Podcasts about american japanese

The Ring sparked a chain reaction in the early 2000s, kicking off the American Japanese horror remake craze. Every so often, a horror remake comes along that outperforms the original.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee  Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community Botanical History On This Day 1849 A most extraordinary presentation took place at Windsor Castle. Imagine, if you will, standing in the grand halls of Windsor Castle as Joseph Paxton (PAX-ton) presented a massive leaf and exquisite blossom of the Victoria Amazonica (vik-TOR-ee-ah am-uh-ZON-ih-kuh) to the Queen. The moment was so moving that Her Majesty enthusiastically declared, "We are immensely pleased." 1909 The Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson (WIL-sun) sent what seemed like a routine notification to the plant industry office in Seattle. Little did anyone know this simple message would set in motion one of the most delicate diplomatic situations in early 20th-century American-Japanese relations. Grow That Garden Library™  Read The Daily Gardener review of The Kew Gardener's Guide to Growing Cacti and Succulents by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Paul Rees Buy the book on Amazon: The Kew Gardener's Guide to Growing Cacti and Succulents by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Paul Rees Today's Botanic Spark 1989 The Sarasota Herald-Tribune published a story that lifted the veil on the shadowy world of rare orchid trading. The article focused on Limerick Inc. and an alleged smuggling operation of endangered Chinese orchids to Florida - but the real story runs much deeper into the heart of orchid obsession. The tale of Kerry Richards and his nursery, Limerick Inc., reads like a botanical thriller. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Olivia Salazar-Winspear and Dheepthika Laurent take a look at all the winners, losers and surprises from the 2024 Emmy Awards ceremony, including historic wins for American-Japanese epic "Shogun" in the drama category. Also: they look at season four of irreverent British spy drama "Slow Horses" and a new season of Ryan Murphy's true crime series based on the story of the Menendez brothers, who killed their parents in 1989. Plus: don't miss "La Maison", a new "Succession"-style family drama à la française!

The Power Hour is a weekly podcast that discusses the most interesting energy and environmental policy issues of the day with top national experts.  Jack has a fascinating discussion with energy policy legend Bill Martin this week that you don't want to miss.  Bill has held top government positions in multiple administrations including as Deputy […]

The Power Hour is a weekly podcast that discusses the most interesting energy and environmental policy issues of the day with top national experts.  Jack has a fascinating discussion with energy policy legend Bill Martin this week that you don't want to miss.  Bill has held top government positions in multiple administrations including as Deputy Secretary (and even Acting Secretary) in  Ronald Regan's Department of Energy.   More recently, Bill has been central in nurturing the critical relationship between America's and Japan's commercial nuclear industries.  But those topics only scratch the surface of this discussion.   Join the conversation with an email to  thepowerhour@heritage.org!  Thank you for listening and please don't forget to subscribe and help us to spread the word.  

Godzilla goes to spaaaace! In a movie that's way more alien invasion space opera than kaiju, the hilariously-dressed Xiliens from Planet X introduce us to Monster Zero (aka Ghidorah) and get Earth wrapped in a convoluted plot involving trapping sleepy Godzilla and Rodan in bubbles. We talk the first American-Japanese co-production for Toho -- which includes a major role for Rebel Without a Cause's Nick Adams and a complex English/Japanese language shoot -- along with space lady clones, a backslide in character dynamics, and of course, Godzilla's famous little dance and its surprisingly important ramifications. ---- Help us nominate The Mixed Reviews for a Film & TV Podcast Award! Go to ⁠podcastawards.com⁠. ---- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Part of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠skreeonkpodcast@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme song:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"BIO WARS - Synth Cover" by Kweer Kaiju⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sources include: Ishirō Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series by David Kalat Godzilla FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the King of the Monsters by Brian Solomon Wikizilla

Welcome to another episode of The Video Store Podcast. Today, I am recommending a selection of films that will hopefully not only entertain, but offer a look at the blending and clashing of 1980s American and Japanese cultures. Whether you're a cinephile or just looking for something interesting, these picks will surely add some flavor to your movie night.First up, we have "Gung Ho" from 1986. Directed by Ron Howard, this comedy explores the clash of work cultures when a Japanese company takes over an American car factory. Michael Keaton shines as the foreman trying to bridge the divide. The film is a light-hearted, but it takes on serious themes like globalization and labor relations, making it both fun and thought-provoking at the same time. Although most people focus on the lightness of the movie.Next, we have "Tokyo Pop" from 1988. This one is a hidden gem. It follows the journey of an American singer who travels to Japan. Not only does it feature catchy music, but it also delves into the intricacies of culture shock and relationships. It's a fascinating look at the late eighties music scene and cultural exchange, presented in a vibrant, almost documentary style.Moving on, we look at "Black Rain," directed by Ridley Scott in 1989. This film is a gritty, neon-lit action thriller that explores the underworld of Osaka through the eyes of two New York cops, played by Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia. The film is well-known for its atmospheric cinematography and intense action sequences. It does a great job of capturing the essence of Japan's urban landscape in a dramatic, almost noir-like manner.Lastly, we have "Mr. Baseball" from 1992. In this sports comedy, Tom Selleck stars as an aging New York Yankee who is traded to a team in Japan. The movie is a humorous and heartfelt look at the struggles and surprises of adapting to a new culture and sports environment. It's especially notable for its insights into the differences between American and Japanese baseball.Each of these films offers a unique perspective on American-Japanese relationships, mixing humor, drama, and action. So, grab some popcorn and enjoy these cross-cultural adventures from the comfort of your couch. Subscribe to the Video Store Podcast* The Video Store Podcast* Apple Podcast* RSS This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.videostorepodcast.com

On this episode of Our American Stories, Major General James Mukoyama rose from his blue collar Chicago neighborhood to become the first Asian-American to command a US Army division. General “Mook” is the author of Faith, Family & Flag: Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader. Here he is to tell the story of the Japanese who fought for the United States in WWII. Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#491 - This week we discuss Michael Keaton's Gun Ho. Please follow and contact us at the following locations: Patreon: ⁠http://patreon.com/hansshotfirst Facebook: Hans Shot First⁠ Twitter: ⁠http://twitter.com/hansshot1st Email: hansshotfirst@outlook.com⁠ iTunes: ⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hans-shot-first/id778071182⁠ Google Play: ⁠https://play.google.com/music/m/I5q2th5tzsucvpzgmy3kmzgtd44?t=Hans_Shot_First⁠ iHeartRadio: ⁠https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-hans-shot-first-30934202/⁠ Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0ityvhlXhdtoXFJFOO1cvA

Holmberg's Morning Sickness - Friday August 18, 2023 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Holmberg's Morning Sickness - Friday August 18, 2023 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last time we spoke about the battle of the Yalu River. It was an absolutely catastrophic week for the Qing dynasty. Within just two days they suffered a major land defeat and now a defeat at sea that practically annihilated the Beiyang fleet. Corruption and incompetence ran rampant as the Beiyang fleet crews found themselves undertrained, understaffed, lacking ammunition and what ammunition they did have, some of it was filled with concrete and porcelain. The Qing dynasty's corruption problems were shown on full display as the IJN combined fleet outperformed them, despite having smaller warships and less of them. Quick firing guns defeated the big guns at Yalu and now the Japanese held control over the seas. The Beiyang fleet now flee's to Weihaiwei to try and repair their ships for another chance at a decisive naval battle, but will it ever come to be?   #52 The First Sino-Japanese War of 1898-1895 Part 4: The Battle for Port Arthur   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. After the battle of the Yalu River, the Japanese had a enormous boost to their propaganda campaign. Despite this the Qing backed press continued their charade of blemishing the losses, take this article from the North China Herald "In spite of the reiterated denials of the Japanese authorities that any of their vessels were badly injured in the recent naval fight, information which we have been able to gather from quarters entitled to all credence, corroborates in a very circumstantial manner the statement that the Japanese lost four vessels in the actual fight, and more probably later on, as the Chinese heavy guns treated them very severely. The Chinese engaged fought with wonderful bravery; there were no skulkers." Despite their claims, by September the 20th the jig was up for the Qing government as foreign military advisers who had participated or witnessed the battle at Yalu arrived to Tianjin. They began spilling the story to the western press, and unlike the Japanese press, the Qing could not simply write them off as mere propaganda. The foreign press corroborated the Japanese reports that 5 Qing warships were had been sunk and “to a man regard the statement that the Japanese lost no ships as a barefaced lie”. Even the foreign eye witnesses could not believe not a single Japanese ship was sunk. The reports caused severe issues for Beijing. This alongside other issues prompted Emperor Guangxu to take an unprecedented move, he summoned Inspector General Constantin von Hanneken, a Prussian officer who was working as a military adviser to the Beiyang fleet for an imperial audience. Von Hanneken was also one of the engineers who helped build the defenses at Port Arthur known to the Chinese as Lushunkou and at Weihaiwei. He of course was present at the battle of the Yalu and the EMperor demanded to learn what actually transpired from him. It certainly says a lot about your Empire, when you would trust a foreigner over your officials.   It is also at this point Japan altered its position on foreign reporters. As mentioned near the beginning of this series, the Japanese opted to have a blackout on news about the war. On August 2nd of 1894 an Imperial Ordinance had been published requiring all newspapers and other publicans to submit any information concerning diplomatic or military affairs to the Japanese government authorities prior to publication. Well after the victories at Pyongyang and Yalu, the Japanese government decided to undermine the Qing war propaganda efforts by allowing foreign correspondence to accompany the IJA. Foreigners would not be given the same accommodation for the Qing ground forces. As explained by a reporter for the Peking and Tientsin times “no one could guarantee the safety of a foreigner accompanying the Chinese troops. Two interpreters accompanying the Second Japanese Army were captured and killed by Chinese forces”. Another major event occurred after the disaster at Yalu, Empress Dowager Cixi abandoned her plans for her extravagant 60th birthday celebration, which really adds to the myth about the embezzlement of naval funds. On September 25th, EMperor Guangxu issued this edict “"H.I.M. the Empress-Dowager, in view of the continuation of the war with Japan, cannot bear to be celebrating her birthday anniversary with great rejoicing while her subjects and soldiers are all suffering from the hardships of war, hence she has commanded that the triumphal progress from Eho [the Summer Palace or Yiheyuan, to the Forbidden City and the celebrations at the former place be given up, and only the ordinary celebrations settled upon in the Palace be observed on the auspicious day. We did our best to try to pray her Majesty to reconsider the above decision, but the grace and virtue of her Majesty has resisted our prayers." It was estimated by the French press that Empress Dowager had spent nearly 80 million francs in preparation for the celebration that was canceled. This is about the time you hear rumors of Empress Dowagers infamous embezzling scandal. It was said by many that she had siphoned naval funds in the figure of 100 million taels which was the reason why the Qing Navy received no significant funding after 1889. As I mentioned in the previous episode, its not so black and white, but indeed the summer palace did see serious renovations. Some of those renovations costs upto 14 million taels and it seems like at least 11 million did come from funds originally dedicated to the navy. There is also a huge amount of irony, as one of these renovations was to refurbish a marble pavilion in the shape of a boat for one of the palace gardens. Too good to be true some would say. The first two key battles of the war were focused on expelling the Chinese from the Korean Peninsula. After the victory at Yalu, the war theater now shifted to Manchuria. The IJA wanted to clear a way from the Korean border to the Liaodong Peninsula in preparation for an attack upon one of her grandest and most important fortresses and naval bases, Port Arthur. The Fortress of Port Arthur took over 16 years to build and its naval station was considered superior to that of Hong Kong. If Port Arthur were to fall, the Qing would be unable to repair their best damaged ships and would succumb to a naval war of attrition. Guarding the southern shores of the Bohai was China's second most important naval base, that at Weihaiwei. Weihaiwei and Port Arthur worked together to check any sea approaches to Beijing. If both fell, the rest of the war would literally descend into mop up operations. Japan's war plan was to execute a pincer attack against Beijing. Their forces would advance in 3 columns. 1) Part of the 1st IJA would move south through Manchuria towards the Liaodong Peninsula; 2) the 2nd IJA would land on the Liaodong Peninsula and advance upon Port Arthur; 3) another part of the 1st IJA would advance from the Korean border towards Mukden, hoping to seize it and use it as a down payment later on to decapitate the Qing dynasty. Once Port arthur was taken, the 1st IJA would continue their land campaign in Manchuria to clear a path to Beijing while the 2nd IJA would amphibious attack Weihaiwei. If successful this would obliterate the Qing southern naval forces and leave Beijing at their mercy. As a coup de grace, the Japanese were also organizing a 3rd IJA at Hiroshima in anticipation for amphibious landings at Dagu to march upon Beijing. However the Japanese were under no illusions of this all coming to be, they figured great powers would intervene at some point to limit their war aims. The Qing counterstrategy was quite minimal; it rested upon the assumption the Japanese would never be capable of crossing the Yalu River. After their defeat at Pyongyang the Qing ground forces made their next stand 125 miles to the north along the Yalu River. The river constituted the boundary between Korea and China. It was deep and wife, making it a formidable obstacle for the advancing Japanese army. Two fortified outposts faced another fromm opposite sides of the river, one at Jiliancheng on the Manchurian side and the other at Uiji on the Korean side. These became the headquarters for the opposing armies. General Song Qing fortified the northern bank of the Yalu for 7 miles going as far south as Andong and 10 miles north to Hushan. General Song Qing was 74 years old, famous for helping suppress the Taiping 30 years prior. He was one of Li Hongzhang's subordinates during the campaign against the Taiping and Nian rebellion. Since 1880 he had served as an assistant to Li Hongzhang, overseeing the defenses of Manchuria. By 1882 he alongside his troops took up a station at Port Arthur, and apparently there he had done very little to modernize the Manchurian army. After the battle of Pyongyang, Li Hongzhang put him in charge of directing the war and gave him authority to reorganize the army. Meanwhile the 1st IJA led by Field Marshal Count Yamagata Aritomo departed from Pyongyang on October 23rd. The 56 year old Yamagata was the father of the modern Japanese army, a leading Meiji era statesman. He had overseen the introduction of national conscription in 1873, the reorganization of the army along first French, then Prussian lines in 1878 and the adoption of an independent General staff system. During the 1880s he also oversaw the organization of the national police force and system of local government. He was prime minister from 1889-1891, during his time he introduced the imperial rescript on education. So needless to say he was a colossal figure. His plan was based on Napoleons successful tactic of making a feint to the front while delivering a blow to the flank, this time directed at Hushan. He planned to use a small force to attack the Qing left flank, in the hopes of turning its flank and feinting the movements of the main bulk of his army. The main bulk would concentrate on the center of the Qing lines. But to do all of this, he had to cross the Yalu.  The Japanese had learned bitter lessons about fording large rivers at Pyongyang, they could have massively lost the battle because they never prepared the tools to ford such things. This time the IJA carefully prepared themselves. Yamagata occupied Uiju by October 23rd with around 10,000 troops of the 3rd and 5th divisions of the 1st IJA. On the other side of the Yalu, General Song Qing had 16 km's of fortifications in the form of hundreds of redoubts and trenches manned by nearly 23,000 troops.  On the night of October 24th, the Japanese crept up to the Yalu river near Uiji and secretly erected a pontoon bridge to get the main body of their forces across. Miraculously this went undetected. The IJA 3rd division led by General Katsuro Taro performed a night attack against Hushan. Incredibly, upon attacking Hushan, the Japanese found the Qing garrison had deserted their fortifications the night before! Simultaneously the IJA 5th division led by General Nozu Michitsura sent his men over the pontoon bridge and attacked Jiuliancheng, also finding positions deserted. In fact only a Qing rear guard even bothered to make a token resistance! In less than 3 hours of combat the fortifications at Hushan and Juliancheng were already in Japanese hands? According to a military analyst named Du Boulay, "The Chinese garrison [at Jiuliancheng] which might have inflicted great damage on the hostile army from behind battlements of solid masonry, silently decamped during the night, keeping up a desultory fire in the meantime, in order to encourage the belief that they intended to retain possession of the stronghold." When the Japanese came to Dandong the situation was the very same. The Qing had abandoned enormous quantities of weapons, rice and other war materials. The battle to stop the Japanese from entering Manchuria resulted in about 34 deaths and 111 wounded or the Qing and practically nothing for the Japanese.  It had turned out the field commanders, Generals Yikteang'a, Ye Zhicheng and Nie Shicheng had all retreated to Fenghuangcheng. Yiketang'a was a Manchu general in control of banner forces from Heilongjiang province and not under direct command of Li Hongzhang. The 1st IJA split into two groups to pursue the fleeing Qing forces. One group was commanded by Lt General Taro who advanced northwards towards Fenghuangcheng chasing after General Nie Shichengs men. At Fenghuangcheng, Yiketang and Nie chose to torch the city and fled the scene by October 30th. By November 15th, the Japanese seized Xiuyan just due west of Fenghuangcheng. By taking both these cities the land approaches to Port Arthur were now severed.  Meanwhile the other Japanese group led by Lt General Oku Yasukata were advancing north towards Mukden. Severe winter conditions began to hit the region as General SOng Qing moved his forces to Liaoyang to block the Japanese advance upon Mukden. Because of the descending winter, both sides went into winter quarters. The Qing sources at this point stopped claiming victories, and instead began presenting events as brave encounters against overwhelmingly superior numbers. Take this from the North China Herald on November 2nd "When the Japanese army of forty odd thousand attacked Chiuliench'eng [Jiuliancheng] on the 24th of October there were only a little over 5,000 Chinese troops to oppose the enemy. But it took the latter two whole days to take the city. When the city was abandoned all the modern Krupp and Hotchkiss guns, over twenty in number, were carried along with the army, the ones left to the enemy being some thirty odd old muzzle-loading pieces, a hundred years old, which had been placed there many years ago as a defence against possible native or Corean marauders." Because of the absence of decent telegraph lines or good roads, communications were extremely slow to come out of the Manchurian campaign. Initial coverage tended to be based more so on rumor than fact, kind of like social media today. It would often take more than a month for a comprehensive account to become known.  General Song Qing's forces had retreated in the general direction of Liaoyang to protect Mukden. It was after all the ancestral home of the Manchu, thus it held tremendous symbolic importance for their dynasty. The city could not afford to lose if the Manchu hoped to still control China. But for the Japanese, Mukden was like their trump card to play later, their primary target of course was Port Arthur. The Manchu leadership were following the traditional strategy focusing on the land war and dynastic continuity while overlooking the need to deny the Japanese access to the coast to continue landing their forces. They assumed China's vast territory and population would prove too much for the Japanese Army, that time was on their side and a war of attrition would deliver victory. This was a possibility of course, a strong government could abandon their capital and continue to fight, but the Manchu's fought under the belief they would lose the dynasty if they left the capital too long. If they were absent too long, perhaps the Han would strike a deal with the Japanese. Thus it was imperative to the Manchu they must thwart Japanese landings in China proper; the key to this of course was to deny Japan access to the key ports in Bohai. To do this they had to hold Port Arthur which held the only repair facilities capable of maintaining their best warships. Their land forces needed to concentrate at Port Arthur, not disperse in Manchuria.  The next order of business for the Japanese was to seize Jinzhou and then Dalian which were on either neck of the Liaodong Peninsula. Once they were taken the Japanese could launch a land offensive against Port Arthur whose primary defenses anticipated an attack by sea. The 2nd IJA of Major General Nogi Maresuke and Lt General Baron Yamaji Motoharu began arriving at  Pi-tse-Wo, present day Pikou along the Liaodong Peninsula on October 24th. Their first objective was Jinzhou, the most important fortified town in southern Fengtian province. It was a major transportation intersection, located at the fork in the road from China proper to the Liaodong Peninsula and Korea. One route followed the western coast of the Peninsula going to Niuzhang and further to parts of the Great Wall of China at Shanhaiguan. The other route went northward to the Yalu River. Jinzhou held a garrison of 1500 soldiers equipped with four 240mm, two 210mm and two 150mm artillery pieces. On November the 6th, General Nogi's men stormed Jinzhou, taking it with very little resistance. Jinzhou was actually quite a tough position to defend because it was surrounded by hills, making it easy for an enemy to position their artillery to batter the fortifications. The next day General Nogi's men advanced upon Dalian. Dalian was garrisoned by 3500 soldiers equipped with 5 forts and batteries consisting of eight 240mm, four 210mm, 6 150mm and two 120mm artillery pieces. It was a formidable fortress and it was taken without a single shot fired. Yes Dalian defenders had all fled to Port Arthur the night prior. Taking Jinzhou and Dalian was literally a cake walk. Dalian was a port town and its dock facilities greatly aided the Japanese supply lines. The Qing defenders of Dalian had left so fast they had even abandoned plans that showed the minefield locations for Port Arthur's defenses. While all of this was going on, the Beiyang fleet and limped back to Port Arthur by early November only to receive orders from Li Hongzhang over in Tianjin, to withdraw to Weihaiwei. It seemed Li Hongzhang did not want to risk another tussle with the IJN combined fleet. Thus Port Arthur would not be reinforced by the Beiyang warships big guns, and to add insult to injury, as the Beiyang fleet was pulling  into Weihaiwei, the battleship Zhenyuan struck some rocks at the entrance to her harbor and had to be beached. The only dockyards capable of repairing either of the two giant German built battleships were at Port Arthur, thus one of China's best warships was out of commission. The commander of the Zhenyuan, Commodore Lin Taizeng, who was the grandson of the famous Lin Zexu who had legendary destroyed the crates of Opium that led to the opium wars was so ashamed of what had happened he committed suicide via opium overdose. That is quite the case of bad luck.  After the battle of Yalu, both Li Hongzhang and Admiral Ding Ruchang's top priority was the preservation of the Beiyang Fleet. Ding was given instructions throughout the rest of the war to defend the Bohai coast from Weihaiwei to the Yalu, basically this meant protecting Beijing where the Manchu leadership were. This strategy wasted the Beiyang fleet on convoy duty instead of interrupting the IJN transportation of troops and materials to the theater of war. But from the Manchu point of view, the top priority was the protection of the dynasty and their most dangerous enemy was not necessarily the Japanese, but rather the Han population of China. Before the battle would commence over Port Arthur, Colonel J.F Maurice of the British Royal artillery informed the London and China express this “a comparatively small Chinese naval force could make it very difficult for the Japanese to transport large quantities of troops to the Asian mainland. Yet Admiral Ding did nothing to impede their troop build up to assault Port Arthur”. The Japanese Weekly Mail were complete dumbfounded at this time and produced this in an article “"When we begin to think what the loss of Port Arthur would signify for the Chinese Fleet, and what the abandonment of the place to its fate would imply under the circumstances, we can not but marvel at China's apparent inaction. Port Arthur is the only dock in north China. Did it come into Japanese possession, the Chinese war-ships would have no place to go for repairs and consequently dare not risk an engagement. Moreover, Port Arthur alone is not invested. The Japanese are holding the entrance to Pechili [Bohai] Gulf...Yet despite its easy accessibility for purposes of relief, and despite the crippling consequences involved in its capture, the Chinese seem resolved to leave it to its fate." It was unbelievable from the Japanese point of view. The very lifeline of the Japanese military relied upon her sealanes and transport. It was so direly needed, even merchant ships were helping the Japanese military to perform the task and they did so completely undaunted. As explained by the North China Herald “ordinary unarmed merchantmen, have been regularly plying to and fro without any escort, and they could have been waylaid and sent to the bottom time after time had China but risen to the occasion. The movement of the Chinese fleet have throughout the war been. . . utterly and incomprehensibly imbecile. . . The Chinese fleet has not attempted to meet the Japanese fleet in the open sea, or weighed a single anchor to hinder and debar the unprotected transports of Japan passing to and fro with their freight of eager invaders”. After the war, Hilary A Herbert the United States secretary of the navy provided an analysis on China's performance against the Japanese. "China had in this war a chance, and only one chance to win, and that lay in her fleet. To seize this chance required aggressive and daring use of that navy. Instead, China had entered upon a losing game of transporting troops to Korea, the battle ground Japan had chosen, in competition with an enemy, whose lines by sea were shorter and whose transports were as three to one. The result of this game was shortly seen in the numbers that met each other at the battle of Ping Yang [P'ydngyang]. Japan, having beaten China in transporting troops to Korea, was then allowed to choose her own time and place for a sea fight in the battle off the Yalu. The first of the untoward results of the unfortunate policy of scattering her war ships upon which China had embarked, was that she was worsted off Asan [at Feng Island], where three of Japan's ships attacked two of the Chinese vessels." The Chinese were doomed. To defeat Japan, China needed to be aggressive and daring. But the whole incentive system in the Qing dynasty penalized anyone who left its traditional war path, which was losing them said war. To break with the norm, to defy traditions and such, even if met with success in battle meant the creation of enemies within the Qing court. No one was willing to take daring action, not even the champion of China at this time, Li Hongzhang.  With Dalian in hand, the Japanese had gained yet another perfect location to have their massive convoys deliver troops and materials. Dalian in many ways was the perfect base of operations to launch an attack upon Port Arthur. Reports began to circulate that within the fortress of Port Arthur, the soldiers had lost all discipline. The foreign military advisor Captain Calder reported this to Li Hongzhang “at Port Arthur with the growing unruliness of the so-called defenders, that the fabric was tottering. The Generals did little else but quarrel amongst themselves and act in opposition. Soldiers were wandering about in mobs, taking pot-shots at electric light lamps and destroying everything in the most wanton way. In some of the smaller forts the soldiers were finding amusement in discharging the smaller guns at everything and anything a small fishing boat for instance”. Before the Japanese made it to Port Arthur, the Chinese defenders of the city began looting it. The North China Herald stated on December 21st "commander of the submarine mines and torpedo corps, in his fright, cut the connecting electric wires and carrying away the firing apparatus immediately fled, his example being well imitated by those under him, so that of the 600 odd torpedoes laid in the harbour not a single one was fired against the enemy. "news of the fall of Port Arthur has been expected every day...Foreigners from Newchwang [Niuzhuang] and Port Arthur give a most deplorable account of the state of things among the common people. All who can are fleeing with such of their possessions as they can take away."" Skirmishes between the Japanese and Chinese began on November 20th on the outskirts around Port Arthur. The next day the main attack began. The Japanese lacked the proper grade and range of ammunition for their larger siege guns, thus the Qing held an enormous advantage in artillery. But the Japanese were able to storm the forts. As reported by the Japan Weekly Mail on December 8th "Chinese gunnery was hopelessly ineffective...What fighting followed was mere carnage...The Chinese officers abandoning their men to their fate, got on board two small steamers that remained in the harbour and put out to sea." It proved unnecessary for the Japanese to besiege the fortress, because the Chinese had given up quickly. The Japanese had begun their assault at midnight on the 21st under some heavy fire initially, but they had stormed all the important landward defenses by noon the following day. Defense by land required coordination among the forts on the semicircle hills surrounding the fortress. But the Chinese were not coordinating, thus the Japanese picked the smaller forts off one by one, turning their fort guns upon the others. Eventually the Japanese took forts closer to Port Arthur and began using their guns on the dockyards and arsenal. The shore fortifications held out a bit longer, but the final one was neutralized by 5pm. During the night of the 22nd, the Chinese defenders began deserting their remaining positions. Most of the Qing officers fled using two small boats in the port, literally ditching their men to their fate. The Qing had abandoned 57 large caliber and 163 small caliber artillery pieces. Within the fortifications and the dockyards were enormous stores of coal that the Japanese would readily take for their warships.  The taking of Port Arthur was a colossal victory for Japan. There were outrageous estimates from the Japanese that they had inflicted over 4000 casualties upon the Qing at Port Arthur and only received 300 in return. Regardless of the real figures, it was the turning point of the war from the perspective of the western world. But while it was a grand victory it would represent a defeat for the Japanese. Ever since the sinking of the Kowshing, the Japanese had striven to acquire a reputation for absolute impeccable behavior on the battlefield. Since then they had demonstrated their military prowess, their high degree of civilization and their humane treatment of civilians and POW's. From a public relations viewpoint, they were brilliant. Even the anti-Japanese North China Herald reluctantly had to agree "Official corruption has certainly sapped China's strength and brought about defeat and loss, and Japan's humane treatment has certainly been the chief cause of her victories." Japan had signed the Geneva Convention and Minister of War Marshal Oyama Iwao had alerted the IJA of their responsibilities as such “Japanese soldiers must never forget that however cruel and vindictive the foe may allow himself, he must nevertheless be treated in accordance with the acknowledged rules of civilization; his disabled must be succored and his captured kindly and considerately protected.Our Army fights for the right and in accordance with the principles of civilization. Our enemies are the military forces of the country with which we are at war, not the individuals of the country. Against the force of our foe we must fight with all resolution, but as soon as any of his soldiers surrender, are taken prisoners, or receive wounds, they cease to be enemies, and it becomes our duty to treat them with all kindness." But at Port Arthur the Japanese would fail tremendously. Because of how the Japanese had treated civilians so well, alongside Oyama's publicized promises, countless civilians stayed within Port Arthur when the Japanese took it. When the Japanese patrols first entered the Port Arthur region on November 18th, they came upon mutilated Japanese bodies. Thomas Cowan of the London Times and James Creelman of the New York World were traveling with the Japanese patrol forces and witnessed this. Cowan had this to say "The sight was most revolting and was sufficient to excite revengeful feelings in the hearts of the best disciplined men." Creelman described what they saw when entering Port Arthur “the Japanese troops found the heads of their slain comrades hanging by cords, with the noses and ears gone" and "a rude arch in the main street decorated with bloody Japanese heads." Throughout the war, the IJA would discover severed heads and other mutilated body parts of their fallen comrades, but until Port Arthur they had not taken their revenge it seemed. One particularly bad incident occurred on November 18th when the IJA found a large group of wounded soldiers they had left behind in an area, were severely mutilated with their hands and feet cut off. As one eye witness, James Allan wrote after the war "Strongly as the massacre by the Japanese troops in Port Arthur is to be condemned, there is not the slightest doubt in the world that the Chinese brought it on themselves by their own vindictive savagery towards their enemies...[O]ne of the first things I saw on the morning of the 19th was a pair of [Japanese] corpses suspended by the feet from the branches of a huge camphor tree...They had been disemboweled; the eyes were gouged out, the throat cut, the right hand severed. They were perfectly naked, and groups of children were pelting them with mud and stones." When the Japanese began moving into the region on November 18th, the Qing government had issued bounties on POW's. Up to 50 taels were given for Japanese heads or other body parts.  When the Japanese came to the fortress of Port Arthur there were several mutilated body parts of their comrades displayed at the entrance to the city. Several soldiers including Lt Kijiro Nanbu vowed revenge. The IJA entered the city at around 2pm and they began killing everyone who remained in the city.  Here is a diary entry from Makio Okabe of the 1st division “As we entered the town of Port Arthur, we saw the head of a Japanese soldier displayed on a wooden stake. This filled us with rage and a desire to crush any Chinese soldier. Anyone we saw in the town, we killed. The streets were filled with corpses, so many they blocked our way. We killed people in their homes; by and large, there wasn't a single house without from three to six dead. Blood was flowing and the smell was awful. We sent out search parties. We shot some, hacked at others. The Chinese troops just dropped their arms and fled. Firing and slashing, it was unbounded joy. At this time, our artillery troops were at the rear, giving three cheers [banzai] for the emperor.” James Allen tells us "Nobody was spared, man, woman, or child, that 1 could see. The Chinese appeared to offer no resistance. Many of them prostrated themselves on the ground before the butchers with abject submission, and were shot or stabbed in that posture. The dead were mostly the townspeople; their valiant defenders seemed to have been able to make themselves scarce.the diabolical orgy of murder and mutilation, rape, lust, and rapine."" Thomas Cowan had this to say during the first day of the cities capture "I was greatly surprised next day to find them still killing the Chinese. They practically routed out the whole of the town: every house was entered and searched; the Chinese were driven out and killed; some were even killed in the houses." The Japanese press tried to place the blame of the massacres upon coolies working for the IJA, but as Cowan explained “The murders were all done by soldiers in uniform; not the work of coolies, so far as I could see." The Japanese press also tried to argue the case that it was difficult to distinguish civilians from combatants, and indeed many Qing soldiers wore civilian clothing, but this did not account for the killing of women and children. Again Cowan tells us  "the hillsides around Port Arthur were strewn with their uniforms. I saw scores of Chinese hunted out of cover, shot down and hacked to pieces, and never a man made any attempt to fight...I watched intently for the slightest sign of cause, confident that there must be some, but I saw none whatever. The Japanese perhaps also are barbarous at heart, like the Chinese. To prove it, for the fact remains that a dozen white men saw these Japanese commit these savageries for four clear days after the day of the fight." Western press reports like Cowan were corroborated by diaries from Japanese soldiers.  Creelman ran into a Japanese legal advisor named Agria Nagao of the 2nd IJA who told him this "On the night of the second day [of the massacre] the legal adviser of the army told me that Field Marshal Oyama regarded the continued slaughter as quite justifiable. 'Prisoners are a burden.We took a few hundred prisoners at Pingyang [Pyongyang], and we found it very expensive and troublesome to feed and guard them. We are taking practically no prisoners here."'" The massacre lasted several days, and one of the reports many Western audiences would remember was this chilling one from Cowan “Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent by the soldiery in murder and pillage from dawn to dark, in mutilation, in every conceivable kind of nameless atrocity, until the town became a ghastly Inferno to be remembered with a fearsome shudder until one's dying day. I saw corpses of women and children, three or four in the streets, more in the water ... Bodies of men strewed the streets in hundreds, perhaps thousands, for we could not count – some with not a limb unsevered, some with heads hacked, cross-cut, and split lengthwise, some ripped open, not by chance but with careful precision, down and across, disembowelled and dismembered, with occasionally a dagger or bayonet thrust in the private parts. I saw groups of prisoners tied together in a bunch with their hands behind their backs, riddled with bullets for five minutes and then hewn to pieces. I saw a junk stranded on the beach, filled with fugitives of either sex and of all ages, struck by volley after volley until – I can say no more.”  The scale of the killing has long been debated. Figures range dramatically. Scout reports sent by Li Hongzhang placed civilian deaths at 2700 within the city, but this did not account for the countless people slaughtered in the surrounding area. After WW2 the CCP built a cemetery proclaiming the death toll to be 20,000, this figure includes the soldiers as well, but the number has been orthodoxy ever since. Creelman asserted 60,000 were slain, which would have represented the entire population around Port Arthur. It was a atrocious beyond imagination. As Creelman explains in the greater context of national status "The Japanese troops entered Port Arthur on Nov. 21 and massacred practically the entire population in cold blood. The defenseless and unarmed inhabitants were butchered in their houses and their bodies were unspeakably mutilated. There was an unrestrained reign of murder which continued for three days. The whole town was plundered with appalling atrocities. It was the first stain upon Japanese civilization. The Japanese in this instance relapsed into barbarism." Japan's meticulous crafted public image as the only civilized nation in the Far East was shattered. It would even threaten to upset the ratification of an American-Japanese treaty providing japan juridical equality. Japan had undone so much they had worked for in just a few days of senseless slaughter. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The victory and capture of Port Arthur was a major turning point of the war, but it represented not just victory but also a defeat in many ways for Japan. Her public image had been shattered by senseless slaughter, would it undue everything?  

Stan Hom is a character animator for video games (Callisto Protocol, 2022), motion capture director (Mafia III, 2016), martial artist, and Hong Kong movie fan. He talks about how Hong Kong cinema affected his animation style and motion capture process. You can find his Moby Games profile here: https://www.mobygames.com/person/4285... Timestamps: 00:00:25 Early interest in action 00:02:47 How he started in animation 00:03:52 Making character moves and key poses 00:08:11 Blocking out combat engine 00:11:15 Learning animation and first games 00:14:01 The gradual development of software/hardware 00:15:49 Working with motion capture 00:19:01 Got into boxing and training 00:21:31 Transferring real fighting to film/game fighting 00:24:09 Fighting styles, intention, influence 00:28:39 Approach to mocap shoot and directing 00:33:56 Finding performers and choreography 00:35:47 Violence and psychology 00:44:17 Why do characters fight 00:46:43 Hong Kong action vs American/Japanese action 00:49:57 Character development

This week on Talk World Radio, we're discussing the new book War Is Hell: Studies in the Right of Legitimate Violence. Our guest is the author, Charles Douglas Lummis. He has written extensively on the topic of U.S. foreign relations, and is a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. Susan Sontag has called Lummis "one of the most thoughtful, honorable, and relevant intellectuals writing about democratic practice anywhere in the world." Karel van Wolferen has referred to him as an "eminent observer of the American-Japanese vassalage relationship."

In this episode, we review a tiny piece of American-Japanese media. Or is it Japanese-American media? It's MAKUDONARUDO. Come learn Japanese with us in this bite-sized Milk Buds episode! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/isthisartgood/message

A monster by any other name would spook as sweet... it's THE MANSTER (1959) aka SŌTŌ NO SATSUJINKI aka THE SPLIT from directors George Breakston and Kenneth G. Crane! An American/Japanese co-production, this schlocky-titled film is anything but as it tackles themes of masculinity and alcoholism. Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 10:15; Discussion 29:07; Ranking 45:17

When Will the Chinese Regime Start Shooting Down Taiwanese, American, Japanese, and Australian Aircraft?

Ending Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with some crazy and sad facts about how as a country we treated American Japanese people. I just touched on a few things, there is so much more that isn't really told. Please do your own research and enjoy this episode.

On this week's 51%, Albany OB GYN Dr. Katherine Cartwright offers her guidance for those struggling with infertility, and we speak with Albany Medical Center's Dr. Erica Nicasio about her work monitoring high-risk pregnancies. Guests: Dr. Katherine Cartwright, Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology; Dr. Erica Nicasio, Albany Medical Center; Natalie Rudd, learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Follow Along You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for tuning in, I'm Jesse King.  We've got another roundup of health-related conversations for you today. Last week, we took an in-depth look at endometriosis, a disease that, in addition to causing a lot of pain, can also contribute to issues like infertility. But as our first guest today will tell us, there's actually a lot of reasons why someone may have trouble getting pregnant. It's an issue that can feel very personal and heartbreaking, so to dispel some myths right up front: infertility doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with your body, and it's actually more common than you might think. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly one in five American, heterosexual women up to age 49 (with no prior births) will have trouble conceiving after their first year of trying. So if you think you might fall in that group, hopefully today's episode has some basic information to get you thinking and put you at ease. Dr. Katherine Cartwright is an OB GYN with Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology. She got her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University and completed her residency at SUNY's University at Buffalo. Dr. Cartwright says she provides comprehensive women's health care for patients at various stages in their lives, but as part of that, she provides an awful lot of guidance to women (and couples) struggling to conceive. The way that we medically define infertility is 12 months of inability to conceive, despite regular intercourse and regular cycles. Within 12 months, somewhere between 80-90 percent of couples will be able to achieve a pregnancy on their own. So once they've reached a year, that's when we have a medical diagnosis of infertility. It's a little bit different in patients with different risk factors. So patients who are a little bit older, patients over 35, we use more of a six-month cut off. That has a little bit less to do with a difference in them suddenly being infertile after six months, and more to do with known declining fertility with age and wanting to get those people into medical care and into a workup [sooner]. When we have a patient that's concerned about infertility, there's a wide range of things that we really need to talk to them about. Their medical history is one of the most important things, and then talking to their partner and having a patient come in and be evaluated with their partner – or at least have good information about their partner – is really important. This is really a two-person issue, if there is a concern about ability to conceive, and about a third of infertility issues actually are male-factor issues. So I think it often is looked at as a solely female problem if someone's not conceiving, and it's something that we have to talk about very early on and make sure that we are looking at all angles. The basic workup is looking at the very basic building blocks of “How do we make a baby here?” And are all of those parts here? So, is this person making eggs? And are they releasing an egg every month? That's obviously something that's necessary. Is there sperm, and is the sperm normal? Is it present? And then the third thing that we really need to look at is, are they able to meet? So is there a structural thing that's preventing the egg from meeting with the sperm, and those are things we call “tubal factors,” where the actual fallopian tube where they're supposed to meet could be impacted by a variety of different disease processes that could inhibit the ability for an otherwise normal egg and sperm to meet. And that's really where the workup is focused. So we look at all three of those different things in a different way. Usually, we do blood testing, and just talk about a patient's medical history and cycles to see if it sounds like ovulation could potentially be an issue. We generally will get a semen analysis, so that is actual testing of the semen in the sperm from the male partner. And there are tests that we can do, either with dye or with saline that we put through the uterus to actually watch the tubes and see that they are open and able to have a sperm and an egg pass through them. Once you identify with what the issue is, is it usually an easy fix? So, it really depends what the causes are. One of the difficult things with infertility is the number one cause of infertility is “unexplained infertility” – that's an actual, medical diagnosis. And that is where most infertility workups land us, is with what we call “unexplained infertility.” So we do this whole workup, we do lab work, and we say everything looks normal. You know, it's always sort of a double-edged sword of good and bad, because for a patient, there's nothing wrong with you – but we don't have an answer as to why this is happening. [With] unexplained infertility, there are things we just sort of empirically do, which means we're just trying things, helping to time intercourse a little bit better. Sometimes we monitor their cycles and actually help make sure that they ovulate by giving them medications and monitoring their cycles. And even patients with unexplained infertility have relatively high rates of eventually being able to conceive. And sometimes we don't find an answer. But for a patient, what they really want is to have a baby, and so lots of times fertility doctors may say, “We don't have a good answer as to why this hasn't happened, but here are all of the options and things that we can try.” And that's everything from IUI, which is insemination, to IVF, which a lot of people are kind of familiar tangentially with IVF and how that works. And so sometimes patients ultimately go on to have these more invasive infertility interventions and treatments without ever having a definitive answer as to why they weren't able to get pregnant on their own. Do you have any thoughts on IVF or IUI? Like, is there one that I guess is easier? It depends, it depends on the patient. And I think there's different factors to consider. There are people who just don't want to go the route of creating embryos and re-implanting them – that's what IVF is. So IVF is where they actually take eggs out of someone's ovary, they fertilize them with sperm, they grow them, make sure that they're growing, and then they essentially put them back in the uterus to grow. And so it's definitely a lot of technology that's used. And that's medically amazing that we have [that], but for some people, it's just too much, and they don't want to do it. For other people, anything they could possibly do is something that they want to pursue. Financially, I think it's a concern for patients. Historically, many infertility treatments have not been well covered by insurance. In New York state, companies now are required to offer some fertility coverage. I don't know all of the details in it, it really depends on the size of the company, and there are some exemptions to that, but we do have better coverage than we used to. So hopefully, there's less of a financial constraint for people that are trying to use these services to grow a family. Would I be able to ask you about miscarriages? Yeah, yeah. So early pregnancy loss, or miscarriage, is very common. It's something that, you know, the numbers are mixed, because we know that there are very early pregnancies that are just not clinically recognized, meaning sperm meets the egg, it starts to implant, and the pregnancy fails before a patient even knows that she's pregnant, let alone is actually seen and has labs or an ultrasound or something done. Numbers vary anywhere between 25-30 percent in most documented research on this. So that means there's a quarter to a third of a chance, with every successful fertilized egg that is implanting or trying to implant in the uterus, that that could not result in a successful pregnancy with a baby at the end. Early on in pregnancy, it's something people worry about a lot. And, you know, we usually will bring them in for initial visits to meet with a doctor and evaluate in early pregnancy, somewhere around eight weeks or so. But in patients who are feeling well, they have a positive pregnancy test, they haven't had pain or bleeding, and they're feeling well, there's no real reason to rule out an early pregnancy loss unless they're having symptoms in most cases. So symptoms of an early pregnancy loss would be things like bleeding, or painful cramping. Those are really the two things that people present with most often. There can be cases of both pain and bleeding that don't result in miscarriage, and it can be a really scary time for patients, because if it's really early, we can't see a pregnancy on ultrasound, we don't have a really good way to confirm that things are moving forward normally, and so there's, unfortunately, a multiple-week period often of just waiting and seeing what will happen for patients. So that can be certainly anxiety-provoking for them. Reasons for miscarriage vary, and similar to infertility, we often just don't have a good answer as to why a miscarriage has happened. A single miscarriage with rates anywhere from 25-30 percent often is just kind of bad luck. Most of those miscarriages have to do with what we would consider a non-viable embryo, an embryo that, as it was dividing, had some kind of chromosomal abnormality that's not compatible with life. And so that's sort of the body's way of not continuing a pregnancy that would not be able to be successful. In patients who have had recurrent pregnancy loss, so multiple miscarriages, the workup becomes a little bit different, and there are other things that we need to look into. This is not infertility, necessarily, in that they haven't been able to get pregnant – that's what people think of as infertility – but recurrent pregnancy loss, where someone has been unable to have a baby, is still a form of infertility, and is something that needs to be to be looked at. What do you see as the future of treatment and research for infertility? It is a much newer field than I think people realize. The first baby ever born from IVF, I believe, is 40 or 41 now. And so if you think of that in the grand scheme of medical science, and what we know, it's really a very, very young field. I think continuing to find treatments and ways to predict fertility is one of the things that I hope we get better and better at. We have patients come in all the time that say, “I would love to have my fertility tested,” and it's just not something that you can do. We can't say, “Here's a test, this means for sure that you are fertile and you will not have any issues with infertility.” Continuing to look at what are some of the factors, especially in this unexplained infertility area where there are huge numbers of patients that have unexplained infertility, I think really focusing on ultimately, can we find a cause for that? What exactly is that cause? And how can we address that in the future is probably one of the biggest things that we need to do. If someone is struggling with their fertility, what advice do you have for them? It's always a good idea, before someone even starts to try to conceive, to have a conversation with their provider, whether they see a physician or a midwife, or whoever it is that they see for reproductive health care. Having a conversation, from the beginning, is a way to probably alleviate a lot of the unknowns and the anxieties related around conceiving, and how it will work if there's a problem. So that initial conversation we have with patients a lot, it's called a “preconception visit.” And we talked to them about things that potentially could influence their fertility: Do they have regular cycles? Do they have a history of infections, or pelvic infections? Do they have a history of endometriosis? Looking at the age of patients is something that we always think about in a preconception visit. If I have a patient who's coming to me and is 42, and just got married, and says, “I would like to try to conceive in this next year,” that's a patient that I often will immediately get some baseline labs on and actually recommend that they see a fertility specialist. Over 40 is a specific population of patients who have declining fertility at a rate that we really want to make sure that we're not wasting any time if they have decided that this is something that's important to them, and they want to move forward. These are not patients who I would wait 12 months or even six months to wait and see what happens. We often do what's called “concurrent management,” where they will actively be seeing an infertility specialist to start a workup while they're trying to start to conceive, because we really don't want to have delays in something that we know, biologically, does have some limitations. So looking at age, looking at all those risk factors, family history is something that we talk about a lot. And then other risk factors that could make a pregnancy more dangerous if they were to be pregnant. So something that would be a high-risk factor for a patient in a future pregnancy is important for us to talk about before they're pregnant. Do they have a cardiac condition? Is it well managed? Do we need to optimize their medical health and talk about medications that are safe in pregnancy, prior to them even conceiving? So that that's really where that conversation should start. If a patient has a concern that they are not pregnant as fast as they think they should, to me, that is enough to start a workup. So by definition, 12 months under 35, and six months over 35 is the definition of infertility, if you haven't been able to conceive. But if I have a patient who walks in and says, “I only get my period every three months,” it's not realistic to wait 12 months, because they haven't really had 12 months of chances if they're not ovulating every month, or they're not having regular cycles. Or if a patient says, “I conceived all of my other kids within one to two cycles, and it's been eight months so I'm really concerned,” that's a patient that I would also really start and initiate a workup. So I think the patient's concerns are important, and that's important to bring to any physician that you talk to, because that often is enough to at least start an initial workup for a patient. As Dr. Cartwright pointed out, conception is just the start — there's plenty to navigate going forward, and issues to look out for. Our next guest is a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Albany Medical Center. Dr. Erica Nicasio earned her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, and completed her residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She specializes in the diagnosis and management of fetal anomalies, preterm delivery, hypertensive disease and diabetes in pregnancy, multiple gestation, and more. What kinds of issues do you see people coming in for? Some of the more common things that we see are things that are becoming a lot more common for women just in general and in health care, in the population. We see a lot of women that have things like hypertensive diseases, so high blood pressure. The other really common medical issue that a lot of women have or developed during pregnancy is diabetes. So we take care of women both that have either Type I or Type II diabetes prior to pregnancy, to help them with insulin control and their pregnancy management, because it can change what happens with their blood sugars during pregnancy. And then also gestational diabetes, which is a specific form of the disease that develops because of the pregnancy, and can change as the pregnancy progresses. So those are some of the more common things that we deal with from a mom side. We also have complex pregnancies from the baby side, so we deal with those sorts of issues such as women that have had preterm labor, for example, going into labor early and delivering a baby. Or fetal anomalies, so a baby that developed some sort of congenital abnormality or a developmental abnormality that we can diagnose by ultrasound and sort of managing what we do with that going forward. At what point do people usually identify the fact that they might have a high-risk pregnancy? I'm guessing there's gonna be some people who are going into it knowing that they're going to have a high-risk pregnancy, but are there some identifying factors that they should watch out for? Absolutely. So that definitely varies, and there's a whole spectrum of high-risk pregnancies. And I think it is hard for women to know what that actually means, and what is defined as a high-risk pregnancy. For example, women that have had complicated medical problems may know that they have a complex medical history, and that makes them high-risk just because of their diseases that they bring to a pregnancy. So someone who has diabetes, someone who has had cancer before and chemotherapy, someone who has lupus, for example. Those sorts of conditions just become a little bit more complicated, or maybe more complex, in a pregnancy. And then as the pregnancies progress, sometimes we have women that develop high-risk issues and then get transferred to us, or have a consultation with us, so that we can discuss how to best manage those pregnancies and those risks that develop. Some examples would be if we do some genetic screening, that's something we offer for women in their first trimester, so early in pregnancy, to look for abnormal chromosomes in the baby. Every woman is offered that screening, if they want to know if they have a high-risk for a baby that has a chromosome abnormality. The most common thing that we see is something like Down syndrome, which would be an extra chromosome 21. So if we do that screening, and that comes back high-risk in their first trimester, often they'll come to us for further testing and discussion of sort of what to do about those findings. Similarly, as the pregnancy progresses, sometimes when we do their anatomic screening, which is an ultrasound, where we look at all of the parts of the baby like heart, lungs, belly, all of the different congenital development of the baby to make sure that everything has formed correctly, sometimes we find abnormalities on those ultrasounds, and often women that have those diagnoses get sent to a specialist like a maternal fetal medicine doctor to have higher level ultrasounds, detailed evaluation, and then again, discussion about how that might affect their baby in utero. How does multiple gestation complicate a pregnancy? What should people expect if they're planning to have twins or triplets? That's a good question. So that's definitely one of those high-risk pregnancy issues that get sent to us as well. So multiples have become much more commonplace because of infertility treatment and older women getting pregnant. And oftentimes, we get to diagnose that – so we get to tell a woman who's had a pregnancy test at home that's positive and comes to an ultrasound and, surprise, we see two babies in there. That can be very exciting. We also have to talk to them about the complications that are increased in those multiple gestations. Pretty much as an overarching rule, most of the complications that we see in pregnancy, like high blood pressure diseases, early labor, gestational diabetes, those sorts of things, are just more commonly seen in a twin pregnancy compared to a singleton pregnancy. You're twice as likely to have a genetic abnormality, for example, because of the additional fetus being there. So these pregnancies are definitely more high-risk than a typical single gestation, so we watch them much more closely than the typical, uncomplicated single baby. And then interestingly, there's different types of multiple gestations, including how the twins formed and how they live inside the uterus. So they can be in their own sac and have their own placentas – completely separate pregnancies, like two babies in there, doing their own thing. And that's generally the lowest risk type of twins. Or they can be sharing placenta, or they can even be sharing gestational sacs, so they're living in the same fluid-filled sac, and those become much more complicated as well. We have to monitor to make sure that they're each getting the nutrients and blood flow and oxygenation that they need to develop appropriately, and if they don't, it can be much more complicated. I've read that you've also done research on things like preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction and fetal testing and maternal obesity. Could you tell me a little bit about your research there? Absolutely. So I was looking at preeclampsia, which is basically a high blood pressure disease that develops during pregnancy. Usually after 20 weeks of pregnancy, so it can happen sort of any time. Women develop high blood pressure as well as protein in their urine, and then it can also affect their kidney function, their liver function and their blood counts, like their platelets. And the biggest risk is, you know, a neurologic risk woman can eventually have if not controlled. It can develop neurologic complications like strokes, and seizures, and really scary things that would be dangerous to pregnancy. So we often end up delivering babies on the earlier side, to protect mom's health, because of the risk of the severity of the disease to mom. And in other countries, they see a lot more eclampsia, which is actually the seizures that can develop. And unfortunately, though we see it relatively commonly, especially at a center where we have high-risk doctors, and we get referrals for it, we still don't exactly know even why it happens. So that's sort of what interests me, is sort of trying to help to understand why some women develop preeclampsia and other women don't. We know that there are risk factors from a health perspective – like having high blood pressure, or lupus, or things that affect your kidneys, for example, put you at risk for preeclampsia. But then otherwise, you know, healthy first-time moms [develop issues] – first pregnancies are actually more likely to get preeclampsia than women that have had multiple pregnancies before. And we don't exactly understand the reason for which women will develop this disease and which women will develop even more severe disease, but we think that it has to do with the placenta and how the placenta forms and invades into the uterus and communicates with the blood vessels in mom. That's sort of what I was looking at, was taking women that have preeclampsia and comparing them with women who don't, and looking at their placenta after they deliver, to see if there was a protein that was expressed differently from one pregnancy to the other. But to be honest, you know, people have been researching this topic for many, many years, and we still have lots of question marks. So it's a very, very complicated disease process that, if we were able to figure out the mechanism of why it happens, then we will be able to treat it better. But unfortunately, right now, the only solution is to deliver the baby early to help remove the placenta. And commonly, the disease actually gets much better after delivery. So this is of course, aside from the usual things people experience with pregnancy, the ways the body changes. I once had a nurse who told me her vision temporarily deteriorated during her pregnancy – is that a thing? What other things might women experience that we just don't talk as much about, or know as much about? There are a ton of changes just due to having a pregnancy in general. And so women's bodies are going through so many different changes, and then the changes change, as the pregnancy progresses. Pregnancy's 10 months long, and so it's definitely a journey. The big things that we see are, you know, some physiologic changes, meaning changes that just happened because of the pregnancy: increased blood volume, so you actually have more blood flowing through your body during pregnancy than you do normally, to feed the pregnancy, and then also in preparation for delivery, when the body loses blood. Many women get anemic during pregnancy. And many women can be anemic before pregnancy, but the way the blood is concentrated, actually causes some anemia. So some low blood counts, we monitor for that, for example. Your respiratory system changes, both the way that you're getting oxygen to your body and then also as the uterus grows, it can affect how you breathe, because the uterus gets big enough to affect the diaphragm and its ability to go up and down. And so many women will describe shortness of breath during pregnancy. Another really common one is reflux, acid reflux. A lot of people are prone to that baseline, but in pregnancy, the sphincter that closes your esophagus to your stomach off so that the acid in your stomach doesn't go back up into your esophagus and chest and cause that acid feeling gets looser, because of the hormones of pregnancy. And so a lot of women have issues with reflux getting worse during pregnancy. And then as the uterus grows, it also causes compression of all of your abdominal contents as the uterus kind of fills up the belly and makes that reflux worse. So we see a lot of that as well. Is the way that we're having babies changing at all in the U.S.? That's a good question. In terms of delivery type, our cesarean rates probably have increased over the years, but so has our high-risk pregnancy [rate], and high-risk pregnancies put you at risk for having a cesarean delivery. So I think a little bit of that has probably played into it. I think there's a lot of social pressures that come with the idea women have as to how their delivery should go. And with social media and Pinterest and things like this, people get the idea that it should be one thing for everybody, or that, you know, having a “natural birth” is the only way to successfully have a baby. But there's a lot of ways that babies come into this world. One of the things is, you never know how it's gonna go. And I think people have an idea that they should have a birth plan, and have everything set up and be ready. And having done this for long enough now, what we really know is that generally nothing goes according to plan. And so having a little bit of flexibility and being ready for whatever comes your way during the labor processes is usually a good way to go into it. Before we go, we're celebrating Women's History Month by taking some time each week to recognize prominent women in history. Last week Natalie Rudd joined us from the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, and she's back with us to share some more of the “women of the hall.” Dolores Huerta Dolores was born in New Mexico, however, she spent most of her life in Stockton, California. Her primary inspiration was her mother: she owned a 70-room hotel where she would often welcome low-wage workers and oftentimes waive the fee for them. She was an active participant in her community and really encouraged cultural diversity, which was really common in Stockton, which was a heavily agricultural-based community. So they had an agricultural community that was made up of Mexican, Filipino, American Japanese, and Chinese working families. Dolores found for inspiration as an organizer while serving in the leadership for the Stockton community service organization, or CSO. During this time, she set up voter registrations, and pressed local government for barrio improvements. And then in 1955, she was introduced to the CSO director, Cesar Chavez, and the two soon discovered that they had this shared vision of organizing farmworkers. Together, they launched the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The two were partners in lobbying and really unionizing farm workers in America, and she really came to prominence when she helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers. The strike lasted for five years, and drew national attention for its nonviolent resistance. During this time, during the national boycott of the California table grapes, she was in New York and she came in contact with Gloria Steinem, who was doing a huge part of the burgeoning feminist movement. And she realized that they have a lot in common, so she was advocating for farm workers while also advocating for women and how they are discriminated within the farm working movement. At the age of 58, she suffered a life-threatening assault while protesting against the policies of then-presidential candidate George Bush. A police officer with the baton ended up breaking for her ribs and shattering her spleen. And then during her really intensive recovery period, she took a leave of absence from the union and focused on women's rights. During this time she traveled the country on behalf of the feminist majority's “Feminization of Power,” which is a campaign that resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. So she began her career working with agricultural farm workers and has worked continuously for union rights as well as lobbying to get women into government. Even now, today, at 89 years old, she continues to work tirelessly to help leaders advocate for the working poor, women, and children. She founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, where she travels across the country engaging in campaigns, all that supports equality defending civil rights, and she often speak to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. Nellie Bly Nellie was a pioneer in investigative journalism in the late 1800s. She was one of the first reporters who truly went behind the scenes to get the real story. She had herself committed to a mental institution in an effort to expose the abuse that occurred there, and the results of this story were reforms that were actually made to living and care conditions at Blackwell's Island Mental Institute in New York City. When this story broke, she became like an overnight sensation, she became an extremely popular reporter. She ultimately ended up shining a light on everything from the improper treatment of prisoners in New York City jails, to the poor working conditions in factories, to corruption politics – she wrote about it all. She ended up gaining a ton of fame in 1899 when she traveled around the world in 72 days, which drew inspiration from the fiction novel Around the World in 80 Days, which is written by Jules Verne. She married a successful businessman, Robert Seaman. And then after he died in 1904, Nellie took control of his company and put into practice all of the workplace reforms that she had envisioned while working as a journalist, such as health care, and adding fitness centers into his company. She ended up unfortunately dying of pneumonia at a very young age of 57, but she had done so much in her lifetime. She really ushered in this whole new era of investigative journalism in such a short life, she really accomplished a lot. And that's like the quick version. I could spend hours talking about Nellie Bly. The small stories about her travels and her journals are really, really incredible. Natalie Rudd is the learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. The Hall will be inducting its next class, including Indra Nooyi, Mia Hamm, Octavia Butler, Michelle Obama, and more, this September. 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue.

On this week's 51%, Albany OB GYN Dr. Katherine Cartwright offers her guidance for those struggling with infertility, and we speak with Albany Medical Center's Dr. Erica Nicasio about her work monitoring high-risk pregnancies. Guests: Dr. Katherine Cartwright, Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology; Dr. Erica Nicasio, Albany Medical Center; Natalie Rudd, learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Follow Along You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for tuning in, I'm Jesse King.  We've got another roundup of health-related conversations for you today. Last week, we took an in-depth look at endometriosis, a disease that, in addition to causing a lot of pain, can also contribute to issues like infertility. But as our first guest today will tell us, there's actually a lot of reasons why someone may have trouble getting pregnant. It's an issue that can feel very personal and heartbreaking, so to dispel some myths right up front: infertility doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with your body, and it's actually more common than you might think. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly one in five American, heterosexual women up to age 49 (with no prior births) will have trouble conceiving after their first year of trying. So if you think you might fall in that group, hopefully today's episode has some basic information to get you thinking and put you at ease. Dr. Katherine Cartwright is an OB GYN with Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology. She got her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University and completed her residency at SUNY's University at Buffalo. Dr. Cartwright says she provides comprehensive women's health care for patients at various stages in their lives, but as part of that, she provides an awful lot of guidance to women (and couples) struggling to conceive. The way that we medically define infertility is 12 months of inability to conceive, despite regular intercourse and regular cycles. Within 12 months, somewhere between 80-90 percent of couples will be able to achieve a pregnancy on their own. So once they've reached a year, that's when we have a medical diagnosis of infertility. It's a little bit different in patients with different risk factors. So patients who are a little bit older, patients over 35, we use more of a six-month cut off. That has a little bit less to do with a difference in them suddenly being infertile after six months, and more to do with known declining fertility with age and wanting to get those people into medical care and into a workup [sooner]. When we have a patient that's concerned about infertility, there's a wide range of things that we really need to talk to them about. Their medical history is one of the most important things, and then talking to their partner and having a patient come in and be evaluated with their partner – or at least have good information about their partner – is really important. This is really a two-person issue, if there is a concern about ability to conceive, and about a third of infertility issues actually are male-factor issues. So I think it often is looked at as a solely female problem if someone's not conceiving, and it's something that we have to talk about very early on and make sure that we are looking at all angles. The basic workup is looking at the very basic building blocks of “How do we make a baby here?” And are all of those parts here? So, is this person making eggs? And are they releasing an egg every month? That's obviously something that's necessary. Is there sperm, and is the sperm normal? Is it present? And then the third thing that we really need to look at is, are they able to meet? So is there a structural thing that's preventing the egg from meeting with the sperm, and those are things we call “tubal factors,” where the actual fallopian tube where they're supposed to meet could be impacted by a variety of different disease processes that could inhibit the ability for an otherwise normal egg and sperm to meet. And that's really where the workup is focused. So we look at all three of those different things in a different way. Usually, we do blood testing, and just talk about a patient's medical history and cycles to see if it sounds like ovulation could potentially be an issue. We generally will get a semen analysis, so that is actual testing of the semen in the sperm from the male partner. And there are tests that we can do, either with dye or with saline that we put through the uterus to actually watch the tubes and see that they are open and able to have a sperm and an egg pass through them. Once you identify with what the issue is, is it usually an easy fix? So, it really depends what the causes are. One of the difficult things with infertility is the number one cause of infertility is “unexplained infertility” – that's an actual, medical diagnosis. And that is where most infertility workups land us, is with what we call “unexplained infertility.” So we do this whole workup, we do lab work, and we say everything looks normal. You know, it's always sort of a double-edged sword of good and bad, because for a patient, there's nothing wrong with you – but we don't have an answer as to why this is happening. [With] unexplained infertility, there are things we just sort of empirically do, which means we're just trying things, helping to time intercourse a little bit better. Sometimes we monitor their cycles and actually help make sure that they ovulate by giving them medications and monitoring their cycles. And even patients with unexplained infertility have relatively high rates of eventually being able to conceive. And sometimes we don't find an answer. But for a patient, what they really want is to have a baby, and so lots of times fertility doctors may say, “We don't have a good answer as to why this hasn't happened, but here are all of the options and things that we can try.” And that's everything from IUI, which is insemination, to IVF, which a lot of people are kind of familiar tangentially with IVF and how that works. And so sometimes patients ultimately go on to have these more invasive infertility interventions and treatments without ever having a definitive answer as to why they weren't able to get pregnant on their own. Do you have any thoughts on IVF or IUI? Like, is there one that I guess is easier? It depends, it depends on the patient. And I think there's different factors to consider. There are people who just don't want to go the route of creating embryos and re-implanting them – that's what IVF is. So IVF is where they actually take eggs out of someone's ovary, they fertilize them with sperm, they grow them, make sure that they're growing, and then they essentially put them back in the uterus to grow. And so it's definitely a lot of technology that's used. And that's medically amazing that we have [that], but for some people, it's just too much, and they don't want to do it. For other people, anything they could possibly do is something that they want to pursue. Financially, I think it's a concern for patients. Historically, many infertility treatments have not been well covered by insurance. In New York state, companies now are required to offer some fertility coverage. I don't know all of the details in it, it really depends on the size of the company, and there are some exemptions to that, but we do have better coverage than we used to. So hopefully, there's less of a financial constraint for people that are trying to use these services to grow a family. Would I be able to ask you about miscarriages? Yeah, yeah. So early pregnancy loss, or miscarriage, is very common. It's something that, you know, the numbers are mixed, because we know that there are very early pregnancies that are just not clinically recognized, meaning sperm meets the egg, it starts to implant, and the pregnancy fails before a patient even knows that she's pregnant, let alone is actually seen and has labs or an ultrasound or something done. Numbers vary anywhere between 25-30 percent in most documented research on this. So that means there's a quarter to a third of a chance, with every successful fertilized egg that is implanting or trying to implant in the uterus, that that could not result in a successful pregnancy with a baby at the end. Early on in pregnancy, it's something people worry about a lot. And, you know, we usually will bring them in for initial visits to meet with a doctor and evaluate in early pregnancy, somewhere around eight weeks or so. But in patients who are feeling well, they have a positive pregnancy test, they haven't had pain or bleeding, and they're feeling well, there's no real reason to rule out an early pregnancy loss unless they're having symptoms in most cases. So symptoms of an early pregnancy loss would be things like bleeding, or painful cramping. Those are really the two things that people present with most often. There can be cases of both pain and bleeding that don't result in miscarriage, and it can be a really scary time for patients, because if it's really early, we can't see a pregnancy on ultrasound, we don't have a really good way to confirm that things are moving forward normally, and so there's, unfortunately, a multiple-week period often of just waiting and seeing what will happen for patients. So that can be certainly anxiety-provoking for them. Reasons for miscarriage vary, and similar to infertility, we often just don't have a good answer as to why a miscarriage has happened. A single miscarriage with rates anywhere from 25-30 percent often is just kind of bad luck. Most of those miscarriages have to do with what we would consider a non-viable embryo, an embryo that, as it was dividing, had some kind of chromosomal abnormality that's not compatible with life. And so that's sort of the body's way of not continuing a pregnancy that would not be able to be successful. In patients who have had recurrent pregnancy loss, so multiple miscarriages, the workup becomes a little bit different, and there are other things that we need to look into. This is not infertility, necessarily, in that they haven't been able to get pregnant – that's what people think of as infertility – but recurrent pregnancy loss, where someone has been unable to have a baby, is still a form of infertility, and is something that needs to be to be looked at. What do you see as the future of treatment and research for infertility? It is a much newer field than I think people realize. The first baby ever born from IVF, I believe, is 40 or 41 now. And so if you think of that in the grand scheme of medical science, and what we know, it's really a very, very young field. I think continuing to find treatments and ways to predict fertility is one of the things that I hope we get better and better at. We have patients come in all the time that say, “I would love to have my fertility tested,” and it's just not something that you can do. We can't say, “Here's a test, this means for sure that you are fertile and you will not have any issues with infertility.” Continuing to look at what are some of the factors, especially in this unexplained infertility area where there are huge numbers of patients that have unexplained infertility, I think really focusing on ultimately, can we find a cause for that? What exactly is that cause? And how can we address that in the future is probably one of the biggest things that we need to do. If someone is struggling with their fertility, what advice do you have for them? It's always a good idea, before someone even starts to try to conceive, to have a conversation with their provider, whether they see a physician or a midwife, or whoever it is that they see for reproductive health care. Having a conversation, from the beginning, is a way to probably alleviate a lot of the unknowns and the anxieties related around conceiving, and how it will work if there's a problem. So that initial conversation we have with patients a lot, it's called a “preconception visit.” And we talked to them about things that potentially could influence their fertility: Do they have regular cycles? Do they have a history of infections, or pelvic infections? Do they have a history of endometriosis? Looking at the age of patients is something that we always think about in a preconception visit. If I have a patient who's coming to me and is 42, and just got married, and says, “I would like to try to conceive in this next year,” that's a patient that I often will immediately get some baseline labs on and actually recommend that they see a fertility specialist. Over 40 is a specific population of patients who have declining fertility at a rate that we really want to make sure that we're not wasting any time if they have decided that this is something that's important to them, and they want to move forward. These are not patients who I would wait 12 months or even six months to wait and see what happens. We often do what's called “concurrent management,” where they will actively be seeing an infertility specialist to start a workup while they're trying to start to conceive, because we really don't want to have delays in something that we know, biologically, does have some limitations. So looking at age, looking at all those risk factors, family history is something that we talk about a lot. And then other risk factors that could make a pregnancy more dangerous if they were to be pregnant. So something that would be a high-risk factor for a patient in a future pregnancy is important for us to talk about before they're pregnant. Do they have a cardiac condition? Is it well managed? Do we need to optimize their medical health and talk about medications that are safe in pregnancy, prior to them even conceiving? So that that's really where that conversation should start. If a patient has a concern that they are not pregnant as fast as they think they should, to me, that is enough to start a workup. So by definition, 12 months under 35, and six months over 35 is the definition of infertility, if you haven't been able to conceive. But if I have a patient who walks in and says, “I only get my period every three months,” it's not realistic to wait 12 months, because they haven't really had 12 months of chances if they're not ovulating every month, or they're not having regular cycles. Or if a patient says, “I conceived all of my other kids within one to two cycles, and it's been eight months so I'm really concerned,” that's a patient that I would also really start and initiate a workup. So I think the patient's concerns are important, and that's important to bring to any physician that you talk to, because that often is enough to at least start an initial workup for a patient. As Dr. Cartwright pointed out, conception is just the start — there's plenty to navigate going forward, and issues to look out for. Our next guest is a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Albany Medical Center. Dr. Erica Nicasio earned her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, and completed her residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She specializes in the diagnosis and management of fetal anomalies, preterm delivery, hypertensive disease and diabetes in pregnancy, multiple gestation, and more. What kinds of issues do you see people coming in for? Some of the more common things that we see are things that are becoming a lot more common for women just in general and in health care, in the population. We see a lot of women that have things like hypertensive diseases, so high blood pressure. The other really common medical issue that a lot of women have or developed during pregnancy is diabetes. So we take care of women both that have either Type I or Type II diabetes prior to pregnancy, to help them with insulin control and their pregnancy management, because it can change what happens with their blood sugars during pregnancy. And then also gestational diabetes, which is a specific form of the disease that develops because of the pregnancy, and can change as the pregnancy progresses. So those are some of the more common things that we deal with from a mom side. We also have complex pregnancies from the baby side, so we deal with those sorts of issues such as women that have had preterm labor, for example, going into labor early and delivering a baby. Or fetal anomalies, so a baby that developed some sort of congenital abnormality or a developmental abnormality that we can diagnose by ultrasound and sort of managing what we do with that going forward. At what point do people usually identify the fact that they might have a high-risk pregnancy? I'm guessing there's gonna be some people who are going into it knowing that they're going to have a high-risk pregnancy, but are there some identifying factors that they should watch out for? Absolutely. So that definitely varies, and there's a whole spectrum of high-risk pregnancies. And I think it is hard for women to know what that actually means, and what is defined as a high-risk pregnancy. For example, women that have had complicated medical problems may know that they have a complex medical history, and that makes them high-risk just because of their diseases that they bring to a pregnancy. So someone who has diabetes, someone who has had cancer before and chemotherapy, someone who has lupus, for example. Those sorts of conditions just become a little bit more complicated, or maybe more complex, in a pregnancy. And then as the pregnancies progress, sometimes we have women that develop high-risk issues and then get transferred to us, or have a consultation with us, so that we can discuss how to best manage those pregnancies and those risks that develop. Some examples would be if we do some genetic screening, that's something we offer for women in their first trimester, so early in pregnancy, to look for abnormal chromosomes in the baby. Every woman is offered that screening, if they want to know if they have a high-risk for a baby that has a chromosome abnormality. The most common thing that we see is something like Down syndrome, which would be an extra chromosome 21. So if we do that screening, and that comes back high-risk in their first trimester, often they'll come to us for further testing and discussion of sort of what to do about those findings. Similarly, as the pregnancy progresses, sometimes when we do their anatomic screening, which is an ultrasound, where we look at all of the parts of the baby like heart, lungs, belly, all of the different congenital development of the baby to make sure that everything has formed correctly, sometimes we find abnormalities on those ultrasounds, and often women that have those diagnoses get sent to a specialist like a maternal fetal medicine doctor to have higher level ultrasounds, detailed evaluation, and then again, discussion about how that might affect their baby in utero. How does multiple gestation complicate a pregnancy? What should people expect if they're planning to have twins or triplets? That's a good question. So that's definitely one of those high-risk pregnancy issues that get sent to us as well. So multiples have become much more commonplace because of infertility treatment and older women getting pregnant. And oftentimes, we get to diagnose that – so we get to tell a woman who's had a pregnancy test at home that's positive and comes to an ultrasound and, surprise, we see two babies in there. That can be very exciting. We also have to talk to them about the complications that are increased in those multiple gestations. Pretty much as an overarching rule, most of the complications that we see in pregnancy, like high blood pressure diseases, early labor, gestational diabetes, those sorts of things, are just more commonly seen in a twin pregnancy compared to a singleton pregnancy. You're twice as likely to have a genetic abnormality, for example, because of the additional fetus being there. So these pregnancies are definitely more high-risk than a typical single gestation, so we watch them much more closely than the typical, uncomplicated single baby. And then interestingly, there's different types of multiple gestations, including how the twins formed and how they live inside the uterus. So they can be in their own sac and have their own placentas – completely separate pregnancies, like two babies in there, doing their own thing. And that's generally the lowest risk type of twins. Or they can be sharing placenta, or they can even be sharing gestational sacs, so they're living in the same fluid-filled sac, and those become much more complicated as well. We have to monitor to make sure that they're each getting the nutrients and blood flow and oxygenation that they need to develop appropriately, and if they don't, it can be much more complicated. I've read that you've also done research on things like preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction and fetal testing and maternal obesity. Could you tell me a little bit about your research there? Absolutely. So I was looking at preeclampsia, which is basically a high blood pressure disease that develops during pregnancy. Usually after 20 weeks of pregnancy, so it can happen sort of any time. Women develop high blood pressure as well as protein in their urine, and then it can also affect their kidney function, their liver function and their blood counts, like their platelets. And the biggest risk is, you know, a neurologic risk woman can eventually have if not controlled. It can develop neurologic complications like strokes, and seizures, and really scary things that would be dangerous to pregnancy. So we often end up delivering babies on the earlier side, to protect mom's health, because of the risk of the severity of the disease to mom. And in other countries, they see a lot more eclampsia, which is actually the seizures that can develop. And unfortunately, though we see it relatively commonly, especially at a center where we have high-risk doctors, and we get referrals for it, we still don't exactly know even why it happens. So that's sort of what interests me, is sort of trying to help to understand why some women develop preeclampsia and other women don't. We know that there are risk factors from a health perspective – like having high blood pressure, or lupus, or things that affect your kidneys, for example, put you at risk for preeclampsia. But then otherwise, you know, healthy first-time moms [develop issues] – first pregnancies are actually more likely to get preeclampsia than women that have had multiple pregnancies before. And we don't exactly understand the reason for which women will develop this disease and which women will develop even more severe disease, but we think that it has to do with the placenta and how the placenta forms and invades into the uterus and communicates with the blood vessels in mom. That's sort of what I was looking at, was taking women that have preeclampsia and comparing them with women who don't, and looking at their placenta after they deliver, to see if there was a protein that was expressed differently from one pregnancy to the other. But to be honest, you know, people have been researching this topic for many, many years, and we still have lots of question marks. So it's a very, very complicated disease process that, if we were able to figure out the mechanism of why it happens, then we will be able to treat it better. But unfortunately, right now, the only solution is to deliver the baby early to help remove the placenta. And commonly, the disease actually gets much better after delivery. So this is of course, aside from the usual things people experience with pregnancy, the ways the body changes. I once had a nurse who told me her vision temporarily deteriorated during her pregnancy – is that a thing? What other things might women experience that we just don't talk as much about, or know as much about? There are a ton of changes just due to having a pregnancy in general. And so women's bodies are going through so many different changes, and then the changes change, as the pregnancy progresses. Pregnancy's 10 months long, and so it's definitely a journey. The big things that we see are, you know, some physiologic changes, meaning changes that just happened because of the pregnancy: increased blood volume, so you actually have more blood flowing through your body during pregnancy than you do normally, to feed the pregnancy, and then also in preparation for delivery, when the body loses blood. Many women get anemic during pregnancy. And many women can be anemic before pregnancy, but the way the blood is concentrated, actually causes some anemia. So some low blood counts, we monitor for that, for example. Your respiratory system changes, both the way that you're getting oxygen to your body and then also as the uterus grows, it can affect how you breathe, because the uterus gets big enough to affect the diaphragm and its ability to go up and down. And so many women will describe shortness of breath during pregnancy. Another really common one is reflux, acid reflux. A lot of people are prone to that baseline, but in pregnancy, the sphincter that closes your esophagus to your stomach off so that the acid in your stomach doesn't go back up into your esophagus and chest and cause that acid feeling gets looser, because of the hormones of pregnancy. And so a lot of women have issues with reflux getting worse during pregnancy. And then as the uterus grows, it also causes compression of all of your abdominal contents as the uterus kind of fills up the belly and makes that reflux worse. So we see a lot of that as well. Is the way that we're having babies changing at all in the U.S.? That's a good question. In terms of delivery type, our cesarean rates probably have increased over the years, but so has our high-risk pregnancy [rate], and high-risk pregnancies put you at risk for having a cesarean delivery. So I think a little bit of that has probably played into it. I think there's a lot of social pressures that come with the idea women have as to how their delivery should go. And with social media and Pinterest and things like this, people get the idea that it should be one thing for everybody, or that, you know, having a “natural birth” is the only way to successfully have a baby. But there's a lot of ways that babies come into this world. One of the things is, you never know how it's gonna go. And I think people have an idea that they should have a birth plan, and have everything set up and be ready. And having done this for long enough now, what we really know is that generally nothing goes according to plan. And so having a little bit of flexibility and being ready for whatever comes your way during the labor processes is usually a good way to go into it. Before we go, we're celebrating Women's History Month by taking some time each week to recognize prominent women in history. Last week Natalie Rudd joined us from the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, and she's back with us to share some more of the “women of the hall.” Dolores Huerta Dolores was born in New Mexico, however, she spent most of her life in Stockton, California. Her primary inspiration was her mother: she owned a 70-room hotel where she would often welcome low-wage workers and oftentimes waive the fee for them. She was an active participant in her community and really encouraged cultural diversity, which was really common in Stockton, which was a heavily agricultural-based community. So they had an agricultural community that was made up of Mexican, Filipino, American Japanese, and Chinese working families. Dolores found for inspiration as an organizer while serving in the leadership for the Stockton community service organization, or CSO. During this time, she set up voter registrations, and pressed local government for barrio improvements. And then in 1955, she was introduced to the CSO director, Cesar Chavez, and the two soon discovered that they had this shared vision of organizing farmworkers. Together, they launched the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The two were partners in lobbying and really unionizing farm workers in America, and she really came to prominence when she helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers. The strike lasted for five years, and drew national attention for its nonviolent resistance. During this time, during the national boycott of the California table grapes, she was in New York and she came in contact with Gloria Steinem, who was doing a huge part of the burgeoning feminist movement. And she realized that they have a lot in common, so she was advocating for farm workers while also advocating for women and how they are discriminated within the farm working movement. At the age of 58, she suffered a life-threatening assault while protesting against the policies of then-presidential candidate George Bush. A police officer with the baton ended up breaking for her ribs and shattering her spleen. And then during her really intensive recovery period, she took a leave of absence from the union and focused on women's rights. During this time she traveled the country on behalf of the feminist majority's “Feminization of Power,” which is a campaign that resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. So she began her career working with agricultural farm workers and has worked continuously for union rights as well as lobbying to get women into government. Even now, today, at 89 years old, she continues to work tirelessly to help leaders advocate for the working poor, women, and children. She founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, where she travels across the country engaging in campaigns, all that supports equality defending civil rights, and she often speak to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. Nellie Bly Nellie was a pioneer in investigative journalism in the late 1800s. She was one of the first reporters who truly went behind the scenes to get the real story. She had herself committed to a mental institution in an effort to expose the abuse that occurred there, and the results of this story were reforms that were actually made to living and care conditions at Blackwell's Island Mental Institute in New York City. When this story broke, she became like an overnight sensation, she became an extremely popular reporter. She ultimately ended up shining a light on everything from the improper treatment of prisoners in New York City jails, to the poor working conditions in factories, to corruption politics – she wrote about it all. She ended up gaining a ton of fame in 1899 when she traveled around the world in 72 days, which drew inspiration from the fiction novel Around the World in 80 Days, which is written by Jules Verne. She married a successful businessman, Robert Seaman. And then after he died in 1904, Nellie took control of his company and put into practice all of the workplace reforms that she had envisioned while working as a journalist, such as health care, and adding fitness centers into his company. She ended up unfortunately dying of pneumonia at a very young age of 57, but she had done so much in her lifetime. She really ushered in this whole new era of investigative journalism in such a short life, she really accomplished a lot. And that's like the quick version. I could spend hours talking about Nellie Bly. The small stories about her travels and her journals are really, really incredible. Natalie Rudd is the learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. The Hall will be inducting its next class, including Indra Nooyi, Mia Hamm, Octavia Butler, Michelle Obama, and more, this September. 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue.

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/korean-studies

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Tanuki Raw, a popular American-Japanese restaurant and bar first launched its outlet at Orchard Central in 2012. And a decade later, the restaurant is continuing to incubate a forward-thinking concept that anticipates how customers may want to spend their time now when they decide to head out of their homes. Howard Lo, Founder, Tanuki Raw shares some of the milestones Tanuki Raw have achieved over the past 10 years and how they have been able to continue innovating and strategically extending its markets presence with outlets designed to cater to the broadening needs of its fans.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford University Press, 2021), David S. Roh brings Asian Americanist study of Korean American literature in conversation with Asian studies scholars' work on Zainichi literature—that is, the literature of ethnic Koreans displaced to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea—to model what a sustained dialogue between Asian studies and Asian American studies scholarship might reveal about both Korean American and Zainichi literatures. On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, David Roh chats about the fortunate happenstances that led him to this project, Younghill Kang's thoughts on Syngman Rhee and the expansion of US empire in Korea, the legal status of the Zainichi and how it troubles Asian American assumptions about citizenship and nationality, the incorporation of American racial discourse into Kazuki Kaneshiro's GO, tensions and problems in Asian American studies' taking up of discourse around so-called “comfort women,” study abroad as it brings together the paths of both real and fictional Korean American and Zainichi lives, and the institutional barriers and structural obstacles to realizing this vision of a sustained minor transpacific framework of inquiry. Tune in for more! David S. Roh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and data analyst based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

人のことを蛇に例えると、どういう意味になるでしょう？どうやら国によって違うようです！アメリカでは人を騙すような裏切り者を指す一方、日本ではしつこい人を蛇に例えますよね。 What does it mean to call someone a snake? As it turns out, it depends on what country you are in! In America, being called a snake usually means someone who is deceitful, while in Japan, it means someone who is annoying. 今週のエピソードでは、英語と日本語を使って人を動物の名前で呼ぶときの話で盛り上がります。様々な動物が登場しますが、ネガティブな意味合いのものが多いようです。もっと前向きな意味合いで使えるものはあるでしょうか？ぜひリスナーのみなさまにもお聞きしたいところです！ In this week's episode, Yakko & Cheechan talk about the animal names we call people and what they mean. There are a lot of animals they cover, many of the associations are negative. They need your help to find more positive animal names we call people. 《今週のポッドキャスト・フレーズ》 newbie: 新人、新米、新入り、新参者、ルーキーなどを表すスラング。「自分は新参者で〜」と自分を謙遜したり、「あのルーキーはすごい」「あいつは新米だから」などポジティブ、ネガティブ問わず耳にする頻度の高いフレーズです！ ポッドキャストの無料視聴は上記プロフィールのリンクからアクセスして下さい！アップルポッドキャストやアンドロイドでのご購読もお忘れなく！ Check out this week's episode at the link in our profile and don't forget to subscribe via Apple Podcast or Android! Yakko & Cheechan have a gift for you! It's a free e-book, The Five Overlooked Secrets to Speaking English. 無料e-book **『**みんな見落としてた⁉ 英語スピーキングの ５つの秘密』とは！ Get your copy here. プロフィールのリンクからアクセスして下さい。 Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Hello, kaiju lovers! “Godzilla Redux” continues with Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (the original and not the 2019 film covered on MIFV a few months ago). Elijah Thomas (aka “The Littlest Gatekeeper”) from the Kaiju Conversation podcast joins Nate to discuss this Americanized version of the original 1954 kaiju classic. While it's often been derided by both fans and critics alike, Nate and Elijah argue that it's not only an important time capsule commenting on American-Japanese relations in the mid-1950s, but it just might be more culturally significant than Ishiro Honda's original film! You read that right! If it wasn't for Raymond Burr playing reporter (not comedian) Steve Martin in this version, the Godzilla franchise may have stalled and faded into the arthouse ether. That's just a taste of these boys' defense of the film! Before the broadcast, Nate gets a call from Legal Action Team paralegal Gary, who says he's meeting with a private investigator concerning their case against the Board—just when William H. George III, the Board's special envoy, pays Nate a visit to make some veiled threats. After the broadcast, which includes several reports about an escaped Gyaos, Raymund Martin comes demanding to know if Nate has seen Gary that day—and tells Nate and Jimmy about a tragedy on the Island. Listen to Nate and Travis's spinoff podcast, The Henshin Men Podcast, on Redcircle. This episode's prologue and epilogue, “Gary and the Gyaos,” was written by Nathan Marchand with Michael Hamilton and Damon Noyes.  Guest stars: Michael Hamilton as William H. George III Damon Noyes as Gary & Raymund Martin Additional music: “Rondeau” by Jean-Joseph Mouret “Opening the Way” by Pablo Coma “Chant My Name!” by Masaaki Endo “Abandoned by God” by RoeTaKa Sound effects sourced from Freesound.org. We'd like to give a shout-out to our MIFV MAX patrons Travis Alexander and Michael Hamilton (co-hosts of Kaiju Weekly); Danny DiManna (author/creator of the Godzilla Novelization Project); Eli Harris (elizilla13); Chris Cooke (host of One Cross Radio); Bex from Redeemed Otaku; Damon Noyes, The Cel Cast, TofuFury, and today's guest host, Elijah Thomas! Thanks for your support! You, too, can join MIFV MAX on Patreon to get this and other perks starting at only $3 a month! Check out MIFV MAX #4 to learn how you can help make Episode 50—MIFV's second anniversary special—possible! Buy official MIFV merch on TeePublic! This episode is approved by the Monster Island Board of Directors. Timestamps: Prologue: 0:00-4:37 Intro: 4:37-16:30 Main Discussion: 16:30-1:28:59 Listener Feedback, Housekeeping & Outro: 1:28:59-1:39:13 Epilogue: 1:39:13-end Podcast Social Media: Twitter Facebook Instagram Follow Jimmy on Twitter: @NasaJimmy Follow the Monster Island Board of Directors on Twitter: @MonsterIslaBOD Follow the Raymund Martin and the MIFV Legal Team on Twitter: @MIFV_LegalTeam Follow Crystal Lady Jessica on Twitter: @CystalLadyJes1 Follow The Henshin Men Podcast on Twitter: @HenshinMenPod www.MonsterIslandFilmVault.com #JimmyFromNASALives       #MonsterIslandFilmVault       #Godzilla        #GodzillaKingoftheMonsters © 2021 Moonlighting Ninjas Media Bibliography/Further Reading: Brothers, Peter H. Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda. Galbraith IV, Stuart. Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of 103 Features Released in the United States 1950-1992. Glownia, Dawid. “Socio-Political Aspects of Kaijū Eiga Genre: A Case Study of the Original Godzilla.” Silva Iaponicarum, vol. 37. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Commentary by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski (Classic Media DVD).. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Commentary by David Kalat (Criterion Blu-Ray). Hein, Laura. “Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan.” Cold War History, Vol. 11, No. 4, November 2011, 579–599. Hoberman, J. “Poetry After the A-Bomb” (2011 Criterion Blu-Ray booklet). “International Military Tribunal for the Far East” (Wikipedia). Kalat, David. A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series, 2nd Kaijuvision Radio - “Episode 4: Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (US) (1956) (Occupation of Japan Part 2: Tokyo Tribunal).” LeMay, John. The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies Volume 1: 1954-1982. Napier, Susan J. “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira.” The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 327-351. Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies. Noriega, Chon. “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When ‘Them!' Is U.S.” Cinema Journal, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 63-77. Published by University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & MediaStudies. Rhodes, Sean, and Brooke McCorkle. “Chapter 3: Godzilla, Nature and Nuclear Revenge.” Japan's Green Monsters: Environmental Commentary in Kaiju Cinema. Ryfle, Steve. “Godzilla's Footprint” (Classic Media DVD booklet). Ryfle, Steve, and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa.

Today we're celebrating the birthday of the Paul Seiko Chihara, an award winning American-Japanese composer! Paul's work and style, drawing from his difficult childhood in a Japanese internment camp, is full of rich tradition and reflects the influence from his Asian heritage. Happy birthday, Paul! If YOU want a birthday shoutout, email us with your name, and a little bit of information about you, at TheNameDayProject@gmail.com

The work of Canadian mokuhanga printmaker Graham Scholes is the work of an artist searching for history. His career has taken him across Canada, teaching, studying and creating his prints and water colours.  Graham has worked in various types of printmaking and art but it is mokuhanga which he seems to have found his voice.  In this episode of The Unfinished Print, Graham (accompanied with his wife Marnie) goes into his artist life, his relationship with printmaker Noboru Sawai, his various print series as well as his printmaking methods and philosophies. We also discover how history shapes an artist.   Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own print work on Instagram @popular_wheatprints, Twitter @unfinishedprint, or email me at theunfinishedprint@gmail.com Notes: notes may contain a hyperlink. Simply click on the highlighted word or phrase. Graham Scholes website and shop can be found here. Art Gallery Of Ontario is a big box art gallery located in the city of Toronto founded in 1900. Western Technical School is a high school located centrally in the city of Toronto and was founded in 1927 with a focus on machinery and robotics.  Font de libération du Québec (FLQ) was a neo-nationalist and separatist political group and terrorist organization which was highly active in the Canadian province of Québec from 1963-1971. For a good read on the subject, D'arcy Jenish's book The Making of the October Crisis is worth a read. Barrie, Ontario, Canada is a city located in the Canadian province of Ontario with a long a rich history of First Nation and settler tradition and culture. The McLaren Art Centre which Graham discussed in the episode is located in Barrie. Vancouver Island is an island off the coast of Canada with a rich history of First Nations and settler culture. Watercolours and How is a book published by Graham Scholes describing the use of watercolours as an art form.   Let There Be Light  is a book by Graham Scholes about his lighthouse woodblock prints.   Noboru Sawai (1931-2016) - mokuhanga and printmaking teacher of Graham Scholes, an American/Japanese printmaker who spent 22 years in Calgary, Alberta at the University of Calgary. He studied printmaking with Tōshi Yoshida (1911-1995) in Japan. His studio, Sawai Atelier was established in Vancouver, BC in 1981.   Kochi, is a prefecture located on Shikoku Island in Japan. It has a rich samurai history and tradition of paper making. Inochō paper making museum is located in Kochi.   Takamatsu is a port city in Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku Island in Japan. shina (Tilia Japonica) is a Japanese plywood made for mokuhanga printmaking.    The West Coast Trail is a 75km trail for backpacking which follows the southwestern edge of Vancouver Island. gomazuri is a printmaking technique called sesame printing in English printed with water and pigment.    waterless lithography is a form of printmaking developed by Canadian printmaker Nik Semenoff using silicone, offset aluminum plates, toner, water-soluble pencils and heat.  dry point is drawing on copper plates with diamond or carbide tipped needles, inked then cleaned.  This process is in the intaglio family of printmaking. John Amoss is an American mokuhanga printmaker whose Appalachian Trail series is one of the greatest modern mokuhanga print series available today. He was interviewed by The Unfinished Print and can be found here.  Sybil Andrews (1898-1992) was a British modernist linocut printmaker, painter, and teacher who lived in British Columbia. Her works are lauded and highly collectable.  kappazuri are Japanese stencil prints by layering colour and form with stencils cut by the artist. Made famous by Yoshitoshi Mori (1898-1992). Mokuhanga printer and painter Paul Binnie also began his career with kappazuri. Ronin Gallery NY has a great blog post about kappazuri  here.  reduction printmaking, colloquially known as “suicide prints,” is a form of printmaking where the printmaker cuts away from one  wood or Lino block , printing as they go.   Walter J. Phillips (1884-1963) was a British born printmaker who lived in Victoria, British Columbia. Famous for his watercolours and self-taught woodblock prints, WJP made his own tools and made some of the greatest woodblock prints ever produced.   opening and closing credit background music:  Blue, Red and Grey by The Who from the record, The Who By Numbers (1975)  © Popular Wheat Productions Disclaimer: Please do not reproduce or use anything from this podcast without shooting me an email and getting my express written or verbal consent. I'm friendly :) The opinions expressed in The Unfinished Print podcast are not necessarily those of Andre Zadorozny and of Popular Wheat Productions.                 .                               

Transformer toys have been a popular star amongst young children for ages. It is an American Japanese franchise product, manufactured by Hasbro ( an American toy brand) and Takara Tomy ( a Japanese toy brand). The transformer has an extensive range of toys, games, animations, videos, comic books, etc. It has always been a savior when it comes to dealing with kids and their boredom issues. The transformer brand started in the 1984 era and has been dominating the toy sector ever since. The initial strategy of the business was to produce miniature cars and toys, in order to cater to the adolescent sector of society. However, with increasing popularity and brilliant marketing values, Hasbro soon evolved its conceptual. They soon started manufacturing a bunch of different kinds of toys and models, that had new and approachable ways of 'transformation'. With the increasing diversity and optionality, the brand decided to label it under 'the transformer'. This is how one of the biggest toy industries came into existence.

Tim Brantingham comes from a long line of Ohio missionaries living in Asia (5th generation to be exact). He was born in Taiwan, returned to the US for college, lived in various cities in Asia as an expat, married an American-Japanese wife, is the father of 3 kids, and recently relocated from Hong Kong to Japan. He's not only a Sandwich Kid where his parents made decisions that greatly differed from what was expected of them, he is also a Third Culture Kid and a Sandwich Parent himself. Join us as we discuss how all this impacts his life and how he parents his children. #sandwichparenting #consciousparenting #thirdculturekid #sandwichkid #expatlife #timbrantingham #livinginAsia #greatdad --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sandwich-parenting/message

We are an American-Japanese team, who are creating a podcast meant for those wanting to learn English, Japanese or both. We will mainly focus on news, grammar and culture. Also, We'll talk about linguistics together ! このポッドキャストは日本人のわたしあずみとアメリカ人のクリスさんが、英語と日本語を勉強するみなさんに、週１回同じテーマを英語と日本語別々のエピソードでお届けする２０分の番組です。ニュースを中心に文法や文化。そして、言語学についていっしょに勉強！

Hello, kaiju lovers! This week's episode is a “traditional” mini-analysis of Latitude Zero, an almost obscure 1969 Toho science fiction film directed by Ishiro Honda, who probably had to take a dip in the “Bath of Immunity” to endure the stress of making it. To say it was harrowing would be an understatement. This strange American/Japanese co-production has a troubled history full of clashing sensibilities and creative differences (which you can hear more about in MIFV episode six). However, the main topic of the episode is the concept of utopia because Latitude Zero seems to be a rare example in fiction of a successful one. Spoiler warning: Nathan doesn't buy it. Afterward, Nathan and Jimmy are visited by the Monster Island Board of Directors' executive assistant, Ms. Perkins, who is the Island's head of PR. She wanted to discuss recent “fake news” being spread by Jimmy From NASA and also announce the Board's decision on Nathan's proposals for season two of MIFV. All this plus listener feedback! This episode features Celeste Mora as Ms. Perkins (Twitter: @VOCelesteMora). The song heard in the episode is “Opening the Way” by Pablo Coma, which is a remix from the video game Shadow of the Colossus. It is from the OCRemix album, BadAss Boss Themes: Volume III. The episode thumbnail was created by Michael Hamilton. We'd like to give a shout-out to our Patreon patrons Travis Alexander and Michael Hamilton (co-hosts of Kaiju Weekly); Danny DiManna (author/creator of the Godzilla Novelization Project); Eli Harris (elizilla13); Chris Cooke (host of One Cross Radio), and Bex from Redeemed Otaku! Thanks for your support! You, too, can support us on Patreon and get this and other perks starting at only $3 a month! This episode is approved by the Monster Island Board of Directors. Read Jimmy's Notes on this episode. Podcast Social Media: Twitter Facebook Instagram Follow Jimmy on Twitter: @NasaJimmy Follow the Monster Island Board of Directors on Twitter: @MonsterIslaBOD #JimmyFromNASALives #MonsterIslandFilmVault © 2020 Moonlighting Ninjas Media Bibliography/Further Reading: “The Ambiguous Necessity of Utopia: Post-Colonial Literatures and the Persistence of Hope” by Bill Ashcroft (Social Alternatives, Vol. 28 No.3, 2009) The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies Volume 1: 1954-1982 by John LeMay The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies: The Lost Films (Mutated Edition) by John LeMay “Dystopia: Who Needs It?” by Adrian Mourby (History Today; Dec 2003; 53, 12; ProQuest Research Library, pg. 16) Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godzisewski Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of 103 Features Released in the United States 1950-1992 by Stuart Galbraith IV Kaijuvision Radio – Episode 52: Latitude Zero (1969) (The South China Sea Disputes) Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda by Peter H. Brothers “News from Somewhere: Enhanced Sociability and the Composite Definition of Utopia and Dystopia” by Gregory Claeys (The Journal of the Historical Association) “Pragmatism, Utopia and Anti-Utopia” by Ruth Levitas (Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory 9.1, May 2008, 42–59) “The problem with utopia” by Michael Shermer (This Week and Aeon) Utopia by Thomas More “Utopia isn't just idealistic fantasy – it inspires people to change the world” by Heather Alberro (The Conversation) “Utopian Fiction as Moral Philosophy; Imagination and Critique” by Roger J. H. King (Utopian Studies, No. 3 (1991), pp. 72-78) Writing Giant Monsters by John LeMay The post Episode 30: ‘Latitude Zero' (Mini-Analysis) appeared first on The Monster Island Film Vault.

This is the first episode that was ever recorded of the GAI ting. My guest is Roman Bickel, a half American-Japanese peer of mine. Roman shares about his childhood in America before moving to Japan and gives insight of what its like to be 'hafu'.

On this episode of Chill Filtered, Cole and Robby drink an American/Japanese collaboration from Beam Suntory: Legent Bourbon. They talk Cole's great week at work, Robby's bad week at work, greyhounds, layoff avoidance, Suntory, Jim Beam and Martin Lawrence movies. On Whiskey World News, Robby reads an article about a guy who is selling his birthday collection of Macallan whiskey to buy a house. And on "What Whiskey Would You Choose?" Robby asks simply: What's the whiskey you're sipping this week? And listen to the end to hear some amazing upcoming news for the podcast. Join the boys for a twist on a Jim Beam product and find out why Robby's week just got better on this fun episode. 

Me (British) and my wife (American/Japanese) having a look at a list of things the UK does better than the USA!

Ant remembers liking Mr. Baseball when he watched it in his youth, but can’t quite remember why. Turns out it was probably all he half naked men in this American/Japanese culture clash sports movie. In this discussion there is: surprise at how small the actual culture clash element is (seeing as, you know, its the … Continue reading "280: Mr. Baseball [1992] Movie Review"

Ant remembers liking Mr. Baseball when he watched it in his youth, but can’t quite remember why. Turns out it was probably all he half naked men in this American/Japanese culture clash sports movie. In this discussion there is: surprise at how small the actual culture clash element is (seeing as, you know, its the … Continue reading "280: Mr. Baseball [1992] Movie Review"

Jonathan interviews Dr. David Matsumoto - Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University and President of Humintell, LLC. https://www.humintell.com/ Contacts: JonathanShachter@gmail.com, dm@sfsu.edu

Thanks for joining us! We have a special episode for you today and we are joined by CJ. from Villains & Vinyl and Julian Benn from Ordinary Fellow. In our U.C.U. episodes we discuss topics such as animation (American/Japanese) and any nerd culture topics (Video games/foreign dramas/Movies/Film/etc.). We dissect Avatar: The Legend of Korra mercilessly and explain why we felt it was not a great sequel to Avatar: TLA. Like share and subscribe and enjoy or content for you today. Solve those enigmas and don't leave them unsolved. To follow Julian visit his Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/ordinaryfellowj/ To Subscribe to Villains & Vinyl visit them at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/villains-vinyl/id1485105136 If you would like to support, please visit: https://anchor.fm/enigmas-unchained/support If you would like to support, please visit: https://anchor.fm/enigmas-unchained/support --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/enigmasunc/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/enigmasunc/support

Thanks for joining us! We have a special episode for you today and we are joined by CJ. from Villains & Vinyl and Julian Benn from Ordinary Fellow. In our U.C.U. episodes we discuss topics such as animation (American/Japanese) and any nerd culture topics (Video games/foreign dramas/Movies/Film/etc.). We use this time to talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender and why we enjoyed it and things we didn't like so much about it. Like share and subscribe and enjoy or content for you today. Solve those enigmas and don't leave them unsolved. To follow Julian visit his Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/ordinaryfellowj/ To Subscribe to Villains & Vinyl visit them at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/villains-vinyl/id1485105136 If you would like to support, please visit: https://anchor.fm/enigmas-unchained/support --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/enigmasunc/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/enigmasunc/support

Hitomi of Simple Table by Hitomi, talks about farm to table in the Mississippi River town of Fort Madison, Iowa. An American/Japanese fusion restaurant with no need to advertise, word of mouth does it all.

Get tips from an American-Japanese author for experiencing the rugged allure of Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. Then hear from a nature photographer what it's like to spend a summer boating up Hudson Bay in search of polar bears. And learn all about how Dubliners celebrate Bloomsday — good fun even if you still haven't finished Ulysses. For more information on Travel with Rick Steves - including episode descriptions, program archives and related details - visit www.ricksteves.com.

On this edition of the Cinema Clash: Ava DuVernay’s flawed adaptation of the classic children’s novel, A WRINKLE IN TIME; a solid cast elevates the mediocre dark-comedy crime drama, GRINGO; an aging couple takes a final, meandering roadtrip in THE LEISURE SEEKER; a lonely woman adopts an alter-ego while learning English in the American-Japanese drama, OH, LUCY!; and a manipulative student takes advantage of an obsessed teacher in the timely – or not so timely - SUBMISSION.

The American Red Cross Iwakuni Station partnered with the Japanese Red Cross Society for a blood drive to benefit local hospitals.

To kick off our weekly King Kong spectacular to lead up to the release of Kong: Skull Island, we set our sights on the Japanese King Kong films. Join us as we discuss Toho's King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and King Kong Escapes (1967) at length. We also touch on the two lost Japanese Kong films, the American/Japanese cartoon The King Kong Show, Kong's appearance on Toho's Go! Greenman, unmade Japanese Kong films, and even some of the many King Kong manga! The King of the Apes has a rich history with Japan and we wanna tell you all about it! But first, we have the latest news regarding Godzilla 2 and Legendary Pictures!

In this week’s music review, broadcaster and DJ Nick Luscombe brings in the latest music by London four-piece Hejira, American-Japanese trio Halo Orbit and Hot Chip drummer Pillow Person.

Otaku Movie Anatomy hosts review The Animatrix! The Animatrix (アニマトリックス Animatorikkusu?) is a 2003 American-Japanese anthology anime film based on The Matrix trilogyproduced by The Wachowskis, who wrote and directed the trilogy. The film is a compilation of nine animated short films, including four written by the Wachowskis. It details the backstory of the Matrix universe, including the original war between man and machines which led to the creation of the Matrix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Popcorn Talk Network proudly presents a vodcast that offers a glimpse into the movies we love to watch with breakdown and analysis of the movies some might call… a "Guilty Movie Pleasure". Join us each week as Ben Begley and Cameron Louis breakdown your favorite films, from the classics to the yet to be seen; it’s all here under one banner… GUILTY MOVIE PLEASURES! Rate us and Download on itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/guilty-movie-pleasures/id909155875?mt=2 This week on GMP, Ben Begley and Cameron Louis break down Pacific Rim! Pacific Rim is a 2013 American-Japanese science fiction monster film directed by Guillermo del Toro, and starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba,Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman. The screenplay is by Travis Beacham and del Toro, with a story by Beacham. The film is set in the 2020s, when Earth is at war with the Kaiju,[a] colossal monsters which have emerged from an interdimensional portal on the bottom of the --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Carly Fiorina—Issues.  Senator Rick Santorum—Issues.  Jonathan Narcisse is really alarmed over the Nancy Sebring settlement.  And a Japanese political consultant wonders about American-Japanese relations on the 70 anniversary of the end of WW2.

We were all set to release a very big interview-based episode this week with producer/engineer extraordinaire Toby Wright until we discovered that the week of Thanksgiving (here in the U.S.) is not particularly kind to podcasts as many listeners are on holiday and podcasts, by nature, are consumed by a large number of listeners while on the job. With that in mind, we wanted to make sure our conversation gets the exposure it deserves so we are pushing it back by a week. In the meantime, this week we give you a music-based taste of the massively impressive Toby Wright discography. Episode 60 - The Wright to Rock gives you a heaping helping of Rock & Metal to tide you through until next week. We open the show with a kicking track from Corrosion of Conformity's 1994 Deliverance album before seguing into System of a Down recording a blinding Black Sabbath cover for 2000's Nativity in Black II album. One of the most interesting stories that will be revealed in next week's conversation with Toby Wright will be that of the controversy surrounding Jason Newsted's bass sound (or lack thereof) on 1987's ...And Justice for All. With a good primer for that discussion, we give you a track that is truly to die for from this landmark album. We follow that up with a rare track from a rare band, Cats in Boots, that was an American/Japanese hybrid. Toby Wright was an assistant engineer on this 1989 release. Coming back from the break we relax things a bit with a great tune from Alice in Chains from their massively successful EP, Jar of Flies before cranking things into overdrive with a Slayer cover of a Steppenwolf tune from a NASCAR-themed release. How's that for digging deep?! We travel back to 1991 to spin a track from the first album that Toby Wright produced by Canadian-bred band Brighton Rock from their Love Machine album before spinning a track of a much-discussed, controversial KISS album that never got the exposure that it deserved. Korn reached overwhelming mainstream success in 1998 with the release of Follow the Leader. In next week's discussion, you will hear about the circumstances that led to Toby Wright being the producer of this album that showcased a fuller, thicker guitar sound. In the meantime, we give you a deep cut that will certainly get you fired up. It's rare that a tacked on "new" track on a greatest hits compilation can stand up to the hits that it's sandwiched with but we finish off today's Toby Wright-themed episode with a track that is every bit as worthy as its competitors-in-song from Motley Crue's 1991 Decade of Decadence album. We think you're gonna love next week's discussion with Toby Wright and hope this week's music-themed episode helped get you in the mood for it. Happy Thanksgiving! Buy Music! Corrosion of Conformity Black Sabbath Metallica Cats in Boots Alice in Chains Slayer Brighton Rock KISS Korn Motley Crue Contact Us!   Rate, Review, and Subscribe in iTunes Join the Fan Page Follow on Twitter E-mail Us Comment Below