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In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Summer 2026 and rate them. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Armor series at my Payhip store: FALLARMOR The coupon code is valid through September 21, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 319 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 4th, 2026, and today I'm looking back at the movies and streaming shows I watched over Summer 2026. We will also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Armor series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLARMOR. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through September 21st, 2026, so if you need a new ebook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Visions is done. It came to 99,000 words. It'd be kind of cool if it came to 100,000, but as I've learned in the 15 years I've been doing this, it's not a good idea to pad things for length. Editing is underway. I'm about 15% through the first pass of edits. I'm working on the cover design, so I'm on good track to have the book out before the end of the month. I also wrote a tie-in short story called Winter Crown and don't forget that [newsletter] subscribers will get a free ebook copy of that short story when Blade of Visions comes out later this month. So this makes a very excellent time to subscribe to my new release newsletter. I am also 12,000 words into Elven-Warlock, which will be the seventh book in the Half-Elven Thief series. Hopefully that will be out in October, if all goes well. In audiobook news, I think Blade of Thieves (as narrated by Brad Wills) and Cloak of Worlds (as narrated by Hollis McCarthy) are now finally available at all the usual audiobook stores, which includes Audible, Apple, Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, Chirp, and all the others. So if you want to listen to those if you are going on a Labor Day road trip, you can check those out. A reminder that Stealth and Spells Online: The Complete LitRPG trilogy (narrated by C.J. McAllister) is also available on Audible, so check that out. That's 32 hours long and that would also cover all your Labor Day travels. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:22 Main Topic of the Week: Summer 2026 Movie Roundup So let's move on to our main topic this week. Our main topic this week is the Summer 2026 Movie Roundup and I always enjoy doing those. These episodes are a little less serious than some of the other episodes and it's fun to talk about things I enjoyed and that you might enjoy as well. And I did see a lot of new movies this summer. In fact, I went to the actual theater four times for Masters of the Universe, The Odyssey, Spider-Man, and Coyote vs. Acme, which is probably more than I've gone in a single season since before COVID times. So as usual, here are the movies I saw this summer (rated from least favorite to most favorite). The grades are totally subjective and based on nothing but my own thoughts and opinions. First up is The Breadwinner, which came out in 2026. This is basically standup comedian Nate Bargatze's act come to life as a movie. If you've seen Bargatze's standup, his usual routine is to portray himself as the dumb husband and bumbling Girl Dad, which is actually quite clever from a comedic standpoint since you're unlikely to have outraged mobs calling for your head if all you're doing is making fun of yourself. Anyway, Bargatze portrays Nate Wilcox, the best Toyota salesman in Nashville. (Don't worry, this is the first of only many product placement moments.) He lets his wife Kate manage the household and do the bulk of the work with their three daughters. When Kate's invention takes off on Shark Tank, she has to go to South Korea for two weeks to oversee manufacturing, leaving Nate in charge of the kids. Comedic chaos ensues. On the positive side of this movie, I did approve how this movie showed a married couple trying to work through a rough patch and do what's right for their kids and each other in a semi-productive way rather than blowing up their lives over nonsensical trivialities in the style of Eat, Pray, Love. On the downside, there was a lot of product placement, to the point where it at times felt like an extended commercial with bits of plot jammed in between product endorsement. No doubt most of the production budget came from product placement money. Will Forte was funny as an eccentric roofing contractor and Martin Herlihy as a shifty DoorDash employee. Kumail Nanjiani was funny as Nate's rival salesman at the car dealership. So overall, I would say this was blandly amusing and inoffensive with some funny slapstick moments. Overall grade: C- Next up is Supergirl, which came out in 2026. This movie really was sort of a strange combination of John Wick and the human trafficking subplot from 2020's Black Widow. The end result wasn't quite as good as Superman from 2025, alas. I did like this movie's interpretation of Supergirl. Kara Zor-El's departure from Krypton was way more traumatic than Superman's, so she's dealing with her unresolved emotional issues by traveling from planet to planet with red suns and getting hammered since the same yellow sun that gives Kryptonians their superpowers on Earth also keeps them from getting drunk because their bodies process alcohol too efficiently. However, Kara comes to a planet where a girl named Ruthye lives. Ruthye's family has been slaughtered by ruthless brigands yet led by Krem of the Yellow Hills and she's going on a quest for revenge. When Ruthye tries to recruit Kara for the quest, she's not interested, but then Krem steals Kara's spaceship and poisons her dog Krypto. Krem carries the antidote on his person, so now Kara and Ruthye team up to get vengeance on Krem and to heal Krypto. Krem is a nasty piece of work and he and his space gang travel from planet to planet abducting women to be their wives. I think the problem was that Krem was kind of a boring but nasty villain, but he was still boring. He was basically a space thug with too many piercings. Lex Luthor from 2025 Superman, by contrast, was a really interesting villain, this malignant narcissist who knows that his obsession with Superman is over the top, but he's going to act on it anyway. Additionally, I don't think this version of Supergirl is quite capable of being a lead character on her own. She'd make a superb secondary character, but I don't think she could quite carry a movie on her own. And Jason Momoa was pretty good as Lobo. Overall grade: C- Next up is Troy, which came out in 2004. I wanted to see this either before or after I watched The Odyssey this summer and ended up watching it the day before I went to see The Odyssey. I would say this movie was slow and ponderous, but I did enjoy watching it. This is an adaption of The Iliad and has the sort of slow stateliness of epic films from the '60s. It had good performances and good battle scenes. Brian Cox was enjoyable as a scenery chewing Agamemnon and Brad Pitt worked as Achilles. Interestingly, his version of Achilles reminded me of the interpretation of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen from Dune 2 as sort of a violent psychopath with his own twisted sense of honor. Oddly, despite the fact that this was rather a long movie, the ending seems a bit rushed, like we needed to hurry up and get to the Trojan Horse. It was amusing how Achilles' relationship with Patroclus was changed to "cousin" for the modern audience, but Greek views on sexuality would definitely be unpalatable with both right-wing and left-wing versions of the modern mind, which is a good thing because while the Greeks contributed a great deal to the development of civilization, they were into a lot of unsavory stuff. So overall, I would say this was a fun, epic movie, but I think this walked so the 2026 version of The Odyssey could run. Amusing fact: Christopher Nolan was apparently supposed to direct this, but the deal fell through and he got Batman Begins as a consolation prize instead. Overall grade: B- Next up is The Dink, which came out in 2026. This is an Apple TV comedy movie about pickleball of all things. I feel like this was made because some Apple executive got made fun of by some tennis players for playing pickleball and then decided to take revenge through media. Jake Johnson plays Dustin Boyd, a washed up former child tennis star who now works at his father's tennis club. The club has difficulties because of a growing influx of pickleball players who the hardcore tennis players hate. Dustin's father decides to use the club's bylaws to force a duel match to decide the issue, in the grand tradition of wacky comedy stakes. Dustin really wants to play the duel match, but his wrist is injured in an accident. To get his wrist mobility back, the doctor suggested he play some pickleball and Dustin views this as beneath him, but he really wants to play again, so he signs up for pickleball. This ends up being a wacky sports company/buddy movie as Dustin gradually befriends an eccentric older pickleball player. Ed Harris should really do more comedic roles. He was great as Dustin's stern, yet unscrupulous father. I do admire Apple TV's dedication to making random stuff. Overall grade: B- Next up is Green and Gold, which came out in 2025, and this is a melodrama about a farmer and his granddaughter dealing with the grim economic realities of farming. This is set in 1992/1993 era Wisconsin. Buck refuses to modernize his dairy farm in Door County, Wisconsin. His granddaughter Jenny is a talented musician and also a skilled farmer, and Buck wants her to take over the farm one day, but Jenny's ambitions are looking elsewhere. Events come to a head when Jenny realizes that Buck is deeply in debt to the bank, which is about to foreclose on the farm. However, Buck and the chief banker have a personal animosity, so they settle on a bet. If the Green Bay Packers win a Super Bowl title in 1993, the banker will give Buck one more year to turn things around on the farm. Meanwhile, Jenny begins to wonder if her music ambitions might generate the money to save the farm. Of course, if you are familiar with the history of the Packers, you know that they won a Super Bowl in 1996, not 1993. The movie has carried on the back of the very strong performances of its actors. It also has an ambiguously happy ending, as is true with so many things in farming. I like this movie because I've spent a lot of my life in the American Midwest, [and] I did appreciate how it shows the difficulties of the farming life. Also, this is important: a fall from a ladder is a plot point. Ladder safety is important, people! If you are going up a ladder, for heaven's sake don't climb the ladder in high heels like the character in question does. Wear sensible, well-fitting shoes with good soles. A very long time ago, I used to work with a guy who would climb extension ladders in cowboy boots. It is nothing short of the mercy of God that he didn't fall off and shatter half the bones in his body. Overall grade: B Next up is Grumpy Old Men, which came out in 1993. Apparently this is set in Wabasha, Minnesota, which is amusing because filming actually took place in several areas in the Twin Cities in Eastern Minnesota, but not actually in Wabasha. I found that personally amusing because I'm quite familiar with the area and so I recognize several filming locations. Anyway, the movie is about two retirees, Max and John, who are enemies and have been enemies for years, but Max is lonely and wants to get married again, and John is about to lose his house to the IRS due to tax problems. Things come to a head when an attractive literature professor moves across the street and both Max and John take an interest in her and start competing for her affections. However, it turns out that Max and John are actually best friends whose love language happens to be hatred and practical jokes, kind of like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, but more on them below. This was a good character comedy/drama. It was interesting that the professor was an early version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, albeit several decades before someone came up with the term. This is worth watching both as a character and comedy drama and a time capsule of the 1990s. Sometimes a movie ages a bit badly (Airplane and the Thomas Crown Affair from the Spring Movie Roundup come to mind), but this didn't. The sequel Grumpier Old Men from 1995 is basically the same movie, but with the characters acting about 20% dumber so a sitcom style plot can happen. Still entertaining, but not as good as the first one, so Grumpier Old Men only gets a B-, but Grumpy Old Men gets a B+. Next up is Masters of the Universe, which came out in 2026. It was amusing to read reviews of this movie because people thought way too hard about a movie that is essentially about battling action figures. Anyway, this was pretty good. It was nice to see a movie about a science fiction property that doesn't actually hate the source material. Basically it's a live action version of the cartoons from the '80s, albeit with somewhat more thoughtful moments. I heard someone suggest that it was close in tone to Thor: Ragnarok, and that seems accurate. The plot is that Skeletor conquers Eternia and 10-year-old Prince Adam is sent with the Sword of Power through a magical portal to Earth to keep him and the sword out of Skeletor's reach. However, Adam loses the sword while passing through the gate and 15 years later is working in human resources. He's still seeking for the sword despite his therapist trying to convince him that it was a trauma-induced fantasy. However, his persistence pays off and he does find the sword. Teela, who is one of the resistance leaders against Skeletor's rule, comes to Earth to find him and bring him back, but Skeletor's minions arrive to claim the sword as well. Adam and Teela escape back to Eternia and it's up to Adam to find a way to use the Sword of Power to become the hero that Eternia needs. Dolph Lundgren's cameo was great. Overall, I would say this is a fun movie to watch, especially if you're a Millennial or Gen Xer who saw the cartoons or the live action movie back in the '80s. Jared Leto has something of an increasingly questionable reputation these days, but he did a good job as Skeletor, played him halfway between the solemn gravitas of the 1987 version and the malevolent comedic cornball of the cartoons. Of course, in my opinion, the Frank Langella version from 1987 is the best version of Skeletor since he placed it with all the seriousness of a Shakespearean villain monologue at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In hindsight, it wasn't terribly surprising that this underperformed at the box office. It felt like it was made for guys my age, not for kids. I would've been comfortable bringing an eight-year-old to see The Mandalorian and Grogu or Super Mario Galaxy, but I would've been less certain bringing a kid that age to see Masters of the Universe. Additionally, it seemed very Marvel in tone, and I think the overall mood of the US these days is less "Marvel Cinematic Universe quips and banter" and more sort of the grimness of The Odyssey, which we'll talk about shortly. Overall grade: B+ Next up is Young Washington, which came out in 2026, a biopic of the early life of George Washington, covering how he more or less accidentally started the French and Indian War and how he recovered his reputation at the Battle of Braddock's Field. To be fair, the international situation at the time meant that someone was going to start the French and Indian War. It just happened to be Washington, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Overall, I liked this. It was reasonably historically accurate, though some of the emotional and family dialogue at times was a bit clunky. Additionally, Washington was portrayed as having revolutionary leanings much earlier in life than he actually did, since when he was a young man, he had no thoughts of being anything but a British subject and officer. That said, some of the most implausible stuff in the movie actually happened in real life. Like if I were to write in a novel that the future president of the United States personally rallied the army's rear guard to save as many men as possible from an ambush, and in the process had two horses shot out from under him and ended up with bullet holes in his hat and coat (all while fighting continuously), you would probably find that a bit implausible, but it actually happened that way. Washington's daring actions during that battle were one of the reasons he was appointed commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, that and there weren't many other colonials with as much experience of military command as Washington. In that vein, the battle scenes were the best part of the movie. They captured the brutality and messiness of 18th Century warfare without being especially graphic. Anyway, I'm glad this is getting a sequel. Maybe we'll end up with a Young Washington Cinematic Universe. Overall grade: B+ Next up is Meet the Parents, which came out in 2000, and this is probably one of the apex forms of cringe comedy. Ben Stiller plays Greg Focker, a nurse who's in love with schoolteacher Pam Burns. Greg wants to marry Pam, but overhears a phone call with her sister where she says her fiancé asked permission of her traditional father first. Greg decides that he's going to ask Pam's father's permission first to get off on the right foot, and so accompanies Pam to her sister's wedding and her parents' house to, as the title says, Meet the Parents. However, Pam's father is the former CIA counterintelligence officer Jack, and he and Greg immediately get on each other's nerves. To make things worse, the airline has lost Greg's luggage. From these two starting premises follow a cascading series of hilarious disasters that accumulate in a septic tank fire on the lawn. I'm not sure, but I think I saw this one in the theaters when it came out in 2000, and I thought it was funny then. With 26 years of additional life experience under the belt, I still think it's pretty funny, though you could still tell that this movie was filmed before 9/11 because if Greg had his airport meltdown seen today, the consequences would've been much worse. Overall grade: B+ Next up is O Brother Where Art Thou, which came out in 2000. This is a very, very, very specific adaptation of The Odyssey directed by the Coen brothers. George Clooney plays Everett, a convict who escapes from a chain gang in Mississippi during the Great Depression. He wants to find a treasure and he recruits fellow convicts Delmar and Peter to assist him. Along the way, Everett and his team encountered 1930s era versions of the Sirens, the cyclops, the blind prophet Tiresias, and other characters and foes from the original Odyssey myth. Everett and his friends end up running a scam where they pretend to be a Christian music group, but as it turns out, they're actually pretty good at singing, so this leads to unexpected hilarity and opportunities. This was also a very funny movie. Imagine The Odyssey is a comedy with a lot of singing set in the Deep South during the Depression, and you're there. If you're a fan of bluegrass music, this is worth watching. If you've seen Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, it's worth watching this just to ponder how the same source material can produce such wildly divergent interpretations. If you don't care about The Odyssey, then this is still a fun movie to watch. Proof: I mentioned to someone that I had seen this and she responded that she both loved the movie and was surprised to learn that he had in fact been inspired by The Odyssey. Overall grade: A- Next up is Hoppers, which came out in 2026. Like most Pixar movies, this was very high concept. Unlike many recent Pixar movies, it wasn't too depressing and didn't disappear up its own tailpipe. In the city of Beaverton, hot tempered girl Mabel bonds with her grandmother in their favorite place, a woodland grove favored by beavers. Years later, Mabel is a biology student under Dr. Fairfax, but is neglecting her studies to face off against her nemesis, the popular yet sketchy Mayor Jerry of Beaverton. Mayor Jerry wants to build an expressway that will wipe out the woodland grove, and he's perfectly within his rights to do it since no animals have been found living there. Since Mabel's grandmother has died, she's unwilling to give up the grove. However, Dr. Fairfax's research might give her a way. Dr. Fairfax has worked out a way to temporarily transfer human consciousness to a robotic beaver capable of speaking to real beavers, much like the plot of Avatar. In a funny scene, Fairfax angrily denies that it's just like Avatar. Mabel gets the idea to use this to convince real beavers to settle in the grove, thereby thwarting Mayor Jerry's plans. This touches off both a wacky yet poignant adventure. The plot was very well structured and it followed the proper rules of story structure, which I've talked about before. Mabel definitely is a protagonist who takes action, but experiences setbacks and problems of her own creation. It was pretty good. I say it was a return to form for Pixar after some of their weaker movies in the 2020s. Overall grade: A Now it's time for my three favorite movies of summer 2026, all of which I actually saw in the theater. First up is Coyote versus Acme, which came out in 2026. This movie had an extra surge of popularity from the fact that Warner Brothers canceled it as a tax write-off, but distributor Ketchup Entertainment revived it. That makes it a plucky underdog since Warner Brothers senior executives are kind of like the apex version of soulless corporate bug men. Like if I wrote characters in my books who acted like Warner Brothers senior executives, people would think I was being didactic and heavy-handed. Anyway, after decades of failures in efforts to capture the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote decides to sue Acme Corporation for its numerous defective products. Coyote teams up with a lazy strip mall lawyer named Kevin Avery, who specializes in getting small settlements from Acme. However, Avery and Coyote end up filing a massive lawsuit against Acme, which means they'll face the full wrath of Acme Corporation, including its ace lawyer Buddy Crane and its ruthless CEO, Foghorn Leghorn. What follows is a comedic courtroom battle as Coyote and Avery try to defeat Acme Corporation, defeat its sinister plans, and Coyote starts to realize that Road Runner might actually be his best friend. Both quite amusing and touching, and I'm glad this was rescued from the tax write-off vault. Overall grade: A Next up is The Odyssey, which came out in 2026. This wasn't quite as good as Oppenheimer in 2023 in my opinion, but it was still very good and very much worth seeing. It was weird that The Odyssey was briefly a football in the never-ending US culture war scrum because the movie isn't really political and doesn't really have a message beyond "war is destructive and bad", which every sensible person would agree with, and a lesser message of "violating the law of morality has unforeseen cascading bad consequences, including the destruction of civilization", which is also quite true and was one of the themes of Oppenheimer. Nolan himself dismissed the controversies as "irrelevant" and "part of the territory" since no one had actually seen the movie yet, and given that The Odyssey has made a billion and a half dollars as of this recording, I think that may have proved his point. I imagine the scrutiny from Batman fans back in the 2010s was way more intense since in the modern era, many people care more deeply about the accuracy of Batman than The Odyssey. I do think the debate over the historical accuracy in The Odyssey is pointless because the Odyssey is myth, not history. The Iliad and The Odyssey are a lot like Arthurian myth in terms of their actual historicity. Even when Arthurian legend was massively popular with English kings and nobles in the late medieval and early modern period (for example, Henry VIII's older brother was named Arthur in imitation of King Arthur), the version of Arthurian myth they celebrated and wished to emulate had virtually no connection to the reality of Britain in the 500s AD and was instead a sort of fantasy version of their own time in the 14th and 15th centuries. By the time The Odyssey was written down, no doubt a similar process was underway. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey and the Arthurian cycle probably have a kernel of historical truth buried underneath the tales of magic swords, sirens, cyclopses, and vengeful witches with magic islands. There likely was a Romano-British warlord who might have been named Arthur (or possibly Ambrosius Aurelianus) who held off the Saxons for a while before he was overwhelmed and killed. Likewise, Heinrich Schliemann was a highly eccentric and very sketchy crazy rich guy, but he did prove that there really was some version of the city of Troy that was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. But everything beyond those basic details came from thousands of years of embellishments and flourishes from later poets and writers. So arguing about the historical accuracy of The Odyssey is a bit like arguing if Star Wars portrays faster than light travel in an accurate way. That kind of argument is just missing the point entirely. It's also interesting to see how modern standards clashed with the ancient mindset. You know how I always say that everywhere in the United States is exactly the same right until it really, really isn't? I think ancient people are just like us until they really, really weren't. Like ancient people would have been superstitious to an extent that even the most credulous crystal and aura influencer on TikTok would find horrifying and frequently violent in a way that the most strident self-defense advocate would find shocking. The Odyssey's version of Odysseus feels guilt and remorse over his actions in a way an actual ancient Greek probably wouldn't have, but so what? This is The Odyssey viewed through the lens of the 21st century, just as those English nobles viewed the myth of King Arthur and his knights through the lens of their time. As I mentioned with Troy above, the ancient Greeks were often quite brutal and would celebrate sacking an enemy city. One side note before we get to the movie, I probably found it funnier than I should have how Nolan favorably cited classicist Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey as a source, and Wilson then had an extended and unintentionally comedic multi-article crashout about how much she hated the movie and of course how much she hated the commemorative Trojan Horse popcorn bucket. Apparently Wilson hated the movie so much she's going to do a new translation of The Odyssey, much to her publisher's baffled dismay. No one does offended huffy petulance quite like an academic. Anyway, back to the movie. It follows the familiar story of Odysseus through Christopher Nolan's preference for non-linear storytelling and practical effects. I did think it was interesting how in this interpretation, Odysseus explicitly connected the ruse of the Trojan Horse with the collapse of the Bronze Age and the rise of the Sea Peoples. It's also probably the most supernatural film Nolan has ever done with actual fantasy and supernatural elements as opposed to science fiction like Inception, Tenant, and Interstellar. Odysseus talks to Athena throughout the movie and it's left up to the viewer's interpretation whether or not he's actually talking to Athena or his own guilt-ridden hallucinations. That said, Odysseus encounters a witch with actual magic powers and travels to the underworld to speak with the shades of the dead, so it's entirely possible he's talking to the actual Athena. In this version, as I mentioned, Odysseus is guilt-ridden over the ruse of the Trojan Horse, which is shown as a violation of the sacred hospitality of Zeus's law and as great a crime as the creation of the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer, which of course is similar to Oppenheimer, where Oppenheimer's creation of the atomic bomb is treated similarly. There are also some genuinely scary sequences in the movie. The bit with the underworld is very spooky, the cyclops is actually quite frightening, and the character of Circe reaches the level of scary previously attained by Heath Ledger's version of The Joker in The Dark Knight. If Nolan ever decides he wants to do a horror movie, it will probably be one of the scariest ones ever made. To sum up, The Odyssey has great performances, great spectacle, great cinematography, and great action sequences. As an interesting interpretation of the original myth, definitely worth seeing. I think you can tell it was a great movie because of all the arguments on the Internet about "what does it really mean?" Great art often has that effect. Overall grade: A The final of my three favorite movies of [Summer] 2026 is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which came out in 2026. There's a rumor, and I don't know if it's true or not, that Tom Holland found the experience of working with Christopher Nolan on The Odyssey so eye-opening that he insisted that if they made another Spider-Man movie, it had to have a reason for existing other than "make a lot of money". If this story is true, it clearly worked. Previously, I though the two best Spider-Man movies were Spider-Man 2 from 2004 and Spider-Man: No Way Home from 2021. I must now amend that opinion to say that there are three best Spider-Man movies and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is one of the three. It is pretty good. I would've trimmed it here and there, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and is an excellent Spider-Man story that totally captures the essence of the character within a good story. It takes place four years after the events of No Way Home erased everyone's memory that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Peter has now been crime fighting full time, but it is taking a severe toll on his emotions and personal life that he's deliberately ignoring. Meanwhile, Spider-Man has become the beloved crime fighter of New York, trusted by both the NYPD and the Federal Department of Damage Control, which is a reoccurring frenemy for superheroes from other movies. When someone launches an attack on the headquarters of Damage Control, the director recruits Peter to fight their new enemy, a mysterious figure who uses telepathy to possess people from a distance. Peter is the only one who can sense it thanks to his spider sense, and he's also the only one able to resist the telepath's possession abilities. But despite his resistance to possession, fighting a telepath is a dangerous proposition for someone with as many emotional issues as Peter, and things start to spiral out of control when the telepath starts digging into his life. But there's another lesson Peter has to learn. People (and especially superheroes) who take the federal government at its word tend to regret it. For that matter, ignoring his emotional issues is causing Peter's spider powers to start acting in strange ways. But of course, at the end of the day, Spider-Man always follows his conscience, no matter how high the cost to him personally. Definitely an enjoyable movie. All the scenes with Spider-Man and Punisher were great, and the two of them had a great dynamic together. A few other Marvel Cinematic Universe people show up, but this is probably one of the most standalone movies the MCU has done in a while. Of course, the risk of MCU Continuity Lockout is always there (which is one of the reasons I started writing Half-Eleven Thief in 2023). Overall grade: A So I would say it was a pretty good summer for movies. It's also valuable lessons in not taking the Internet too seriously, which too many people do nowadays. There are all these dedicated analyses on X, Threads, and Reddit in June and May explaining why The Odyssey was going to fail for whatever reason, and instead it made $1.5 billion. So I think that's a good lesson in not taking everything you read on the internet a little too seriously. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show enjoyable. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.  

In 1976, American toy designer Jim Swearingen was working at Kenner, a mid-sized company in the American Midwest.When a script for a new film called Star Wars landed on his desk, Jim was intrigued. Larger toy companies had already passed on the chance to make the figures."It was difficult from the point of view that it was a movie, could be in and out of theater in weeks, maybe months," he said. "It was science fiction, and toy buyers at that time had been turned off to science fiction because they still had a lot of Star Trek on the shelf. "And it was opening in May, which is completely counter to the toy business. We sold toys from September to December."Jim tells Rowan Bridge how he persuaded his boss to take a chance on Star Wars, what it was like seeing the film for the first time, and about the race to get the toys into the shops.Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it through the voice of someone who was there. Scientists, artists, campaigners, soldiers, leaders and everyday people tell their true stories.When you subscribe to Witness History, you'll be taken inside turning points in world affairs from West Africa's fight back against Boko Haram in 2015 to the behind-closed-doors talks that led to the US-Cuba “thaw” and the surprise announcement of restored relations. You'll discover what it was like to experience disasters and how people recovered from them, including the Tabasco floods in Mexico, Portugal's worst train disaster, and the huge clean-up after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. You'll explore culture and ideas too: Sweden's Expedition Robinson, often credited as the first modern reality TV game show; the friendship between The Beatles' George Harrison and Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar; and the night a tiger attack brought Las Vegas superstars Siegfried and Roy's show to a sudden end. And if you're curious about inventions, we'll tell you how air fryers, BlackBerry, YouTube, Alexa, GPS, superglue, the shopping cart (shopping trolley) and bubble tea were created.If you're new to Witness History, the appeal is simple: real voices, one strong true story, and a fresh way to understand today through events from history – all in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of tea or a walk around the block. Join millions of BBC World Service podcast listeners around the globe and enjoy the insight, context and detail Witness History will bring you.(Photo: Children playing with Star Wars figures. Credit: Getty Images)

My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Jane Hartsock, author of the book Fan Base. Jane writes psychological literary fiction set in the American Midwest that centers the agency and experiences of women. Her first novel Load Bearing (2024) tells the story of a young woman who become obsessed with the long-dead architect of the 1920s mansion she and her husband are renovating. Fan Base (2025) involves a widow who is unexpectedly reunited with the washed-up celebrity she slept with once in college and is then subjected to relentless cyber-bullying from his toxic fandom. Jane also has a forthcoming biography about the Midwestern father-daughter team that were the first to translate an ancient Egyptian medical text (2027). Her current project is a novel that involves the Salem Witch Trials (anticipated 2028). Her work has been anthologized in several fiction and non-fiction publications.   Jane holds a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing from Butler University, an MA in Philosophy with a concentration in Bioethics, and a JD all from Indiana University. When she's not writing, you can find Jane hanging with her family and friends (and amazing writing groups) in Indianapolis and teaching Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Indiana University Indianapolis where her research focus includes the use of literature to develop ethical sensitivity, as well as the ethically informed use of artificial intelligence in clinical medicine.   In my book review, I stated Fan Base is a psychological thriller by Jane Hartsock. And this is one you won't want to miss.   It starts out like any slightly steamy romance. Babs, who lost her husband three years earlier to an accident and then loses her job due to her lackluster performance while grieving, meets Austin Lewis. Meets again, actually. Their one-day fling 25-years earlier has always stayed in the back of her mind.   Austin was a teen heart-throb. Babs was unfazed by this fact. They met. They connected. She quickly moved on, became a lawyer, married, and had two children. Austin's fame waned, but he found the business side of Hollywood and moved forward. When they reconnect in a coffeeshop, it seems like fate.   Soon, Babs learns of the Lewnatics - a group of super fans who continue to follow and harrass Austin. And now, the Lewnatics are after her. To make matters worse, her sister, Margot, is part of this crazy group. As things heat up - both in the bedroom and with the crazies - Babs wonders who she can trust.   But you can trust me - the ending will leave your mouth gaping!   Subscribe to Online for Authors to learn about more great books! https://www.youtube.com/@onlineforauthors?sub_confirmation=1   You can follow Author Jane Hartsock Website: https://janehartsock.com/ IG: @writejanewrite   Purchase Fan Base on Amazon: Paperback: https://amzn.to/4wCE80b Ebook: https://amzn.to/44l9mgz   Teri M Brown, Author and Podcast Host: https://www.terimbrown.com FB: @TeriMBrownAuthor IG: @terimbrown_author X: @terimbrown1   Want to be a guest on Online for Authors? Send Teri M Brown a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/member/onlineforauthors   #janehartsock #fanbase #thriller #terimbrownauthor #authorpodcast #onlineforauthors #characterdriven #researchjunkie #awardwinningauthor #podcasthost #podcast #readerpodcast #bookpodcast #writerpodcast #author #books #goodreads #bookclub #fiction #writer #bookreview *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

US and the World It is that time of year again. In many ways August represents the time for the stretch drive in crop development as soybeans need moisture to set pods and corn needs some moisture to finish. It has been somewhat of an uneven year in many areas within the greater North American corn belt. There has been lots of dryness and heat as well as too much rain in some areas. However, as we head into late August it looks like the crop is a good one coming into September. On August 9th the USDA estimated the US corn crop at 61% good to excellent at full 11 percentage points below last year’s 72%. Soybeans were rated at 61% good to excellent, six percentage point below last year’s 68%. A little bit of benign weather going forward and we’ll be able to bring this crop home. The USDA came out with their latest WASDE report on Wednesday August the 12th. Some of the biggest news from the USDA report had to do with an increase in planted acreage for both corn and soybeans. The USDA estimated an additional 1.4 million acres for both corn and soybeans. This boosted corn acres up to 96.7 million acres and increased production to 16.013 billion bushels. This happened despite a drop in yield by 2.3 bushels per acre at 180.7 bushels per acre. This put corn ending stocks for 2026 and 2027 projected at 1.653 billion bushels down from 1.79 billion bushels last month. If this yield potential is realized the US will have the second largest corn crop on record this year. Soybeans got the additional 1.4 million acres which translates to 4.519 billion bushels using a trendline yield estimate of 52.7 bushels per acre. This is on planted acreage of 86.8 million acres with harvested acreage at 85.5 million acres. If this comes to fruition we will have the largest American soybean crop in history. New crop US ending stocks came in at 320 million bushels. Brazilian soybean production at 186 MMT and Argentina at 50 MMT. USDA estimated total US wheat production at 1.531 billion bushels a slight cut from the July report. On Aug 14th corn, soybeans and wheat were lower than the last Market Trends report. September 2026 corn futures were at $4.59 a bushel. Dec 2026 corn was at $4.83 bu. The November 2026 soybean futures were at $11.92 bu. The Sept 2026 wheat futures closed at $6.74 a bushel. The Minneapolis Sept 2026 wheat futures closed at $6.78 a bushel with the July 2027 contract closing at $7.10 a bushel. The nearby oil futures as of Aug 14th, 2026, closed at $82.40/barrel lower vs the nearby futures recorded in the last Market Trends report of $89.31/barrel. The average price for US ethanol in the US was $2.23/gallon, higher vs the $2.19/gallon recorded in the last Market Trends Report. The Canadian dollar noon rate on August 14th, 2026, was .7207 US, higher vs the .7096 US reported here in the last Market Trends report. The Bank of Canada’s lending rate remained at 2.25%. Ontario In Ontario any drought in the deep southwest was broken by early August and now as of August 14th soil moisture across the province has been exceptional to excessive in some areas. This is meant that crops are developing under ideal conditions without the drought stressors from July. Labour Day is still 3 weeks out and producers will be hoping for more benign ideal weather heading into early September. Crops could really benefit. Wheat harvest is approximately 96% completed according to an estimate from the Grain Farmers of Ontario as of August the 13th. It was the tale of two halves as West of Toronto the harvest was pretty good with good quality during the dry period of late July. However, in eastern Ontario it has been a much tougher battle as rainy weather has led to downgrades and challenges in the field. A new pest called the orange wheat blossom midge has been identified in some Ontario wheat fields, which has led to some surprisingly lower wheat yields in some areas. Basis levels for grains are lower than they were three weeks ago. To a large extent this has to do with the Canadian dollar up about a cent and a half in the last three weeks. For crops like soybeans and wheat in Ontario that always makes a huge effect on cash basis values, not so much for corn. As we head into September we’ll have to have a close watch on the corn basis with regard to any early market. Old crop corn basis levels are $1.75 to $2.04 over the September 2026 corn futures on Aug 14th across the province. New crop corn basis levels were $1.65 to $1.94 over Dec 2026 futures. The old crop basis levels for soybeans range from $3.82 to $4.20 over the November 2026 futures. New crop soybeans range from $3.50 to $3.75 over the November 2026 futures. Ontario SRW wheat prices are in flux during harvest by as of Aug 14th are approximately $8.00. For July 2027 new crop the bid is in the $8.41/bu. range. On Aug 14th the US replacement price for corn was $6.98/bushel. You can access all these Ontario grain prices in the marketing section at https://gfo.ca/daily-commodity-report/ The Bottom Line The USDA did provide a bit of a surprise in August when they gave us a cut in yield but more acres. At the end of the day, we still expect the second largest corn crop in history and the largest soybean crop in history. The tone should be bearish, but it is not. Headlines for the moment are driving this market and with a 1.653-billion-bushel carryout for next year there is support underneath the corn complex. The rally started previous to the USDA report when news came of the Ukrainians bombing the biggest Russian export grain facility in the Black Sea. At the same time the Russians are bombing Ukrainian port facilities. As per usual, in war truth is always the first casualty. However, these are not the headlines that grain trading algorithms want. There is just too much uncertainty to send prices for the moment south. Usually, a lower crop yield estimate from USDA in August versus July means the crop is getting smaller. However, there has been very good rainfall across the American Midwest through August. In fact, rainfall has been so much in some areas that flooding is a concern. So, depending on crop ratings you could actually see an increase in yield predicted in the September report which will impact prices. In other words, weather still matters going into September and we could see a yield bump. It is not hot and dry, it’s cooler and more wet. That often can mean a supercharged yield for soybeans in the United States as well as in eastern Canada. Keep in mind that despite our grain algorithms insatiable appetite for headline news, fundamentals still matter. The corn stocks/use ratio is at 10.1% which is quite low and combining this with a lower new crop carryout number of 1.653 billion bushels can only be seen as resilient for prices. This, even though it is the second largest corn crop on record. Demand is strong, very strong and it needs to be maintained. Commodity Specific Comments Corn We are looking at the second largest the corn crop in U.S. history with last year’s crop being the biggest. Intuitively, that just should mean lower prices, but demand has been very strong. There is even the possibility of Chinese buying in corn which would be an added dimension to this demand complex. On August 13th the Rosario Grain Exchange and CONAB raise Argentina and Brazil corn production to a record 70.5 MMT and 143 MMT, respectively. That, coupled with the fact that Argentine corn is the world’s cheapest, adds to the big corn supply situation. The Argentine harvest has now advanced to 77% done. South American production should never be negated, and these big corn numbers are all part of the equation. The September 2026 corn contract is currently priced at 24.5 cents lower than the December 2026 contract a bearish indication of old crop corn demand. Seasonally, we know that corn prices tend to peak in early June and bottom out in early October. The December 2026 corn futures contract is at the 22nd percentile of the past five-year price distribution range. Soybeans It is an old axiom that soybeans are made in August. So, despite some of the bullish talk coming from the corn and wheat complex, beans have caught some of that wave. However, it cannot be negated that these plentiful rains especially in the central and eastern part of the corn belt could easily boost the yield from 52.7 upward in the next USDA report. In recent market action soybeans have been a bit of an onlooker to corn and wheat. However, there is still the specter of Chinese demand which has been very good for prices. They have been in the market buying approximately about 8 MMT of the 25 MMT committed to earlier. Expect more news of this especially with the upcoming visit of President Xi to the United States on September 24th. The September 2026 soybean contract is currently priced 15 cents below the November contract considered bearish for old crop soybean demand. Seasonally, soybean prices tend to peak in early July and bottom out in early October. The November 2026 soybean contract is currently at the 29th percentile of the past five-year price distribution range. Wheat The headlines in the wheat market which are driving algorithms are feeding from the news from the Black Sea where both Russian and Ukrainian grain export facilities have been compromised by war. In fact, in Ukraine they are looking to export about 30MMT of corn, wheat and other oil seeds to get ready for the upcoming corn harvest. That is creating a bottleneck affecting everything. Wheat prices are largely benefiting from these issues in that part of the world. It’s all very fluid it could stop very quickly or vice versa. These problems in world markets have been a boon to Ontario wheat producers who saw wheat prices sore almost to $9 a bushel during harvest. This is approximately $3 more than a year ago. In fact, many producers have sold wheat $1.50 to $2.00 more than a year ago and it has mostly been based on the problems in the Black Sea with futures spiking. As per usual, a Canadian dollar fluttering in the 70 and 71 cent level US has boosted Ontario cash prices. With wheat futures spiking it has had an acceleration effect on upward price movement. The Bottom Line (cont.) The Canadian dollar simply matters especially for Ontario cash grain prices. On August 14th the noon rate for the loonie was 0.7207 US. This represented the third straight weekly gain for the currency. This is the highest it has reached since June 3rd when it was 72.12 US cents. Of course, this hasn’t been a monumental move, but the US dollar has been losing some momentum, and oil prices are helping depending on what’s happening in the Iran war. Needless to say, currency variations impact the demand for Ontario agricultural commodities and slight changes in this currency can cause 10 to $0.20/bu volatility in cash grain prices very quickly. That’s where standing orders for cash grain price levels can come in very helpful. As per usual, there is always another layer of marketing management considering both the value of the Canadian currency and grain futures prices. We are moving into a time in September when we will have actual harvest results out of the United States and later on from Ontario. The USDA reducing the yield of the big US corn crop is significant and we will see as we go forward whether this is substantiated by actual harvest results. We will also have the September USDA come out and it will be significant what they say after the beneficial rains that we’ve seen in August. Intuitively, you would think that soybeans would add yield and maybe even corn. However, this is 2026 with continual mini–Black Swan events coming out of the Black Sea and other places. Volatility probably is our only certainty. In Ontario we need to bring this crop home. Generally speaking, the crops do look good across Ontario even though some areas have had enough rain while others might have had too much. However, we don’t have the devastating drought in eastern Ontario which we had a year ago. This will affect cash markets going forward. Weather surely will also be a key factor in the next 4 weeks. In those four weeks Ontario producers will need to continue to hone their grain marketing plans. Specifically, in front of harvest we need to recalculate the costs of storing grain and treat them as an opportunity cost. Just because the bins shine on days with a beautiful autumn sun, doesn’t necessarily mean they should be filled. There are choices to be made. Key is always good planning and daily market intelligence. Risk management never gets old. There will be many grain marketing opportunities ahead. The post Market Trends Report – August & September 2026 appeared first on Grain Farmers of Ontario.

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

“Kmart sucks.” Join Ian, Liam & Megs for our 342nd episode as we hit the road for Ian's Patreon pick, Barry Levinson's Oscar-winning classic Rain Man (1988). It's a journey across America filled with family wounds, unexpected connection, and one of the most celebrated performances in cinema history. Kev isn't with us this week—he insisted Raymond was right about Kmart underwear and is currently somewhere in the American Midwest refusing to buy a different brand. This week we discuss: Dustin Hoffman's Oscar-winning performance — groundbreaking, influential, and endlessly imitated. How well has Raymond Babbitt's portrayal of autism stood the test of time? Tom Cruise before he became Tom Cruise — is Charlie Babbitt one of the strongest dramatic performances of his career, and does his character truly earn the emotional destination the film arrives at? Ian makes the case for a brilliant screenplay — from inherited trauma and forgiveness to what it means to truly communicate and how do we compartmentalise intimacy -  we explore why every major theme reinforces another in one of the tightest character scripts we've reviewed. The road movie structure — why does Rain Man work because Raymond doesn't fundamentally change... Charlie does? The elevator scene — one of the film's sweetest moments or one of its most complicated? We unpack how differently that sequence plays in 2026 and whether it's an affirmation of Raymond's humanity, a thoughtful act of kindness, or something more ethically complex. Las Vegas — does the casino sequence undercut Charlie's character development by rewarding the very instincts he's supposed to be leaving behind, or is it a necessary step in his transformation? Liam explores the brothers' relationship — does the film ultimately become less about autism than about learning to see another person on their terms rather than your own? Megs examines the film's emotional honesty — sentimentality, manipulation, and whether Rain Man earns every emotional beat it asks of its audience. The "show versus tell" balance — how much does the film trust Hoffman's performance to communicate Raymond's world without resorting to unnecessary exposition? The supporting cast — particularly Susanna. Is she underwritten, or does she quietly become the emotional bridge between Charlie and Raymond? The ending — understated, bittersweet, and refreshingly restrained. Could there have been any other conclusion that stayed true to these characters? And finally, whether Rain Man is the Best Film Ever — or one of the finest character-driven dramas ever put to film. Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at https://www.patreon.com/BFE

In this late-night rollercoaster, Walter teams up with journalist Ross Coulthart to unpack the latest UFO government cover-ups. Former Marine Edward Jones drops in to decode the escalating military tensions, missile strikes, and shipping tolls in Iran. That's just the beginning—Walter also dives headfirst into bizarre conspiracies involving timeline-shifting CERN colliders and giants building the American Midwest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the morning of the 7th of June 1992, a 19-year-old woman named Janelle Kirby drove across Springfield, Missouri, to a small house on East Delmar Street, looking for her two best friends. They had graduated from high school the day before. They were supposed to be driving down to a resort in Branson. When Janelle pushed open the unlocked front door, she found the family's terrier agitated, the girls' clothes folded neatly on chairs, beds slept in, purses untouched, cars in the driveway, and the smashed pieces of the porch light scattered across the boards outside. What she did not find was Suzie Streeter, her mother Sherrill Levitt, or her friend Stacy McCall. Three women had vanished from inside that house overnight. The dog. The beds. The car. The purses. The cash. All of it left behind. Thirty-four years later, no one has ever solved one of the strangest unsolved disappearances in the history of the American Midwest.Become a Patreon or Apple + subscriber now for ealry and ad free access from as little as $1.69 a week. All the details hereSubscribe to Crime at Bedtimes Youtube channel HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

US and the World It has been a solidly good spring in the American Midwest with no major planting issues. On June 29th USDA estimated 67% of the US corn crop was good to excellent while soybeans we’re rated at 65% good to excellent. June 30th always represents a benchmark for grain markets with the release of the June 30th acreage report. Acreage is important and in past years the June 30th acreage report would often serve as a volatile reminder of how prices can ebb and flow. Sometimes the changes in the report can be dramatic, and sometimes not. 2026 proved to be the latter. USDA is estimating that there will be 95.3 million acres of corn in the United States this year. This is down 3.5 million acres from last year’s 98.8 million acres of corn. This acreage is the 5th largest on record but points to the second largest corn crop ever after last year. The quarterly corn stocks number came in at 5.29 billion bushels which was up 14% from 2025. Soybeans were the benefactor from the lower corn numbers. US soybean acreage is set to come in at 85.4 million acres this year. This is 5% higher than a year ago. The quarterly stocks numbers for soybeans came in at 1.06 million bushels which was 5% higher than a year ago. The bigger surprise in the acreage equation was wheat which came in at 42.7 million acres, 1.1 million acres below expectations. This will be the lowest US wheat acreage on record. On July 3rd corn, soybeans and wheat were higher than the last Market Trends report. September 2026 corn futures was at $4.23 a bushel. Dec 2026 corn was at $4.41 bu. The August 2026 soybean futures was at $11.36 bu. The November 2026 soybean futures were at $11.47. The Sept 2026 wheat futures closed at $5.99 a bushel. The Minneapolis Sept 2026 wheat futures closed at $6.18 a bushel with the September 2027 contract closing at $6.89 a bushel. The nearby oil futures as of July 3rd, 2026, closed at $68.78/barrel much lower vs the nearby futures recorded in the last Market Trends report of $84.88/barrel. The average price for US ethanol in the US was $2.17/gallon, lower vs the $2.18/gallon recorded in the last Market Trends Report. The Canadian dollar noon rate on July 3rd, 2026, was .7042 US, down vs the .7155 US reported here in the last Market Trends report. The Bank of Canada’s lending rate remained at 2.25%. Ontario In Ontario things are looking pretty good. Very hot weather has pushed development in both corn and soybeans. There is dryness in southwestern Ontario where a widespread rain would be welcome especially going into pollination for the corn crop. However, it is a different story in eastern Ontario where they’ve had widespread rains and it is such a different story than last year when drought ruled the day. Winter wheat harvest has commenced in Essex County as of early July and this will ramp up across Ontario depending on the weather in the next couple of weeks. It’s important to remember that Ontario is a big province with croplands stretching from Windsor to the Quebec border as well as up into northern Ontario and as far West as the Rainy River district. This will not only lead to variable conditions province wide but also differences in cash markets. Producers should always be vigilant of this when marketing their grain. The Canadian dollar has fallen below the $71 US range over the last couple of weeks which is further added stimulus to Ontario cash prices. This has happened at a time when futures prices have risen slightly compared to the lower values of a few weeks ago. This has caused basis levels to strengthen for both corn and soybeans. Keep in mind the traditional higher basis level for eastern Ontario corn is happening reflecting the lower production numbers from last year’s drought as well as a robust export program from Ontario. Old crop corn basis levels are $1.50 to $2.35 over the September 2026 corn futures on July 3rd across the province. New crop corn basis levels were $1.35 to $1.86 over Dec 2026 futures. The old crop basis levels for soybeans range from $4.00 to $4.40 over the August 2026 futures. New crop soybeans range from $3.66 to $3.85 over the November 2026 futures. Ontario SRW wheat prices are in flux during harvest by as of July 3rd are approximately $7.30. For July 2027 new crop the bid is in the $7.61/bu range. On June 3rd the US replacement price for corn was $6.53/bushel. You can access all these Ontario grain prices in the marketing section at https://gfo.ca/daily-commodity-report/ The Bottom Line It seems like a little different world now. Earlier when we had the war in Iran in the front pages everyday oil prices surged to $120.00 a barrel. In many ways this dragged corn up over $5 a bushel and $12.00 a bushel for soybeans on the futures market. Even though that conflict is not over and there is a 60-day moratorium of understanding, the edginess in the market from those earlier days is gone. Of course, this has led too much lower prices. Keep in mind that there has been an exit of non-commercial interests in our grain markets. With the war in Iran starting, we saw the funds accumulate more long positions. At the height of this inflation trade, funds were long 300,000 contracts in corn and 200,000 contracts in soybeans. It was a case of money flow and maybe it continues to be as some of these funds are turning back and buying again. Keep in mind the funds are looked at as villains sometimes but as saviours other times. They add a lot of liquidity to our grain market. Who knows what the immediate future might bring but one lesson we might take from the last few months is the effect on oil prices on just about everything. For instance, we saw corn, soybeans and wheat go up as oil reached $120.00 a barrel. The same could be said with fertilizer and fuel prices. Now that oil is reach levels since before the Iran war everything is down. It is a benchmark lesson for the future. Geopolitical events which push the price of oil, can push everything and when it’s over it’s over and agricultural commodity prices retreat. Always a variable in the grain market weather is setting up now as quite interesting. In Europe they have had tremendous heat, and this is having an effect on their corn production. For instance, the most active November European corn futures are moving to contract highs as French corn production may fall 30% in 2026. That is completely opposite to what we are expecting in the United States and South America this year. However, it is an example of what can happen if the weather goes South. Commodity Specific Comments Corn It’s getting to be that time of year when corn is stressed. In other words, it’s getting to be that critical time of year and any weather stress whether that’s lack of rain or too much rain or very hot temperatures can impact corn yield significantly. It’s not perfect in the American Midwest but it’s close. The next few weeks will tell the story going into pollination. In retrospect, we saw about an 80 cent drop in the price of corn from its highs of $5.06 a bushel. The funds now have a small net long position and if the weather goes sideways, they will likely add to that putting corn in a position to rally again. However, will it be enough to get back to the $5 level? The answer is blowing in the wind depending on whether Mother Nature plays nice. The July 2026 corn contract is currently priced at 8.75 cents lower than the September 2026 contract a bearish indication of old crop corn demand. Seasonally, we know that corn prices tend to peak in early June and bottom out in early October. The July 2026 corn futures contract is at the 6th percentile of the past five-year price distribution range. Soybeans Soybeans have resisted the price decreases over the last month, sustained by good demand especially in the soybean oil market which continues to have healthy price increases. Yes, the soybean renewable diesel boom in the United States is making a long-term difference. As we all know, soybeans are made in August, so the jury is still out. An outlier with regard to soybeans is Chinese demand. The Chinese had bought a little bit earlier, but they’ve still not come in and bought the 25 MMT they committed to in an early agreement after the President’s visit to Beijing. Generally speaking, it’s at this time of the year when they would be buying American beans. There has been no incentive to do so up until now as the American beans are cheaper than Brazilian soybeans. Fresh Chinese buying would significantly boost soybean prices at this time of year. The August 2026 soybean contract is currently priced 5.25 cents below the September contract considered bearish for old crop soybean demand. Seasonally, soybean prices tend to peak in early July and bottom out in early October. The November 2026 soybean contract is currently at the 25th percentile of the past five-year price distribution range. Wheat After reaching highs earlier in the spring wheat prices plummeted and now are seemingly rebounding again. Part of the price increase earlier had to do with dry weather in the American wheat country and the war in Iran. Keep in mind that Europe has had extreme heat and drought which is affecting wheat there and this might pressure prices in the weeks to come. However, keep in mind that prices now are still higher than they were a year ago. As always, there is wheat everywhere in the world filling supply gaps. The latest USDA report reiterated the trend by saying the US has the smallest wheat crop on record. In Ontario early reports from Essex County are showing pretty good wheat yields and pretty good quality. Wheat is turning quickly across the province and the wheat harvest will likely proceed depending on the weather going forward. Cash prices have also been bolstered by a slight rebound in wheat futures and a Canadian dollar in the $0.70 range. The Bottom Line (cont.) With the Canadian dollar currently sitting at .7042 US there’s been considerable stimulus added to Canadian cash grain prices. As always, the Canadian dollar is a thinly traded currency and generally is at an inverse value to American dollar. However, it has also been buffeted by a Canadian economy that is slowed and interest rates expectations which have changed. This has been accentuated by the American decision not to renew CUSMA. Will the Canadian dollar go under $0.70 US? It is all so hard to say but eventually it will start the long March back to 80 cents and even $0.90 US. It will always be an added layer within our Ontario grain marketing plans. Geopolitics continues to be very real, but it also is so dialed in to our grain trading algorithms. The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran runs out on August the 18th and depending on what might happen will also have an effect on a grain price volatility. At the same time Ukrainian drones are reaching deep inside of Russia causing supply constraints and disarray within the Russian war narrative. The possibility these events might reignite oil and grain prices will likely continue. It is often said that rain makes grain and that is surely true in 2026 as any other year. There is also the narrative that the greatest cure for low prices is low prices. In that regard over the last year and a half we had seen grain demand acceleration. There has been no demand destruction because of high prices however, at a certain point when supply is constrained in some way, we will need grain prices to rise to ration demand. This always needs to be kept in mind within our marketing plans. As we move into the later parts of July, as stated earlier we will be getting into the critical pollination period for corn, where moisture and mild temperatures are always preferred. After that we will be looking toward August and the soybean pod set and this is always critical to production going forward. The challenge for Ontario producers is to continue to refine their marketing plans to capture the marketing opportunities that will inevitably occur. Risk management never gets old. Daily market intelligence will remain key. The post Special Edition – Market Trends Report – USDA Report July 6, 2026 appeared first on Grain Farmers of Ontario.

Visit Saily here: https://saily.com/Use Code Brent15Code for visiting North America: Score35In this lesson, we are breaking down the latest political drama between Barack Obama and Donald Trump to help you level up your English skills! We'll dive into real-world American English vocabulary, advanced idioms, and native-speaker phrasing so you can easily understand the news.Want to speak English more naturally? Check out the resources below!

Beyond the jazz clubs and barbecue smoke lies a darker side of the American heartland, one shaped by frontier violence, ghost stories, and enduring legends.Kansas City is often known for its jazz, railroads, and rich frontier history, but beneath the surface lies a city filled with ghost stories, urban legends, and echoes of a turbulent past. Join us as we explore the hauntings, folklore, and hidden history of Kansas City, from Civil War violence and historic theatres to infamous haunted locations and some of the American Midwest's most enduring supernatural legends.EPISODE CREDITSWritten by – Melissa WestNarrated by – Steven HollowayProduced by – Pink Flamingo Home StudioEnjoyed the episode? Subscribe, leave us a rating, and drop a review. It really helps the show reach more listeners. Here's where to find more:Support the show: Patreon (patreon.com/hauntedukpodcast) | Ko-fi (ko-fi.com/hauntedukpodcast)Follow us: Instagram @hauntedukpodcast | TikTok @hauntedukpodcast | X @hauntedukpodWebsite: https://hauntedukpodcast.com/Produced by Pink Flamingo Sound Studio Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special on-location episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, recorded at the Chicago History Museum on the occasion of His Majesty the King's official birthday, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Richard Hyde — His Majesty's Consul General in Chicago and the senior British diplomatic representative across 14 states in the American Midwest. Speaking just before the British Consulate's King's Birthday Garden Party, Richard explains what a Consul General actually does, why Britain doesn't have a National Day, how he approaches representing modern Britain to the heartland of America, and what King Charles's address to a joint session of Congress meant for the Special Relationship. The conversation also uncovers a remarkable piece of Anglo-Chicago history: after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Queen Victoria and 8,000 British donors — including Disraeli, Tennyson, and John Stuart Mill — sent books to Chicago, directly founding the Chicago Public Library. Plus: the Beatles, Frank Lloyd Wright's Welsh roots, Abraham Lincoln's North Wales ancestry, and why Chicago is Richard's favorite city in the world. Note: We had originally planned to do a 100th Q&A for our 100th episode, but a much bigger opportunity arose last week, which we thought was more fitting. We'll do the Q&A soon! Links British Consulate General Chicago Website UK In Chicago on Instagram British Consulate General Chicago on X/Twitter British Embassy Washington DC UK Government in the USA Chicago History Museum Chicago Public Library Foundation Hawksmoor Chicago Celtic Crossings Chicago Chicago Shakespeare Theater America 250 Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways The United Kingdom is one of the only countries in the world without an official National Day — which is why British consulates abroad use the King's official birthday in June as their annual celebration, conveniently timed to coincide with Trooping the Colour. Richard Hyde covers 14 American states as Consul General — roughly 25% of the entire United States — including 105 members of the House of Representatives and 28 senators, making the Midwest a critical region for understanding where American politics is heading. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Queen Victoria personally led a donation drive that saw 8,000 British donors — including Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and John Stuart Mill — send books to Chicago, directly founding the Chicago Public Library. Victoria's personally signed copy of a biography of Prince Albert is still in the library's special collection. King Charles's address to a joint session of Congress during his America 250 visit was, in Richard's assessment, a masterclass in diplomatic communication — speaking to shared values rather than political divisions and reminding both nations of the deep historical thread connecting Magna Carta to the US Constitution. Frank Lloyd Wright's family were Welsh; Abraham Lincoln's great-great-grandfather came from a small village in North Wales just 40 miles from Richard's hometown of Liverpool; and Anish Kapoor — who designed Chicago's Cloud Gate Bean — is British. Britain's cultural fingerprints are everywhere in Chicago. The British Consulate deliberately chose the Chicago History Museum and the Chicago Public Library Foundation as partners for this year's King's Birthday event to honor the Victorian book donation story — and encouraged guests to donate to the Foundation in the spirit of Queen Victoria's original gesture. Richard argues that British culture in America is simultaneously everywhere and invisible — so deeply embedded in American music, film, language, and history that most Americans don't register it as foreign. The Beatles are the perfect example: four working-class kids from Liverpool whose music plays in every country in the world, including a Chinese restaurant in Somalia in 1998. The Special Relationship, Richard says, is ultimately about 80% agreement — both countries share fundamental values on democracy, freedom, and human rights, and the disagreements, while loud, are at the margins. King Charles's Congress speech focused on that 80%. Richard's most unexpected discovery in Chicago: Midwesterners are the most authentically friendly people he's encountered in 10 overseas postings. They follow up. They text you. They actually become your friends — not just professional contacts. Richard's message to young Americans: spend time abroad. Not a two-week vacation, but a semester, a few months, living in someone else's culture. It will change how you see America — and make you appreciate it far more deeply. Soundbites "I like to joke that Chicago is one of America's two great cities with proper downtowns. Everywhere else is sprawl. But the difference is — in Chicago, the people are nice, the streets are clean, and the food's better." — Richard on why Chicago stands apart. "We're celebrating America 250. We're celebrating the fact that this is the greatest startup in history. We argued a little bit and there was some spilled tea — and despite all of that, 250 years on, no two countries do more together in the world." — Richard on Britain's approach to America 250. "Queen Victoria and 8,000 British donors sent books to Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 — and that donation directly led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. Victoria's signed copy is still there. It's a gesture from 1871 that still resonates now." — Richard on the Anglo-Chicago library story. "The King rises above the moment. He was able to come at a challenging time in our relationship and remind Americans — and remind Brits — that there are fundamentally more important things than the moment we're in. And that is our shared values." — Richard on King Charles's Congress speech. "I've been all around the world. I've never really been a great theater-goer. But Ed Hall at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre has kind of infected me. I've become addicted to theater." — Richard on an unexpected Chicago conversion. "The flag in the United States is the symbol of their liberty. Our flag was created from existing countries we already had. So Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland — the Union flag is basically a combination of four different crosses. We didn't have to fight for it." — Richard on why Brits and Americans relate to their flags so differently. "I've lived here almost two years. Of all the places I've lived, this is the easiest place in the world to actually build a network of friends. You can stand in a bar and someone starts talking to you about the Cubs and fundamentally how terrible everyone is at the moment — and they actually follow up." — Richard on Midwestern friendliness. "The longer I stay away and the more I've represented my country overseas, the prouder I am of that country. Warts and all. I'm proud of the history — even the complicated history. You have to understand it, not erase it." — Richard on representing Britain from a distance. "I have to say — I saw Hamilton recently and the best character in Hamilton is the King. Everyone agrees. He has the best songs." — Richard on George III stealing the show. "If you ever get a chance to travel — and I say this to a lot of young Americans — don't mean a two-week vacation. Go spend a semester abroad. Go spend a few months in somebody else's culture. And you'll understand A, that the country you love isn't perfect. But the longer you think about it, the more you'll appreciate what your country does." — Richard's message to young Americans. Chapters 00:21 Introduction — Jonathan sets the scene at the Chicago History Museum on King's Birthday 01:36 Welcome from Richard Hyde — The occasion, Chicago, and what the day means 01:58 Richard's Background — Liverpool, an Indian father, and a career that took him to India, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Texas, and Chicago 02:47 What Surprised Richard Most About Chicago — Midwest vs. Texas, great food, accessibility, and why Chicago rivals New York 04:44 British Things in Chicago — Hawksmoor, Celtic Crossings, Irish pubs, and a Sunday roast worth traveling for 07:08 What Does a Consul General Actually Do? — The difference from an ambassador, 14 states, 25% of the US, and what the job really looks like day to day 10:25 Representing Modern Britain — Multicultural, proud, complicated history, and the gap between Downton Abbey and reality 11:30 The Scope of the Midwest Region — 105 House members, 28 senators, and listening to farmers in South Dakota 15:22 What Is the King's Official Birthday? — Why Britain has no National Day and how the official birthday fills that gap 17:42 The Anglo-Chicago Library Story — The Great Fire of 1871, Queen Victoria, 8,000 British donors, Disraeli, Tennyson, and the founding of the Chicago Public Library 19:49 Chicago's Literary Heritage — Hemingway, Carnegie libraries, and the bookishness of the Midwest 20:15 America 250 — Celebrating the greatest startup in history, spilled tea, and why Britain is all in 22:20 The Founding Fathers as British People — A nuance most Americans don't consider 22:33 King George III in Hamilton — Richard's verdict: the best character, the best songs 23:07 King Charles's Address to Congress — What it meant, how it landed, and the 80% agreement principle 26:02 Getting the King to Chicago — Deep dish dreams and the challenge of a royal itinerary 26:36 The Anglo-Chicago Connection — Frank Lloyd Wright's Welsh roots, Lincoln's North Wales ancestry, Anish Kapoor's Bean, and why British culture in America is invisible because it's everywhere 29:14 The Transatlantic Flow Goes Both Ways — Charles Yerkes and the London Underground, Gordon Selfridge, and Chicago's British legacy 29:46 Does Representing Britain Change How You See It? — Absence, appreciation, complicated history, and Churchill in Fulton, Missouri 33:08 What Richard Champions in the Midwest — The Beatles, Liverpool, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and British music's global reach 35:25 Chicago's Theater Scene — Shakespeare, Kinky Boots, Harry Potter, and how theater became Richard's unexpected passion 36:10 The Tea Question — Richard's honest answer, builder's tea, Yorkshire Tea, and the biscuit problem 37:06 Hadrian's Wall and Health Plans — Jonathan's August walk, no sugar in the tea, and necessity 37:37 Richard's Favorite Thing About Chicago — The people, authentic friendliness, and why this is his best posting in 10 assignments 39:39 The World Cup Question — England's chances, Richard's divided loyalties, Wales, Argentina, and playing in the heat 40:46 Wrap-Up — Thank you to the Chicago History Museum, how to follow the British Consulate General Chicago Video Version

Send us Fan MailA jiu jitsu gym is not where most people expect to have a careful conversation about Israel, antisemitism, and identity, but that's exactly what happens here. I'm joined by a Jewish Israeli American lawyer and training partner to talk through the topics people usually avoid, not to score points, but to understand how real lives and real history sit behind the headlines.We start with what brought him to the mic: a post about war in the region and the need to hear a perspective that often gets flattened or caricatured. From there we dig into growing up Jewish in the American Midwest, the moment academia and politics start framing everything as oppressor versus oppressed, and why that mindset can make complex conflicts feel like a cartoon. We also connect the dots to education in the US, including school choice, why some kids get opportunity and others get trapped, and how ignorance can turn into ugly generalizations.Then we zoom out to Jewish diaspora history and the stories many Americans never learn: Jewish communities across North Africa and the Middle East, what it meant to live as a protected but second class minority, and why so many communities fled. We also talk borders and immigration through a faith lens, plus a vivid look at Shomer Shabbat as a weekly reset that forces community, rest, and attention.If you want a conversation that treats Jewish identity, Israel, diaspora history, and antisemitism with seriousness and humanity, hit play. Subscribe, share this with someone who thinks they already understand the topic, and leave a review with the question you still can't shake. Support the show

Hey there, Believers! This week, I'm joined by author Nicholas Daigle, to discuss the research behind his book, Genesis 6 and the Ozarks!! Nick put boots on the ground for this, uncovering what may be proof of giants that once inhabited the American Midwest! You don't want to miss this one!Have an experience that you'd like to share?Holler at me: thebumppodcast@gmail.comFeel led to donate to The BUMP Podcast?Check out www.buymeacoffee.com/thebumppodcastPick up my books!Army of God- https://a.co/d/0S3HttWTerror by Night- https://a.co/d/2tIy8yYMeet all your survival and EDC needs here!www.squatchsurvivalgear.comUse Promo Code BUMP26 to save 15% sitewide! Outro Song:"Oh, My Soul" Written and Performed by Ray Messer Jr.

This episode explores how the promise that capitalism would democratize China became one of the most consequential political and economic myths of the modern era, accelerating the collapse of American manufacturing while strengthening the authoritarian system it was supposed to weaken. Drawing from the article “How the corporate myth of exporting democracy to China fueled the decline of American manufacturing,” the episode examines how Republican trade policy, corporate lobbying, and the pursuit of shareholder profit drove the transfer of industrial production from the American Midwest to China under the moral justification of liberalizing global commerce. The conversation traces the rise of China's entry into the World Trade Organization, the destruction of manufacturing centers like Milwaukee, the growth of surveillance-driven authoritarianism funded through foreign investment, and the eventual recognition that economic integration failed to produce political reform.

Actor Doug Jones | The Brett Allan Show | "Get Me Doug Jones" CLICK HERE https://www.getmedougjones.com/about Actor Doug Jones has often been referred to as the Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff of our time. This in depth feature length documentary seeks to find out how an actor & mime went from humble beginnings in the American Midwest to becoming one of Hollywood's most sought after performers when it comes to creating fantastic creatures in full body make-up & costumes. From his early start on projects such as MAC TONIGHT, BATMAN RETURNS and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER to major motion pictures like HELLBOY I & II and FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER, television work including STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS to the multi Oscar-winning films PAN'S LABYRINTH and THE SHAPE OF WATER, this documentary will explore the rich, vibrant life and career of this Hollywood legend. "Doug is love..." - Sonequa Martin-Green This documentary will showcase the incredible life that Doug Jones has lived, not only focusing on his iconic career, but also on the deeply personal relationships he has held with family, friends and fans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long before The White Stripes shook the music world with its unique garage sound, Jack White was honing his artistic skills in Detroit. ‘Jack White: These Thoughts May Disappear’ at London’s Newport Street Gallery marks his first major exhibition, connecting craftsmanship and the visual language of the American Midwest. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this powerful episode, we sit down with John Radtke, host of the Dairy Land Frights Podcast—a show dedicated to exploring high strangeness, the unexplained, and the eerie undercurrents of the American Midwest and beyond.Today, we confront one of the most unsettling realities of the human experience: spiritual attacks. Affecting countless people across the globe, these encounters often blur the line between the psychological, the paranormal, and the profoundly spiritual. John shares his own harrowing personal battles with demonic forces, including an intense three-month ordeal in which his daughter and entire family fought against a relentless spiritual assault.With raw honesty and compassion, John walks us through the fear, the struggle, and the path to resilience—reminding listeners that it's okay to speak up, seek help, and know they are not alone.We also explore riveting accounts of exorcisms, real-life stories of possession and deliverance, and the quiet battles waged by those still fighting unseen forces. Along the way, we venture into deeper rabbit holes: the whispered rumors of high-level demonic prisoners held within the Vatican's hidden chambers, centuries-old secrets, and the tantalizing questions that remain unanswered.From sleep paralysis to malevolent hauntings, we examine how these phenomena may all connect as varying expressions of spiritual attack—far more common than most people realize.Prepare for a gripping, eye-opening conversation that challenges what we think you know about the forces operating just beyond our everyday perception. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or someone who has faced the darkness yourself, this episode offers both chills and hope.https://linktr.ee/dairylandfrightsGot a mind-blowing paranormal encounter, cryptid sighting, UFO experience, or any high-strangeness story that still gives you chills? We want to hear it—and we want YOU on the show! Become a guest on Let's Get Freaky and share your true story with our growing freaky community. Drop us a line at: letsgetfreakypodcast@mail.com Or slide into our DMs on socials: Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, or YouTube → @tcletsgetfreakypodcast.

On the highways that cut through the American Midwest, where headlights stretch into darkness and exits blur past without memory, a predator moved unnoticed for years. Larry Eyler didn't look like a killer; he blended in, a quiet man drifting between Indiana and Illinois, offering rides to young men who would never be seen again. Their bodies would later be found miles apart, scattered across counties and backroads, each discovery raising questions no one yet knew how to connect. It wasn't until the pattern emerged—too late for many—that investigators realized they were chasing not separate crimes, but a single, methodical force moving along the highways themselves. And even after his arrest, the full truth of what Eyler had done would remain buried, waiting until the very end to surface in a confession that revealed a scale of violence far greater than anyone had imagined.SOURCES: 1) Crime Library: Larry Eyler, the Highway Murderer2) The Roanoke Times: Killer Confesses to Killing 21 Men3) Crime Online: "Highway Killer" Larry Eyler's Victim Identified after 40 Years4) UPI: Lawyer: Eyler was serial killer5) The Washington Post: Killer Confessed to 21 More Deaths6) The Midwest Crime Files Podcast: The Highway Killer: The Victims of Larry Eyler7) Larry Eyler's Wikipedia Page

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, April 29, 9am -10am CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes Kansas City Art Institute students with Professor Kat Dison Nechlebová writer writer Blair Schulman. BLAIR SCHULMAN- On May 1, Midwest Agenda celebrates its fifth anniversary, marking five consecutive years of daily coverage dedicated to documenting contemporary art across the American Midwest. Founded in 2021 by critic, writer, and speaker Blair Schulman, Midwest Agenda is anindependent, free, and publicly accessible platform documenting regional cultural activity. Through artist features, exhibition announcements, critical commentary, and reporting, it amplifies artists and institutions often overlooked by national art media. Over five years, the project has documented thousands of exhibitions and events across twelve states, creating one of the most consistent public archives of Midwestern art. Midwest Agenda's coverage has tracked key developments impacting artists and communities, including shifts in public arts funding, debates around public art and civic space, the role of artificial intelligence in creative practice, political impact on the arts and the increasing influence of artist-led initiatives. Its social media platforms extend this work through direct, public-facing critiques of how current events shape artistic production and cultural conditions across the Midwest. The anniversary underscores several conclusions drawn from the archive: • Independent, decentralized media platforms are essential to documenting contemporary art ecosystems where visibility remains a barrier • Art in the Midwest is deeply connected to civic, political, and community life As Midwest Agenda enters its sixth year, it continues its commitment to daily publication and long-term documentation, reinforcing its role as both a news source and a living archive of the region's cultural landscape. Support Midwest Agenda with a tax-deductible donation through its fiscal sponsor, Blair Schulman Insta: midwestagenda TikTok: midwestagenda KCAI Sculpture Students- Inspiration for sculpture is everywhere. It can be informed from the rock on your hike, the smile of a stranger, or a song on your playlist. In KCAI's Sculpture School, you'll explore the conceptual, spatial, material, and processes that can bring your vision to life. In Sculpture, learn to transfer abstract ideas into materials and form. Weld, mold, cast, fabricate, or computer code your imagination into artwork. At the Sculpture School, students explore object-making, digital pieces, and installations. Discover sound and video, performance, kinetics, and multimedia art. Dive into collaborative, culturally diverse ventures and create community art projects. Work on both small and large-scale pieces in our outdoor foundry or the new digital lab. Make work that is relevant to contemporary issues and global art practice. Kansas City Art Institute is located at 4415 Warwick Blvd. KCMO www. kcai.edu

The 2015 Intelligent Community of the Year will celebrate the anniversaries of its award and its hosting of the 2016 ICF Summit this October. Since it was named Intelligent Community of the Year the city of Columbus has built on its prowess as representative of the rise of the American Midwest. The State of Ohio, inspired by the Intelligent Community movement in Columbus has since produced several Intelligent Communities thanks to the ICF Institute, located in nearby Dublin, Ohio. The Institute has been working with communities in Ohio and around the world to share best practices and accelerate development. All of this comes together this year at the Summit. Lou interviews two people who have been instrumental in bringing the Summit program back to Ohio. You will want to attend! In this edition of The INTELLIGENT Community Interview, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Doug McCollough, Executive Director of The Beta District and Moez Chaabouni, Managing Partner and CEO, Summit Technologies LLC.

Donald Trump found enthusiastic cheerleaders not only in the American Midwest but also the historic heartland of Europe. He spawned imitation movements across the continent, powered by a fear that Christian Europe was being lost to mass immigration. But the president's war on Iran and his aggressive foreign and trade policies are unnerving European parties that were once allies. GUEST:THOMAS FAZI, a columnist for UnHerd and Compact magazines has been watching this breakdown.

On this episode of the Ramp. It. Up! Podcast we are observing Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Awareness Month.  MS is a chronic neurological disease where the immune system attacks the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves), causing symptoms like fatigue, vision loss, pain, and mobility issues.The month of March is set aside to raise awareness, promote early diagnosis, and support funding to find a cure. Our Guest for this episode of the podcast is Regina Beach, an author, an adventurer, a fellow performer of the From Where I Sit project, and a person living with MS. Regina shares about her life, her work in the arts, navigating living with MS, and how to keep things sexy with your partner, even with a disability. Ramp. It. Up!Get to Know Our GuestRegina Beach is a disabled poet and essayist. Originally from the American Midwest, she now calls the U.K. home. She is a freelance writer and editor passionate about accessibility in the arts. She is the founder of the literary magazine Lesions | Art + Words, featuring the work of creators living with chronic conditions. She hosts Writers' Hour and is the editor of the London Writers' Salon's Writing in Community anthology. She facilitates creativity workshops for the MS-UK charity and is the producer of the Living Well with MS podcast. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reginabeach_creativewellbeing Facebook: http://facebook.com/ReginaBeachCreativeWellbeing/ Substack: http://reginagbeach.substack.com/ Website: http://www.reginagbeach.com/ Click the links below to watch the From Where I Sit performance presented by UAB:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfCYWhId-48https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvBSsiIQODQClick the link below to watch the From Where I Sit documentary directed by Ingrid Pfau:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M3qmd4WoPgStay Connected to the PodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ramp.it.up.podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZoeOnWheelz/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZAnH8I6sGEf7SJ9OKw8dEAEmail: rampituppodcast@gmail.comWe want to hear from you!Support the show

In this episode of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, hosts Malcolm Harris and Michael Vincent wrap up the month of February 2026 with a deep dive into industrial trends, autonomous infrastructure, and AI-driven safety.Industrial Rebound and Broker LiabilityJP Hampstead joins the show to discuss the “re-industrialization” of the American Midwest. He shares insights on:• Industrial Production: U.S. industrial production has finally reached pre-pandemic levels, hitting its highest point since 2019.• Flatbed Volatility: A staggering 42.5% of flatbed loads are currently being rejected, signaling intense demand in construction and energy sectors.• Supreme Court Battles: A preview of next week's oral arguments regarding broker liability in the TQL and C.H. Robinson cases.The Future of the MailboxDan O'Toole, CEO of Arrive AI, discusses the evolution of autonomous delivery infrastructure. He explains:• Mailbox 2.0: Moving beyond the drone itself to create the necessary “smart” landing and securement infrastructure for robotic deliveries.• Safety Innovation: How Arrive points can assist first responders using emergency strobe features.• Economic Impact: The potential for autonomous delivery to remove thousands of trucks from congested roadsCutting Through the Noise with Insurevision.aiMark Miller, founder of Insurevision.ai, joins from London to explain why “risk is visual”. Key takeaways include:• Context over Telematics: Why traditional data like “hard braking” lacks the context needed to truly predict crashes.• End-to-End Models: Using Tesla-style machine learning to analyze dashcam footage and identify true risk in milliseconds.• Fair Underwriting: How AI allows insurance companies to score fleets based on current safety performance rather than five-year-old loss runs. Watch on YouTube Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, hosts Malcolm Harris and Michael Vincent wrap up the month of February 2026 with a deep dive into industrial trends, autonomous infrastructure, and AI-driven safety.Industrial Rebound and Broker LiabilityJP Hampstead joins the show to discuss the “re-industrialization” of the American Midwest. He shares insights on:• Industrial Production: U.S. industrial production has finally reached pre-pandemic levels, hitting its highest point since 2019.• Flatbed Volatility: A staggering 42.5% of flatbed loads are currently being rejected, signaling intense demand in construction and energy sectors.• Supreme Court Battles: A preview of next week's oral arguments regarding broker liability in the TQL and C.H. Robinson cases.The Future of the MailboxDan O'Toole, CEO of Arrive AI, discusses the evolution of autonomous delivery infrastructure. He explains:• Mailbox 2.0: Moving beyond the drone itself to create the necessary “smart” landing and securement infrastructure for robotic deliveries.• Safety Innovation: How Arrive points can assist first responders using emergency strobe features.• Economic Impact: The potential for autonomous delivery to remove thousands of trucks from congested roadsCutting Through the Noise with Insurevision.aiMark Miller, founder of Insurevision.ai, joins from London to explain why “risk is visual”. Key takeaways include:• Context over Telematics: Why traditional data like “hard braking” lacks the context needed to truly predict crashes.• End-to-End Models: Using Tesla-style machine learning to analyze dashcam footage and identify true risk in milliseconds.• Fair Underwriting: How AI allows insurance companies to score fleets based on current safety performance rather than five-year-old loss runs. Watch on YouTube Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Midwest is facing an existential threat—not from outside forces, but from within. Population decline, aging communities, and shrinking tax bases are creating what researcher Dr. Jonathan Burkham calls a "demographic winter." But there's a solution hiding in plain sight: immigration.In this episode, Lauren Clarke sits down with Dr. Burkham, author of the new book “Migrant Midwest: The Case for Immigration and Economic Growth in the American Heartland,” to explore how the region that once defined American industry and culture has become the least foreign-born area of the country. The conversation traces the Midwest's transformation from an immigration magnet—where 87% of Milwaukee's population at the turn of the 20th century were immigrants or their children—to today's demographic crisis.Dr. Burkham presents a data-driven case for place-based immigration policy modeled after Canada's Provincial Nominee Program, allowing Midwest states to sponsor immigrants based on local economic needs in manufacturing, healthcare, and beyond. The discussion tackles political rhetoric versus economic reality, immigrant retention, and the fundamental choice facing America: continue growing as a global power, or manage decline like Japan. With evidence showing immigrants are net contributors who assimilate across generations, this conversation reframes immigration as the Midwest's lifeline.HOST: LAUREN CLARKEGUEST: Dr. Jonathan Burkham, Associate Professor of Human Geography, University of Wisconsin-WhitewaterAuthor of Migrant Midwest: The Case for Immigration and Economic Growth in the American Heartland NEWS NERD: ROB TAYLORPRODUCER: ADAM BELMARResource Links:Migrant MidwestThe Case for Immigration and Economic Growth in the American Heartlandhttps://www.bloomsbury.com/us/migrant-midwest-9798216276098/

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more in his book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House, 2022). Peter S. Goodman is the global economic correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). 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

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more in his book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House, 2022). Peter S. Goodman is the global economic correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more in his book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House, 2022). Peter S. Goodman is the global economic correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Welcome to Paranormal Spectrum, where we illuminate the enigmatic corners of the supernatural world. I'm your host, Barnaby Jones, and today we have a very special guest joining us:A distinguished author, filmmaker, historian and paranormal researcher, Larry Eissler III has over 15 years of experience and 7 years in paranormal video production. His work spans documentaries, social media content and an episodic series, focusing on lesser-known haunted locations in the American Midwest. Larry's dedication to the paranormal community is evident through his Telly award-winning production, extensive publications and his role as and educator and historian.Larry's Link Treehttps://linktr.ee/LarryEisslerIIIClick that play button, and let's unravel the mysteries of the UNTOLD! Remember to like, share, and subscribe to our channel to stay updated on all the latest discoveries and adventures. See you there!Join Barnaby Jones on the Paranormal Spectrum every Thursday on the Untold Radio Network Live at 12pm Central – 10am Pacific and 1pm Eastern. Come and Join the live discussion next week. Please subscribe.We have twelve different Professional Podcasts on all the things you like. New favorite shows drop each day only on the UNTOLD RADIO NETWORK.To find out more about Barnaby Jones and his team, (Cryptids, Anomalies, and the Paranormal Society) visit their website www.WisconsinCAPS.comMake sure you share and Subscribe to the CAPS YouTube Channel as wellhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs7ifB9Ur7x2C3VqTzVmjNQ

James Naughtie examines the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States.In this major new series marking America's 250th anniversary, James travels through time and across the landscape to discover how the Declaration of Independence embedded the idea of a country founded on what its authors described as 'self-evident' truths – that everyone's inalienable rights included ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' In this first episode James begins with the 'pursuit of happiness' – the American search for opportunity. He begins on the site of the original gold rush in northern California, before journeying to farms and factories; small towns and big cities across the American Midwest. As he does, he reveals how from Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, Americans have always seen the connection between economic and democratic freedom - the ability to choose their own fates, and the fate of the country. Producer: Giles Edwards.

Late one night on a desolate stretch of Midwest highway, a road maintenance worker comes face to face with something that should not exist — the Skinned Man. This terrifying Creepypasta horror story takes you deep into the dark heart of the American Midwest, where true scary stories blur the line between urban legend and nightmare. If you love Creepypasta, horror stories, and scary stories from the road, this tale will keep you on edge until the very end. Turn out the lights… and listen carefully. Some things are still out there, wandering the highways.

[00:30] Destroying the Work (25 minutes) Herbert W. Armstrong built a worldwide work that preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God as a “witness unto all nations.” On Jan. 16, 1986, Mr. Armstrong died. Tragically, his successors wasted no time in dismantling his entire work. Forty years later, where is the work of Herbert Armstrong? [26:00] Celtic Throne Tour (11 minutes) Celtic Throne is on tour through the American Midwest. This is the first time the troupe has toured and performed around January 16. [37:00] WorldWatch (4 minutes) [41:00] Tribute to Mr Armstrong (26 minutes) Following Mr. Armstrong's death on Jan. 16, 1986, the Worldwide Church of God prepared a special tribute program. The program aired on the weekend of Jan. 25-26, 1986 and brought in a record number of requests for Mr. Armstrong's greatest book, Mystery of the Ages.

Theodore Karamanski joins fellow Lake Michigan enthusiast Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan. Looking down from outer space a vast expanse of blue appears in the heart of North America. Of the magnificent chain of inland seas, only one of those bodies of water--Lake Michigan--is entirely within the boundaries of the United States. Lake Michigan has been uniquely shaped by its relationship with humans, since its geological evolution took place at the same time as Paleo-Indian peoples interacted with the changing environment. Each generation of humans has altered the lake to suit society's changing needs, dredging harbors, building lighthouses, digging canals and channels, filling in shallows, and obliterating wetlands. Great Lake is a comprehensive survey of the manifold ways Americans, from the first Native American communities to the present age, have abused, nurtured, loved, and neglected this massive freshwater resource. Extending 307 miles from north to south, the lake cuts across climatic, environmental, and physiographic zones, from the prairies of Illinois to the boreal forests of the north. Bordered by large cities like Chicago and Milwaukee as well as smaller Wisconsin resorts and northern Michigan mines and mill towns, the lake touches people in urban centers and countryside. Thus, the history of Lake Michigan combines the history of frontier resource extraction, agricultural abundance, industrialization, and dense urbanization in the American heartland. Great Lake is the story of the ever-escalating and divergent demands Americans have placed on Lake Michigan, how the lake's ecosystem responded to those changes, and how together they have shaped the modern American Midwest. 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

Theodore Karamanski joins fellow Lake Michigan enthusiast Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan. Looking down from outer space a vast expanse of blue appears in the heart of North America. Of the magnificent chain of inland seas, only one of those bodies of water--Lake Michigan--is entirely within the boundaries of the United States. Lake Michigan has been uniquely shaped by its relationship with humans, since its geological evolution took place at the same time as Paleo-Indian peoples interacted with the changing environment. Each generation of humans has altered the lake to suit society's changing needs, dredging harbors, building lighthouses, digging canals and channels, filling in shallows, and obliterating wetlands. Great Lake is a comprehensive survey of the manifold ways Americans, from the first Native American communities to the present age, have abused, nurtured, loved, and neglected this massive freshwater resource. Extending 307 miles from north to south, the lake cuts across climatic, environmental, and physiographic zones, from the prairies of Illinois to the boreal forests of the north. Bordered by large cities like Chicago and Milwaukee as well as smaller Wisconsin resorts and northern Michigan mines and mill towns, the lake touches people in urban centers and countryside. Thus, the history of Lake Michigan combines the history of frontier resource extraction, agricultural abundance, industrialization, and dense urbanization in the American heartland. Great Lake is the story of the ever-escalating and divergent demands Americans have placed on Lake Michigan, how the lake's ecosystem responded to those changes, and how together they have shaped the modern American Midwest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Theodore Karamanski joins fellow Lake Michigan enthusiast Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan. Looking down from outer space a vast expanse of blue appears in the heart of North America. Of the magnificent chain of inland seas, only one of those bodies of water--Lake Michigan--is entirely within the boundaries of the United States. Lake Michigan has been uniquely shaped by its relationship with humans, since its geological evolution took place at the same time as Paleo-Indian peoples interacted with the changing environment. Each generation of humans has altered the lake to suit society's changing needs, dredging harbors, building lighthouses, digging canals and channels, filling in shallows, and obliterating wetlands. Great Lake is a comprehensive survey of the manifold ways Americans, from the first Native American communities to the present age, have abused, nurtured, loved, and neglected this massive freshwater resource. Extending 307 miles from north to south, the lake cuts across climatic, environmental, and physiographic zones, from the prairies of Illinois to the boreal forests of the north. Bordered by large cities like Chicago and Milwaukee as well as smaller Wisconsin resorts and northern Michigan mines and mill towns, the lake touches people in urban centers and countryside. Thus, the history of Lake Michigan combines the history of frontier resource extraction, agricultural abundance, industrialization, and dense urbanization in the American heartland. Great Lake is the story of the ever-escalating and divergent demands Americans have placed on Lake Michigan, how the lake's ecosystem responded to those changes, and how together they have shaped the modern American Midwest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

In this episode, we step inside the shadows of some of the most haunted churches where faith endures, but so do the spirits who refuse to let go. We begin in rural Indiana, at a small chapel where visitors report being pursued by the dark silhouette of a man who appears only long enough to send them fleeing into the night. From there, we travel to a historic Chicago parish shaken by sightings of shrouded monks who drift through between pews, terrifying more than a dozen parishioners in a single weekend. Our journey continues north to Montreal's famed oratory, where the preserved heart of a revered saint may be binding his presence to the grounds. We'll also stop at an Iowa college campus chapel, where the tragic death of a young woman left behind unanswered questions, lingering sorrow, and reports of a presence still searching for resolution.Ghosts & Legends of Crawfordsville, Indiana by Christopher and Christina HuntThe Big Book of Illinois Ghost Stories by Troy TaylorThe Mammoth Book of True Hauntings edited by Peter HainingTrue Ghost Stories: Haunted Heartland from the American Midwest by Beth Scott and Michael NormanTrue Ghost Stories: Real Haunted Churches and Cathedrals by ZaYou can also use this link to text us your story :)If you have an experience, story, or anything else you'd like to share with us, you can email us at Opeaghost@gmail.com You can also follow us on Instagram, Join our Facebook group : Ope, A Ghost, or Follow us on YoutubeToodles!

The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.WhoLonie Glieberman, Founder, Owner, & President of Mount Bohemia, MichiganRecorded onNovember 19, 2025About Mount BohemiaClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Lonie GliebermanLocated in: Lac La Belle, MichiganYear founded: 2000, by LoniePass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: Boho has developed one of the strongest reciprocal pass programs in the nation, with lift tickets to 34 partner mountains. To protect the mountain's more distant partners from local ticket-hackers, those ski areas typically exclude in-state and border-state residents from the freebies. Here's the map:And here's the Big Dumb Storm Chart detailing each mountain and its Boho access:Closest neighboring ski areas: Mont Ripley (:50)Base elevation: 624 feetSummit elevation: 1,522 feetVertical drop: 898 feetSkiable acres: 585Average annual snowfall: 273 inchesTrail count: It's hard to say exactly, as Boho adds new trails every year, and its map is one of the more confusing ones in American skiing, both as you try analyzing it on this screen, and as you're actually navigating the mountain. My advice is to not try too hard to make the trailmap make sense. Everything is skiable with enough snow, and no matter what, you're going to end up back at one of the two chairlifts or the road, where a shuttlebus will come along within a few minutes.Lift count: 2 (1 triple, 1 double)Why I interviewed himFor those of us who lived through a certain version of America, Mount Bohemia is a fever dream, an impossible thing, a bantered-about-with-friends-in-a-basement-rec-room-idea that could never possibly be. This is because we grew up in a world in which such niche-cool things never happened. Before the internet spilled from the academic-military fringe into the mainstream around 1996, We The Commoners fed our brains with a subsistence diet of information meted out by institutional media gatekeepers. What I mean by “gatekeepers” is the limited number of enterprises who could afford the broadcast licenses, printing presses, editorial staffs, and building and technology infrastructure that for decades tethered news and information to costly distribution mechanisms.In some ways this was a better and more reliable world: vetted, edited, fact-checked. Even ostensibly niche media – the Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power magazines that I devoured monthly – emerged from this cubicle-in-an-office-tower Process that guaranteed a sober, reality-based information exchange.But this professionalized, high-cost-of-entry, let's-get-Bob's-sign-off-before-we-run-this, don't-piss-off-the-advertisers world limited options, which in turn limited imaginations – or at least limited the real-world risks anyone with money was willing to take to create something different. We had four national television networks and a couple dozen cable channels and one or two local newspapers and three or four national magazines devoted to niche pursuits like skiing. We had bookstores and libraries and the strange, ephemeral world of radio. We had titanic, impossible-to-imagine-now big-box chain stores ordering the world's music and movies into labelled bins, from which shoppers could hope – by properly interpreting content from box-design flare or maybe just by luck – to pluck some soul-altering novelty.There was little novelty. Or at least, not much that didn't feel like a slightly different version of something you'd already consumed. Everything, no matter how subversive its skin, had to appeal to the masses, whose money was required to support the enterprise of content creation. Pseudo-rebel networks such as ESPN and MTV quickly built global brands by applying the established institutional framework of network television to the mainstream-but-information-poor cultural centerpieces of sports and music.This cultural sameness expressed itself not just in media, but in every part of life: America's brand-name sprawl-ture (sprawl culture) of restaurants and clothing stores and home décor emporia; its stuff-freeways-through-downtown ruining of our great cities; its three car companies stamping out nondescript sedans by the millions.Skiing has long acted as a rebel's escape from staid American culture, but it has also been hemmed in by it. Yes, said Skiing Incorporated circa 1992, we can allow a photo of some fellow jumping off a cliff if it helps convince Nabisco Bob fly his family out to Colorado for New Year's, so long as his family is at no risk of actually locating any cliffs to jump off of upon arrival. After all, 1992 Bob has no meaningful outlet through which to highlight this advertising-experience disconnect. The internet broke this whole system. Everywhere, for everything. If I wanted, say, a Detroit Pistons hoodie in 1995, I had to drive to a dozen stores and choose the least-bad version from the three places that stocked them. Today I have far more choice at far less hassle: I can browse hundreds of designs online without leaving the house. Same for office furniture or shoes or litterboxes or laundry baskets or cars. And especially for media and information. Consumer choice is greater not only because the internet eliminated distance, but also because it largely eliminated the enormous costs required to actualize a tangible thing from the imagination.There were trade-offs, of course. Our current version of reality has too many options, too many poorly made products, too much bad information. But the internet did a really good job of democratizing preferences and uniting dispersed communities around niche interests. Yes, this means that a global community of morons can assemble over their shared belief that the planet is flat, but it also means that legions of Star Wars or Marvel Comics or football obsessives can unite to demand more of these specific things. I don't think it's a coincidence that the dormant Star Wars and Marvel franchises rebooted in spectacular, omnipresent fashion within a decade of the .com era's dawn.The trajectory was slightly different in skiing. The big-name ski areas today are largely the same set of big-name ski areas that we had 30 years ago, at least in America (Canada is a very different story). But what the internet helped bring to skiing was an awareness that the desire for turns outside of groomed runs was not the hyper-specific desire of the most dedicated, living-in-a-campervan-with-their-dog skiers, but a relatively mainstream preference. Established ski areas adapted, adding glades and terrain parks and ungroomed zones. The major ski areas of 2025 are far more interesting versions of the ski areas that existed under the same names in 1995.Dramatic and welcome as these additions were, they were just additions. No ski area completely reversed itself and shut out the mainstream skier. No one stopped grooming or eliminated their ski school or stopped renting gear. But they did act as something of a proof-of-concept for minimalist ski areas that would come online later, including avy-gear-required, no-grooming Silverton, Colorado in 2001, and, at the tip-top of the American Midwest, in a place too remote for anyone other than industrial mining interests to bother with, the ungroomed, snowmaking-free Mount Bohemia.I can't draw a direct line between the advent of the commercial internet and the rise of Mount Bohemia as a successful niche business within a niche industry. But I find it hard to imagine one without the other. The pre-internet world, the one that gave us shopping malls and laugh-track sitcoms and standard manual transmissions, lacked the institutional imagination to actualize skiing's most dynamic elements in the form of a wild and remote pilgrimage site. Once the internet ordered fringe freeskiing sentiments into a mainstream coalition, the notion of an extreme ski area seemed inevitable. And Bohemia, without a basically free global megaphone to spread word of its improbable existence, would struggle to establish itself in a ski industry that dismissed the concept as idiotic and with a national ski media that considered the Midwest irrelevant.Even with the internet, Boho took a while to catch on, as Lonie detailed in his first podcast appearance three years ago. It probably took the mainstreaming of social media, starting around 2008, to really amp up the online echo-sphere and help skiers understand this gladed, lake-effect-bombed kingdom at the end of the world.Whatever drove Boho's success, that success happened. This is a good, stable business that proved that ski areas do not have to cater to all skiers to be viable. But those of us who wanted Bohemia before it existed still have a hard time believing that it does. Like superhero movies or video-calls or energy drinks that aren't coffee, Boho is a thing we could, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, easily imagine but just as easily dismiss as fantasy.Fortunately, our modern age of invention and experimentation includes plenty of people who dismiss the dismissers, who see things that don't exist yet and bring them into our world. And one of the best contributions to skiing to emerge from this age is Mount Bohemia.What we talked aboutSeason pass price and access changes; lifetime and two-year season passes; a Disney-ski comparison that isn't negative; when your day ticket costs as much as your season pass; Lonie's dog makes a cameo; not selling lift tickets on Saturdays; “too many companies are busy building a brand that no one will hate, versus a brand that someone will love”; why it's OK to have some people be angry with you; UP skiing's existential challenge; skiing's vibe shift from competition to complementary culture; the Midwest's advanced-skier problem; Boho's season pass reciprocal program; why ski areas survive; the Keweenaw snow stake and Boho's snowfall history; recent triple chair improvements and why Boho didn't fully replace the chair – “it's basically a brand-new chairlift”; a novel idea for Boho's next new chairlift; the Nordic spa; proposed rezoning drama; housing at the end of the world; could Mount Bohemia have a Mad River Glen co-op-style future?; why the pass deadline really is the pass deadline; and Mount Bohemia TV.What I got wrong* I said that Boho's one-day lift ticket was “$89 or $92” last time Lonie joined me on the pod, in fall, 2022. The one-day cost for the 2022-23 ski season was $87.* I said that Powder Mountain, Utah, may extend their no-lift-ticket-sales-on-Saturdays-and-Sundays-in-February policy, which the mountain rolled out last year, to other dates, but their sales calendar shows just eight restricted dates (one of which is Sunday, March 1), which is the same number as last winter.Why you should ski Mount BohemiaI can't add anything useful to this bit that I wrote a few months back:Or didn't say three years ago, around my first Boho pod:Podcast NotesOn Boho's season passOn Lonie's LibraryA Boho podcast will always come loaded with some Lonie Library recommendations. In this episode, we get The Power of Cult Branding by Mattew W. Ragas and Bolivar J. Bueno and The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries.On Raising Cane'sLonie tells us about a restaurant called Raising Cane's that sells nothing but chicken fingers. Because I have this weird way of sometimes not noticing super-obvious things, I'd never heard of the place. But apparently they have 900-ish locations, including several here in NYC. I'm sure you already know this.On Jimmy BuffettThen again I'm sometimes overly attuned to things that I think everyone knows about, like Jimmy Buffett. Probably most people are aware of his Margaritaville-headlined music catalog, but perhaps not the Boomers-Gone-Wild Parrothead energy of his concerts, which were mass demonstrations of a uniquely American weirdness that's impossible to believe in unless you see it:I don't know if I'd classify this spectacle as sports for people who don't like sports or anthropological proof that mass coordinated niche crowd-dancing predates the advent of TikTok, but I hope this video reaches the aliens first and they decide not to bother.On “when we spoke in Milwaukee”This was the second time I've interviewed Lonie recently. The first was in front of an audience at the Snowvana ski show in Milwaukee last month. We did record that session, and it was different enough from this pod to justify releasing – I just don't have a timeline on when I'll do that yet. Here's the preview article that outlined the event:On Lonie operating the Porcupine Mountains ski areaI guess you can make anything look rad. Porcupine Mountains ski area, as presented today under management of the State of Michigan's Department of Natural Resources:The same ski area under Lonie's management, circa 2011:On the owner of Song and Labrador, New York buying and closing nearby Toggenburg ski areaOn Indy's fight with Ski CooperI wrote two stories on this, each of which subtracted five years from my life. The first:The follow-up:On Snow Snake, Apple Mountain, and Mott Mountain ski areasThese three Mid-Michigan ski areas were so similar it was frightening – the only thing I can conclude from the fact that Snow Snake is the only one left is that management trumps pretty much everything when it comes to which ski areas survive:On Crystal Mountain, Michigan versus Sugar Loaf, MichiganI noted that 1995 Stu viewed Sugar Loaf as a “more interesting” ski area than contemporary Crystal. It's important to note that this was pre-expansion Crystal, before the ski area doubled in size with backside terrain. Here are the Crystal versus Sugar Loaf trailmaps of that era:I discussed all of this with Crystal CEO John Melcher last year:On Thunder Mountain and Walloon HillsLonie mentions two additional lost Michigan ski areas: Thunder Mountain and Walloon Hills. The latter, while stripped of its chairlifts, still operates as a nonprofit called Challenge Mountain. Here's what it looked like just before shuttering as a public ski area in 1978:The responsible party here was nearby Boyne, which bought both Walloon and Thunder in 1967. They closed the latter in 1984:The company now known as Boyne Resorts purchased a total of four Michigan ski areas after Everett Kircher founded Boyne Mountain in 1948, starting with The Highlands in 1963. That ski area remains open, but Boyne also owned the 436-vertical foot ski area alternately known as “Barn Mountain” and “Avalanche Peak” from 1972 to '77. I can't find a trailmap of this one, but here's Boyne's consolidation history:On Nub's Nob and The HighlandsWhen I say that Nub's Nob and Boyne's Highlands ski area are right across the street from each other, I mean they really are:Both are excellent ski areas - two of the best in the entire Midwest.On Granite Peak's evolution under Midwest Family Ski ResortsI've written about this a lot, but check out Granite Peak AKA “Rib Mountain” before the company now known as Midwest Family Ski Resorts purchased it in 2000:And today:And it's just like “what you're allowed to do that?”On up-and-over chairliftsBohemia may replace its double chair with a rare up-and-over machine, which would extend along the current line to the summit, and then continue to the bottom of Haunted Valley, effectively functioning as two chairlifts. Lonie explains the logic in the podcast, but if he succeeds here, this would be the first new up-and-over lift built in the United States since Stevens Pass' Double Diamond-Southern Cross machine in 1987. I'm only aware of four other such machines in America, all of them in the Midwest:Little Switzerland recently revealed plans to replace the machine that makes up the 1 and 2 chairlifts with two separate quads next year.On Boho's Nordic SpaI never thought hot tubs and parties and happiness were controversial. Then along came social media. And it turns out that when a ski area that primarily markets itself as a refuge for hardcore skiers also builds a base-area zone for these skiers to sink into another sort of indulgence at day's end and then promotes these features, it make Angry Ski Bro VERY ANGRY.For most of human existence we had incentives to prevent ostentatious attention-seeking whining about peripheral things that had no actual impact on your life, and that incentive was Not Wanting To Get Your Ass Kicked. But some people interpreted the distance and anonymity of the internet as a permission slip to become the worst versions of themselves. And so we have a dedicated corps of morons trolling Boho's socials with chest-thumping proclamations of #RealSkierness that rage against the $18 Nordic Spa fee taped onto each Boho $99 or $112 season pass.But when you go to Boho, what you see is this:And these people do not look angry. Because they are doing something fun and cool. Which is one more reason that I stopped reading social media comments several years ago and decided to base reality on living in it rather than observing it through my Pet Rectangle.On the Mad River Glen Co-Op and Betsy PrattSo far, the only successful U.S. ski area co-op is Mad River Glen, Vermont. Longtime owner Betsy Pratt orchestrated the transformation in 1995. She passed away in 2023 at age 95, giving her lots of years to watch the model endure. Black Mountain, New Hampshire, is in the midst of a similar transformation. On Mount Bohemia TVBoho is a strange, strange universe. Nothing better distills the mountain's essence than Mount Bohemia TV – I mean that in the literal sense, in that each episode immerses you in this peculiar world, but also in an accidental quirk of its execution. Because the video staff keeps, in Lonie's words, “losing the password,” Mount Bohemia has at least four official YouTube channels, each of which hosts different episodes of Mount Bohemia TV.Here's episodes 1, 2, and 3:4 through 15:16 through 20:And 21 and 22:If anyone knows how to sort this out, I'm sure they'd appreciate the assist. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

In this powerful and unfiltered part 3 of episode 266, host Mike Ritland sits down with former U.S. Army Green Beret and Afghan-American Kawa Mawlayee — a first-generation immigrant who fled Soviet-occupied Afghanistan as a child, grew up in the American Midwest, and went on to serve 23 years in Special Forces, including multiple combat tours. What starts as a discussion about Trump's leadership style, tariffs, and manufacturing quickly evolves into a raw, no-holds-barred exploration of the biggest issues facing America in 2025: foreign policy hypocrisy, the military-industrial complex, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Islamophobia and the myth of “Sharia law takeover,” America-First nationalism vs. endless overseas entanglements, accountability in leadership, the future of the U.S. military under Pete Hegseth, and whether the country is sliding toward internal conflict. Kawa brings a rare perspective: a Muslim Green Beret who loves America deeply, calls out both parties, refuses PAC money, and isn't afraid to criticize Israel, U.S. foreign policy, or the current administration — all while still serving in the National Guard Special Forces. The result is one of the most honest, nuanced, and at times uncomfortable conversations you'll hear from two combat veterans who actually agree on far more than they disagree. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's part 2 of our dive into the Insect Apocalypse, with our good friend Dr. Jason Dombroskie from the Cornell University Insect Collection!In this part, Jason fills us in on the drivers of the Insect Apocalypse and - most importantly - what we can do about it.This episode was recorded on August 21, 2025 at Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area in Dalton, NY.. Episode NotesDuring the episode, we made the claim that 40 million acres of the US is lawn, and that that area is equal to all of the country's National Parks put together. True? Well, sort of. The claim that the U.S. has about 40 million acres of lawn—roughly equal to all our national parks combined—is only partly true. A NASA-funded study led by Cristina Milesi estimated that turfgrass covers about 128,000 km² (≈31 million acres) of the continental U.S., making it the largest irrigated “crop” in the country (Milesi et al., Environmental Management, 2005; NASA Earth Observatory). Later analyses and popular summaries often round that up to ≈40 million acres (e.g., Scienceline, 2011; LawnStarter, 2023). By comparison, the total land area of all officially designated U.S. National Parks is about 52.4 million acres, while the entire National Park System—which also includes monuments, preserves, and historic sites—covers about 85 million acres (National Park Service, 2024). So while lawns and parks occupy areas of similar magnitude, lawns do not actually equal or exceed the combined area of the national parks. Is it better to mulch leaves on your lawn or leave them be? Here's what we found: It's generally best to mulch your leaves with a mower rather than rake or remove them. Research from Michigan State University found that mowing leaves into small pieces allows them to decompose quickly, returning nutrients to the soil and reducing weeds like dandelions and crabgrass (MSU Extension, “Don't rake leaves — mulch them into your lawn”, 2012). Cornell University studies similarly show that mulched leaves improve soil structure, moisture retention, and microbial activity (Cornell Cooperative Extension, “Leaf Mulching: A Sustainable Alternative”, 2019). However, in garden beds, wooded edges, or under shrubs, it's often better to leave leaves whole, since they provide winter habitat for butterflies, bees, and other invertebrates that overwinter in leaf litter (National Wildlife Federation, “Leave the Leaves for Wildlife”, 2020). The ideal approach is a mix: mow-mulch leaves on grassy areas for turf health and leave them intact where they naturally fall to support biodiversity and soil ecology. Episode LinksThe Cornell University Insect Collection Also, check out their great Instagram feedAnd their annual October event InsectapaloozaFind out more about the recently discovered species of Swallowtail, Papilio solstitius, commonly known as the Midsummer Tiger Swallowtail- https://www.sci.news/biology/papilio-solstitius-13710.htmlSponsors and Ways to Support UsThank you to Always Wandering Art (Website and Etsy Shop) for providing the artwork for many of our episodes.Support us on Patreon.Works CitedBiesmeijer, J.C., Roberts, S.P., Reemer, M., Ohlemuller, R., Edwards, M., Peeters, T., Schaffers, A.P., Potts, S.G., Kleukers, R.J.M.C., Thomas, C.D. and Settele, J., 2006. Parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the Netherlands. Science, 313(5785), pp.351-354. Boyle, M.J., Bonebrake, T.C., Dias da Silva, K., Dongmo, M.A., Machado França, F., Gregory, N., Kitching, R.L., Ledger, M.J., Lewis, O.T., Sharp, A.C. and Stork, N.E., 2025. 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Cross‐Taxa Analysis of Long‐Term Data Reveals a Positive Biodiversity‐Stability Relationship With Taxon‐Specific Mechanistic Underpinning. Ecology Letters, 28(4), p.e70003. Salcido, D.M., Forister, M.L., Garcia Lopez, H. and Dyer, L.A., 2020. Loss of dominant caterpillar genera in a protected tropical forest. Scientific reports, 10(1), p.422. Sánchez-Bayo, F. and Wyckhuys, K.A., 2019. Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biological conservation, 232, pp.8-27. Schowalter, T.D., Pandey, M., Presley, S.J., Willig, M.R. and Zimmerman, J.K., 2021. Arthropods are not declining but are responsive to disturbance in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(2), p.e2002556117. Sedlmeier, J.E., Grass, I., Bendalam, P., Höglinger, B., Walker, F., Gerhard, D., Piepho, H.P., Brühl, C.A. and Petschenka, G., 2025. Neonicotinoid insecticides can pose a severe threat to grassland plant bug communities. 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A single streetlight blinks, and a very important tapestry starts to fray. Welcome to Unprepared Casters: Wild Things! Meet our scrappy teens played by Grace, Dillin, and Nick as Haley introduces them to a world of magic beyond any of their wildest imaginations: The American Midwest. Content Warnings: strong language Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices