes and and heels and and trying not to fall over, you know. So, but um, yeah, no, it's that was still the big and bulky stuff back then. Michael Hingson  14:14 Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm not surprised, and at the same time, you did it. What's what's the most memorable, if you have one, memorable event or thing that you can think of that you did while you were out there in Texas doing football and baseball and all that? Nicole Pytel  14:30 Oh man, there's there's so many, there's so many. But I think one of the coolest things I got to do was, you know, Kyle Field, which is Texas A&M's home stadium. It is it is enormous. It seats you know 100,000 plus people, and you know being there on a Saturday is is unreal. It's loud. Those are probably some of the most devoted fans on the planet. They never sit down. They they. Practice all their cheers the night before. I mean, it's just wild. But you know, I used to do obviously during the season. I'd go to the weekly press conferences during the week, and I'd I'd do stories. And you know, I never. I don't know if I ever told anybody this publicly, but they used to leave a chain link gate open at Kyle Field on Tuesday afternoons. It was just unlocked, and so I would I would go in there, and the stadium would be totally empty except for me, not a soul. And I'd go in there, and I was you know shooting my own stuff. So I had it all figured out where exactly where I had to put the camera and exactly how I had the angle of the tripod and exactly where I had to stand, so that I could get there. Home of the 12th man sign like right over my shoulder, the perfect shot for you know my stand up and my story. And so every every Tuesday I'd go in there. I'd kind of sneak in. I don't know to this day if they ever knew I was in there, but but being in there, you know, on the 50-yard line of this enormous stadium, all by yourself-it's totally silent. You know what it's like at at peak velocity volume, and being in there all by yourself, you're just like, this is the coolest thing I know ever. Like this is amazing. It's wild. It's just wild. Michael Hingson  16:19 Well, I won't tell anyone. I mean, it's sort of like Vin Scully, who always said, "This is between me and you, nobody else. Nicole Pytel  16:24 Exactly, exactly. Michael Hingson  16:26 Nobody will hear it. It's okay. That's that's cool. The only thing I would say about that is, and I experience this. If you talk about crazy fans, Kentucky and football is just as challenging, I went to do a speech somewhere, and the speech was on Monday night. It was the NCAA championship in football, and the and the Kentucky Wildcats were one of the teams. And I was told that my speech had to end at 630. It could not go any later because if it went later, I'd be speaking to an empty gym. Nicole Pytel  17:04 Yes, you would absolutely no pressure, no pressure. No, no Michael Hingson  17:07 pressure at all. Well, I kept an eye on the time and and ended it right at 630, and by 631, the place was empty. It was crazy. Nicole Pytel  17:14 Cleared out, cleared out. Well, hey, that speaks well for you that they were all there before the game. They weren't tailgating or anything, you you were bigger than the tailgate. Michael Hingson  17:22 I guess so, but it was it was fun, and and then you've got North Carolina for basketball, so oh yeah, it's again it's it's pretty amazing. Well, how long did you do your your stint dealing with sports and and being in the news media? Nicole Pytel  17:41 Yeah, so I was a sports reporter for two years, and then my contract was up in the summer of 2008 when the the economy was not so great. Yeah, and I I didn't want to stay in my job not because I didn't love it. I just wasn't really making any money. You don't make any money in TV. That's the big secret. It looks so glamorous, and and you're broke. But it was so it was basically impossible to get another sports job at at that time, you know. And I got a really good opportunity at the station I was at. They were like, you know what? Like everybody in town knows you. They see you on the sidelines. They see you behind home plate. Like they see you at all the things. And so why don't you be the main news anchor? Because they were rebranding the station, and I said, you know what? Okay, cool. I'll do that. You know that that'll be something new and different. And you know it kind of hurt to leave sports, but it was a challenge. You know to be the main anchor and the producer. So it was it was my show to run. So I did that for two years as well. No pressure, no pressure at all. No, it's fine. Michael Hingson  18:51 Yeah, Nicole Pytel  18:51 pressure. Michael Hingson  18:53 So you did that for two years, and then, Nicole Pytel  18:56 and then I left, and I totally did something different. I left TV and I started my own content marketing agency. Just me, myself, and I, and my little my little built-in desk in my kitchen in my apartment. So couldn't be more different. Michael Hingson  19:12 Did you do now? Was that in Texas? It Nicole Pytel  19:15 was in Texas. It was you know it was it was you know time to leave TV, and it was just like, okay, well, what am I good at? Like, what can I do? And I said, well, shoot, I can write anything, you know. So I'll do content marketing, and and there's so many journalists that go into PR. That's kind of like the the thing they all do. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Like, I don't know. It's just like being on the journalism side, you know, all the PR people. It's like, oh, come on, guys, stop! So I went into content marketing, started my own agency, just just me, myself, and I. And you know, was it was scary, but it was fun. It was you know throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool and and seeing if you could swim. If Speaker 1  20:02 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  20:35 So now, tell me something about what content marketing Nicole Pytel  20:40 is. Yeah, so you know content marketing, and and I I've always been on on the B 2b side, the business to business. So and usually, and most of my career has been in in tech. So you know, selling very expensive things to people who are very skeptical of whether or not it works and don't want to make the wrong decision on you know a six figure platform or something like that, and it's really the content marketer's job to really kind of give them almost like a buffet of things that that they need to really figure out. Okay, what problem do I have? What solutions are there for this problem? Like, who are the different vendors? What what are the different ways to solve this problem? What makes all these vendors different? How do I know which vendor you know will actually give me ROI? Like, do they understand my business? Do they understand people like me, and then you know, getting them all the way through until they're ready for a sales conversation. And as you might imagine, people don't like to talk to salespeople. They're you know at this point probably probably 80% of the way through. You know they they probably are pretty set on on which vendor they're going to go with before they talk to sales, but you know there's all kinds of different marketing. But content's the one that really runs the whole gamut of everything. You know, you everything ties back to content because you've got to bring them to something. Like you know, ads have got to drive to something. The website's got to say something. You know, like PR has got to plug something. So, you know, content's kind of that that through line for the entire process of them making these, you know, huge expensive decisions. Michael Hingson  22:33 Well, still going into content marketing, since you were in TV, is a pretty major, pretty major switch all the way around. And what makes me curious is how did you discover you really knew and understood content marketing? And more important, even than I guess, would be since you loved TV so much, when did you decide that it was worth staying in TV than it was to switch careers? That had to be a pretty scary thing, or maybe it wasn't. You may be just used to doing that sort of thing. Nicole Pytel  23:05 Yeah, no. Leaving TV, there was a there was a day, you know, when I knew I was done with TV, and and I was kind of frustrated with it. You know, you're not making much money, and and at that time it was so tough. The economy was was still tough, even even a couple years after that, and and it was just was tough. And news is a totally different kettle of fish than sports. Sports is is fun, and the fun stories and the feature stories and news is just it can be depressing. It can you know, it like you know. If it bleeds, it leads. That's you know where we're at, and that just started to get to me. And there, there was one day where things were just really, really slow, and and I was just like, oh my god, we don't have a lead story, and time is a ticking, and 10 o'clock is coming, whether I'm ready or not, and it's not like you can get on TV and go. Well, hey, good evening. Nothing happened today. Shut off your TV and go to sleep. And that's a story. That's a story in and of itself. Nothing happened, and I was really struggling. Like, oh my God, what's the lead story? What's the lead story? Am I going to have to take something and just kind of you know make make chicken salad out of chicken you know what and try to pass this off as important, and then we heard over the scanner there had been this this fatal car accident and this teenage girl had died in a car accident you know and for a split second I thought, "Oh, thank God, I have a lead story. And then, in the next second, I went, "Oh my God! Like, how is that your reaction to this story? Like, this girl is gone; her family is destroyed forever. Like, how did your brain even get to oh my god?" Thank God, I have a lead story, and and it was then that I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. You know, I was one foot out the door, and then I was like, uh, I don't like this. And to this day, I don't remember the girl's name. I don't remember any of the details, but I still think about it because it was really this turning point of like, I just don't want to do this anymore. Like I want to go do something else. That you know, maybe if I had stayed in sports, it would have been totally different. But the news side is just-it's tough. It's tough to see all that bad stuff day after day after day and kind of capitalize on it. Yeah, Michael Hingson  25:34 I-I'm amazed at some of the reporters that that I watch and and just listen to how they report the news, and now there's always it seems in our country a lead story of some sort. But how they do it and how they're able to do it day after day without registering too much emotion is pretty amazing. And I and I hope that their characters just don't become so hardened that they don't feel sympathy, and I and I think they don't. The reporters that I tend to watch, I think, are very human oriented, but and and they they behave appropriately, but at the same time, I'm amazed that they're able to do what they do, and it's got to be so tough. Nicole Pytel  26:24 It is tough. It is tough because sadly, you're kind of seeing the worst of the worst. I mean, you know, that's that's the stuff that that makes the news. And and today, you know, I don't watch local news really at all anymore. But it seems like now it's just kind of the police blotter, and it's like when I hear about all these bad things, you know. It's just, you know, the the storytelling has has kind of fallen out of it quite a bit. Michael Hingson  26:49 I collect old radio shows as a hobby, and I'm very fascinated to listen to the all the old news broadcasts from the 20s, well, the 30s, 40s, and into the 50s mainly. And I've heard some interviews with people who did news back in those days, and and who are somewhat still well, they're still alive or they used to be, and they talk about how news broadcasting has changed over the years, and they don't they don't do the same kind of news that they they used to do where they would report on things. Now they've got different people sort of chattering back and forth, and and they're they sometimes make light of stories and they just do a lot of different things, but they're not reporting the news the way the old reporters used to do. Nicole Pytel  27:36 Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, back in the day, you had you know Walter Cronkite kind of ripping the paper off, you know, or you know they're sitting there smoking a cigarette, giving the news. I mean, you know, stuff like that, and you know, yeah, it's just it's totally different. I think it's become so sensationalized, and everybody's obsessed with being first. I think, I mean, you always want to be first, but I I think people are obsessed with being first, even if they don't always get it right. Yeah, and that's Michael Hingson  28:08 happened a lot. It Nicole Pytel  28:09 happens a lot, and and also it's like who can be the most sensational, who can make the biggest splash, and you know it just I don't know. It's it has it's changed so much. Yeah. Michael Hingson  28:25 Well, so now, but but again, well, not now. But then you went into contact mark content marketing. Do you feel that you knew that business as you were going into it, or or did you have a lot to learn? And how did you do it? Because for a while, it was just you doing everything? Nicole Pytel  28:41 Yeah, it was it was me doing literally everything. And did I know about content marketing? No, I didn't. I knew how to write, so I knew I could do copywriting. And I said, okay, well, I'll I'll figure out the marketing part. And it took a lot of courses. I learned about SEO. I learned about email marketing. I learned about inbound marketing. You know, I just took every course that I could and kind of just built the plane as I flew it. And you know, because yeah, when you start your own business and you're all by yourself, there's no there's no senior person to go ask. You're the person, and you've got to figure it out, and you know, I like to say the money train doesn't doesn't just magically show up every two weeks. You know, you've got to you've got to work and you've got to earn it. And so, when you've got your own business, you know, that's just it's a lot of pressure. And so, yeah, I just I just went and and learned as I went and learned a lot quickly. And you know, would would I tell everybody to go do that? No, but for me it was like, well, if I can do that, I can I can probably do anything. I mean, shoot, I kept a a roof over my head and food food on the table for for eight years with my. Business, so that's that's something that a lot of people can't say. Michael Hingson  30:03 Did you make any kind of mistake at the beginning, or as you were starting and running this business, that you're very grateful today that you made? Nicole Pytel  30:11 Oh, I I made plenty of mistakes. Oh my goodness! And of course, you're going to make mistakes. You're you're just learning. You're just drinking from the fire hose and just hanging onto the bowl, you know, and I think there was a there was a couple of mistakes I made. I think probably the biggest was not shutting off, you know. And I had come from news where at 10 o'clock the news started, at 1030 the show was over. You were done for the day. Nothing carried over to the next day. You came into work the next day. You started over, and it was really hard to have work that dragged on for days or weeks at a time. And you know, it was hard to shut off, especially when it's your own business. It's like, oh, let me just reply to this one email, or let me check this one thing, or let me go do this one thing over here. And and when I started my own business, you know, I was working, I was working out of the kitchen. So you know, you go to sit down and relax on the couch at night, and and your computer's you know four feet away in the kitchen. So oh, I'll I'll just go check this one thing, and I never was shutting off, and you burn out that way. You really, you really do. And I'm glad I learned that lesson. And I'm not saying I've never repeated that lesson because I've definitely, you know, it's it's a very acquired skill to be able to just turn your brain off and and go focus on something else. But I'm glad I made that mistake because it really showed me, like, you don't have to be on 24/7 even to run your own business, you know, like, and you have to stop. And so, what I've done ever since then, ever since I was able to afford, you know, a two-bedroom apartment or whatever, even my house now. I've always had an office so that you know I go, I do my work, and then at the end of the day, I shut off the computer and I leave that room, and I don't come back until the next day. Where it's like you know, like if you go to a traditional office, you get up at 5o'clock, you walk out, you're back at 9o'clock the next morning, like I've worked really hard to do that at home to really avoid that whole always on kind of mentality because you've just got to kind of stop, you know. Michael Hingson  32:34 Yeah, I my wife passed away in November of 2022, and she was more of a late riser, and I was more of a morning person, but we compromise pretty well. But since she has passed, I tend to get up pretty early because I can eat breakfast and then come in and spend time before anything else happens, going through emails and doing some things. But I don't have to rush doing it, and that helps. But then, then then the the other things happen in the course of the day. But I I know what you're saying, and I work pretty hard at shutting things down by around 5o'clock. Of course, I also have to do that because I have two creatures who say it's five here, not somewhere else, and we better get our food. Yeah. Yep. So they help, but I hear what you're saying, and it and it is a it is a discipline. Working at home and working for yourself is a is a discipline that a lot of people Nicole Pytel  33:33 oh yeah Michael Hingson  33:34 could learn and don't or just don't have the skills to do. But it is, I think, a very doable thing, and I enjoy it. And I usually have I usually have television as well. I have television or something on in the background, although I don't listen to much of it. It's just background noise, but it's there and it helps. Nicole Pytel  33:53 Yeah, yeah. There's something about silence. I've always got to have you know some music on or something. It's like the silence gets a little deafening when you're at home working, it's it's it's funny that way. Michael Hingson  34:03 I do some stuff on the weekends, and when I when I do catching up on letters and things like that on the weekends, I typically don't turn anything on. I just focus and get it done, and then I go off and read and do other things. So it works out. But I but I hear what you're saying, and I think it's an important lesson to learn that you've got to learn. You've got to find a way to recognize that that it is important to turn off. And if you don't, you're going to drive yourself crazy. Nicole Pytel  34:30 You will. And and you know now that we've got you know email on our phones and Slack on our phones and LinkedIn on our phones, it's really easy to sit on the couch at night after dinner and just let me check my email this one more time, or or let me reply to this Slack message, and you just gotta stop because you will burn out, and and then you know you're you're of no use to anybody, most of all yourself, you know. And I think that Michael Hingson  34:57 oh, go ahead. Nicole Pytel  34:58 I was just gonna say I think it. I think it's a lesson that a lot of people struggle with, you know, because everything is just this on-demand one tap of your phone. You can just be back at work 24 hours a day, and I think you have to learn that I don't have to be on 24-seven to be successful. Think that's the thing you've got to learn. Michael Hingson  35:20 Do you think you've experienced burnout along the way? Nicole Pytel  35:23 Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I, I, you know, one of my bad habits is, you know, I'll kind of like put myself last, and I've learned that, you know, oh, it's really easy to, you know, oh, I won't go for a run this morning because I've got you know this work thing that I've got to do, and you know you've got to kind of treat yourself as a non-negotiable as well. You know, not that you get to do the run every morning. There's some mornings when you really can't, but if you look at the run as you know something of that's you taking care of yourself, and something that that is pretty non-negotiable, and it needs to be part of the schedule. You're you're more likely to to stick with it and not push it off to the side. Because yeah, I'm guilty of that. You know, you you push things off to the side. You're eating at your desk. You're passing up on this, or oh, I'm not going to go out to dinner tonight because I'm going to sit here and catch up on stuff, and and you burn out, you know, and it's exhausting. Michael Hingson  36:28 Yeah, yeah, you gotta gotta learn to keep things in perspective, and you're right. Yeah, yourself is is an important part of of what you do, and you have to be able to take care of yourself along the way as well, Speaker 1  36:42 yeah. Michael Hingson  36:42 Well, you had your own company for almost 10 years, and then you decided to go back to work for someone else. What what caused that to happen? Nicole Pytel  36:50 Yeah, so it was a couple of things. You know, one was you know when you own your own business, and and Michael, you understand this. You're you're the everything. You're you're the you're the president. You're the head of marketing. You're the head of sales. You're the head of operations. You're doing the taxes. You're you're doing all the things, and you're not necessarily good at all the things, and you don't necessarily enjoy all the things. You know, and so there was kind of two reasons. So I wanted to really focus on what I was good at, which was the content marketing part. You know, I didn't want to have to fill out quarterly reports for the state or you know things like that. All the admin work that goes in into running your own business, and so I said, okay, I want to be able to do what I do best, and I want to be able to work with clients that are bigger than I can get myself. And so I was really, really lucky to land at an agency. I worked remotely, but the agency was was based in Silicon Valley, and you know our our biggest client was Google, and you know for clients it doesn't get any bigger than that so you know I got to just focus on the content marketing part and work with with companies and and people that I never would have been exposed to if I had stuck with my own business you know no matter what I was never going to break into Silicon Valley from from my apartment in Florida, so you know it was the right decision. It really was, and and in job interviews, people asked me, "Well, you're giving up being your own boss? And it's like I've got very specific reasons for doing that. It was just time, you know. Michael Hingson  38:35 Do you feel like in any way it was a step backwards going to work for somebody rather than being the boss? Nicole Pytel  38:42 No, I don't think so. You know, because I've that eight years that I had in my own business, I got I I've got that under my belt, and you know, no one can take that experience away. You know, it is it is what it is. I learned a lot of lessons. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way too, and it was a great springboard. But I like being able to focus on what I'm best at, and you know the stuff that I've been able to do since then. I wouldn't have had those opportunities if I had just kind of kept with my own business. So I didn't see it as a step back at all because I had very specific reasons for making the move. Michael Hingson  39:20 Yeah, and you know I respect that, and and went through the same sort of thing. I owned my own company for four years back in the mid 1980s because I wasn't able to find a job at the time. People just wouldn't hire blind people, so I started my own company, and then eventually decided to go back into the workforce. And my wife and I worked out a a plan for that, and I created a cover letter that actually impressed some people, and I got a job out of it. But by the same token, I wasn't at all regretful about having to stop doing what I was doing and go back to work for someone else, partly because some of those very pressures that. We're talking about went away, and partly because, as you said, it was time, and I knew it, so we did. Nicole Pytel  40:07 Yeah, yeah. You've got to you've got to go with your gut and stuff like that. You know, like if if your gut is telling you something, or if you're like, I think I'd be a little bit happier doing something else, or if I didn't have to do this part of it, you know, go for Michael Hingson  40:24 it. Well, so there were times that, as you describe it, you would go into a role with no map. You were the only and the first content marketing hire, and you did a lot of stuff with Google Cloud marketing and and so on. What's the difference? I guess the best way to put it. What's the difference between, well, yeah, what's the difference between confidence and just hiding fear? That's probably the good basic question. Nicole Pytel  40:51 Yeah, yeah, they're probably kind of on the same plane, but they project Michael Hingson  41:00 differently. Nicole Pytel  41:01 They project very differently. They they project very differently. So so yes, you know, I created my own business, and then two of the agencies I've worked at, I was the first you know full time content hire. Built the content marketing practice. It was like building a business within a business, and and all the things that go along with that, I just didn't have to do the taxes, and which is a good thing. Yeah, it's a great thing. And then at the same time, yeah, I was I was embedded with with Google Cloud's marketing organization, and and so I think confidence is you know you can do it. Like deep down, you're like I know my stuff, I can do the work, I can do this, and then of course there's the fear of, oh my god! Like Google, like I'm gonna have a Google email address. I'm gonna have you know a title at Google and a supervisor at Google. Like, oh my god! Like, and then of course you know the the fear comes in. The imposter syndrome kind of comes in. Like me, me, really? And I think it's kind of like jumping into a really cold pool. You're scared, but you just gotta do it and kind of not fake it till you make it, but just dive in and trust in the confidence side. You know, there's like it's like the devil and the angel on your shoulder. One is your confidence. That's the angel, and the devil is the fear. And just listen to that confident part, and eventually, I feel like the fear gets drowned out. Now, does the imposter system ever imposter syndrome ever totally go away? Of course not. Of course not. We all have days where you're like, why am I here? Why is anybody listening to me? Why does anybody think I'm smart? We all have those days, but you know, eventually, you know, if you've got that confidence in yourself, it will win out. Michael Hingson  42:52 Yeah, and and it is something that we all have to deal with. But I think we can. I think if we truly understand ourselves and we listen to our inner voice. We'll get the guidance and the confidence that we need. I think so many people tend not to be introspective and tend not to go back and listen to the lessons that they could learn from their own inner subconscious, their own inner voice. And the result of that is that they they end up being very clueless, but the fact of the matter is, there's a part of you that monitors every single solitary thing that you do, and it's ready to give you the information that you need if you'll but take the time to learn to listen to it. And most people just don't do that. But the fact is, we should take that time because we'll get better results than we would ever get any other way. Nicole Pytel  43:45 It's funny because we'll say things to ourselves that we would never say to somebody else. Like you'd never say it to a friend, but you say it to yourself. It's like, why do we do that? And you know, sometimes I think one of the most important questions I've ever asked myself is why not you? You know, you want to go be a sports journalist in Texas? Why not you? Why can't you do that? You want to own your own business? Why not you? People do that all the time. Why? Why can't you do it? And I think if you if you're really honest with yourself, and you say, "Well, why not you? And you force yourself to kind of have this conversation with yourself and give an answer. A lot of times, you can't think of Michael Hingson  44:33 one, and you create excuses. Nicole Pytel  44:37 You do, which Michael Hingson  44:38 really are are not helping, and they're not healthy, but you do it anyway. And I understand the concept of imposter syndrome, but you ultimately have control over that. Nicole Pytel  44:50 You do, and I think that's the thing. It's you know I think anxiety gets the best of us a lot of the time, and and you've got to be like, okay, well, what can I control? What is totally out of my control? I actually heard somebody say today, you know, when anxiety creeps in and you have a thought, "Oh my God, what if X Y Z happens? You say to yourself, "So what if it does? Like, so what? Like, can you control it? Can you fix it? And if not, then then you shouldn't just give it airtime in your brain, you know. We Michael Hingson  45:23 spend so much time worrying about everything over which we don't have control, and we don't really learn the about the things over which we truly have control and should focus our time on, which is which is such an issue because the reality is over 95% of the things that we worry about and what if about all the time are things over which we have no control. I hear a lot of people say I don't watch the news because I just get angry at all that. Well, I like to watch the news because I love information, but I can do that generally without getting angry. Now, sometimes I will, I will yell at somebody on the the TV because they say dumb things. There are people who have learned how to do that, but I also don't spend a lot of time at it, and I also know that I'm not going to hurt them, even if they hear me. So the Michael Hingson  46:16 the bottom line is that I I work at not doing that, but I still want to get the information as to what's going on, so I do. Nicole Pytel  46:24 Yeah, and that's you. I want to know, and what can I control my reaction to it? I'm not going to get angry unless somebody says something really, really stupid, and and then you know it comes out. But yeah, it's it. That's a great example. I want to know what's happening, and I'm going to control my reaction to it, and a lot of times that's all we can control is our reaction to things. Michael Hingson  46:45 But we don't, which is really and we don't. We don't, and we should. Nicole Pytel  46:49 Yep. Michael Hingson  46:50 Well, speaking of reactions, earlier this year you got laid off from your VP role. I'm I'm curious, what did that do to how you see your own professional identity and and and so on, or did you know it was coming, or anything like that? Nicole Pytel  47:05 There, there were some rumblings right before it happened that it was coming, and you know I'm one of sadly very very many people, you know, 1000s, 10s of 1000s, maybe even hundreds of 1000s of people in this position, and and it's it's tough because you're not your job, but when you do something 40 hours a week and and you get up every day and that's what you do, it becomes part of who you are. It's like that's what I do, and then when that's gone, it's just like, well, now like am I still am I still useful? Like, am I still smart? You know, and and all these things go go through your mind, and you learn a lot about yourself when that happens. You know, talking about hey, all I can control is how I react to it. You know, Lord knows. You know, when you get laid off, like there's a a million what ifs running through your brain, and and all you can do is just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and and controlling how you react to it. But it absolutely, you know, it definitely shakes your confidence, and you know, it's it's it's a very weird feeling, you know that first Monday when you don't go to work. It's like, oh my God, the rest of the world went back to work, and and I didn't, and it's very jarring. You know, especially when you're when you're as old a fossil as me and you've been working for so long, it's like now you're not. You know, I've been I've been very very lucky to take on you know some freelance work and stuff like that, and and you know it's given me an opportunity to really catch up on a lot of the things that I wanted to learn and try and do when I was working full time and didn't really have the time. So from that perspective, it's been really good. But it it it'll knock you down for a minute, and it's up to you to kind of pick yourself back up, and that's where you kind of learn a lot about yourself as to how how you react to that. Michael Hingson  49:08 Yeah, and you have to again. It's a matter of choice, and you have to decide what what you want to do. Well, so you got laid off. Did you sleep late that first Monday? Nicole Pytel  49:19 I didn't. You know what I did. You know what I did. I I knew I had to give myself something to do, so I got up early on that first Monday and I went and got the oil changed in my car. I was like, I'm gonna go out and be productive. You know, could I have laid in bed all day and just kind of wallowed in self. Yeah, that doesn't help. Yeah, but that's not helpful. So I was like, "I'm going to go get that oil change I've been putting off for like two months. And you got to go Michael Hingson  49:49 in earlier than you otherwise would have, and probably got it done sooner. Nicole Pytel  49:53 There you go. There you go. Sometimes it just works out. Michael Hingson  49:57 And you probably had two little fur creatures who. We're very glad to see you continuing to support their habits. Nicole Pytel  50:04 Yes, yes, they my little fur divas. Yes, they're kind of like you know now you know Minnie Minnie's worked with me her whole life. She just turned 14. I've had her since she was 11 months old, and and I've I've worked at home her whole life, and so she she comes to the office with me every single day with her little memory foam, and and and and she gets her decompression time too. You know, she knows at 5o'clock when I take her memory foam bed back into the bedroom. Like, all right, I'm done working for the day. I'm good. But you know, at first she was like, "Why aren't we working, mom? And then you know, we got some freelance work and got back in the office, and I could tell she was like, "Okay, we're getting back to normal. Because at first they were both like, "What are we doing? Aren't you supposed to be working? Like, what's happening? But as long as they've got all their treats and all their toys and and and you know all their things, they're good. Michael Hingson  50:58 Didn't you tell them that was time for them to go get a job? Nicole Pytel  51:01 Oh yeah, absolutely. Michael Hingson  51:03 And how'd that work for you? Absolutely. Nicole Pytel  51:04 No, it didn't work out. They were like, "We don't do that. Like, I don't think you understand, Mom. Yeah, this is not how this works. Yeah, Michael Hingson  51:11 yeah. Well, so one of the things I think that's interesting, we're and we're all facing it to one degree or another, is the whole concept of of AI, a lot of people are afraid that AI is coming for their jobs, and I can make some comments, and I will about that. But you've chosen to face that fear and confront it. So I guess the real question is, why do you think that was the right call, and what do you think about this whole business of AI? Nicole Pytel  51:39 AI is really something, and so so I I've seen both sides of it. As a content marketer, you know we were supposed to become extinct because AI could just write everything. And my point is, is like, can AI create content? Sure, but it doesn't know what to create, and that's where the human comes in. It like the human has to come up with the strategy, and you know I remember the first time trying out ChatGPT and having it write stuff, and it wasn't very good, and and you know obviously things have gotten much much better in in the past 334 years, but you know it just became obvious that that this is a thing, and I guess you know, as a benefit, so many of of my clients were AI companies in some way, shape, or form, and it's like this is happening, and you have got to learn how to deal with it. And at least in my job, it can it can make me better at my job because it can speed things up. It can kind of eliminate some redundancies, you know. And is it ever going to replace me? No, because I'm the human with the judgment, and I understand, you know, the business goals of of what we're trying to do and how we hit the revenue goals and who the audience is and what they care about and all of those things, but I think one of the the silver linings of of getting laid off was you know I've I've had a you know a chunk of time to really dive in and get my hands dirty with AI like the things that I was like, oh, if I could have it do this, this, and this, that'd be really cool. And then go in and build it and see, hey, can I actually build this and go into Claude Code and see if if I really can do that, you know? And and it's given me a chance to really do that and go, okay, well, when I when I get another job, this is how I'm going to use AI on day one. I'm going to create, you know, this list of things, and here's why. Here's the order I'm going to do them in, and here's where I'm going to use AI to make it better. But more importantly, here's kind of the framework for how humans and AI should work together in content marketing, because there's so many people out there that are like, "Hey, ChatGPT, go write my website for me, and then they wonder why it's not very good or or why it sounds the same as as their competitors. You know, there's studies out there that say you know buyers think that these companies all sound the same, and you know AI is a big reason for that. So if you can really figure out how humans and AI work together, I think that's that's the piece, you know. And and there at the beginning there were a lot of content marketing kind of purists out there that were like, I will never use this. I'm gonna write everything myself. I'm gonna do everything from scratch, and I was just like, "That's like saying, you know, when cars came out, like I'm not, I'm not riding a horse. I'm not getting a car. I'm taking my horse and buggy to work. You know, I mean, it's the same thing. Like things evolve, and and you know, take advantage of it. Michael Hingson  54:56 Well, the reality is that AI is here. And I think you're right. What we need to do is to learn how to use it. I heard a friend comment a couple months ago that was talking to his boss about AI, and his boss said, "I will never fire you and replace you with AI. I won't do that, he said. "I might fire you if you don't learn how to use AI. Nicole Pytel  55:26 Yes, and Michael Hingson  55:26 I think that's absolutely true. I I use AI when I write because it gives me ideas, but ultimately I have to still be the one to create them, and I am not convinced that we're going to see AI in anywhere in the near future, develop the true human spirit and learn how to do the things that we do, Nicole Pytel  55:48 right? Michael Hingson  55:50 And so I think it's important that we learn how to use AI, and we I get a lot of great ideas from it, and so I go into what I write, and that's great because it's got a lot more information and experience than I do. So I don't mind doing that, and I'll be glad to take the ideas. The first time I heard anybody talking about AI was in a Christmas party with relatives, and somebody was complaining because teachers were grousing about the fact that kids were just letting AI write their papers, Nicole Pytel  56:22 yeah. Michael Hingson  56:22 And I said, why not let AI write the papers? You're missing a golden opportunity, and the golden opportunity. And I've said this before on Unstoppable Mindset, but the golden opportunity is the teacher should let students, if they want to use AI to write their papers, let them use AI to write their papers. But then, after you collect the papers, take a period, call each student to the front of the class, and say, "Now defend your position. You're going to find out who really knows what they're talking about and who doesn't. Nicole Pytel  56:50 Yep. Michael Hingson  56:51 What a great opportunity! Nicole Pytel  56:53 That's one way to do it for sure. And my guess is most of them would have no idea. Yeah. Michael Hingson  57:00 How was your view of a special of a professional career change since you started years ago, or has it? Nicole Pytel  57:08 Yeah, many, many, many moons ago. Many Michael Hingson  57:11 moons. Nicole Pytel  57:12 You know, I think when when you first start out in your career, and tell me, Michael, if you agree with this, you know, you just want to get going. It's like I'm a grown up now. I get to do all these grown up things and all the things that I learned about in school. I'm gonna run off and do them, and I want to do as much as I can, as fast as I can, and and climb the ladder and do all the things. And then, you know, that's still important, obviously. But I think it's more about, you know, am I doing something that I take? I truly, truly take pride in something that I believe in. You know, like you know, I could never go work for a company and and do marketing if if I thought the product was boring. You know, I just couldn't. I I don't really care what title you give me, or you know how much money you want to pay me. It's like if it's going to be boring, I don't, I don't want to do it. So I think part of it is, you know, are are you getting satisfaction out of what you're doing? Michael Hingson  58:13 Also, we need to recognize and understand that sometimes life gets in the way, and you start out with a great plan. This is what I'm going to do, and something happens to change it. And the reality is, again, it's of course how you approach that change. But that change might very well be for the best. I know that's happened to me several times, and I have learned that life may happen, things may happen, but I'm gonna not. I don't. I didn't have control over the change necessarily happening. So it's a question more about how I decide to deal with it and what I'm going to do. And I think that's what's really so important to be able to do. And so I find that it's so important to let life do what life is going to do, and you evaluate which way you want to go, but truly evaluate it. Don't don't just react. Sit back and think. You may decide to keep on doing what you're doing, and you're given another opportunity. And of course, for me, the most dramatic example of that is after September 11th, people started calling and saying, "Gee, would you come and talk to us and tell us what we ought to know about September 11th and talk to us about leadership and so on. We saw your name in the media and we want to hear from you and we'll pay you. And of course, you'll pay me. That was a great start. But but what happened was that so many of those happened that my wife and I at the by the beginning of 2002 realized that this was an incredible opportunity. It would take work, but it was an incredible opportunity, and that in reality, as I tell people, selling life and philosophy is a whole lot more rewarding than being a computer hardware sales manager and selling computer hardware. And so I've been doing it ever since, and I've had so many wonderful advances. And I've I've met so many people, learned so many things, and I spend the time working on learning wherever I go and wherever I speak, and so I can't complain at all about what what caused my life to change. Nicole Pytel  1:00:15 Yeah, I mean everything happens for a reason. I really do believe that, and and you may not know what that reason is right away, but yeah, I mean, look at you. I I I can't even imagine having been there on September 11th. It was it was jaw dropping enough to to watch it on TV, and and I'm sure there was a lot that went through your mind and and went through your mind during and right after. And but now look at I mean all the people that that you've gotten to inspire and and educate and motivate and and people who have really learned something and you never would have had that platform. It's it's it's really something. Michael Hingson  1:00:56 Yeah, and and it's and and if you're given a choice between two things that both really sound great, you make a choice, and then you live with the choice you made. Again, don't don't what if the things over which you don't have control, Nicole Pytel  1:01:13 right? Exactly. Michael Hingson  1:01:15 Well, if someone is in a position today where they're listening and they're standing kind of in the same place you were when you decided to go leave television, so on, and they're certain that they should be going off and doing something different, but they're terrified to admit it. What would you say is the one thing that you should tell them? Nicole Pytel  1:01:36 I would say if your gut is telling you to do something, you need to listen to it, and I would say, ask yourself why not me? Why can't I go do this now? If you want to run off and be an

What do the Alamo, the Murdaugh family and the federal case against former New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell tell us about the South today? Investigative journalist Jed Lipinski spent years reporting for The Times-Picayune, and now his Edward R. Murrow Award-winning podcast "Gone South" is expanding beyond true crime to examine the myths, power structures and complicated legacies that still shape this region.

FOX'S Jimmy Failla sits down with Kennedy to discuss the stark contrast between living in major coastal cities like New York and the quality of life in the Midwest. From wild and unpredictable subway encounters to soaring rent prices and middle-American sanity, they break down why big-city chaos is making small-town living look better than ever. Plus, Jimmy shares highlights from his recent trip to San Antonio, TX, why he'll always "Remember the Alamo," and where you can catch him and Kennedy next. Kennedy Now Available on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.podtrac.com/kstw_yt⁠⁠⁠ Follow on TikTok:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@kennedy_foxnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join Kennedy for Happy Hour on Fridays!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWlNiiSXX4BNUbXM5X8KkYbDepFgUIVZj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of A Book with Legs, Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager, welcomes back Bryan Burrough to discuss his book, “The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild.”Bryan Burrough is a New York Times bestselling author or coauthor of eight books, including the Wall Street classic “Barbarians at the Gate,” which he previously discussed on A Book With Legs podcast, as well as “Public Enemies,” “The Big Rich,” and “Forget the Alamo.” He spent nearly a decade as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has been a longtime special correspondent for Vanity Fair.The conversation traces how a Southern honor code, a new piece of technology, the Colt revolver, and a generation of traumatized Civil War veterans collided in one state to produce three decades of violence, and how journalism turned killers into folk heroes. Along the way: how Texas became home to 30% of all major postwar gunfights in America, the true origins of the gunfighter in Southern dueling culture rather than frontier life, and how legends like Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Jesse James were built as much by newspapers as by their own actions.“The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild,” published by Penguin Press, is available now.Sign up to be notified about new episodes: https://hubs.ly/Q0452V800

This episode previews UTSA's defensive line heading into the 2026 season and looks at the biggest early camp takeaways from the unit. Jared and Adrian also discuss who might be flying under the radar, which transfers are poised to make an immediate impact, and how a new defensive line coach could impact the play on the field. Sign up for a free month of Patreon at this link: https://www.patreon.com/alamodomeaudible/redeem/EDAA2 (Offer expires at kickoff against UTRGV) Video: https://youtu.be/GwVtKxfR2Rk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this bonus episode, Jim shares a song that ties back to his childhood fascination with the Alamo.Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcSign up for our newsletter: https://www.patreon.com/collection/2136865Make a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lUSend us a Voice Memo: Desktop: bit.ly/2RyD5Ah Mobile: sayhi.chat/soundopsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hear J5 and MC continue their breakdown of the chaos within Season 3 of Euphoria Season 3 with Episodes 4, 5 and 6! After a whirlwind of a wedding in Monday's episode, the feds do a sweep on Rue and turn her into a DEA informant, Cassie's Linktree is on fire with Maddy behind the wheel and Nate has taken his fifth ass beating in the matter of days -- how the hell did we get here from East Highland High?! Across town, we meet Jules and Lexi in one of the oddest segments of the season, confused on her change of direction in the show's final moments. Finally, we unpack Alamo's tragic backstory right before sharing the lessons from Rue's latest sign from God. Tune in this Friday, August 14 for the series finale of Overly Medicated, discussing Episodes 7 and 8 + our overall look at the highlights throughout three seasons of HBO's memorable drama!

The Alamo Audible crew joins the Birds Up Podcast to break down everything Roadrunner fans need to know heading into the 2026 UTSA Football season. We'll discuss key returning players, new additions, position battles, must-watch matchups and the biggest questions facing the team. Can UTSA contend for an American Conference championship and return to the postseason? Tune in for expert insight, bold predictions and plenty of Roadrunner football talk as we get ready for kickoff. Birds Up! Show Notes:UT San Antonio Alumni/UT San Antonio MembershipUTSA FootballAlamo Audible     Thanks for tuning in! Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe for more great content! Birds Up!

Garry, Kris, Dan, and Andy take you behind the scenes of their epic Texas video swing—from the Alamo and Galveston to San Jacinto and the remarkable John Nau Collection. Hear about the history, road-trip adventures, unexpected moments, and inevitable chaos that unfolded when the cameras weren't rolling, and Garry forgot to get Dan's coffee. 

With the Roadrunners kicking off fall camp this week it's time for us to dive into this season's schedule. A relatively favorable schedule will give UTSA a chance to take an early lead in the conference championship run, but they'll first need to handle business against Texas State. We breakdown each opponent on the schedule, highlighting the most important games on the docket. Want to unlock all of our season preview content? Join us for a free month on Patreon at this link: https://www.patreon.com/alamodomeaudible/redeem/EDAA2 Video: https://youtu.be/eDJchjL_N1o 0:00 Intro: season stakes for Jeff Traylor & UTSA 3:12 AAC race wide open entering 2026 6:26 Vegas win total & schedule strength 10:38 vs. UTRGV 18:22 at Texas State 24:13 at Texas 26:02 vs. Colorado State 32:38 at Rice 37:32 vs. South Florida 44:04 vs. Navy 46:15 at Tulane 50:19 at Florida Atlantic 53:19 vs. North Texas 57:29 at UAB 1:01:08 vs. Tulsa 1:04:33 Season outlook & win total prediction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

French Rizz has officially landed in Paris... and immediately started taking the worst tourist photos in recorded history. While Rizz enjoys croissants, wine, and accidentally inventing "half-photo tourism," the rest of the crew takes over the studio and proves that absolutely nothing can stay on the rails for very long.Moon discovers that having an empty house sounds a lot more relaxing than it actually is, because apparently sitting still for more than six minutes causes immediate guilt. King Scott earns legitimate homeowner points by repairing his own dryer, immediately becoming every Midwest dad's favorite person. Lern shares the highs and lows of Copper Fire's latest show, where technical problems forced the band to improvise through feedback, monitor speakers, and pure determination. Sometimes rock and roll isn't glamorous... sometimes it's just hoping the audience sticks around anyway.Then Rafe returns from San Antonio with what may become one of the show's all-time travel stories. Between Southwest Airlines delays, airport complaints, Pee-wee Herman's bike inside the Alamo museum, and a confession involving the Alamo that definitely deserves its own historical plaque, the crew spends way too much time debating what actually counts as "peeing at the Alamo." It's exactly the kind of discussion you'd expect from your favorite daily comedy show.As if that wasn't enough, Taco Bell's lettuce lawsuit continues to grow, the crew debates whether $200 is enough compensation for catastrophic fast-food regret, someone steals thousands of dollars worth of Little Debbie snacks, Martha Stewart accidentally provides some unforgettable sound bites during National Grab Some Nuts Day, and everyone shares the snacks they secretly keep stocked around the studio.Throw in conversations about French vacations, delayed flights, NBA jerseys, the St. Louis Riverfront, fashion rankings, summer heat making everyone older, and the usual nonstop roasting between friends, and you've got another completely normal episode of The Rizzuto Show—which, of course, means absolutely nothing about it is normal.Whether you're listening on your morning commute, at work pretending to be productive, or simply looking for an excuse to laugh at somebody else's terrible decisions, this daily comedy show delivers another episode packed with ridiculous stories, unexpected tangents, and the kind of chemistry that only comes from friends who have absolutely no problem embarrassing one another for entertainment.Thanks for making us part of your day. If you laughed, groaned, or questioned how any of these conversations happened, mission accomplished. We'll be back tomorrow with even more chaos, because that's what a daily comedy show is supposed to do.Follow The Rizzuto Show → https://linktr.ee/rizzshowConnect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → https://1057thepoint.com/RizzShowHear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

French Rizz has officially landed in Paris... and immediately started taking the worst tourist photos in recorded history. While Rizz enjoys croissants, wine, and accidentally inventing "half-photo tourism," the rest of the crew takes over the studio and proves that absolutely nothing can stay on the rails for very long.Moon discovers that having an empty house sounds a lot more relaxing than it actually is, because apparently sitting still for more than six minutes causes immediate guilt. King Scott earns legitimate homeowner points by repairing his own dryer, immediately becoming every Midwest dad's favorite person. Lern shares the highs and lows of Copper Fire's latest show, where technical problems forced the band to improvise through feedback, monitor speakers, and pure determination. Sometimes rock and roll isn't glamorous... sometimes it's just hoping the audience sticks around anyway.Then Rafe returns from San Antonio with what may become one of the show's all-time travel stories. Between Southwest Airlines delays, airport complaints, Pee-wee Herman's bike inside the Alamo museum, and a confession involving the Alamo that definitely deserves its own historical plaque, the crew spends way too much time debating what actually counts as "peeing at the Alamo." It's exactly the kind of discussion you'd expect from your favorite daily comedy show.As if that wasn't enough, Taco Bell's lettuce lawsuit continues to grow, the crew debates whether $200 is enough compensation for catastrophic fast-food regret, someone steals thousands of dollars worth of Little Debbie snacks, Martha Stewart accidentally provides some unforgettable sound bites during National Grab Some Nuts Day, and everyone shares the snacks they secretly keep stocked around the studio.Throw in conversations about French vacations, delayed flights, NBA jerseys, the St. Louis Riverfront, fashion rankings, summer heat making everyone older, and the usual nonstop roasting between friends, and you've got another completely normal episode of The Rizzuto Show—which, of course, means absolutely nothing about it is normal.One hundred episodes in and somehow we've reached peak Rizz Show chaos. One mysterious coffee cake delivery instantly derails the entire morning as the crew debates legendary Missouri bakeries, family traditions, suspiciously delicious pastries, and whether one slice is enough motivation to break a Guinness World Record for push-ups. (Spoiler: probably not.)The gang dives into Ariana Grande taking a well-earned break after an exhausting run of performances while discussing the line between public concern and respecting someone's privacy. Then it's onto the latest mystery surrounding Slipknot's Sid Wilson, Smashing Pumpkins celebrating a massive hometown moment at Lollapalooza, William Shatner somehow becoming a heavy metal performer at 95, and a look back at one of television's most unforgettable characters.Movie lovers get plenty to chew on too. Spider-Man continues dominating theaters, Barbie 2 hits development roadblocks, and the crew wonders why Hollywood keeps rebooting everything instead of taking chances on original stories. Along the way they revisit cult classics, argue about the greatest television series ever made, celebrate indie filmmaking, and somehow end up ranking the most scientifically accurate disaster movies ever filmed. Because naturally that's where breakfast conversations lead.The laughs don't stop there. There's an ongoing push-up debate, questionable workout motivation involving coffee cake crumbs, "Back in the Day" history lessons, celebrity birthdays, bizarre Hollywood stories, ridiculous hypotheticals, and the kind of sarcastic banter that somehow turns every topic into comedy.With Rizz celebrating his birthday overseas, the gang decides that "Happy Birthday" is officially retired and immediately begins brainstorming the next long-term psychological prank. The mission? Convince him that everyone has always celebrated Happy Bastille Day, Rizz. The debate spirals into Mandela Effects, alternate realities, and enough gaslighting to make even the French question reality.Meanwhile, breakfast becomes an Olympic event as four boxes of donuts disappear at alarming speed while pre-workout somehow enters the equation. The crew debates whether they're fueling up for the gym or an emergency nap, and honestly nobody ever figures it out.Then comes one of the most unpredictable rounds of "3 in 5" in recent memory. Listeners battle through categories ranging from beans and famous vampires to Pixar movies, breakfast cereals, state capitals, and Tom Hanks films. Some contestants dominate. Others completely forget movies exist. Rules are forgotten. Rules are invented. Tickets are awarded anyway because apparently Charity Monday is alive and well.The conversation also dives into birthday bash planning, exclusive birthday beer names, concert giveaways, and plenty of classic Rizz Show side quests that somehow become funnier than the original topic. It is exactly the kind of organized chaos fans expect from a funny morning show that refuses to stay on script.Whether you're here for ridiculous games, sarcastic humor, listener interactions, or simply watching adults argue about whether "Happy Bastille Day" is a perfectly normal greeting, this episode delivers another unforgettable daily comedy podcast.If you're new here, welcome to the weird corner of the internet where logic takes the day off and everyone somehow leaves happier than they arrived. Fans of comedy podcasts, daily shows, pop culture commentary, hilarious fails, and St. Louis radio will feel right at home.This daily comedy podcast proudly serves comedy, chaos, and questionable decision-making every single weekday.Follow The Rizzuto Show → https://linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → https://1057thepoint.com/RizzShowHear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.Phil Collins Alamo CollectionCyclospora: Missouri cases near 600, but state still missing from CDC outbreak mapTaylor Farms Class Action Seeks $200 for Taco Bell CustomersClothes cost people the most in these 5 U.S. cities, study findsLittle Debbie BanditStudy: Extreme Heat May Speed Up Aging in Older Adults10 Ways to Help Your Child Recognize Unsafe SituationsBack-to-School Mental Health: Guide for ParentsCollege instructor goes viral for catching students using AIAriana Grande Is ‘Taking a Step Back from Visibility'See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1821, a little-known backwoods hunter named David Crockett won a seat in the Tennessee legislature, despite having little formal education and virtually no political experience beyond his gift for spinning a good story. It marked an unlikely turning point for a man who would become a symbol of the American frontier, which was then rapidly expanding as settlers pushed into land long inhabited by Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, Crockett's frontier persona would prove his greatest political asset, eventually carrying him all the way to Congress. But once there, he would break with his own party over Native removal, before heading to Texas for one final, fateful stand at the Alamo.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

An assault on a congressman in Washington launches a chain of events that would permanently redraw the map of North America.  This episode traces the remarkable rise of Sam Houston from his Cherokee roots, political scandal, and exile, through the Alamo, San Jacinto, and the fight over Texas annexation.  Then President James K. Polk turns Manifest Destiny into war, sending American armies deep into Mexico over protests from critics in Congress calling out the bloodshed.  And an unknown State Department clerk defies the White House in negotiating the treaty that secures the vast American Southwest, setting America on a collision course with itself. GLENN'S SPONSORS: American Financing: American Financing can show you how to put your hard-earned equity to work and get you out of debt. Dial ⁠800-906-2440⁠, or visit ⁠https://www.americanfinancing.net⁠. Real Estate Agents I Trust: When you're buying or selling a home, you need a real estate agent you can trust. Visit https://realestateagentsitrust.com/ to find the top-selling real estate agents in your area. Chapter: When it comes to Medicare, Chapter puts you first. Dial #250 and say the key word Chapter. Mercury One: Learn about the REAL history of America. Become a Founding Member of the Sacred Honor Society at the American Journey Experience for $17.76 TODAY! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you seen Toy Story 5 yet or have you been North of the wall? Sauce Monkey is getting to the bottom of this and it doesn't matter if you get the hubbas. Anyway check out this pimento cheese, Erick. Support us directly https://www.patreon.com/100percenteat where you can join the discord with other 100 Percenters, stay up to date on everything, and get The Michael, Jordan Podcast every Friday. Follow us on IG & Twitter: @100percenteat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices