Podcasts about ambassadors

After a visit to Asia that included a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump returned to the White House on Thursday, dismissing proposals to impose a 100% tariff. Michael Allen, Former National Security Council Senior Director and managing director of Beacon Global Strategies, joins to discuss how the meeting between President Trump and President Xi helped de-escalate trade tensions, China's continued aggression in the South China Sea and the need to maintain a U.S. presence, and President Trump's announcement directing the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing. Later, retired U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela James B. Story joins to discuss the state of Venezuela's regime, the secrecy of U.S. military activity in the region, and the Maduro government's ties to China, Russia, drug cartels, and terrorist organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a visit to Asia that included a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump returned to the White House on Thursday, dismissing proposals to impose a 100% tariff. Michael Allen, Former National Security Council Senior Director and managing director of Beacon Global Strategies, joins to discuss how the meeting between President Trump and President Xi helped de-escalate trade tensions, China's continued aggression in the South China Sea and the need to maintain a U.S. presence, and President Trump's announcement directing the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing. Later, retired U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela James B. Story joins to discuss the state of Venezuela's regime, the secrecy of U.S. military activity in the region, and the Maduro government's ties to China, Russia, drug cartels, and terrorist organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast, Ambassador Yechiel Leiter joins Tudor to break down the realities of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the latest ceasefire developments. From Gaza’s urban warfare tactics to the humanitarian toll on families, Leiter offers firsthand insight into the ongoing struggle in the Middle East. The discussion dives deep into how media coverage shapes public perception, the influence of money on international narratives, and whether de-radicalization is possible in a region long divided by violence. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kit Kat was hit by a Waymo in San Francisco and the community is devastated. He was known as the "16th St. Ambassador".

St. John's, Lafayette Square Washington, DC Release date: 31 October 2025

What does it take to keep a family business thriving for generations? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I talk with Jan Southern, a seasoned business advisor who helps family-owned companies build long-term success through structure, trust, and clarity. We explore why so many family firms lose their way by the third generation—and what can be done right now to change that story. Jan shares how documenting processes, empowering people, and aligning goals can turn complexity into confidence. We unpack her “Three Ps” framework—People, Process, and Product—and discuss how strong leadership, accountability, and smart AI adoption keep growth steady and sustainable. If you've ever wondered what separates businesses that fade from those that flourish, this conversation will show you how to turn structure into freedom and process into legacy. Highlights: 00:10 – Why unexpected stories reveal how real businesses grow. 01:39 – How early life in Liberal, Kansas shaped a strong work ethic. 07:51 – What a 10,000 sq ft HQ build-out teaches about operations. 09:35 – How a trading floor was rebuilt in 36 hours and why speed matters. 11:21 – Why acquisitions fail without tribal knowledge and culture continuity. 13:19 – What Ferguson Alliance does for mid-market family businesses. 14:08 – Why many family firms don't make it to the third generation. 17:33 – How the 3 Ps—people, process, product—create durable growth. 20:49 – Why empowerment and clear decision rights prevent costly delays. 33:02 – The step-by-step process mapping approach that builds buy-in. 36:41 – Who should sponsor change and how to align managers. 49:36 – Why process docs and succession planning start on day one. 56:21 – Realistic timelines: six weeks to ninety days and beyond. 58:19 – How referrals expand projects across departments. About the Guest: With over 40 years of experience in the realm of business optimization and cost-effective strategies, Jan is a seasoned professional dedicated to revolutionizing company efficiency. From collaborating with large corporations encompassing over 1,000 employees to small 2-person offices, Jan's expertise lies in meticulously analyzing financials, processes, policies and procedures to drive enhanced performance. Since joining Ferguson Alliance in 2024, Jan has become a Certified Exit Planning Advisor and is currently in the process of certification in Artificial Intelligence Consulting and Implementation, adding to her ability to quickly provide businesses with an assessment and tools that will enhance their prosperity in today's competitive landscape. Jan's forte lies in crafting solutions that align with each client's vision, bolstering their bottom line and staffing dynamics. Adept in setting policies that align with company objectives, Jan is renowned for transforming challenges into opportunities for growth and longevity. With a knack for unraveling inefficiencies and analyzing net income, Jan is a go-to expert for family-owned businesses looking to extend their legacy into future generations. Ways to connect with Jan: Email address : Jan@Ferguson-Alliance.com Phone: 713 851 2229 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jansouthern cepa Website: https://ferguson alliance.com 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/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ 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 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone. I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. But the neat thing about it is we don't usually deal with inclusion or diversity. We deal with everything, but that because people come on this podcast to tell their own stories, and that's what we get to do today with Jan southern not necessarily anything profound about inclusion or diversity, but certainly the unexpected. And I'm sure we're going to figure out how that happens and what's unexpected about whatever I got to tell you. Before we started, we were just sitting here telling a few puns back and forth. Oh, well, we could always do that, Jan, well, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Any puns before we start?   Jan Southern ** 02:09 No, I think we've had enough of those. I think we did it   Michael Hingson ** 02:11 in, huh? Yes. Well, cool. Well, I want to thank you for being here. Jan has been very actively involved in a lot of things dealing with business and helping people and companies of all sizes, companies of all sizes. I don't know about people of all sizes, but companies of all sizes in terms of becoming more effective and being well, I'll just use the term resilient, but we'll get into that. But right now, let's talk about the early Jan. Tell us about Jan growing up and all that sort of stuff that's always fun to start with.   Jan Southern ** 02:50 Yes, I grew up in Liberal Kansas, which is a small town just north of the Oklahoma border and a little bit east of New Mexico kind of down in that little Four Corners area. And I grew up in the time when we could leave our house in the morning on the weekends and come home just before dusk at night, and our parents didn't panic, you know. So it was a good it was a good time growing up. I i lived right across the street from the junior high and high school, so I had a hugely long walk to work, I mean,   Michael Hingson ** 03:28 to school,   Jan Southern ** 03:30 yeah, and so, you know, was a, was a cheerleader in high school, and went to college, then at Oklahoma State, and graduated from there, and here I am in the work world. I've been working since I was about 20 years old, and I'd hate to tell you how many years that's been.   Michael Hingson ** 03:51 You can if you want. I won't tell   03:55 nobody will know.   Michael Hingson ** 03:57 Good point. Well, I know it's been a long time I read your bio, so I know, but that's okay. Well, so when you What did you major in in college psychology? Ah, okay. And did you find a bachelor's degree or just bachelor's   Jan Southern ** 04:16 I did not. I got an Mrs. Degree and had two wonderful children and grew up, they've grown up and to become very fine young men with kids of their own. So I have four grandchildren and one great grandchild, so   Michael Hingson ** 04:33 Wowie Zowie, yeah, that's pretty cool. So when you left college after graduating, what did you do?   Jan Southern ** 04:40 I first went to work in a bank. My ex husband was in pharmacy school at Oklahoma, State University of Oklahoma, and so I went to work in a bank. I was the working wife while he went to pharmacy school. And went to work in a bank, and years later, became a bank consultant. So we we lived in Norman, Oklahoma until he was out of school and and as I began having children during our marriage, I went to work for a pediatrician, which was very convenient when you're trying to take care of kids when they're young.   Michael Hingson ** 05:23 Yeah, and what did you What did you do for a pediatrician?   Jan Southern ** 05:27 I was, I was her receptionist, and typed medical charts, so I learned a lot about medicine. Was very she was head of of pediatrics at a local hospital, and also taught at the university. And so I got a great education and health and well being of kids. It was, it was a great job.   Michael Hingson ** 05:51 My my sister in law had her first child while still in high school, and ended up having to go to work. She went to work for Kaiser Permanente as a medical transcriber, but she really worked her way up. She went to college, got a nursing degree, and so on, and she became a nurse. And eventually, when she Well, she didn't retire, but her last job on the medical side was she managed seven wards, and also had been very involved in the critical care unit. Was a nurse in the CCU for a number of years. Then she was tasked. She went to the profit making side of Kaiser, as it were, and she was tasked with bringing paperless charts into Kaiser. She was the nurse involved in the team that did that. So she came a long way from being a medical transcriber.   Jan Southern ** 06:51 Well, she came a long way from being a single mom in high school. That's a great story of success.   Michael Hingson ** 06:56 Well, and she wasn't totally a single mom. She she and the guy did marry, but eventually they they did divorce because he wasn't as committed as he should be to one person, if it were,   Speaker 1 ** 07:10 that's a familiar story. And he also drank and eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah, that's always sad, but, you know, but, but she coped, and her her kids cope. So it works out okay. So you went to work for a pediatrician, and then what did you do?   Jan Southern ** 07:31 Well, after my husband, after he graduated, was transferred to Dallas, and I went to work for a company gardener, Denver company at the time, they've been since purchased by another company. And was because of my experience in banking prior to the pediatrician, I went to work in their corporate cash management division, and I really enjoyed that I was in their corporate cash management for their worldwide division, and was there for about four years, and really enjoyed it. One of my most exciting things was they were moving their headquarters from Quincy, Illinois down to Dallas. And so I had been hired. But since they were not yet in Dallas, I worked with a gentleman who was in charge of putting together their corporate offices. And so we made all the arrangements. As far as we had a got a 10,000 square foot blank space when we started. And our job was to get every desk, every chair, every pen and pencil. And so when somebody moved from Quincy, Illinois, they moved in and they had their desk all set up. Their cuticles were cubicles were ready to go and and they were they could hit the ground running day one, so that,   Michael Hingson ** 09:02 so you, you clearly really got into dealing with organization, I would would say, then, wouldn't, didn't you?   Jan Southern ** 09:11 Yes, yes, that was my, probably my first exposure to to the corporate world and learning exactly how things could be more efficient, more cost effective. And I really enjoyed working for that company.   Michael Hingson ** 09:30 I remember, after September 11, we worked to provide the technology that we were selling, but we provided technology to Wall Street firms so they could recover their data and get set up again to be able to open the stock exchange and all the trading floors on the 17th of September. So the next Monday. And it was amazing, one of the companies was, I think it was Morgan Stanley. Finally and they had to go find new office space, because their office space in the World Trade Center was, needless to say, gone. They found a building in Jersey City that had a floor, they said, about the size of a football field, and from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, they said it took about 36 hours. They brought in computers, including IBM, taking computers from some of their own people, and just bringing them into to Morgan Stanley and other things, including some of the technology that we provided. And within 36 hours, they had completely reconstructed a trading floor. That's amazing. It was, it was absolutely amazing to see that. And you know, for everyone, it was pretty crazy, but Wall Street opened on the 17th and and continued to survive.   Jan Southern ** 10:57 That's a great story.   Michael Hingson ** 10:59 So what did you do? So you did this, this work with the 10,000 square foot space and other things like that. And then what?   Jan Southern ** 11:08 Well, once, once everyone moved into the space in Dallas. Then I began my work in their in their corporate cash management area. And from there, my next job was working in a bank when my my husband, then was transferred back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I went back to work in banking. And from that bank, I was there about three to four years, and I was hired then by John Floyd as a as a consultant for banks and credit unions, and I was with that company for 42 years. My gosh, I know that's unusual these days, but I really enjoyed what I did. We did re engineering work and cost effectiveness and banks and credit unions for those 42 years. And so that was where I really cut my teeth on process improvement and continuous improvement, and still in that industry. But their company was bought by a an equity firm. And of course, when that happens, they like to make changes and and bring in their own folks. So those of us who had been there since day one were no longer there.   Michael Hingson ** 12:26 When did that happen?   Jan Southern ** 12:27 That was in 2022   Michael Hingson ** 12:32 so it's interesting that companies do that they always want to bring in their own people. And at least from my perspective, it seems to me that they forget that they lose all the tribal knowledge that people who have been working there have that made the company successful   Jan Southern ** 12:51 Absolutely. So I guess they're still doing well, and they've done well for themselves afterwards, and but, you know, they do, they lose all the knowledge, they lose all of the continuity with the clients. And it's sad that they do that, but that's very, very common.   Michael Hingson ** 13:13 Yeah, I know I worked for a company that was bought by Xerox, and all the company wanted was our technology. All Xerox wanted was the technology. And they lost all of the knowledge that all the people with sales experience and other kinds of experiences brought, because they terminated all of us when the company was fully in the Xerox realm of influence.   Jan Southern ** 13:39 So you know what I went through? Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 13:42 Well, what did you do after you left that company? After you left John Floyd,   Jan Southern ** 13:47 I left John Floyd, I was under a I was under a non compete, so I kind of knocked around for a couple of years. I was of age where I could have retired, but I wasn't ready to. So then I found Ferguson Alliance, and I'm now a business advisor for family owned businesses, and so I've been with Ferguson just over a year, and doing the same type of work that I did before. In addition to that, I have become a certified Exit Planning advisor, so that I can do that type of work as well. So that's that's my story in a nutshell. As far as employment,   Michael Hingson ** 14:26 what is Ferguson Alliance?   Jan Southern ** 14:29 Ferguson Alliance, we are business advisors for family owned businesses. And the perception is that a family owned business is going to be a small business, but there are over 500,000 family owned businesses in the United States. Our market is the middle market, from maybe 50 employees up to 1000 20 million in revenues, up to, you know, the sky's the limit, and so we do. Do a lot of work as far as whatever can help a family owned business become more prosperous and survive into future generations. It's a sad statistic that most family owned businesses don't survive into the third generation.   Michael Hingson ** 15:16 Why is that?   Jan Southern ** 15:19 I think because they the first the first generation works themselves, their fingers to the bone to get their their business off the ground, and they get successful, and their offspring often enjoy, if you will, the fruits of the labors of their parents and so many of them, once they've gone to college, they don't have an interest in joining the firm, and so they go on and succeed on their own. And then their children, of course, follow the same course from from their work. And so that's really, I think, the primary reason, and also the the founders of the businesses have a tendency to let that happen, I think. And so our coaching programs try to avoid that and help them to bring in the second and third generations so that they can, you know, they can carry on a legacy of their parents or the founders.   Michael Hingson ** 16:28 So what do you do, and what kinds of initiatives do you take to extend the longevity of a family owned business then,   Jan Southern ** 16:39 well, the first thing is that that Rob, who's our founder of our family owned business, does a lot of executive coaching and helps the helps the people who are within the business, be it the founder or being at their second or third generations, and he'll help with coaching them as to how to, hey, get past the family dynamics. Everybody has their own business dynamics. And then you add on top of that, the family dynamics, in addition to just the normal everyday succession of a business. And so we help them to go through those types of challenges, if you will. They're not always a challenge, but sometimes, if there are challenges, Rob's coaching will take them through that and help them to develop a succession plan that also includes a document that says that that governance plan as to how their family business will be governed, in addition to just a simple succession plan, and my role in a lot of that is to make sure that their business is ready to prosper too. You know that their their assessment of as far as whether they're profitable, whether they are their processes are in place, etc, but one of the primary things that we do is to help them make certain that that if they don't want to survive into future generations, that we help them to prepare to either pass it along to a family member or pass it along to someone who's a non family member, right?   Michael Hingson ** 18:34 So I've heard you mentioned the 3p that are involved in extending longevity. Tell me about that. What are the three P's?   Jan Southern ** 18:41 Well, the first p is your people. You know, if you don't take care of your people, be they family members or non family members, then you're not going to be very successful. So making certain that you have a system in place, have a culture in place that takes care of your people. To us, is very key. Once you make sure that your people are in a culture of continuous improvement and have good, solid foundation. In that regard, you need to make sure that your processes are good. That's the second P that that you have to have your processes all documented, that you've authorized your people to make decisions that they don't always have to go to somebody else. If you're a person in the company and you recognize that something's broken, then you need to have empowerment so that your people can make decisions and not always have to get permission from someone else to make certain that those processes continuously are approved improved. That's how to you. Could have became so successful is they installed a product. They called it, I say, a product. They installed a culture. They called it kaizen. And so Kaizen was simply just continuous improvement, where, if you were doing a process and you ask yourself, why did I do it this way? Isn't there a better way? Then, you know, you're empowered to find a better way and to make sure that that that you can make that decision, as long as it fits in with the culture of the company. Then the third P is product. You know, you've got to have a product that people want. I know that you've seen a lot of companies fail because they're pushing a product that nobody wants. And so you make certain that your products are good, your products are good, high quality, and that you can deliver them in the way that you promise. And so those are really the 3p I'd like to go back to process and just kind of one of the things, as you know, we had some horrendous flooding here in Texas recently, and one of the things that happened during that, and not that it was a cause of it, but just one of the things that exacerbated the situation, is someone called to say, Please, we need help. There's flooding going on. It was one of their first responders had recognized that there was a tragic situation unfolding, and when he called into their system to give alerts, someone says, Well, I'm going to have to get approval from my supervisor, with the approval didn't come in time. So what's behind that? We don't know, but that's just a critical point as to why you should empower your people to make decisions when, when it's necessary.   Michael Hingson ** 21:56 I'm sure, in its own way, there was some of that with all the big fires out here in California back in January, although part of the problem with those is that aircraft couldn't fly for 36 hours because the winds were so heavy that there was just no way that the aircraft could fly. But you got to wonder along the way, since they are talking about the fact that the electric companies Southern California, Edison had a fair amount to do with probably a lot a number of the fires igniting and so on, one can only wonder what might have happened if somebody had made different decisions to better prepare and do things like coating the wires so that if they touch, they wouldn't spark and so on that they didn't do. And, you know, I don't know, but one can only wonder.   Jan Southern ** 22:53 It's hard to know, you know, and in our situation, would it have made any difference had that person been able to make a decision on her own? Yeah, I was moving so rapidly, it might not have made any any difference at all, but you just have to wonder, like you said,   Michael Hingson ** 23:10 yeah, there's no way to, at this point, really know and understand, but nevertheless, it is hopefully something that people learn about for the future, I heard that they're now starting to coat wires, and so hopefully that will prevent a lot, prevent a lot of the sparking and so on. I'd always thought about they ought to put everything underground, but coating wire. If they can do that and do it effectively, would probably work as well. And that's, I would think, a lot cheaper than trying to put the whole power grid underground.   Jan Southern ** 23:51 I would think so we did when I was with my prior company. We did a project where they were burying, they were putting everything underground, and Burlington Vermont, and it was incredible what it takes to do that. I mean, you just, we on the outside, just don't realize, you know, there's a room that's like 10 by six underground that carries all of their equipment and things necessary to do that. And I never realized how, how costly and how difficult it was to bury everything. We just have the impression that, well, they just bury this stuff underground, and that's all. That's all it takes. But it's a huge, huge undertaking in order to do that   Michael Hingson ** 24:36 well. And it's not just the equipment, it's all the wires, and that's hundreds and of miles and 1000s of miles of cable that has to be buried underground, and that gets to be a real challenge.   Jan Southern ** 24:47 Oh, exactly, exactly. So another story about cables. We were working in West Texas one time on a project, and we're watching them stretch the. Wiring. They were doing some internet provisioning for West Texas, which was woefully short on in that regard, and they were stringing the wire using helicopters. It was fascinating, and the only reason we saw that is it was along the roadways when we were traveling from West Texas, back into San Antonio, where flights were coming in and out of so that was interesting to watch.   Michael Hingson ** 25:28 Yeah, yeah. People get pretty creative. Well, you know, thinking back a little bit, John Floyd must have been doing something right to keep you around for 42 years.   Jan Southern ** 25:40 Yes, they did. They were a fabulous country company and still going strong. I think he opened in 1981 it's called advantage. Now, it's not John Floyd, but Right, that was a family owned business. That's where I got to cut my teeth on the dynamics of a family owned business and how they should work and how and his niece is one of the people that's still with the company. Whether, now that they're owned by someone else, whether she'll be able to remain as they go into different elements, is, is another question. But yeah, they were, they were great.   Michael Hingson ** 26:20 How many companies, going back to the things we were talking about earlier, how many companies when they're when they buy out another company, or they're bought out by another company, how many of those companies generally do succeed and continue to grow? Do you have any statistics, or do more tend not to than do? Or   Jan Southern ** 26:40 I think that more tend to survive. They tend to survive, though, with a different culture, I guess you would say they they don't retain the culture that they had before. I don't have any firm statistics on that, because we don't really deal with that that much, but I don't they tend to survive with it, with a the culture of the newer company, if they fold them in, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 27:15 Well, and the reality is to be fair, evolution always takes place. So the John Floyd and say, 2022 wasn't the same as the John Floyd company in 1981   Jan Southern ** 27:31 not at all. No, exactly, not at all.   Michael Hingson ** 27:34 So it did evolve, and it did grow. And so hopefully, when that company was absorbed elsewhere and with other companies, they they do something to continue to be successful, and I but I think that's good. I know that with Xerox, when it bought Kurzweil, who I worked for, they were also growing a lot and so on. The only thing is that their stock started to drop. I think that there were a number of things. They became less visionary, I think is probably the best way to put it, and they had more competition from other companies developing and providing copiers and other things like that. But they just became less visionary. And so the result was that they didn't grow as much as probably they should have.   Jan Southern ** 28:28 I think that happens a lot. Sometimes, if you don't have a culture of continuous improvement and continuous innovation, which maybe they didn't, I'm not that familiar with how they move forward, then you get left behind. You know, I'm I'm in the process right now, becoming certified in artificial intelligent in my old age. And the point that's made, not by the company necessarily that I'm studying with, but by many others, is there's going to be two different kinds of companies in the future. There's going to be those who have adopted AI and those who used to be in business. And I think that's probably fair.   Michael Hingson ** 29:13 I think it is. And I also we talked with a person on this podcast about a year ago, or not quite a year ago, but, but he said, AI will not replace anyone's jobs. People will replace people's jobs with AI, but they shouldn't. They shouldn't eliminate anyone from the workforce. And we ended up having this discussion about autonomous vehicles. And the example that he gave is, right now we have companies that are shippers, and they drive product across the country, and what will happen to the drivers when the driving process becomes autonomous and you have self driving vehicles, driving. Across country. And his point was, what they should do, what people should consider doing is not eliminating the drivers, but while the machine is doing the driving, find and give additional or other tasks to the drivers to do so they can continue to be contributors and become more efficient and help the company become more efficient, because now you've got people to do other things than what they were used to doing, but there are other things that AI won't be able to do. And I thought that was pretty fascinating,   Jan Southern ** 30:34 exactly. Well, my my nephew is a long haul truck driver. He owns a company, and you know, nothing the AI will never be able to observe everything that's going on around the trucking and and you know, there's also the some of the things that that driver can do is those observations, plus they're Going to need people who are going to program those trucks as they are making their way across the country, and so I'm totally in agreement with what your friend said, or your you know, your guests had to say that many other things,   Michael Hingson ** 31:15 yeah, and it isn't necessarily even relating to driving, but there are certainly other things that they could be doing to continue to be efficient and effective, and no matter how good the autonomous driving capabilities are, it only takes that one time when for whatever reason, the intelligence can't do it, that it's good To have a driver available to to to to help. And I do believe that we're going to see the time when autonomous vehicles will be able to do a great job, and they will be able to observe most of all that stuff that goes on around them. But there's going to be that one time and that that happens. I mean, even with drivers in a vehicle, there's that one time when maybe something happens and a driver can't continue. So what happens? Well, the vehicle crashes, or there's another person to take over. That's why we have at least two pilots and airplanes and so on. So right, exactly aspects of it,   Jan Southern ** 32:21 I think so I can remember when I was in grade school, they showed us a film as to what someone's vision of the country was, and part of that was autonomous driving, you know. And so it was, it was interesting that we're living in a time where we're beginning to see that, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 32:41 we're on the cusp, and it's going to come. It's not going to happen overnight, but it will happen, and we're going to find that vehicles will be able to drive themselves. But there's still much more to it than that, and we shouldn't be in too big of a hurry, although some so called profit making. People may decide that's not true, to their eventual chagrin, but we shouldn't be too quick to replace people with technology totally   Jan Southern ** 33:14 Exactly. We have cars in I think it's Domino's Pizza. I'm not sure which pizza company, but they have autonomous cars driving, and they're cooking the pizza in the back oven of the car while, you know, while it's driving to your location, yeah, but there's somebody in the car who gets out of the car and brings the pizza to my door.   Michael Hingson ** 33:41 There's been some discussion about having drones fly the pizza to you. Well, you know, we'll see,   Jan Southern ** 33:50 right? We'll see how that goes. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 33:53 I haven't heard that. That one is really, pardon the pun, flown well yet. But, you know, we'll see. So when you start a process, improvement process program, what are some of the first steps that you initiate to bring that about? Well, the first   Jan Southern ** 34:11 thing that we do, once we've got agreement with their leadership, then we have a meeting with the people who will be involved, who will be impacted, and we tell them all about what's happening, what's going to happen, and make certain that they're in full understanding. And you know, the first thing that you ever hear when you're saying that you're going to be doing a re engineering or process improvement is they think, Oh, you're just going to come in and tell me to reduce my staff, and that's the way I'm going to be more successful. We don't look at it that way at all. We look at it in that you need to be right. Have your staff being the right size, and so in in many cases, in my past. I we've added staff. We've told them, you're under staffed, but the first thing we do is hold that meeting, make certain that they're all in agreement with what's going to happen, explain to them how it's going to happen, and then the next step is that once management has decided who our counterparts will be within the company. Who's going to be working with us to introduce us to their staff members is we sit down with their staff members and we ask them questions. You know, what do you do? How do you do it? What do you Did someone bring it to you. Are you second in line or next in line for some task? And then once you finish with it, what happens to it? Do you give someone else? Is a report produced? Etc. And so once we've answered all of those questions, we do a little a mapping of the process. And once you map that process, then you take it back to the people who actually perform the process, and you ask them, Did I get this right? I heard you say, this? Is this a true depiction of what's happening? And so we make sure that they don't do four steps. And they told us steps number one and three, so that then, once we've mapped that out, that gives us an idea of two of how can things be combined? Can they be combined? Should you be doing what you're doing here? Is there a more efficient or cost effective way of doing it? And we make our recommendations based on that for each process that we're reviewing. Sometimes there's one or two good processes in an area that we're looking at. Sometimes there are hundreds. And so that's that's the basic process. And then once they've said yes, that is correct, then we make our recommendations. We take it back to their management, and hopefully they will include the people who actually are performing the actions. And we make our recommendations to make changes if, if, if it's correct, maybe they don't need to make any changes. Maybe everything is is very, very perfect the way it is. But in most cases, they brought us in because it's not and they've recognized it's not. So then once they've said, yes, we want to do this, then we help them to implement.   Michael Hingson ** 37:44 Who usually starts this process, that is, who brings you in?   Jan Southern ** 37:48 Generally, it is going to be, depending upon the size of the company, but in most cases, it's going to be the CEO. Sometimes it's the Chief Operating Officer. Sometimes in a very large company, it may be a department manager, you know, someone who has the authority to bring us in. But generally, I would say that probably 90% of our projects, it's at the C   Michael Hingson ** 38:19 level office. So then, based on everything that you're you're discussing, probably that also means that there has to be some time taken to convince management below the CEO or CEO or a department head. You've got to convince the rest of management that this is going to be a good thing and that you have their best interest at heart.   Jan Southern ** 38:43 That is correct, and that's primarily the reason that we have for our initial meeting. We ask whoever is the contract signer to attend that meeting and be a part of the discussion to help to ward off any objections, and then to really bring these people along if they are objecting. And for that very reason, even though they may still be objecting, we involve them in the implementation, so an implementation of a of a recommendation has to improve, has to include the validation. So we don't do the work, but we sit alongside the people who are doing the implementation and guide them through the process, and then it's really up to them to report back. Is it working as intended? If it's not, what needs to be changed, what might improve, what we thought would be a good recommendation, and we work with them to make certain that everything works for them. Right? And by the end of that, if they've been the tester, they've been the one who's approved steps along the way, we generally find that they're on board because they're the it's now. They're now the owners of the process. And when they have ownership on something that they've implemented. It's amazing how much more resilient they they think that the process becomes, and now it's their process and not ours.   Michael Hingson ** 40:32 Do you find most often that when you're working with a number of people in a company that most of them realize that there need to be some changes, or something needs to be improved to make the whole company work better. Or do you find sometimes there's just great resistance, and people say no, there's just no way anything is bad.   Jan Southern ** 40:53 Here we find that 90% of the time, and I'm just pulling that percentage out of the air, I would say they know, they know it needs to be changed. And the ones typically, not always, but typically, the ones where you find the greatest resistance are the ones who know it's broken, but they just don't want to change. You know, there are some people who don't want to change no matter what, or they feel threatened that. They feel like that a new and improved process might take their place. You know, might replace them. And that's typically not the case. It's typically not the case at all, that they're not replaced by it. Their process is improved, and they find that they can be much more productive. But the the ones who are like I call them the great resistors, usually don't survive the process either. They are. They generally let themselves go,   Michael Hingson ** 42:01 if you will, more ego than working for the company.   Jan Southern ** 42:05 Yes, exactly, you know, it's kind of like my mom, you know, and it they own the process as it was. We used to laugh and call this person Louise, you know, Louise has said, Well, we've always done it that way. You know, that's probably the best reason 20 years in not to continue to do it same way.   Michael Hingson ** 42:34 We talked earlier about John Floyd and evolution. And that makes perfect sense. Exactly what's one of the most important things that you have to do to prepare to become involved in preparing for a process, improvement project? I think   Jan Southern ** 42:52 the most important thing there's two very important things. One is to understand their culture, to know how their culture is today, so that you know kind of which direction you need to take them, if they're not in a continuous improvement environment, then you need to lead them in that direction if they're already there and they just don't understand what needs to be done. There's two different scenarios, but the first thing you need to do is understand the culture. The second thing that you need to do, other than the culture, is understand their their business. You need to know what they do. Of course, you can't know from the outside how they do it, but you need to know that, for instance, if it's an we're working with a company that cleans oil tanks and removes toxins and foul lines from oil and gas industry. And so if you don't understand at all what they do, it's hard to help them through the processes that they need to go through. And so just learning, in general, what their technology, what their business is about. If you walk in there and haven't done that, you're just blowing smoke. In my mind, you know, I do a lot of research on the technologies that they use, or their company in general. I look at their website, I you know, look at their LinkedIn, their social media and so. And then we request information from them in advance of doing a project, so that we know what their org structure looks like. And I think those things are critical before you walk in the door to really understand their business in general.   Michael Hingson ** 44:53 Yeah, and that, by doing that, you also tend to. To gain a lot of credibility, because you come in and demonstrate that you do understand what they're doing, and people respond well to that, I would think   Jan Southern ** 45:10 they do. You know, one of our most interesting projects in my past was the electric company that I mentioned. There was an electric company in Burlington, Vermont that did their own electric generation. We've never looked at anything like that. We're a bank consultant, and so we learned all about how they generated energy with wood chips and the, you know, the different things. And, you know, there were many days that I was out watching the wood chips fall out of a train and into their buckets, where they then transferred them to a yard where they moved the stuff around all the time. So, you know, it was, it's very interesting what you learn along the way. But I had done my homework, and I knew kind of what they did and not how they did it in individual aspects of their own processes, but I understood their industry. And so it was, you do walk in with some credibility, otherwise they're looking at you like, well, what does this person know about my job?   Michael Hingson ** 46:20 And at the same time, have you ever been involved in a situation where you did learn about the company you you went in with some knowledge, you started working with the company, and you made a suggestion about changing a process or doing something that no one had thought of, and it just clicked, and everybody loved it when they thought about it,   Jan Southern ** 46:42 yes, yes, exactly. And probably that electric company was one of those such things. You know, when they hired us, they they told us. We said, We don't know anything about your business. And they said, Good, we don't want you to come in with any preconceived ideas. And so some of the recommendations we made to them. They were, it's kind of like an aha moment. You know, they look at you like, Oh my gosh. I've never thought of that, you know, the same I would say in in banking and in family businesses, you know, they just, they've never thought about doing things in a certain way.   Michael Hingson ** 47:20 Can you tell us a story about one of those times?   Jan Southern ** 47:24 Yes, I would say that if you're, if you're talking about, let's talk about something in the banking industry, where they are. I was working in a bank, and you, you go in, and this was in the days before we had all of the ways to store things electronically. And so they were having a difficult time in keeping all of their documents and in place and knowing when to, you know, put them in a destruction pile and when not to. And so I would say that they had an aha moment when I said, Okay, let's do this. Let's get a bunch of the little colored dots, and you have big dots and small dots. And I said, everything that you put away for 1990 for instance, then you put on a purple dot. And then for January, you have 12 different colors of the little dots that you put in the middle of them. And you can use those things to determine that everything that has a purple dot and little yellow.in the middle of that one, you know that that needs to be destructed. I think in that case, it was seven years, seven years from now, you know that you need to pull that one off the shelf and put it into the pile to be destructed. And they said, we've never thought of anything. It was like I had told him that, you know, the world was going to be struck, to be gone, to begin tomorrow. Yeah, it was so simple to me, but it was something that they had never, ever thought of, and it solved. They had something like five warehouses of stuff, most of which needed to have been destroyed years before, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 49:21 but still they weren't sure what, and so you gave them a mechanism to do that,   Jan Southern ** 49:27 right? Of course, that's all gone out the window today. You don't have to do all that manual stuff anymore. You're just, you know, I'd say another example of that was people who were when we began the system of digitizing the files, especially loan files in a bank. And this would hold true today as well, in that once you start on a project to digitize the files, there's a tendency to take the old. Files first and digitize those. Well, when you do that, before you get to the end of it, if you have a large project, you don't need those files anymore. So you know, our recommendation is start with your latest. You know, anything that needs to be archived, start with the newest, because by the time that you finish your project, some of those old files you won't even need to digitize, just shred them. Yeah, you know, it's, it's just little simple things like that that can make all the difference.   Michael Hingson ** 50:32 When should a family business start documenting processes? I think I know that's what I thought you'd say,   Jan Southern ** 50:40 yes, yes, that is something that is near and dear to my heart. Is that I would even recommend that you maybe do it before you open your doors, if potential is there, so that the day you open your business, you need to start with your documenting your processes, and you need to start on your succession planning. You know, those are the days that once you really start working, you're not going to have time. You know, you're going to be busy working every day. You're you're going to be busy servicing your customers, and that always gets pushed to the back when you start to document something, and so that's the time do it when you first open your doors.   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 So when we talk about processes, maybe it's a fair question to ask, maybe not. But what are we really talking about when we talk about processes and documenting processes? What are the processes?   Jan Southern ** 51:41 Well, the processes are the things that you do every day. Let's take as an example, just when you set up your your files within your SharePoint, or within your computer, if you don't use SharePoint, your Google files, how you set those up, a process could also be during your accounting, what's the process that you go through to get a invoice approved? You know, when the invoice comes in from the vendor, what do you do with it? You know, who has to approve it? Are there dollar amounts that you have to have approvals for? Or can some people just take in a smaller invoice and pay it without any any approvals? We like to see there be a process where it's approved before you get the invoice from the customer, where it's been approved at the time of the order. And that way it can be processed more more quickly on the backside, to just make sure that it says what the purchase order if you use purchase orders or see what your agreement was. So it's the it's the workflow. There's something that triggers an action, and then, once gets triggered, then what takes place? What's next, what's the next steps? And you just go through each one of the things that has to happen for that invoice to get paid, and the check or wire transfer, or or whatever you use as a payment methodology for it to go out the door. And so, you know what you what you do is you start, there's something that triggers it, and then there's a goal for the end, and then you fill in in the center,   Michael Hingson ** 53:38 and it's, it's, it's a fascinating I hate to use the word process to to listen to all of this, but it makes perfect sense that you should be documenting right from the outset about everything that you do, because it also means that you're establishing a plan so that everyone knows exactly what the expectations are and exactly what it is that needs to be done every step of the way,   Jan Southern ** 54:07 right and and one of the primary reasons for that is we can't anticipate life. You know, maybe our favorite person, Louise, is the only one who's ever done, let's say, you know, payroll processing, or something of that sort. And if something happens and Louise isn't able to come in tomorrow, who's going to do it? You know, without a map, a road map, as to the steps that need to be taken, how's that going to take place? And so that's that's really the critical importance. And when you're writing those processes and procedures, you need to make them so that anybody can walk in off the street, if necessary, and do what Louise was doing and have it done. Properly.   Michael Hingson ** 55:00 Of course, as we know, Louise is just a big complainer anyway. That's right, you said, yeah. Well, once you've made recommendations, and let's say they're put in place, then what do you do to continue supporting a business?   Jan Southern ** 55:20 We check in with them periodically, whatever is appropriate for them and and for the procedures that are there, we make sure that it's working for them, that they're being as prosperous as they want to be, and that our recommendations are working for them. Hopefully they'll allow us to come back in and and most do, and make sure that what we recommended is right and in is working for them, and if so, we make little tweaks with their approvals. And maybe new technology has come in, maybe they've installed a new system. And so then we help them to incorporate our prior recommendations into whatever new they have. And so we try to support them on an ongoing basis, if they're willing to do that, which we have many clients. I think Rob has clients he's been with for ever, since he opened his doors 15 years ago. So   Michael Hingson ** 56:19 of course, the other side of that is, I would assume sometimes you work with companies, you've helped them deal with processes and so on, and then you come back in and you know about technology that that they don't know. And I would assume then that you suggest that, and hopefully they see the value of listening to your wisdom.   Jan Southern ** 56:41 Absolutely, we find that a lot. We also if they've discovered a technology on their own, but need help with recommendations, as far as implementation, we can help them through that as well, and that's one of the reasons I'm taking this class in AI to be able to help our customers move into a realm where it's much more easily implemented if, if they already have the steps that we've put into place, you can feed that into an AI model, and it can make adjustments to what they're doing or make suggestions.   Michael Hingson ** 57:19 Is there any kind of a rule of thumb to to answer this question, how long does it take for a project to to be completed?   Jan Southern ** 57:26 You know, it takes, in all fairness, regardless of the size of the company, I would say that they need to allow six weeks minimum. That's for a small company with a small project, it can take as long as a year or two years, depending upon the number of departments and the number of people that you have to talk to about their processes. But to let's just take an example of a one, one single department in a company is looking at doing one of these processes, then they need to allow at least six weeks to for discovery, for mapping, for their people to become accustomed to the new processes and to make sure that the implementation has been tested and is working and and they're satisfied with everything that that is taking place. Six weeks is a very, very minimum, probably 90 days is a more fair assessment as to how long they should allow for everything to take place.   Michael Hingson ** 58:39 Do you find that, if you are successful with, say, a larger company, when you go in and work with one department and you're able to demonstrate success improvements, or whatever it is that that you define as being successful, that then other departments want to use your services as well?   Jan Southern ** 59:00 Yes, yes, we do. That's a very good point. Is that once you've helped them to help themselves, if you will, once you've helped them through that process, then they recognize the value of that, and we'll move on to another division or another department to do the same thing.   Michael Hingson ** 59:21 Word of mouth counts for a lot,   Jan Southern ** 59:24 doesn't it? Though, I'd say 90% of our business at Ferguson and company comes through referrals. They refer either through a center of influence or a current client who's been very satisfied with the work that we've done for them, and they tell their friends and networking people that you know. Here's somebody that you should use if you're considering this type of a project.   Michael Hingson ** 59:48 Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe explore using your services in Ferguson services, how do they do that?   Jan Southern ** 59:55 They contact they can. If they want to contact me directly, it's Jan. J, a n, at Ferguson dash alliance.com and that's F, E, R, G, U, S, O, N, Dash alliance.com and they can go to our website, which is the same, which is Ferguson dash alliance.com One thing that's very, very good about our our website is, there's a page that's called resources, and there's a lot of free advice, if you will. There's a lot of materials there that are available to family owned businesses, specifically, but any business could probably benefit from that. And so those are free for you to be able to access and look at, and there's a lot of blog information, free eBook out there, and so that's the best way to reach Ferguson Alliance.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:52 Well, cool. Well, I hope people will take all of this to heart. You certainly offered a lot of interesting and I would say, very relevant ideas and thoughts about dealing with processes and the importance of having processes. For several years at a company, my wife was in charge of document control and and not only doc control, but also keeping things secure. Of course, having the sense of humor that I have, I pointed out nobody else around the company knew how to read Braille, so what they should really do is put all the documents in Braille, then they'd be protected, but nobody. I was very disappointed. Good idea   Speaker 2 ** 1:01:36 that is good idea that'll keep them safe from everybody. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:39 Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank to thank all of you for listening today. We've been doing this an hour. How much fun. It is fun. Well, I appreciate it, and love to hear from all of you about today's episode. Please feel free to reach out to me. You can email me at Michael H i@accessibe.com or go to our podcast page. Michael hingson, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, but wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value your thoughts and your opinions, and I hope that you'll tell other people about the podcasts as well. This has been an interesting one, and we try to make them all kind of fun and interesting, so please tell others about it. And if anyone out there listening knows of anyone who ought to be a guest, Jan, including you, then please feel free to introduce us to anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset. Because I believe everyone has a story to tell, and I want to get as many people to have the opportunity to tell their stories as we can. So I hope that you'll all do that and give us reviews and and stick with us. But Jan, again, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun.   Jan Southern ** 1:02:51 It has been a lot of fun, and I certainly thank you for inviting me.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:00 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

This week, we sit down with Jamail, the FAA's Ambassador for Aviation and Space Education and founder of AviationStart.org, to talk about the growing aviation workforce crisis — and why it could actually be the opportunity of a lifetime for anyone considering a career in aviation. From pilot and mechanic shortages to ATC hiring surges, Jamail breaks down what's really happening behind the numbers and how new students, mid-career changers, and aviation enthusiasts can prepare to step into the gap.

Wang Di, Chinese Ambassador to Canada; Dan Davies, Interim NDP Leader; The Front Bench with: Sabrina Grover, Laryssa Waler & Karl Bélanger; John Vennavally-Rao, CTV News.

This week on Screentime John Fardy talks to John C Reilly about his new one man show ‘Mister Romantic' which is coming to the Ambassador, as well as some iconic films like ‘Magnolia' and ‘Casualties of War.' John is also joined by Liam Cunningham who discusses his role in ‘Palestine 36' which looks at the Arab Revolut in Palestine. Liam also talks about his activism and career.

In this episode of “What's Crap on WhatsApp?”, we look at four viral claims:Does this ‘viral video' show late South African ambassador Nathi Mthethwa's fall from a Paris hotel? https://bit.ly/mthethwa_videoHas Mthethwa's ‘killer' been arrested in Paris? https://bit.ly/mthethwa_saIgnore posts claiming a homemade drink can ‘flush out' kidney stones; see a doctor instead. https://bit.ly/kidney_stones_cureIt's a scam: South African minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni is not sponsoring data giveaway. https://bit.ly/ntshavheni_giveawayYour friends and family can sign up for our show! Tell them to save our number (+27 82 709 3527) and send us a WhatsApp message to confirm. You can send us any WhatsApp message that you need fact-checked! Forward videos, pictures and links to this number.

Get ready for another community-fuelled episode as the Couch to Coached LIVE crew celebrates all things North Staffordshire Road Runners Association (NSRRA)!This Week Rob and Emma (no Ben unfortunately) are joined by Mr NSRRA himself, Ken Rushton.The team dive into an incredible season packed with standout race performances, growing participation, and the tight-knit camaraderie that makes NSRRA so special. From upcoming fixtures to the excitement building around the end-of-season awards night, this episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about local running culture.They also explore the importance of injury management, how ambassadors shape the NSRRA experience, and why so many runners are now setting their sights on triathlon challenges. With great stories, friendly banter, and an inside look at what's coming next, this conversation shines a light on a club where everyone is welcome — and the support is unmatched.Whether you're a seasoned racer chasing rankings or curious about joining your first running club (for just a tenner!), this episode will leave you inspired to lace up and get involved.Episode Highlights

Free For All Friday - Hour 1 Amanda Galbraith breaks down the biggest stories of the day with Canada's top newsmakers. On today's show: Prime Minister Carney has met with the President of China on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea. And while he didn't say whether the meeting produced any changes in trade policies, he did describe it as a ‘turning point’ in the Canada-China relationship. We dig deeper with Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s Ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016. In just a matter of hours, the Toronto Blue Jays could be celebrating a World Series title, and their first since 1993. All they need is one more win against the defending champions. TSN’s Aaron Korolnek joins us with a preview of tonight's Game 6 at Rogers Centre. Why do people love scary movies so much? Plus, is the early-November time change really bad for our health? We pose those burning questions to CTV Science and Technology specialist Dan Riskin. Free For All Friday - Hour 2 Contributors from all over the country join The Roundtable to discuss the top stories of the week. Sebastian Skamski, a former Director of Media Relations for Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, joins today's spooky setting. So does Laura D’Angelo, the Vice-President of National Strategy at Enterprise Canada. Topic 1: Next week's budget vote could bring down the Carney government, but what are the odds of that? Topic 2: Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says today's youth have 'sacrificed enough', as he solidifies his messaging around Budget 2025. Is that a good deck of cards to play? Topic 3: Earlier this week, the Alberta government invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to end a weeks-old teachers strike. Will this move come back to bite Premier Danielle Smith? Topic 4: What is the best Halloween candy, and why? There is only one right answer. Topic 5: For the first time since 1993, the World Series is within reach for Canada's Team. All the Blue Jays need is one more win at Rogers Centre. And as the Canada-U.S. trade war drags on, how much would it mean for a Canadian squad to claim an American-dominated trophy?

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joins Katie Couric to talk about his new book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. McFaul says America’s retreat from global leadership hasn’t just left a vacuum: it’s helped autocrats like Putin and Xi fill it. So where does that leave democracy? Together, they dig into what happens when the U.S. pulls back, why isolationism is making a comeback, and what it will take to reassert our moral and political leadership on the world stage. It’s a fascinating–and surprisingly hopeful–conversation about power, principle, and possibility.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To discuss the Trump-Xi meeting, Geoff Bennett spoke with former U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. A diplomat with decades of service under Republican and Democratic administrations, Burns served as envoy during the Biden Administration. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

To discuss the Trump-Xi meeting, Geoff Bennett spoke with former U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. A diplomat with decades of service under Republican and Democratic administrations, Burns served as envoy during the Biden Administration. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

April Stauffer Liaison & Ambassador for UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging joins Jack to inform and promote a free symposium on brain health at the Central Bank Center, Saturday November 1rst!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#3: Awww, feel good pasta; how lucky!

What if the most potent weapon that America has against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) isn't nukes or tariffs?“This isn't a competition between the largest economy and the second largest economy. This is a competition of ideals—and we've got the better ones,” says former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.“If you want to hit them where it hurts, hit them on human rights issues, genocides in their own country, religious freedom that they don't grant any of their people—whether they be Buddhist, Muslim, Falun Gong, Christians. That's where they're the weakest. It's where they're the most vulnerable.”Ahead of President Donald Trump's expected meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, I sat down with Brownback to understand what he sees as the Chinese regime's greatest vulnerabilities, its deepest fears, and how those can be strategically leveraged by the United States.Brownback is co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit. He previously served as governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018 and as a U.S. senator from Kansas, 1996 to 2011. His upcoming book is titled, “China's War on Faith.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

After U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra's unleashes an expletive-lace rant about Doug Ford's anti-tariff ad, Ontario premier's says his trade envoy deserves an apology. Paul Well says he shouldn't hold his breath.Blossom Davis tells me about the moment Hurricane Melissa crashed through her neighbourhood in Rocky Point, Jamaica, and the terrifying moments that have followed.A Virginia soybean farmer says the US president has to end the tariff war with China - because it's already cost him this year's crop, and he could lose a farm his family has worked for generations. It's not clear when the National Guard will be deployed in Chicago, but an active member of the force says that if that order does comes down, he won't follow it. Thanks to the “mummification” of a 66-million-year-old dinosaur in ancient clay, scientists are able to uncover some incredible new details -- like its pretty special set of hooves. Seems like some Australian teachers don't spent enough time thinking about the Roman Empire -- because they taught students about Augustus Caesar when the exam was on Julius Caesar.As It Happens, the Wednesday Edition, Radio that knows the dangers of running with Caesars.

The Boise Philharmonic has taken over as the cities Cultural Ambassador, continuing Boise's tradition of showcasing its rich artistic spirit to the world.

From Russia-India oil trade to defence partnership between two countries & Trump's sanctions to Ukraine war- Watch Denis Alipov, Russia's Ambassador to India, in conversation with ThePrint Editor-In-Chief Shekhar Gupta & Editor (Defence & Diplomacy) Snehesh Alex Philip. This edition of #ThePrint #OffTheCuff was held at The Quorum, Gurugram. Associate Partner: Global PR Connect --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Camera By- Sabika Syed, Saqiba Khan, Mahira Khan Produced By: Shekhar Tiwari --------------------------------------------------------

New York City street vendors are calling on the city council to pass legislation that would remove limits on the number of licenses issued by the city. Meanwhile, more than 160,000 New Jerseyans have already cast their ballot in the hotly contested race for governor. And finally, mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani wants transit ambassadors to handle mental health calls instead of the NYPD.

Doug Ford's anti-tariff TV ads ruffle feathers in Washington, with Trump furious and U.S. Ambassador clashing with Ford's trade advisor. John weighs in on whether Doug is playing the long game or blowing up the Canada-U.S. trade file. Guests include: Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, exposes jaw-dropping government spending on stress balls, branded apples, and even AI garbage cans. Lori Sheeran, Professor of Anthropology at Central Washington University, explains the real dangers of escaped lab monkeys in Mississippi—and whether monkeys actually barter with tourists. Tamir Israel, Director of the Privacy, Surveillance & Technology Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, breaks down the U.S. border's new biometric surveillance rules and what Canadians should know about facial recognition risks. Plus, John unpacks the political theater around Mark Carney, Trump, Doug Ford, and trade strategy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff Douglas talks about what happened with Asa McKercher, Hudson Chair in Canada-US Relations & an associate prof at the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government, at St. FX.

Patty Hajdu, Jobs Minister; The Front Bench with: Brian Gallant, Lisa Raitt, Tom Mulcair & Robert Benzie; Judy Trinh, CTV News.

Multiple witnesses tell CBC News that U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra lashed out at Ontario trade representative David Paterson at an event in Ottawa on Monday, with one witness saying Hoekstra appeared to be upset about Ontario's U.S. ad and could be heard using the F-word. Former minister of foreign affairs John Manley and former U.S. ambassador to Canada Gordon Giffin react. Plus, CBC's Peter Armstrong breaks down why the Bank of Canada delivered another interest rate cut on Wednesday, and why the Federal Reserve did the same in the U.S.

Ciara Doherty's guest has taken up a new role in Ireland but is no stranger to Dublin or indeed Ireland, having lived here before.Kara Owen is the new British Ambassador to Ireland, and took over the reins in September from Paul Johnston.She joins Ciara in the studio to discuss the new role.

Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi has been appointed a Unesco goodwill ambassador for education and book culture in recognition of her global efforts to promote literacy, publishing and educational development. Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com ************************ Follow us on Social. www.instagram.com/pulse95radio www.facebook.com/pulse95radio www.twitter.com/pulse95radio

Send a one-time contribution to the show - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XARF5X38AMZULListen to our Podcast on the go: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elev8podcastTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@elev8podcast X: https://twitter.com/TheElev8Podcast

Three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered the Estonian skies ‘without permission and remained there for a total of 12 minutes', as the Estonian government reported on September 19th. It is the latest example of the threat of Russian aggression. We speak with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, who, during his presidency (2006-2016), faced increasing Russian cyberattacks and efforts to destabilize the region.After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, eyes have also been turned towards the Baltic states. Will Putin risk invading Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania? Twenty-four years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the restoration of independence, the Baltic states have become frontline nations between Russia and the West. How do Russia's neighbors, who have endured years of Russian oppression, view Europe's security challenges now that Russia is increasingly testing the borders of Nato-territory?"Losing democracy happens in much the same way as a character goes bankrupt in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: “gradually, and then suddenly" Toomas Hendrik Ilves, in The EconomistToomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia from 2006 to 2016, has been a key figure in shaping Estonia's post-Soviet transformation and its role in Europe. Born in Sweden to Estonian refugee parents who fled Soviet occupation and mass deportation to Siberia, Ilves was deeply influenced by their experience of displacement. Before becoming president, he served as Estonia's Ambassador to the United States and played a pivotal role in Estonia's accession to the European Union and NATO in 2004. Durign his presidency he focused on Estonia's digital innovation and cybersecurity and European integration.Programme editor: Veronica BaasModerator: Yoeri AlbrechtSupported by: NATOZie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tensions are escalating after Venezuela's President accused President Trump of inventing a war, following the U.S. deployment of an advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. This move comes amid expanded U.S. strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats off Venezuela's coast. James B. Story, retired U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, joins the Rundown to discuss the state of Venezuela's regime, the secrecy surrounding U.S. military operations in the region, and the Venezuelan government's ties with China, Russia, drug cartels, and terrorist organizations. One week until election day: this off-year election cycle includes local races, ballot measures, and more. Voters in New Jersey and Virginia are electing their next governors, while New Yorkers are following their own mayoral race. Democrats lead all of those three key races in the polls. Josh Kraushaar, FOX News Audio Political Analyst and Editor-in-Chief of Jewish Insider, joins the Rundown to break down the three races and that they mean for the overall trajectory of the country. Plus, commentary by Melissa Henson, senior policy advisor for Media and Culture for Concerned Women for America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Samhain once again so this week we had a chat with the amazing Katie Boyle about some lesser known Irish spirits and fairies. Katie's bringing her solo show to the Ambassador on November 08th, you can get tickets here And we've got our own live shows coming up which you can find out about here - ⁠⁠⁠LIVE SHOWS⁠: ⁠Kilkenny - 01st of November⁠ ⁠Dublin w/ Peter McCann - 25th of November Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, has a new book…- The disaster of Russia- Trump's evolving views on Putin (and Nigel's…and Georgia's…)- When McFaul met Putin…in 1991- Was the Maidan uprising an American-sponsored coup?- It's not about NATO- From boring technocrat to a nationalist, imperialist ideologue- What does Putin believe?- Vlad the flat taxer - He's not a Bolshevik- A crook, sure. But an ideological crook- Does no one care about 200,000 dead Russians?- Liberation or surveillance - Elite fatigue in Putin's Russia- The documentary Moynihan mentioned - Mike McFaul, Soviet bootlegger

Welcome back to the Ties That Bind.This season, we are looking at NATO from a bit of a different vantage point, specifically that of the frontline states. How are frontline states investing in and planning for their defense? How are they thinking about their role and contributions in the Alliance and on the world stage? How have their historical experiences shaped how their governments and societies think about defense, countering disinformation, and changing economic realities? And how are they preparing for a potential conflict with Russia? This week, we are looking at Poland, a country that has completely transformed its military and defense capacity over the last two decades. Periods of transition are not always painless, and we'll hear what challenges Poland has faced and what opportunities lie ahead as it looks to become a leading voice within the alliance and on the world stage.Featured guests: * Anna Fotyga, former Polish Foreign Minister, 2006-2007* Tomasz Szatkowski, former Deputy Defense Minister, 2015-2019, and Ambassador to NATO, 2019-2024* Jakub Romaniuk, Programme Director, Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies Get full access to FPRI Insights at fpriinsights.substack.com/subscribe

What does it take to keep your voice—and your purpose—strong through every season of life? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with my friend Bill Ratner, one of Hollywood's most recognized voice actors, best known as Flint from GI Joe. Bill's voice has carried him through radio, animation, and narration, but what stands out most is how he's used that same voice to serve others through storytelling, teaching, and grief counseling. Together, we explore the heart behind his work—from bringing animated heroes to life to standing on The Moth stage and helping people find healing through poetry. Bill shares lessons from his own journey, including losing both parents early, finding family in unexpected places, and discovering how creative expression can rebuild what life breaks down. We also reflect on 9/11, preparedness, and the quiet confidence that comes from trusting your training—whether you're a first responder, a performer, or just navigating the unknown. This conversation isn't just about performance; it's about presence. It's about using your story, your craft, and your compassion to keep moving forward—unstoppable, one voice at a time. Highlights: 00:31 – Hear the Flint voice and what it takes to bring animated characters to life. 06:57 – Learn why an uneven college path still led to a lifelong acting career. 11:50 – Understand how GI Joe became a team and a toy phenomenon that shaped culture. 15:58 – See how comics and cartoons boosted classroom literacy when used well. 17:06 – Pick up simple ways parents can spark reading through shared stories. 19:29 – Discover how early, honest conversations about death can model resilience. 24:09 – Learn to critique ads and media like a pro to sharpen your own performance. 36:19 – Follow the pivot from radio to voiceover and why specialization pays. 47:48 – Hear practical editing approaches and accessible tools that keep shows tight. 49:38 – Learn how The Moth builds storytelling chops through timed, judged practice. 55:21 – See how poetry—and poetry therapy—support grief work with students. 59:39 – Take notes on memoir writing, emotional management, and one-person shows. About the Guest: Bill Ratner is one of America's best known voice actors and author of poetry collections Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake (Slow Lightning Lit 2024,) Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press 2021,) To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press 2021,) and the non-fiction book Parenting For The Digital Age: The Truth Behind Media's Effect On Children and What To Do About It (Familius Books 2014.) He is a 9-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM, 2-time winner of Best of The Hollywood Fringe Extension Award for Solo Performance, Best of the Net Poetry Nominee 2023 (Lascaux Review,) and New Millennium "America One Year From Now" Writing Award Finalist. His writing appears in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press,) Missouri Review (audio,) Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals. He is the voice of "Flint" in the TV cartoon G.I. Joe, "Donnell Udina" in the computer game Mass Effect, the voice of Air Disasters on Smithsonian Channel, NewsNation, and network TV affiliates across the country. He is a committee chair for his union, SAG-AFTRA, teaches Voiceovers for SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Media Awareness for Los Angeles Unified School District, and is a trained grief counsellor. Member: Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA, National Storytelling Network • https://billratner.com • @billratner Ways to connect with Bill: https://soundcloud.com/bill-ratner https://www.instagram.com/billratner/ https://twitter.com/billratner https://www.threads.net/@billratner https://billratner.tumblr.com https://www.youtube.com/@billratner/videos https://www.facebook.com/billratner.voiceover.author https://bsky.app/profile/bilorat.bsky.social 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/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ 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 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well on a gracious hello to you, wherever you may be, I am your host. Mike hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to have a voice actor, person, Bill Ratner, who you want to know who Bill Radnor is, go back and watch the old GI Joe cartoons and listen to the voice of Flint.   Bill Ratner ** 01:42 All right. Lady Jay, you better get your battle gear on, because Cobra is on their way. And I can't bring up the Lacher threat weapon system. We got to get out of here. Yo, Joe,   Michael Hingson ** 01:52 there you go. I rest my case Well, Bill, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Bill Ratner ** 02:00 We can't rest now. Michael, we've just begun. No, we've just begun.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 We got to keep going here. Well, I'm really glad that you're here. Bill is another person who we inveigled to get on unstoppable mindset with the help of Walden Hughes. And so that means we can talk about Walden all we want today. Bill just saying, oh goodness. And I got a lot to say. Let me tell you perfect, perfect. Bring it on. So we are really grateful to Walden, although I hope he's not listening. We don't want to give him a big head. But no, seriously, we're really grateful. Ah, good point.   Bill Ratner ** 02:38 But his posture, oddly enough, is perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 Well, there you go. What do you do? He practiced. Well, anyway, we're glad you're here. Tell us about the early bill, growing up and all that stuff. It's always fun to start a good beginning.   Bill Ratner ** 02:54 Well, I was a very lucky little boy. I was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1947 to two lovely people, professionals, both with master's degree out at University of Chicago. My mother was a social worker. My father had an MBA in business. He was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. So I had the joy of living in a better home and living in a garden.   Michael Hingson ** 03:21 My mother. How long were you in Des Moines?   Bill Ratner ** 03:24 Five and a half years left before my sixth birthday. My dad got a fancy job at an ad agency in Minneapolis, and had a big brother named Pete and big handsome, curly haired boy with green eyes. And moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was was brought up there.   Michael Hingson ** 03:45 Wow. So you went to school there and and chased the girls and all that stuff.   Bill Ratner ** 03:54 I went to school there at Blake School for Boys in Hopkins, Minnesota. Couldn't chase the girls day school, but the girls we are allowed to dance with certainly not chase. Michael was at woodhue dancing school, the Northrop girls from Northrop girls school and the Blake boys were put together in eighth grade and taught the Cha Cha Cha, the waltz, the Charleston, and we danced together, and the girls wore white gloves, and we sniffed their perfume, and we all learned how to be lovers when we were 45   Michael Hingson ** 04:37 There you are. Well, as long as you learned at some point, that's a good start.   Bill Ratner ** 04:44 It's a weird generation. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 04:46 I've been to Des Moines before. I was born in Chicago, but moved out to California when I was five, but I did some work with the National Federation of the Blind in the mid 19. 1970s 1976 into 1978 so spent time at the Iowa Commission for the Blind in Des Moines, which became a top agency for the Blind in well, the late 50s into the to the 60s and so on. So   Bill Ratner ** 05:15 both my parents are from Chicago. My father from the south side of Chicago, 44th and Kenzie, which was a Irish, Polish, Italian, Jewish, Ukrainian neighborhood. And my mother from Glencoe, which was a middle class suburb above Northwestern University in Evanston.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 I Where were you born? 57th and union, north, south side, no, South   Bill Ratner ** 05:42 57th union is that? Is that west of Kenzie?   Michael Hingson ** 05:46 You know, I don't remember the geography well enough to know, but I know that it was, I think, Mount Sinai Hospital where I was born. But it was, it's, it's, it's a pretty tough neighborhood today. So I understand,   Bill Ratner ** 06:00 yeah, yeah, my it was tough, then it's tough now,   Michael Hingson ** 06:03 yeah, I think it's tougher, supposedly, than it was. But we lived there for five years, and then we we moved to California, and I remember some things about Chicago. I remember walking down to the local candy store most days, and had no problem doing that. My parents were told they should shut me away at a home somewhere, because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything. And my parents said, You guys are you're totally wrong. And they brought me up with that attitude. So, you   Bill Ratner ** 06:32 know who said that the school says school so that   Michael Hingson ** 06:35 doctors doctors when they discovered I was blind with the   Bill Ratner ** 06:38 kid, goodness gracious, horrified.   Michael Hingson ** 06:44 Well, my parents said absolutely not, and they brought me up, and they actually worked with other parents of premature kids who became blind, and when kindergarten started in for us in in the age of four, they actually had a special kindergarten class for blind kids at the Perry School, which is where I went. And so I did that for a year, learn braille and some other things. Then we moved to California, but yeah, and I go back to Chicago every so often. And when I do nowadays, they I one of my favorite places to migrate in Chicago is Garrett Popcorn.   Bill Ratner ** 07:21 Ah, yes, with caramel corn, regular corn, the   Michael Hingson ** 07:25 Chicago blend, which is a mixture, yeah, the Chicago blend is cheese corn, well, as it is with caramel corn, and they put much other mozzarella on it as well. It's really good.   Bill Ratner ** 07:39 Yeah, so we're on the air. Michael, what do you call your what do you call your program? Here I am your new friend, and I can't even announce your program because I don't know   Michael Hingson ** 07:48 the name, unstoppable mindset. This   Bill Ratner ** 07:51 is unstoppable mindset.   Michael Hingson ** 07:56 We're back. Well, we're back already. We're fast. So you, you, you moved off elsewhere, out of Des Moines and all that. And where did you go to college?   Bill Ratner ** 08:09 Well, this is like, why did you this is, this is a bit like talking about the Vietnam War. Looking back on my college career is like looking back on the Vietnam War series, a series of delusions and defeats. By the time I the time i for college, by the time I was applying for college, I was an orphan, orphan, having been born to fabulous parents who died too young of natural causes. So my grades in high school were my mediocre. I couldn't get into the Ivy Leagues. I got into the big 10 schools. My stepmother said, you're going to Michigan State in East Lansing because your cousin Eddie became a successful realtor. And Michigan State was known as mu u it was the most successful, largest agriculture college and university in the country. Kids from South Asia, China, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America all over the world came to Michigan State to study agricultural sciences, children of rich farmers all over the world and middle class farmers all over the world, and a huge police science department. Part of the campus was fenced off, and the young cadets, 1819, 20 years old, would practice on the rest of the student body, uniformed with hats and all right, excuse me, young man, we're just going to get some pizza at eight o'clock on Friday night. Stand against your car. Hands in your car. I said, Are you guys practicing again? Shut up and spread your legs. So that was that was Michigan State, and even though both my parents had master's degrees, I just found all the diversions available in the 1960s to be too interesting, and was not invited. Return after my sophomore year, and in order to flunk out of a big 10 University, and they're fine universities, all of them, you have to be either really determined or not so smart, not really capable of doing that level of study in undergraduate school. And I'd like to think that I was determined. I used to show up for my exams with a little blue book, and the only thing I would write is due to lack of knowledge, I am unable to complete this exam, sign Bill ranter and get up early and hand it in and go off. And so what was, what was left for a young man like that was the theater I'd seen the great Zero Mostel when I was 14 years old and on stage live, he looked just like my father, and he was funny, and if I Were a rich man, and that's the grade zero must tell. Yeah, and it took about five, no, it took about six, seven years to percolate inside my bread and my brain. In high school, I didn't want to do theater. The cheerleaders and guys who I had didn't happen to be friends with or doing theater. I took my girlfriends to see plays, but when I was 21 I started acting, and I've been an actor ever since. I'm a committee chair on the screen actors guild in Hollywood and Screen Actors Guild AFTRA, and work as a voice actor and collect my pensions and God bless the union.   Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Well, hey, as long as it works and you're making progress, you know you're still with it, right?   Bill Ratner ** 11:53 That's the that's the point. There's no accounting for taste in my business. Michael, you work for a few different broadcast entities at my age. And it's, you know, it's younger people. It's 18 to 3418 years to 34 years old is the ideal demographic for advertisers, Ford, Motor Company, Dove soap, Betty, Crocker, cake mixes and cereals, every conceivable product that sold online or sold on television and radio. This is my this is my meat, and I don't work for religion. However, if a religious organization calls, I call and say, I I'm not, not qualified or not have my divinity degree in order to sell your church to the public?   Michael Hingson ** 12:46 Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I can understand that. But you, you obviously do a lot, and as we talked about, you were Flint and GI Joe, which is kind of cool.   Bill Ratner ** 13:01 Flynn GI Joe was very cool. Hasbro Corporation, which was based in Providence, Rhode Island, had a huge success with GI Joe, the figure. The figure was about 11 and a half inches tall, like a Barbie, and was at first, was introduced to the public after the Korean War. There is a comic book that was that was also published about GI Joe. He was an individual figure. He was a figure, a sort of mythic cartoon figure during World War Two, GI Joe, generic American soldier, fighting man and but the Vietnam war dragged on for a long time, and the American buying public or buying kids toys got tired of GI Joe, got tired of a military figure in their household and stopped buying. And when Nixon ended the Vietnam War, or allotted to finish in 1974 Hasbro was in the tank. It's got its stock was cheap, and executives are getting nervous. And then came the Great George Lucas in Star Wars, who shrank all these action figures down from 11 and a half inches to three and a half inches, and went to China and had Chinese game and toy makers make Star Wars toys, and began to earn billions and billions dollars. And so Hasbro said, let's turn GI Joe into into a team. And the team began with flint and Lady J and Scarlett and Duke and Destro and cover commander, and grew to 85 different characters, because Hasbro and the toy maker partners could create 85 different sets of toys and action figures. So I was actor in this show and had a good time, and also a purveyor of a billion dollar industry of American toys. And the good news about these toys is I was at a conference where we signed autographs the voice actors, and we have supper with fans and so on. And I was sitting next to a 30 year old kid and his parents. And this kid was so knowledgeable about pop culture and every conceivable children's show and animated show that had ever been on the screen or on television. I turned to his mother and sort of being a wise acre, said, So ma'am, how do you feel about your 30 year old still playing with GI Joe action figures? And she said, Well, he and I both teach English in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania school system, and last year, the literacy level of my ninth graders was 50% 50% of those kids could not read in ninth grade. So I asked the principal if I could borrow my son's GI Joe, action figures, comic books and VHS tapes, recordings of the shows from TV. And he said, Sure, whatever you want to try. And so she did, and she played the video tapes, and these kids were thrilled. They'd never seen a GI Joe cartoon in class before. Passed out the comic books, let him read comics. And then she said, Okay, you guys. And passed out notebooks and pens and pencils, and said, I want you guys to make up some some shows, some GI Joe shows. And so they said, Yeah, we're ready. All right, Cobra, you better get into the barber shop, because the barber bill is no longer there and the fire engines are in the way. And wait a minute, there's a dog in the street. And so they're making this up, using their imagination, doing their schoolwork, by coming up with scenarios, imaginary fam fan fiction for GI Joe and she raised the literacy level in her classroom by 50% that year, by the end of that year, so, so that was the only story that I've ever heard about the sort of the efficacy of GI Joe, other than, you know, kids play with them. Do they? Are they shooting each other all the time? I certainly hope not. I hope not. Are they using the action figures? Do they strip their guns off and put them in a little, you know, stub over by the side and and have them do physical battle with each other, or have them hump the woods, or have them climb the stairs, or have them search the trees. Who knows what kids do? Same with same with girls and and Barbies. Barbie has been a source of fun and creativity for lots of girls, and the source of of worry and bother to a lot of parents as   Michael Hingson ** 17:54 well. Well, at the same time, though, when kids start to react and relate to some of these things. It's, it's pretty cool. I mean, look what's happened with the whole Harry Potter movement and craze. Harry Potter has probably done more in the last 20 or 25 years to promote reading for kids than most anything else, and   Bill Ratner ** 18:17 that's because it's such a good series of books. I read them to my daughters, yeah. And the quality of writing. She was a brilliant writer, not only just the stories and the storytelling, which is fun to watch in the movies, and you know, it's great for a parent to read. If there are any parents listening, I don't care how old your kids are. I don't care if they're 15. Offer to read to them. The 15 year old might, of course, say mom, but anybody younger than that might say either, all right, fine, which is, which means you better do it or read, read a book. To me, sure, it's fun for the parent, fun for the kid, and it makes the child a completely different kind of thinker and worker and earner.   Michael Hingson ** 19:05 Well, also the people who they got to read the books for the recordings Stephen Fry and in the US here, Jim Dale did such an incredible job as well. I've, I've read the whole Harry Potter series more than once, because I just enjoy them, and I enjoy listening to the the voices. They do such a good job. Yeah. And of course, for me, one of the interesting stories that I know about Jim Dale reading Harry Potter was since it was published by Scholastic he was actually scheduled to do a reading from one of the Harry from the new Harry Potter book that was coming out in 2001 on September 11, he was going to be at Scholastic reading. And of course, that didn't happen because of of everything that did occur. So I don't know whether I'm. I'm assuming at some point a little bit later, he did, but still he was scheduled to be there and read. But it they are there. They've done so much to help promote reading, and a lot of those kinds of cartoons and so on. Have done some of that, which is, which is pretty good. So it's good to, you know, to see that continue to happen. Well, so you've written several books on poetry and so on, and I know that you you've mentioned more than once grief and loss. How come those words keep coming up?   Bill Ratner ** 20:40 Well, I had an unusual childhood. Again. I mentioned earlier how, what a lucky kid I was. My parents were happy, educated, good people, not abusers. You know, I don't have a I don't have horror stories to tell about my mother or my father, until my mother grew sick with breast cancer and and it took about a year and a half or two years to die when I was seven years old. The good news is, because she was a sensitive, educated social worker, as she was actually dying, she arranged a death counseling session with me and my older brother and the Unitarian minister who was also a death counselor, and whom she was seeing to talk about, you know, what it was like to be dying of breast cancer with two young kids. And at this session, which was sort of surprised me, I was second grade, came home from school. In the living room was my mother and my brother looking a little nervous, and Dr Carl storm from the Unitarian Church, and she said, you know, Dr storm from church, but he's also my therapist. And we talk about my illness and how I feel, and we talk about how much I love you boys, and talk about how I worry about Daddy. And this is what one does when one is in crisis. That was a moment that was not traumatic for me. It's a moment I recalled hundreds of times, and one that has been a guiding light through my life. My mother's death was very difficult for my older brother, who was 13 who grew up in World War Two without without my father, it was just him and my mother when he was off in the Pacific fighting in World War Two. And then I was born after the war. And the loss of a mother in a family is like the bottom dropping out of a family. But luckily, my dad met a woman he worked with a highly placed advertising executive, which was unusual for a female in the 1950s and she became our stepmother a year later, and we had some very lovely, warm family years with her extended family and our extended family and all of us together until my brother got sick, came down with kidney disease a couple of years before kidney dialysis was invented, and a couple of years before kidney transplants were done, died at 19. Had been the captain of the swimming team at our high school, but did a year in college out in California and died on Halloween of 1960 my father was 51 years old. His eldest son had died. He had lost his wife six years earlier. He was working too hard in the advertising industry, successful man and dropped out of a heart attack 14th birthday. Gosh, I found him unconscious on the floor of our master bathroom in our house. So my life changed. I My life has taught me many, many things. It's taught me how the defense system works in trauma. It's taught me the resilience of a child. It's taught me the kindness of strangers. It's taught me the sadness of loss.   Michael Hingson ** 24:09 Well, you, you seem to come through all of it pretty well. Well, thank you. A question behind that, just an observation, but, but you do seem to, you know, obviously, cope with all of it and do pretty well. So you, you've always liked to be involved in acting and so on. How did you actually end up deciding to be a voice actor?   Bill Ratner ** 24:39 Well, my dad, after he was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines for Meredith publishing, got offered a fancy job as executive vice president of the flower and mix division for Campbell within advertising and later at General Mills Corporation. From Betty Crocker brand, and would bring me to work all the time, and would sit with me, and we'd watch the wonderful old westerns that were on prime time television, rawhide and Gunsmoke and the Virginian and sure   Michael Hingson ** 25:15 and all those. Yeah, during   Bill Ratner ** 25:17 the commercials, my father would make fun of the commercials. Oh, look at that guy. And number one, son, that's lousy acting. Number two, listen to that copy. It's the dumbest ad copy I've ever seen. The jingles and and then he would say, No, that's a good commercial, right there. And he wasn't always negative. He would he was just a good critic of advertising. So at a very young age, starting, you know, when we watch television, I think the first television ever, he bought us when I was five years old, I was around one of the most educated, active, funny, animated television critics I could hope to have in my life as a 56789, 1011, 12 year old. And so when I was 12, I became one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of radio stations with my friends John Waterhouse and John Barstow and Steve gray and Bill Connors in South Minneapolis. I named my five watt night kit am transmitter after my sixth grade teacher, Bob close this is wclo stereo radio. And when I was in sixth grade, I built myself a switch box, and I had a turntable and I had an intercom, and I wired my house for sound, as did all the other boys in the in the B, O, R, S, and that's brotherhood of radio stations. And we were guests on each other's shows, and we were obsessed, and we would go to the shopping malls whenever a local DJ was making an appearance and torture him and ask him dumb questions and listen obsessively to American am radio. And at the time for am radio, not FM like today, or internet on your little radio tuner, all the big old grandma and grandpa radios, the wooden ones, were AM, for amplitude modulated. You could get stations at night, once the sun went down and the later it got, the ionosphere would lift and the am radio signals would bounce higher and farther. And in Minneapolis, at age six and seven, I was able to to listen to stations out of Mexico and Texas and Chicago, and was absolutely fascinated with with what was being put out. And I would, I would switch my brother when I was about eight years old, gave me a transistor radio, which I hid under my bed covers. And at night, would turn on and listen for, who knows, hours at a time, and just tuning the dial and tuning the dial from country to rock and roll to hit parade to news to commercials to to agric agriculture reports to cow crossings in Kansas and grain harvesting and cheese making in Wisconsin, and on and on and on that made up the great medium of radio that was handing its power and its business over to television, just as I was growing As a child. Fast, fascinating transition   Michael Hingson ** 28:18 and well, but as it was transitioning, how did that affect you?   Bill Ratner ** 28:26 It made television the romantic, exciting, dynamic medium. It made radio seem a little limited and antiquated, and although I listened for environment and wasn't able to drag a television set under my covers. Yeah, and television became memorable with with everything from actual world war two battle footage being shown because there wasn't enough programming to 1930s Warner Brothers gangster movies with James Cagney, Edward G   Michael Hingson ** 29:01 Robinson and yeah   Bill Ratner ** 29:02 to all the sitcoms, Leave It to Beaver and television cartoons and on and on and on. And the most memorable elements to me were the personalities, and some of whom were invisible. Five years old, I was watching a Kids program after school, after kindergarten. We'll be back with more funny puppets, marionettes after this message and the first words that came on from an invisible voice of this D baritone voice, this commercial message will be 60 seconds long, Chrysler Dodge for 1954 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I watched hypnotized, hypnotized as a 1953 dodge drove across the screen with a happy family of four waving out the window. And at the end of the commercial, I ran into the kitchen said, Mom, mom, I know what a minute. Is, and it was said, it had suddenly come into my brain in one of those very rare and memorable moments in a person's life where your brain actually speaks to you in its own private language and says, Here is something very new and very true, that 60 seconds is in fact a minute. When someone says, See you in five minutes, they mean five times that, five times as long as that. Chrysler commercial, five times 60. That's 300 seconds. And she said, Did you learn it that that on T in kindergarten? And I said, No, I learned it from kangaroo Bob on TV, his announcer, oh, kangaroo Bob, no, but this guy was invisible. And so at five years of age, I was aware of the existence of the practice of the sound, of the magic of the seemingly unlimited access to facts, figures, products, brand names that these voices had and would say on the air in This sort of majestic, patriarchal way,   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 and just think 20 years later, then you had James Earl Jones,   Bill Ratner ** 31:26 the great dame. James Earl Jones, father was a star on stage at that time the 1950s James Earl Jones came of age in the 60s and became Broadway and off Broadway star.   Michael Hingson ** 31:38 I got to see him in Othello. He was playing Othello. What a powerful performance. It was   Bill Ratner ** 31:43 wonderful performer. Yeah, yeah. I got to see him as Big Daddy in Canada, Hot Tin Roof, ah, live and in person, he got front row seats for me and my family.   Michael Hingson ** 31:53 Yeah, we weren't in the front row, but we saw it. We saw it on on Broadway,   Bill Ratner ** 31:58 the closest I ever got to James Earl Jones. He and I had the same voice over agent, woman named Rita vinari of southern Barth and benare company. And I came into the agency to audition for Doritos, and I hear this magnificent voice coming from behind a closed voiceover booth, saying, with a with a Spanish accent, Doritos. I thought that's James Earl Jones. Why is he saying burritos? And he came out, and he bowed to me, nodded and smiled, and I said, hello and and the agent probably in the booth and shut the door. And she said, I said, that was James Earl Jones. What a voice. What she said, Oh, he's such a nice man. And she said, but I couldn't. I was too embarrassed. I was too afraid to stop him from saying, Doritos. And it turns out he didn't get the gig. So it is some other voice actor got it because he didn't say, had he said Doritos with the agent froze it froze up. That was as close as I ever got to did you get the gig? Oh goodness no,   Michael Hingson ** 33:01 no, you didn't, huh? Oh, well, well, yeah. I mean, it was a very, it was, it was wonderful. It was James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer played Iago. Oh, goodness, oh, I know. What a what a combination. Well, so you, you did a lot of voiceover stuff. What did you do regarding radio moving forward? Or did you just go completely out of that and you were in TV? Or did you have any opportunity   Bill Ratner ** 33:33 for me to go back at age 15, my brother and father, who were big supporters of my radio. My dad would read my W, C, l, o, newsletter and need an initial, an excellent journalism son and my brother would bring his teenage friends up. He'd play the elderly brothers, man, you got an Elvis record, and I did. And you know, they were, they were big supporters for me as a 13 year old, but when I turned 14, and had lost my brother and my father, I lost my enthusiasm and put all of my radio equipment in a box intended to play with it later. Never, ever, ever did again. And when I was about 30 years old and I'd done years of acting in the theater, having a great time doing fun plays and small theaters in Minneapolis and South Dakota and and Oakland, California and San Francisco. I needed money, so I looked in the want ads and saw a job for telephone sales, and I thought, Well, I used to love the telephone. I used to make phony phone calls to people all the time. Used to call funeral homes. Hi Carson, funeral I help you. Yes, I'm calling to tell you that you have a you have a dark green slate tile. Roof, isn't that correct? Yes. Well, there's, there's a corpse on your roof. Lady for goodness sake, bring it down and we laugh and we record it and and so I thought, Well, gee, I used to have a lot of fun with the phone. And so I called the number of telephone sales and got hired to sell magazine subscriptions and dinner tickets to Union dinners and all kinds of things. And then I saw a new job at a radio station, suburban radio station out in Walnut Creek, California, a lovely Metro BART train ride. And so I got on the BART train, rode out there and walked in for the interview, and was told I was going to be selling small advertising packages on radio for the station on the phone. And so I called barber shops and beauty shops and gas stations in the area, and one guy picked up the phone and said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you on the radio right now? And I said, No, I'm just I'm in the sales room. Well, maybe you should be. And he slams the phone on me. He didn't want to talk to me anymore. It wasn't interested in buying advertising. I thought, gee. And I told somebody at the station, and they said, Well, you want to be in the radio? And he went, Yeah, I was on the radio when I was 13. And it just so happened that an older fellow was retiring from the 10am to 2pm slot. K I S King, kiss 99 and KD FM, Pittsburgh, California. And it was a beautiful music station. It was a music station. Remember, old enough will remember music that used to play in elevators that was like violin music, the Percy faith orchestra playing a Rolling Stone song here in the elevator. Yes, well, that's exactly what we played. And it would have been harder to get a job at the local rock stations because, you know, they were popular places. And so I applied for the job, and   Michael Hingson ** 37:06 could have lost your voice a lot sooner, and it would have been a lot harder if you had had to do Wolfman Jack. But that's another story.   Bill Ratner ** 37:13 Yeah, I used to listen to Wolf Man Jack. I worked in a studio in Hollywood. He became a studio. Yeah, big time.   Michael Hingson ** 37:22 Anyway, so you you got to work at the muzack station, got   Bill Ratner ** 37:27 to work at the muzack station, and I was moving to Los Angeles to go to a bigger market, to attempt to penetrate a bigger broadcast market. And one of the sales guys, a very nice guy named Ralph pizzella said, Well, when you get to La you should study with a friend of mine down to pie Troy, he teaches voiceovers. I said, What are voice overs? He said, You know that CVS Pharmacy commercial just carted up and did 75 tags, available in San Fernando, available in San Clemente, available in Los Angeles, available in Pasadena. And I said, Yeah. He said, Well, you didn't get paid any extra. You got paid your $165 a week. The guy who did that commercial for the ad agency got paid probably 300 bucks, plus extra for the tags, that's voiceovers. And I thought, why? There's an idea, what a concept. So he gave me the name and number of old friend acquaintance of his who he'd known in radio, named Don DiPietro, alias Johnny rabbit, who worked for the Dick Clark organization, had a big rock and roll station there. He'd come to LA was doing voiceovers and teaching voiceover classes in a little second story storefront out of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. So I signed up for his class, and he was an experienced guy, and he liked me, and we all had fun, and I realized I was beginning to study like an actor at 1818, who goes to New York or goes to Los Angeles or Chicago or Atlanta or St Louis to act in the big theaters, and starts acting classes and realizes, oh my goodness, these people are truly professionals. I don't know how to do what they do. And so for six years, I took voice over classes, probably 4050, nights a year, and from disc jockeys, from ex show hosts, from actors, from animated cartoon voices, and put enough time in to get a degree in neurology in medical school. And worked my way up in radio in Los Angeles and had a morning show, a lovely show with a wonderful news man named Phil Reed, and we talked about things and reviewed movies and and played a lot of music. And then I realized, wait a minute, I'm earning three times the money in voiceovers as I am on the radio, and I have to get up at 430 in the morning to be on the radio. Uh, and a wonderful guy who was Johnny Carson's staff announcer named Jack angel said, You're not still on radio, are you? And I said, Well, yeah, I'm working in the morning. And Ka big, get out of there. Man, quit. Quit. And I thought, well, how can I quit? I've always wanted to be a radio announcer. And then there was another wonderful guy on the old am station, kmpc, sweet Dick Whittington. Whittington, right? And he said at a seminar that I went to at a union voice over training class, when you wake up at four in the morning and you swing your legs over the bed and your shoes hit the floor, and you put your head in your hands, and you say to yourself, I don't want to do this anymore. That's when you quit radio. Well, that hadn't happened to me. I was just getting up early to write some comedy segments and on and on and on, and then I was driving around town all day doing auditions and rented an ex girlfriend's second bedroom so that I could nap by myself during the day, when I had an hour in and I would as I would fall asleep, I'd picture myself every single day I'm in a dark voiceover studio, a microphone Is before me, a music stand is before the microphone, and on it is a piece of paper with advertising copy on it. On the other side of the large piece of glass of the recording booth are three individuals, my employers, I begin to read, and somehow the text leaps off the page, streams into my eyes, letter for letter, word for word, into a part of my back brain that I don't understand and can't describe. It is processed in my semi conscious mind with the help of voice over training and hope and faith, and comes out my mouth, goes into the microphone, is recorded in the digital recorder, and those three men, like little monkeys, lean forward and say, Wow, how do you do that? That was my daily creative visualization. Michael, that was my daily fantasy. And I had learned that from from Dale Carnegie, and I had learned that from Olympic athletes on NBC TV in the 60s and 70s, when the announcer would say, this young man you're seeing practicing his high jump is actually standing there. He's standing stationary, and the bouncing of the head is he's actually rehearsing in his mind running and running and leaping over the seven feet two inch bar and falling into the sawdust. And now he's doing it again, and you could just barely see the man nodding his head on camera at the exact rhythm that he would be running the 25 yards toward the high bar and leaping, and he raised his head up during the imaginary lead that he was visualizing, and then he actually jumped the seven foot two inches. That's how I learned about creative visualization from NBC sports on TV.   Michael Hingson ** 43:23 Channel Four in Los Angeles. There you go. Well, so you you broke into voice over, and that's what you did.   Bill Ratner ** 43:38 That's what I did, darn it, I ain't stopping now, there's a wonderful old actor named Bill Irwin. There two Bill Irwin's one is a younger actor in his 50s or 60s, a brilliant actor from Broadway to film and TV. There's an older William Irwin. They also named Bill Irwin, who's probably in his 90s now. And I went to a premiere of a film, and he was always showing up in these films as The senile stock broker who answers the phone upside down, or the senile board member who always asks inappropriate questions. And I went up to him and I said, you know, I see you in everything, man. I'm 85 years old. Some friends and associates of mine tell me I should slow down. I only got cast in movies and TV when I was 65 I ain't slowing down. If I tried to slow down at 85 I'd have to stop That's my philosophy. My hero is the great Don Pardo, the late great   Michael Hingson ** 44:42 for Saturday Night Live and Jeopardy   Bill Ratner ** 44:45 lives starring Bill Murray, Gilder Radner, and   Michael Hingson ** 44:49 he died for Jeopardy before that,   Bill Ratner ** 44:52 yeah, died at 92 with I picture him, whether it probably not, with a microphone and. His hand in his in his soundproof booth, in his in his garage, and I believe he lived in Arizona, although the show was aired and taped in New York, New York, right where he worked for for decades as a successful announcer. So that's the story.   Michael Hingson ** 45:16 Michael. Well, you know, I miss, very frankly, some of the the the days of radio back in the 60s and 70s and so on. We had, in LA what you mentioned, Dick Whittington, Dick whittinghill on kmpc, Gary Owens, you know, so many people who were such wonderful announcers and doing some wonderful things, and radio just isn't the same anymore. It's gone. It's   Bill Ratner ** 45:47 gone to Tiktok and YouTube. And the truth is, I'm not gonna whine about Tiktok or YouTube, because some of the most creative moments on camera are being done on Tiktok and YouTube by young quote influencers who hire themselves out to advertisers, everything from lipstick. You know,   Speaker 1 ** 46:09 when I went to a party last night was just wild and but this makeup look, watch me apply this lip remover and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, I have no lip.   Bill Ratner ** 46:20 You know, these are the people with the voices. These are the new voices. And then, of course, the faces. And so I would really advise before, before people who, in fact, use the internet. If you use the internet, you can't complain if you use the internet, if you go to Facebook or Instagram, or you get collect your email or Google, this or that, which most of us do, it's handy. You can't complain about tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. You can't complain about tick tock or YouTube, because it's what the younger generation is using, and it's what the younger generation advertisers and advertising executives and creators and musicians and actors are using to parade before us, as Gary Owens did, as Marlon Brando did, as Sarah Bernhardt did in the 19 so as all as you do, Michael, you're a parader. You're the head of the parade. You've been in on your own float for years. I read your your bio. I don't even know why you want to waste a minute talking to me for goodness sakes.   Michael Hingson ** 47:26 You know, the one thing about podcasts that I like over radio, and I did radio at kuci for seven years when I was in school, what I really like about podcasts is they're not and this is also would be true for Tiktok and YouTube. Primarily Tiktok, I would would say it isn't as structured. So if we don't finish in 60 minutes, and we finish in 61 minutes, no one's gonna shoot us.   Bill Ratner ** 47:53 Well, I beg to differ with you. Now. I'm gonna start a fight with you. Michael, yeah, we need conflict in this script. Is that it The Tick Tock is very structured. Six. No,   Michael Hingson ** 48:03 no, I understand that. I'm talking about podcasts,   Bill Ratner ** 48:07 though, but there's a problem. We gotta Tone It Up. We gotta pick it up. We gotta there's a lot of and I listen to what are otherwise really bright, wonderful personalities on screen, celebrities who have podcasts and the car sucks, and then I had meatballs for dinner, haha. And you know what my wife said? Why? You know? And there's just too much of that. And,   Michael Hingson ** 48:32 oh, I understand, yeah. I mean, it's like, like anything, but I'm just saying that's one of the reasons I love podcasting. So it's my way of continuing what I used to do in radio and having a lot of fun doing it   Bill Ratner ** 48:43 all right, let me ask you. Let me ask you a technical and editorial question. Let me ask you an artistic question. An artist, can you edit this podcast? Yeah. Are you? Do you plan to Nope.   Michael Hingson ** 48:56 I think conversations are conversations, but there is a but, I mean,   Bill Ratner ** 49:01 there have been starts and stops and I answer a question, and there's a long pause, and then, yeah, we can do you edit that stuff   Michael Hingson ** 49:08 out. We do, we do, edit some of that out. And I have somebody that that that does a lot of it, because I'm doing more podcasts, and also I travel and speak, but I can edit. There's a program called Reaper, which is really a very sophisticated   Bill Ratner ** 49:26 close up spaces. You   Michael Hingson ** 49:28 can close up spaces with it, yes, but the neat thing about Reaper is that somebody has written scripts to make it incredibly accessible for blind people using screen readers.   Bill Ratner ** 49:40 What does it do? What does it do? Give me the elevator pitch.   Michael Hingson ** 49:46 You've seen some of the the programs that people use, like computer vision and other things to do editing of videos and so on. Yeah.   Bill Ratner ** 49:55 Yeah. Even Apple. Apple edit. What is it called? Apple? Garage Band. No, that's audio. What's that   Michael Hingson ** 50:03 audio? Oh,   Bill Ratner ** 50:06 quick time is quick   Michael Hingson ** 50:07 time. But whether it's video or audio, the point is that Reaper allows me to do all of that. I can edit audio. I can insert, I can remove pauses. I can do anything with Reaper that anyone else can do editing audio, because it's been made completely accessible.   Bill Ratner ** 50:27 That's great. That's good. That's nice. Oh, it is. It's cool.   Michael Hingson ** 50:31 So so if I want, I can edit this and just have my questions and then silence when you're talking.   Bill Ratner ** 50:38 That might be best. Ladies and gentlemen, here's Bill Ratner,   Michael Hingson ** 50:46 yep, exactly, exactly. Now you have won the moth stories. Slam, what? Tell me about my story. Slam, you've won it nine times.   Bill Ratner ** 51:00 The Moth was started by a writer, a novelist who had lived in the South and moved to New York City, successful novelist named George Dawes green. And the inception of the moth, which many people listening are familiar with from the Moth Radio Hour. It was, I believe, either late 90s or early 2000s when he'd been in New York for a while and was was publishing as a fiction writer, and threw a party, and decided, instead of going to one of these dumb, boring parties or the same drinks being served and same cigarettes being smoked out in the veranda and the same orders. I'm going to ask people to bring a five minute story, a personal story, nature, a true story. You don't have to have one to get into the party, but I encourage you to. And so you know, the 3040, 50 people showed up, many of whom had stories, and they had a few drinks, and they had hors d'oeuvres. And then he said, Okay, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. It's time for and then I picked names out of a hat, and person after person after person stood up in a very unusual setting, which was almost never done at parties. You How often do you see that happen? Suddenly, the room falls silent, and someone with permission being having been asked by the host to tell a personal story, some funny, some tragic, some complex, some embarrassing, some racy, some wild, some action filled. And afterward, the feedback he got from his friends was, this is the most amazing experience I've ever had in my life. And someone said, you need to do this. And he said, Well, you people left a lot of cigarette butts and beer cans around my apartment. And they said, well, let's do it at a coffee shop. Let's do it at a church basement. So slowly but surely, the moth storytelling, story slams, which were designed after the old poetry slams in the 50s and 60s, where they were judged contests like, like a dance contest. Everybody's familiar with dance contests? Well, there were, then came poetry contests with people singing and, you know, and singing and really energetically, really reading. There then came storytelling contests with people standing on a stage before a silent audience, telling a hopefully interesting, riveting story, beginning middle, end in five minutes. And so a coffee house was found. A monthly calendar was set up. Then came the internet. Then it was so popular standing room only that they had to open yet another and another, and today, some 20 years later, 20 some years later, from Austin, Texas to San Francisco, California to Minneapolis, Minnesota to New York City to Los Angeles. There are moth story slams available on online for you to schedule yourself to go live and in person at the moth.org as in the moth with wings. Friend of mine, I was in New York. He said, You can't believe it. This writer guy, a writer friend of mine who I had read, kind of an avant garde, strange, funny writer was was hosting something called the moth in New York, and we were texting each other. He said, Well, I want to go. The theme was show business. I was going to talk to my Uncle Bobby, who was the bell boy. And I Love Lucy. I'll tell a story. And I texted him that day. He said, Oh man, I'm so sorry. I had the day wrong. It's next week. Next week, I'm going to be back home. And so he said, Well, I think there's a moth in Los Angeles. So about 15 years ago, I searched it down and what? Went to a small Korean barbecue that had a tiny little stage that originally was for Korean musicians, and it was now being used for everything from stand up comedy to evenings of rock and roll to now moth storytelling once a month. And I think the theme was first time. And so I got up and told a silly story and didn't win first prize. They have judges that volunteer judges a table of three judges scoring, you like, at a swim meet or a track beat or, you know, and our gymnastics meet. So this is all sort of familiar territory for everybody, except it's storytelling and not high jumping or pull ups. And I kept going back. I was addicted to it. I would write a story and I'd memorize it, and I'd show up and try to make it four minutes and 50 seconds and try to make it sound like I was really telling a story and not reading from a script. And wish I wasn't, because I would throw the script away, and I knew the stories well enough. And then they created a radio show. And then I began to win slams and compete in the grand slams. And then I started submitting these 750 word, you know, two and a half page stories. Literary magazines got a few published and found a whole new way to spend my time and not make much   Michael Hingson ** 56:25 money. Then you went into poetry.   Bill Ratner ** 56:29 Then I got so bored with my prose writing that I took a poetry course from a wonderful guy in LA called Jack grapes, who had been an actor and a football player and come to Hollywood and did some TV, episodics and and some some episodic TV, and taught poetry. It was a poet in the schools, and I took his class of adults and got a poem published. And thought, wait a minute, these aren't even 750 words. They're like 75 words. I mean, you could write a 10,000 word poem if you want, but some people have, yeah, and it was complex, and there was so much to read and so much to learn and so much that was interesting and odd. And a daughter of a friend of mine is a poet, said, Mommy, are you going to read me one of those little word movies before I go to sleep?   Michael Hingson ** 57:23 A little word movie, word movie out of the   Bill Ratner ** 57:27 mouths of babes. Yeah, and so, so and I perform. You know, last night, I was in Orange County at a organization called ugly mug Cafe, and a bunch of us poets read from an anthology that was published, and we sold our books, and heard other young poets who were absolutely marvelous and and it's, you know, it's not for everybody, but it's one of the things I do.   Michael Hingson ** 57:54 Well, you sent me pictures of book covers, so they're going to be in the show notes. And I hope people will will go out and get them   Bill Ratner ** 58:01 cool. One of the one of the things that I did with poetry, in addition to wanting to get published and wanting to read before people, is wanting to see if there is a way. Because poetry was, was very satisfying, emotionally to me, intellectually very challenging and satisfying at times. And emotionally challenging and very satisfying at times, writing about things personal, writing about nature, writing about friends, writing about stories that I received some training from the National Association for poetry therapy. Poetry therapy is being used like art therapy, right? And have conducted some sessions and and participated in many and ended up working with eighth graders of kids who had lost someone to death in the past year of their lives. This is before covid in the public schools in Los Angeles. And so there's a lot of that kind of work that is being done by constable people, by writers, by poets, by playwrights,   Michael Hingson ** 59:09 and you became a grief counselor,   Bill Ratner ** 59:13 yes, and don't do that full time, because I do voiceovers full time, right? Write poetry and a grand. Am an active grandparent, but I do the occasional poetry session around around grief poetry.   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 So you're a grandparent, so you've had kids and all that. Yes, sir, well, that's is your wife still with us? Yes?   Bill Ratner ** 59:40 Oh, great, yeah, she's an artist and an art educator. Well, that   Michael Hingson ** 59:46 so the two of you can criticize each other's works, then, just   Bill Ratner ** 59:52 saying, we're actually pretty kind to each other. I Yeah, we have a lot of we have a lot of outside criticism. Them. So, yeah, you don't need to do it internally. We don't rely on it. What do you think of this although, although, more than occasionally, each of us will say, What do you think of this poem, honey? Or what do you think of this painting, honey? And my the favorite, favorite thing that my wife says that always thrills me and makes me very happy to be with her is, I'll come down and she's beginning a new work of a new piece of art for an exhibition somewhere. I'll say, what? Tell me about what's, what's going on with that, and she'll go, you know, I have no idea, but it'll tell me what to do.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:33 Yeah, it's, it's like a lot of authors talk about the fact that their characters write the stories right, which, which makes a lot of sense. So with all that you've done, are you writing a memoir? By any chance, I   Bill Ratner ** 1:00:46 am writing a memoir, and writing has been interesting. I've been doing it for many years. I got it was my graduate thesis from University of California Riverside Palm Desert.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:57 My wife was a UC Riverside graduate. Oh, hi. Well, they   Bill Ratner ** 1:01:01 have a low residency program where you go for 10 days in January, 10 days in June. The rest of it's online, which a lot of universities are doing, low residency programs for people who work and I got an MFA in creative writing nonfiction, had a book called parenting for the digital age, the truth about media's effect on children. And was halfway through it, the publisher liked it, but they said you got to double the length. So I went back to school to try to figure out how to double the length. And was was able to do it, and decided to move on to personal memoir and personal storytelling, such as goes on at the moth but a little more personal than that. Some of the material that I was reading in the memoir section of a bookstore was very, very personal and was very helpful to read about people who've gone through particular issues in their childhood. Mine not being physical abuse or sexual abuse, mine being death and loss, which is different. And so that became a focus of my graduate thesis, and many people were urging me to write a memoir. Someone said, you need to do a one man show. So I entered the Hollywood fringe and did a one man show and got good reviews and had a good time and did another one man show the next year and and so on. So But writing memoir as anybody knows, and they're probably listeners who are either taking memoir courses online or who may be actively writing memoirs or short memoir pieces, as everybody knows it, can put you through moods from absolutely ecstatic, oh my gosh, I got this done. I got this story told, and someone liked it, to oh my gosh, I'm so depressed I don't understand why. Oh, wait a minute, I was writing about such and such today. Yeah. So that's the challenge for the memoir is for the personal storyteller, it's also, you know, and it's more of a challenge than it is for the reader, unless it's bad writing and the reader can't stand that. For me as a reader, I'm fascinated by people's difficult stories, if they're well   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:24 told well, I know that when in 2002 I was advised to write a book about the World Trade Center experiences and all, and it took eight years to kind of pull it all together. And then I met a woman who actually I collaborated with, Susie Florey, and we wrote thunder dog. And her agent became my agent, who loved the proposal that we sent and actually got a contract within a week. So thunder dog came out in 2011 was a New York Times bestseller, and very blessed by that, and we're working toward the day that it will become a movie still, but it'll happen. And then I wrote a children's version of it, well, not a children's version of the book, but a children's book about me growing up in Roselle, growing up the guide dog who was with me in the World Trade Center, and that's been on Amazon. We self published it. Then last year, we published a new book called Live like a guide dog, which is all about controlling fear and teaching people lessons that I learned prior to September 11. That helped me focus and remain calm.   Bill Ratner ** 1:04:23 What happened to you on September 11,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:27 I was in the World Trade Center. I worked on the 78th floor of Tower One.   Bill Ratner ** 1:04:32 And what happened? I mean, what happened to you?   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:36 Um, nothing that day. I mean, well, I got out. How did you get out? Down the stairs? That was the only way to go. So, so the real story is not doing it, but why it worked. And the real issue is that I spent a lot of time when I first went into the World Trade Center, learning all I could about what to do in an emergency, talking to police, port authorities. Security people, emergency preparedness people, and also just walking around the world trade center and learning the whole place, because I ran an office for a company, and I wasn't going to rely on someone else to, like, lead me around if we're going to go to lunch somewhere and take people out before we negotiated contracts. So I needed to know all of that, and I learned all I could, also realizing that if there ever was an emergency, I might be the only one in the office, or we might be in an area where people couldn't read the signs to know what to do anyway. And so I had to take the responsibility of learning all that, which I did. And then when the planes hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, we get we had some guests in the office. Got them out, and then another colleague, who was in from our corporate office, and I and my guide dog, Roselle, went to the stairs, and we started down. And   Bill Ratner ** 1:05:54 so, so what floor did the plane strike?   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:58 It struck and the NOR and the North Tower, between floors 93 and 99 so I just say 96 okay, and you were 20 floors down, 78 floors 78 so we were 18 floors below, and   Bill Ratner ** 1:06:09 at the moment of impact, what did you think?   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:13 Had no idea we heard a muffled kind of explosion, because the plane hit on the other side of the building, 18 floors above us. There was no way to know what was going on. Did you feel? Did you feel? Oh, the building literally tipped, probably about 20 feet. It kept tipping. And then we actually said goodbye to each other, and then the building came back upright. And then we went,   Bill Ratner ** 1:06:34 really you so you thought you were going to die?   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:38 David, my colleague who was with me, as I said, he was from our California office, and he was there to help with some seminars we were going to be doing. We actually were saying goodbye to each other because we thought we were about to take a 78 floor plunge to the street, when the building stopped tipping and it came back. Designed to do that by the architect. It was designed to do that, which is the point, the point.   Bill Ratner ** 1:07:02 Goodness, gracious. And then did you know how to get to the stairway?   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:04 Oh, absolutely. And did you do it with your friend? Yeah, the first thing we did, the first thing we did is I got him to get we had some guests, and I said, get him to the stairs. Don't let him take the elevators, because I knew he had seen fire above us, but that's all we knew. And but I said, don't take the elevators. Don't let them take elevators. Get them to the stairs and then come back and we'll leave. So he did all that, and then he came back, and we went to the stairs and started down.   Bill Ratner ** 1:07:33 Wow. Could you smell anything?   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:36 We smelled burning jet fuel fumes on the way down. And that's how we figured out an airplane must have hit the building, but we had no idea what happened. We didn't know what happened until the until both towers had collapsed, and I actually talked to my wife, and she's the one who told us how to aircraft have been crashed into the towers, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth, at that time, was still missing over Pennsylvania. Wow. So you'll have to go pick up a copy of thunder dog. Goodness. Good. Thunder dog. The name of the book is Thunder dog, and the book I wrote last year is called Live like a guide dog. It's le

Tensions are escalating after Venezuela's President accused President Trump of inventing a war, following the U.S. deployment of an advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. This move comes amid expanded U.S. strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats off Venezuela's coast. James B. Story, retired U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, joins the Rundown to discuss the state of Venezuela's regime, the secrecy surrounding U.S. military operations in the region, and the Venezuelan government's ties with China, Russia, drug cartels, and terrorist organizations. One week until election day: this off-year election cycle includes local races, ballot measures, and more. Voters in New Jersey and Virginia are electing their next governors, while New Yorkers are following their own mayoral race. Democrats lead all of those three key races in the polls. Josh Kraushaar, FOX News Audio Political Analyst and Editor-in-Chief of Jewish Insider, joins the Rundown to break down the three races and that they mean for the overall trajectory of the country. Plus, commentary by Melissa Henson, senior policy advisor for Media and Culture for Concerned Women for America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bible says that we are to be Christ's ambassadors—representatives sent out on a mission to build relationships for him in the world. In this message series, Pastor Rick looks at the roles, responsibilities, and rewards you have as Christ's ambassador.Jesus calls us to be his ambassadors. That calling comes not only with responsibilities but also with rewards. In this message, Pastor Rick continues to share about the responsibilities of being his ambassador in the world as well as the rewards for those who represent him faithfully. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1103/29

Tensions are escalating after Venezuela's President accused President Trump of inventing a war, following the U.S. deployment of an advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. This move comes amid expanded U.S. strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats off Venezuela's coast. James B. Story, retired U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, joins the Rundown to discuss the state of Venezuela's regime, the secrecy surrounding U.S. military operations in the region, and the Venezuelan government's ties with China, Russia, drug cartels, and terrorist organizations. One week until election day: this off-year election cycle includes local races, ballot measures, and more. Voters in New Jersey and Virginia are electing their next governors, while New Yorkers are following their own mayoral race. Democrats lead all of those three key races in the polls. Josh Kraushaar, FOX News Audio Political Analyst and Editor-in-Chief of Jewish Insider, joins the Rundown to break down the three races and that they mean for the overall trajectory of the country. Plus, commentary by Melissa Henson, senior policy advisor for Media and Culture for Concerned Women for America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pakistan's Military Calculus: Jailing Imran Khan to Disintegrate His Party Hussein Khan (Ambassador Husain Haqqani) Ambassador Husain Haqqani explains the Pakistani military's rationale for keeping Imran Khan imprisoned despite his status as a former Prime Minister. Khan faces various lawfare charges brought by the government, but the underlying strategy is political rather than judicial. The military's calculus is that Khan's party lacks alternate leadership or a succession plan, unlike Pakistan's traditional dynastic parties. Since Khan serves as the sole rallying point and the party stands primarily for good governance under his leadership, the military believes that prolonged imprisonment will cause the party to fade or that Khan will become too old to lead effectively when released.

This is a NerdySouth Entertainment joint! Kirsten Schuder's favorite writing projects make a positive impact upon social issues. Kirsten has written hundreds of parenting and mental health articles and has edited thousands as an expert mental health professional. She fetched an international award with her first co-authored book, Farming Industrial Hemp: Not Your Daddy's Tobacco where their book was instrumental in raising awareness of the dangers of growing industrial hemp in unsafe conditions and influencing Congress in growing guidelines for the budding industry. Her second book, Schooling Your Kids Through a Pandemic: Your Step-by-step, Guilt-free Guide to Remote Learning, Homeschooling, or Somewhere in Between, helps parents navigate the difficulties of remote learning. She also authored a fiction series, Inside Dweller, published by Black Rose Writing September 14, 2023. Inside Dweller: Genesis won in the 19th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards – Finalist and is the winner of The International Firebird Book Awards in Supernatural, Speculative, and Paranormal categories. She serves as the Vice President of Apex Literary Management, a growing boutique literary agency, and loves long subtitles. Finally, she writes whatever the heck she wants in Kirsten's Short Attention Span on Medium. Kirsten has been writing most of her life. She began with a picture book with flowers, houses, and rainbows when she was in preschool and asked her mother to publish it. (She did not.) She worked her way up to writing poetry in the middle of the night and waking her parents up to share it. (She was a joy as a child.) She moved onto articles published in print magazines in her twenties and has been published in every decade she has been an adult.   A recent widow, Kirsten resides in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia with her kids and a myriad of pets. She has been telecommuting for almost a decade and homeschooling her kids for over a decade. Presently, she works with various online platforms, writes her own books, and runs Apex Literary Management, a growing boutique literary agency. FOLLOW KIRSTEN: Email Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn X   30&Nerdy Podcast's Opening Rift: Kyle Standifer The Ballad of 30&Nerdy: Beth Crowley Fanboy Expo Ad Music: “Omega” by Scott Buckley   This Episode is brought to you by: Fan Boy Expo  Tennessee Legend Distillery Hippie Water use the code NerdySouth at checkout Advertising Expressions Encore Theatrical Company Shane's Rib Shack Hwy 81 McDonough, GA   Reaper Apparel Company 30&Nerdy Podcast is an Ambassador for Reaper Apparel Co. If you are interested in checking out all the great attire they have, or learning more about them; click here and if you want to purchase something, don't forget to use our code 30ANDNERDYPOD at check out for 10% off of your order!   You can learn more about NerdySouth Entertainment and its content by visiting The Fortress of NERDitude and while you are there, subscribe to our Nerdly Newsletter for behind the scenes, announcements, and Nerdly News updates. You can also check out the other shows and content under NerdySouth Entertainment   For more NerdySouth content, find us on all social media outlets: Instagram YouTube TikTok Facebook Email us at 30andnerdypod@gmail.com  Shop Nerdy at NerdySouth Studios   Cheers To Ya Nerds!                                                                

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on how Donald Trump's ambassador picks for South Africa and Kuwait collapsed under cross-examination by Democratic and Republican Senators. Go to https://CozyEarth.com and use code MEIDAS at checkout for up to 40% off your new favorite pajama set and blanket!! Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1. Government Shutdown and Federal Worker Pay The episode opens with a discussion of a government shutdown, referred to as the “Schumer shutdown.” Senator Cruz criticizes Democrats for voting against legislation that would have paid essential federal workers during the shutdown. He highlights specific Democratic senators who voted in favor (Warnock, Ossoff, Fetterman) and criticizes the rest for voting against it. Cruz emphasizes the impact on TSA agents, air traffic controllers, and military personnel, warning of potential travel disruptions and national security risks. He also notes that members of Congress continue to receive pay during the shutdown, though he claims to have requested his own pay be withheld. 2. Rise of Antisemitism on the Right Cruz expresses concern about increasing antisemitism within conservative circles, particularly among younger people. He recounts his speech at a Christians United for Israel event, where he warned about the dangers of ignoring antisemitism on the right. He criticizes both the left and right for harboring antisemitic sentiments, but emphasizes a recent rise on the right. Cruz calls on church leaders and conservatives to actively oppose antisemitism and support Israel, citing national security interests and moral obligations. 3. Opposition to Ambassador Nominee Amer Ghalib Cruz discusses his opposition to Amer Ghalib, a nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait. He criticizes Ghalib’s past statements, including praise for the Muslim Brotherhood and controversial social media activity. Cruz argues that Ghalib’s views are incompatible with U.S. foreign policy and President Trump’s positions, particularly regarding Israel and the Abraham Accords. He predicts that the nomination will likely be withdrawn due to bipartisan concerns. 4. Religious Persecution in China The podcast concludes with a segment on the persecution of Christians in China, particularly the arrest of Pastor Jin Mingri and members of the Zion Church. Cruz condemns the Chinese Communist Party’s actions and calls for the U.S. to use diplomatic and economic pressure to advocate for religious freedom. He emphasizes the importance of the U.S. standing up for persecuted religious minorities globally. Cruz expresses hope that President Trump will raise the issue during an upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Go to BackyardButchers.com and enter promo code “VERDICT”, that’s V-E-R-D-I-C-T, for up to 30% off, 2 free 10-ounce ribeyes, and free shipping when you subscribe. http://www.backyardbutchers.com/Verdict Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson and The Ben Ferguson Show Podcast Wherever You get You're Podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show on Social Media so you never miss a moment! Thanks for Listening YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verdictwithtedcruz X: https://x.com/tedcruz X: https://x.com/benfergusonshowYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruzSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.