Podcasts about Bay

In his third appearance on Conversations with Tyler, Nate Silver looks back at past predictions, weighs how academic ideas such as expected utility theory fare in practice, and examines the world of sports through the lens of risk and prediction. Tyler and Nate dive into expected utility theory and random Nash equilibria in poker, whether Silver's tell-reading abilities transfer to real-world situations like NBA games, why academic writing has disappointed him, his move from atheism to agnosticism, the meta-rationality of risk-taking, electoral systems and their flaws, 2028 presidential candidates,  why he thinks superforecasters will continue to outperform AI for the next decade, why more athletes haven't come out as gay, redesigning the NBA, what mentors he needs now, the cultural and psychological peculiarities of Bay area intellectual communities, why Canada can't win a Stanley Cup, the politics of immigration in Europe and America, what he'll work on next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded July 23rd, 2025. Help keep the show ad free by donating today! Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Nate on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

On today's 8.13.25 show we talked about wearing red to a wedding, eating expired food items, celebrity break up rumors, Taylor Swift easter eggs, there was a Labubu heist, another AI proposal, one airline may be going out of business, should babies be kicked out of places for crying? The Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato might reunite for a movie, the new thing people are stealing in the Bay and more! 

On this exciting episode of Fishing the DMV, we revisit an old old episode and head back to the Chesapeake Bay. Specifically, the Virginia portion of Chesapeake Bay with Chris Moore. Chris previously served as the Senior Regional Ecosystem Scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) and has assumed the role of Executive Director at the CBF Virginia office. Mr. Moore played a pivotal role in establishing sustainable fisheries for striped bass, Atlantic menhaden, and blue crabs, while also contributing to oyster policy and restoration endeavors. Additionally, Moore's advocacy efforts with elected officials at local, state, and federal levels have been instrumental in influencing legislative decisions crucial for enhancing the health of the Bay watershed.Please support Fishing the DMV on Patreon!!!     Patreon: https://patreon.com/FishingtheDMVPodcastIf you are interested in being on the show or a sponsorship opportunity, please reach out to me at fishingtheDMV@gmail.comHere is CBF new oyster focused report titled “Hope on the Half Shell” https://cbf.org/document-library/cbf-reports/2024-oyster-report.pdf Here is the latest version of the CBF's State of the Bay Report: https://www.cbf.org/document-library/cbf-reports/2022-state-of-the-bay-report.pdf   Here is the link to the Final Report of the Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team Invasive Catfish Task Force: https://d18lev1ok5leia.cloudfront.net/chesapeakebay/documents/Updated_2014_ICTF_Report.pdf Link to Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) website: https://www.cbf.org/?_gl=1*1vhodis*_ga*MTI3MjYyODE3NS4xNzA5NTA0NTQ4*_ga_LZKG7DYJLG*MTcwOTUwNDU0Ny4xLjEuMTcwOTUwNTE1NC4wLjAuMA..&_ga=2.144343537.514175205.1709504548-1272628175.1709504548&_gac=1.179938902.1709505155.CjwKCAiA3JCvBhA8EiwA4kujZs9HZqnmKa6H7aR4ByrHH_2-C4wcS9xDuFFO6QD9axPLsnpn4LPw5BoCTekQAvD_BwE Please Checkout our Patreon Sponsors Jake's bait & Tackle website:               http://www.jakesbaitandtackle.com/Catoctin Creek Custom Rods: https://www.facebook.com/CatoctinCreekCustomRods  Tiger Crankbaits on Facebook!! https://www.facebook.com/tigercrankbaits Fishing the DMV Facebook page:             https://www.facebook.com/Arensbassin/?ref=pages_you_manage Fishing the DMV Instagram page:             https://www.instagram.com/fishingthedmv/?utm_medium=copy_linkSupport the show

Bay went to see How to Train Your Dragon at her local cinema, and maybe had more of an adventure than she was expecting. Hear the whole messy story and investigate questions such as, when is leadership needed in service of community, instead of about yourself? What would YOU do if you were in Bay's (literal) shoes? P.S. Falling Inn Vermont Retreat: https://wonderlandandcompany.com/fall-retreat 

In this episode of the Remarkable Retail podcast, hosts Michael LeBlanc and Steve Dennis welcome XRC Ventures' Managing Director Pano Anthos, for a deep dive into the future of retail innovation, investment strategies, and overcoming the systemic challenges that keep great technology from scaling.Pano shares his journey from serial entrepreneur to leading a venture fund focused on pre-seed and seed-stage investments at the intersection of retail, consumer behavior, and technology. With over 150 investments since 2015, XRC Ventures targets transformative sectors including retail media networks, the consumerization of healthcare, commerce enablement, and new distribution channels. Pano highlights examples of groundbreaking innovations—from AI-driven financial automation to diagnostics that detect autism in under two hours—that are redefining operational efficiency and customer impact.A major focus of the conversation is retail's organizational dysfunction, where siloed leadership and competing P&Ls create “warring tribes” that hinder adoption of transformative solutions. Pano argues that true progress requires structural change—appointing an operational leader with end-to-end responsibility for traffic and sales across all channels. The discussion also explores the promise of retail media, particularly in-store applications with untapped margin potential, and spatial intelligence, which can bring the precision of e-commerce analytics into physical stores. Pano shares candid insights on startup strategy, stressing that early-stage companies must demonstrate material ROI—significant EBITDA or revenue growth—to make it into a retailer's short list of investment priorities. About UsSteve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling authro of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada's Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael's cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

Raised in Philadelphia, ENEM is a graffiti legend who has made a name for himself for his tagging skills, prolific work, and love of the culture. Navigating the tough streets of Philly, he got in trouble as a juvenile which led to him moving to Oakland as a teenager. There he met Mike Dream (RIP) and joined the infamous TDK crew. Going back and forth between the Bay and Philly, Enem developed his style while continuing to navigate the ups and downs of street life. Eventually he left the streets alone and dedicated himself to graffiti and hip-hop, putting out music and art projects. In 2005, Enem was featured graffiti documentary "Infamy" which highlighted his story for a worldwide audience.For promo opportunities on the podcast, e-mail info@historyofthebay.com--History of the Bay Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZUM4rCv6xfNbvB4r8TVWU?si=9218659b5f4b43aaOnline Store: https://dregsone.myshopify.com Follow Dregs One:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1UNuCcJlRb8ImMc5haZHXF?si=poJT0BYUS-qCfpEzAX7mlAInstagram: https://instagram.com/dregs_oneTikTok: https://tiktok.com/@dregs_oneTwitter: https://twitter.com/dregs_oneFacebook: https://facebook.com/dregsone41500:00 New era of graffiti 07:03 Philly graff history 14:15 Philly handstyles 21:29 Growing up in Philly28:07 Hip-hop 41:12 Developing as a writer 47:27 Dream, TDK, Oakland 1:01:55 Leaving a legacy as a writer1:07:46 Going on the run1:17:11 Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti1:22:39 “Infamy” documentary 1:32:58 Today's graff culture

Today, we're rolling it way back to meet the first professional women's basketball players in the Bay. It's Bay Area women's basketball history on episode seven of BOUNCE!

Starting in 2021, a shoplifting panic was hatched and spread by corporate media, cops, and politicians, resulting in life-or-death consequences (see: Banko Brown).  Damena Page called from SF county jail to report on the conditions, abuse, and how reporting abuse can result in retaliation.  Amy Martyn is a journalist based in the Bay, who's been covering the shoplifting panic since the beginning of the pandemic. America's absurd war on 'organized retail crime' (Amy Martyn, Business Insider) https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-war-organized-retail-crime-target-cvs-victorias-secret-2024-9  Women Languish at San Francisco's Jail for Years Without Answers—or Sunlight (Amy, The Appeal) https://theappeal.org/women-languish-at-san-franciscos-jail-for-years-without-answers-or-sunlight/ The Killing of Banko Brown (Toshio, The Nation) https://www.thenation.com/article/society/banko-brown-killing-san-francisco-crisis/ Sad Francisco episode: "Avenge Banko" https://episodes.fm/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ0NTgyNC9yc3M/episode/ZTI4NDgxYzQtZmVjNy00MDUxLWE1ZTEtYmQ1ODA0MmE5ZDJi

State of the Bay gets an update on the San Francisco Unified School District, hears back-to-school tips from child psychologist Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith, and visits Baba's House, Oakland's mahjong speakeasy.

Dogs in Tauranga are less likely to be put down compared to neighbouring towns in the Bay of Plenty. Libby Kirkby-McLeod finds out what's making the difference.

School is now in session for the Oakland Unified School District. And this past year, there has been A LOT to report on at OUSD  — from the early departure of superintendent Kyla Johnson Trammell, to the district's exit from a 22 year receivership. Reporter Ashley McBride covers education equity for Oaklandside. She's been following these stories, and she co-reported a two-part investigative series looking at lead in the water at Oakland Schools. Grace Won, co-host of KALW's “State of the Bay,” recently spoke with McBride, and we're bringing you an excerpt from that conversation.

On this episode, we delve into the story of the genius who invented the Super Soaker and the massive restitution he ultimately received after Hasbro shorted him on royalties. We share our love for West Coast music, especially the Bay, and trace where that love first began. We hit those hilariously awkward moments of waking up early at a friend's house, reminisce about rocking gold chains to school, and finally settle the mystery of what Grimace from McDonald's really is. Plus, we read a hilarious drive-in marquee, break down some new tracks we've got on repeat, open an epic mailbag, drop some absolute fire on the Discord Drops, and so much more.Today's episode was brought to you by Salty Water. Hydrate Your Inner Warrior! Support our sponsors:IG: https://www.instagram.com/drinksaltywater/Buy: https://tinyurl.com/4c4kz9ceWebsite: https://drinksaltywater.com/Discord: https://discord.gg/superretroMaster list on our NES collection: https://superretropod.com/nes-game-list-super-retro/Join our channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMP4yO-dFGayGUkT_MVYrhQ/joinEmail: SuperRetroPod@gmail.comAll things Super Retro: https://linktr.ee/superretroInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/superretropodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@superretropod

We're recapping the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' first preseason game of 2025 — a win over the Tennessee Titans where the rookies stole the show. From big plays to clutch moments, Tampa Bay's young talent stepped up in a big way, with standout performances from Emeka Egbuka and Jacob Parrish leading the charge.

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-from-crisis-to-advantage-how-india-can-outplay-the-trump-tariff-gambit-13923031.htmlA simple summary of the recent brouhaha about President Trump's imposition of 25% tariffs on India as well as his comment on India's ‘dead economy' is the following from Shakespeare's Macbeth: “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Trump further imposed punitive tariffs totalling 50% on August 6th allegedly for India funding Russia's war machine via buying oil.As any negotiator knows, a good opening gambit is intended to set the stage for further parleys, so that you could arrive at a negotiated settlement that is acceptable to both parties. The opening gambit could well be a maximalist statement, or one's ‘dream outcome', the opposite of which is ‘the walkway point' beyond which you are simply not willing to make concessions. The usual outcome is somewhere in between these two positions or postures.Trump is both a tough negotiator, and prone to making broad statements from which he has no problem retreating later. It's down-and-dirty boardroom tactics that he's bringing to international trade. Therefore I think Indians don't need to get rattled. It's not the end of the world, and there will be climbdowns and adjustments. Think hard about the long term.I was on a panel discussion on this topic on TV just hours after Trump made his initial 25% announcement, and I mentioned an interplay between geo-politics and geo-economics. Trump is annoyed that his Ukraine-Russia play is not making much headway, and also that BRICS is making progress towards de-dollarization. India is caught in this crossfire (‘collateral damage') but the geo-economic facts on the ground are not favorable to Trump.I am in general agreement with Trump on his objectives of bringing manufacturing and investment back to the US, but I am not sure that he will succeed, and anyway his strong-arm tactics may backfire. I consider below what India should be prepared to do to turn adversity into opportunity.The anti-Thucydides Trap and the baleful influence of Whitehall on Deep StateWhat is remarkable, though, is that Trump 2.0 seems to be indistinguishable from the Deep State: I wondered last month if the Deep State had ‘turned' Trump. The main reason many people supported Trump in the first place was the damage the Deep State was wreaking on the US under the Obama-Biden regime. But it appears that the resourceful Deep State has now co-opted Trump for its agenda, and I can only speculate how.The net result is that there is the anti-Thucydides Trap: here is the incumbent power, the US, actively supporting the insurgent power, China, instead of suppressing it, as Graham Allison suggested as the historical pattern. It, in all fairness, did not start with Trump, but with Nixon in China in 1971. In 1985, the US trade deficit with China was $6 million. In 1986, $1.78 billion. In 1995, $35 billion.But it ballooned after China entered the WTO in 2001. $202 billion in 2005; $386 billion in 2022.In 2025, after threatening China with 150% tariffs, Trump retreated by postponing them; besides he has caved in to Chinese demands for Nvidia chips and for exemptions from Iran oil sanctions if I am not mistaken.All this can be explained by one word: leverage. China lured the US with the siren-song of the cost-leader ‘China price', tempting CEOs and Wall Street, who sleepwalked into surrender to the heft of the Chinese supply chain.Now China has cornered Trump via its monopoly over various things, the most obvious of which is rare earths. Trump really has no option but to give in to Chinese blackmail. That must make him furious: in addition to his inability to get Putin to listen to him, Xi is also ignoring him. Therefore, he will take out his frustrations on others, such as India, the EU, Japan, etc. Never mind that he's burning bridges with them.There's a Malayalam proverb that's relevant here: “angadiyil thottathinu ammayodu”. Meaning, you were humiliated in the marketplace, so you come home and take it out on your mother. This is quite likely what Trump is doing, because he believes India et al will not retaliate. In fact Japan and the EU did not retaliate, but gave in, also promising to invest large sums in the US. India could consider a different path: not active conflict, but not giving in either, because its equations with the US are different from those of the EU or Japan.Even the normally docile Japanese are beginning to notice.Beyond that, I suggested a couple of years ago that Deep State has a plan to enter into a condominium agreement with China, so that China gets Asia, and the US gets the Americas and the Pacific/Atlantic. This is exactly like the Vatican-brokered medieval division of the world between Spain and Portugal, and it probably will be equally bad for everyone else. And incidentally it makes the Quad infructuous, and deepens distrust of American motives.The Chinese are sure that they have achieved the condominium, or rather forced the Americans into it. Here is a headline from the Financial Express about their reaction to the tariffs: they are delighted that the principal obstacle in their quest for hegemony, a US-India military and economic alliance, is being blown up by Trump, and they lose no opportunity to deride India as not quite up to the mark, whereas they and the US have achieved a G2 detente.Two birds with one stone: gloat about the breakdown in the US-India relationship, and exhibit their racist disdain for India yet again.They laugh, but I bet India can do an end-run around them. As noted above, the G2 is a lot like the division of the world into Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence in 1494. Well, that didn't end too well for either of them. They had their empires, which they looted for gold and slaves, but it made them fat, dumb and happy. The Dutch, English, and French capitalized on more dynamic economies, flexible colonial systems, and aggressive competition, overtaking the Iberian powers in global influence by the 17th century. This is a salutary historical parallel.I have long suspected that the US Deep State is being led by the nose by the malign Whitehall (the British Deep State): I call it the ‘master-blaster' syndrome. On August 6th, there was indirect confirmation of this in ex-British PM Boris Johnson's tweet about India. Let us remember he single-handedly ruined the chances of a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine War in 2022. Whitehall's mischief and meddling all over, if you read between the lines.Did I mention the British Special Force's views? Ah, Whitehall is getting a bit sloppy in its propaganda.Wait, so is India important (according to Whitehall) or unimportant (according to Trump)?Since I am very pro-American, I have a word of warning to Trump: you trust perfidious Albion at your peril. Their country is ruined, and they will not rest until they ruin yours too.I also wonder if there are British paw-prints in a recent and sudden spate of racist attacks on Indians in Ireland. A 6-year old girl was assaulted and kicked in the private parts. A nurse was gang-raped by a bunch of teenagers. Ireland has never been so racist against Indians (yes, I do remember the sad case of Savita Halappanavar, but that was religious bigotry more than racism). And I remember sudden spikes in anti-Indian attacks in Australia and Canada, both British vassals.There is no point in Indians whining about how the EU and America itself are buying more oil, palladium, rare earths, uranium etc. from Russia than India is. I am sorry to say this, but Western nations are known for hypocrisy. For example, exactly 80 years ago they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, but not on Germany or Italy. Why? The answer is uncomfortable. Lovely post-facto rationalization, isn't it?Remember the late lamented British East India Company that raped and pillaged India?Applying the three winning strategies to geo-economicsAs a professor of business strategy and innovation, I emphasize to my students that there are three broad ways of gaining an advantage over others: 1. Be the cost leader, 2. Be the most customer-intimate player, 3. Innovate. The US as a nation is patently not playing the cost leader; it does have some customer intimacy, but it is shrinking; its strength is in innovation.If you look at comparative advantage, the US at one time had strengths in all three of the above. Because it had the scale of a large market (and its most obvious competitors in Europe were decimated by world wars) America did enjoy an ability to be cost-competitive, especially as the dollar is the global default reserve currency. It demonstrated this by pushing through the Plaza Accords, forcing the Japanese yen to appreciate, destroying their cost advantage.In terms of customer intimacy, the US is losing its edge. Take cars for example: Americans practically invented them, and dominated the business, but they are in headlong retreat now because they simply don't make cars that people want outside the US: Japanese, Koreans, Germans and now Chinese do. Why were Ford and GM forced to leave the India market? Their “world cars” are no good in value-conscious India and other emerging markets.Innovation, yes, has been an American strength. Iconic Americans like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs led the way in product and process innovation. US universities have produced idea after idea, and startups have ignited Silicon Valley. In fact Big Tech and aerospace/armaments are the biggest areas where the US leads these days.The armaments and aerospace tradeThat is pertinent because of two reasons: one is Trump's peevishness at India's purchase of weapons from Russia (even though that has come down from 70+% of imports to 36% according to SIPRI); two is the fact that there are significant services and intangible imports by India from the US, of for instance Big Tech services, even some routed through third countries like Ireland.Armaments and aerospace purchases from the US by India have gone up a lot: for example the Apache helicopters that arrived recently, the GE 404 engines ordered for India's indigenous fighter aircraft, Predator drones and P8-i Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft. I suspect Trump is intent on pushing India to buy F-35s, the $110-million dollar 5th generation fighters.Unfortunately, the F-35 has a spotty track record. There were two crashes recently, one in Albuquerque in May, and the other on July 31 in Fresno, and that's $220 million dollars gone. Besides, the spectacle of a hapless British-owned F-35B sitting, forlorn, in the rain, in Trivandrum airport for weeks, lent itself to trolls, who made it the butt of jokes. I suspect India has firmly rebuffed Trump on this front, which has led to his focus on Russian arms.There might be other pushbacks too. Personally, I think India does need more P-8i submarine hunter-killer aircraft to patrol the Bay of Bengal, but India is exerting its buyer power. There are rumors of pauses in orders for Javelin and Stryker missiles as well.On the civilian aerospace front, I am astonished that all the media stories about Air India 171 and the suspicion that Boeing and/or General Electric are at fault have disappeared without a trace. Why? There had been the big narrative push to blame the poor pilots, and now that there is more than reasonable doubt that these US MNCs are to blame, there is a media blackout?Allegations about poor manufacturing practices by Boeing in North Charleston, South Carolina by whistleblowers have been damaging for the company's brand: this is where the 787 Dreamliners are put together. It would not be surprising if there is a slew of cancellations of orders for Boeing aircraft, with customers moving to Airbus. Let us note Air India and Indigo have placed some very large, multi-billion dollar orders with Boeing that may be in jeopardy.India as a consuming economy, and the services trade is hugely in the US' favorMany observers have pointed out the obvious fact that India is not an export-oriented economy, unlike, say, Japan or China. It is more of a consuming economy with a large, growing and increasingly less frugal population, and therefore it is a target for exporters rather than a competitor for exporting countries. As such, the impact of these US tariffs on India will be somewhat muted, and there are alternative destinations for India's exports, if need be.While Trump has focused on merchandise trade and India's modest surplus there, it is likely that there is a massive services trade, which is in the US' favor. All those Big Tech firms, such as Microsoft, Meta, Google and so on run a surplus in the US' favor, which may not be immediately evident because they route their sales through third countries, e.g. Ireland.These are the figures from the US Trade Representative, and quite frankly I don't believe them: there are a lot of invisible services being sold to India, and the value of Indian data is ignored.In addition to the financial implications, there are national security concerns. Take the case of Microsoft's cloud offering, Azure, which arbitrarily turned off services to Indian oil retailer Nayara on the flimsy grounds that the latter had substantial investment from Russia's Rosneft. This is an example of jurisdictional over-reach by US companies, which has dire consequences. India has been lax about controlling Big Tech, and this has to change.India is Meta's largest customer base. Whatsapp is used for practically everything. Which means that Meta has access to enormous amounts of Indian customer data, for which India is not even enforcing local storage. This is true of all other Big Tech (see OpenAI's Sam Altman below): they are playing fast and loose with Indian data, which is not in India's interest at all.Data is the new oil, says The Economist magazine. So how much should Meta, OpenAI et al be paying for Indian data? Meta is worth trillions of dollars, OpenAI half a trillion. How much of that can be attributed to Indian data?There is at least one example of how India too can play the digital game: UPI. Despite ham-handed efforts to now handicap UPI with a fee (thank you, brilliant government bureaucrats, yes, go ahead and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs), it has become a contender in a field that has long been dominated by the American duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. In other words, India can scale up and compete.It is unfortunate that India has not built up its own Big Tech behind a firewall as has been done behind the Great Firewall of China. But it is not too late. Is it possible for India-based cloud service providers to replace US Big Tech like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure? Yes, there is at least one player in that market: Zoho.Second, what are the tariffs on Big Tech exports to India these days? What if India were to decide to impose a 50% tax on revenue generated in India through advertisement or through sales of services, mirroring the US's punitive taxes on Indian goods exports? Let me hasten to add that I am not suggesting this, it is merely a hypothetical argument.There could also be non-tariff barriers as China has implemented, but not India: data locality laws, forced use of local partners, data privacy laws like the EU's GDPR, anti-monopoly laws like the EU's Digital Markets Act, strict application of IPR laws like 3(k) that absolutely prohibits the patenting of software, and so on. India too can play legalistic games. This is a reason US agri-products do not pass muster: genetically modified seeds, and milk from cows fed with cattle feed from blood, offal and ground-up body parts.Similarly, in the ‘information' industry, India is likely to become the largest English-reading country in the world. I keep getting come-hither emails from the New York Times offering me $1 a month deals on their product: they want Indian customers. There are all these American media companies present in India, untrammelled by content controls or taxes. What if India were to give a choice to Bloomberg, Reuters, NYTimes, WaPo, NPR et al: 50% tax, or exit?This attack on peddlers of fake information and manufacturing consent I do suggest, and I have been suggesting for years. It would make no difference whatsoever to India if these media outlets were ejected, and they surely could cover India (well, basically what they do is to demean India) just as well from abroad. Out with them: good riddance to bad rubbish.What India needs to doI believe India needs to play the long game. It has to use its shatrubodha to realize that the US is not its enemy: in Chanakyan terms, the US is the Far Emperor. The enemy is China, or more precisely the Chinese Empire. Han China is just a rump on their south-eastern coast, but it is their conquered (and restive) colonies such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, that give them their current heft.But the historical trends are against China. It has in the past had stable governments for long periods, based on strong (and brutal) imperial power. Then comes the inevitable collapse, when the center falls apart, and there is absolute chaos. It is quite possible, given various trends, including demographic changes, that this may happen to China by 2050.On the other hand, (mostly thanks, I acknowledge, to China's manufacturing growth), the center of gravity of the world economy has been steadily shifting towards Asia. The momentum might swing towards India if China stumbles, but in any case the era of Atlantic dominance is probably gone for good. That was, of course, only a historical anomaly. Asia has always dominated: see Angus Maddison's magisterial history of the world economy, referred to below as well.I am reminded of the old story of the king berating his court poet for calling him “the new moon” and the emperor “the full moon”. The poet escaped being punished by pointing out that the new moon is waxing and the full moon is waning.This is the long game India has to keep in mind. Things are coming together for India to a great extent: in particular the demographic dividend, improved infrastructure, fiscal prudence, and the increasing centrality of the Indian Ocean as the locus of trade and commerce.India can attempt to gain competitive advantage in all three ways outlined above:* Cost-leadership. With a large market (assuming companies are willing to invest at scale), a low-cost labor force, and with a proven track-record of frugal innovation, India could well aim to be a cost-leader in selected areas of manufacturing. But this requires government intervention in loosening monetary policy and in reducing barriers to ease of doing business* Customer-intimacy. What works in highly value-conscious India could well work in other developing countries. For instance, the economic environment in ASEAN is largely similar to India's, and so Indian products should appeal to their residents; similarly with East Africa. Thus the Indian Ocean Rim with its huge (and in Africa's case, rapidly growing) population should be a natural fit for Indian products* Innovation. This is the hardest part, and it requires a new mindset in education and industry, to take risks and work at the bleeding edge of technology. In general, Indians have been content to replicate others' innovations at lower cost or do jugaad (which cannot scale up). To do real, disruptive innovation, first of all the services mindset should transition to a product mindset (sorry, Raghuram Rajan). Second, the quality of human capital must be improved. Third, there should be patient risk capital. Fourth, there should be entrepreneurs willing to try risky things. All of these are difficult, but doable.And what is the end point of this game? Leverage. The ability to compel others to buy from you.China has demonstrated this through its skill at being a cost-leader in industry after industry, often hollowing out entire nations through means both fair and foul. These means include far-sighted industrial policy including the acquisition of skills, technology, and raw materials, as well as hidden subsidies that support massive scaling, which ends up driving competing firms elsewhere out of business. India can learn a few lessons from them. One possible lesson is building capabilities, as David Teece of UC Berkeley suggested in 1997, that can span multiple products, sectors and even industries: the classic example is that of Nikon, whose optics strength helps it span industries such as photography, printing, and photolithography for chip manufacturing. Here is an interesting snapshot of China's capabilities today.2025 is, in a sense, a point of inflection for India just as the crisis in 1991 was. India had been content to plod along at the Nehruvian Rate of Growth of 2-3%, believing this was all it could achieve, as a ‘wounded civilization'. From that to a 6-7% growth rate is a leap, but it is not enough, nor is it testing the boundaries of what India can accomplish.1991 was the crisis that turned into an opportunity by accident. 2025 is a crisis that can be carefully and thoughtfully turned into an opportunity.The Idi Amin syndrome and the 1000 Talents program with AIThere is a key area where an American error may well be a windfall for India. This is based on the currently fashionable H1-B bashing which is really a race-bashing of Indians, and which has been taken up with gusto by certain MAGA folks. Once again, I suspect the baleful influence of Whitehall behind it, but whatever the reason, it looks like Indians are going to have a hard time settling down in the US.There are over a million Indians on H1-Bs, a large number of them software engineers, let us assume for convenience there are 250,000 of them. Given country caps of exactly 9800 a year, they have no realistic chance of getting a Green Card in the near future, and given the increasingly fraught nature of life there for brown people, they may leave the US, and possibly return to India..I call this the Idi Amin syndrome. In 1972, the dictator of Uganda went on a rampage against Indian-origin people in his country, and forcibly expelled 80,000 of them, because they were dominating the economy. There were unintended consequences: those who were ejected mostly went to the US and UK, and they have in many cases done well. But Uganda's economy virtually collapsed.That's a salutary experience. I am by no means saying that the US economy would collapse, but am pointing to the resilience of the Indians who were expelled. If, similarly, Trump forces a large number of Indians to return to India, that might well be a case of short-term pain and long-term gain: urvashi-shapam upakaram, as in the Malayalam phrase.Their return would be akin to what happened in China and Taiwan with their successful effort to attract their diaspora back. The Chinese program was called 1000 Talents, and they scoured the globe for academics and researchers of Chinese origin, and brought them back with attractive incentives and large budgets. They had a major role in energizing the Chinese economy.Similarly, Taiwan with Hsinchu University attracted high-quality talent, among which was the founder of TSMC, the globally dominant chip giant.And here is Trump offering to India on a platter at least 100,000 software engineers, especially at a time when generativeAI is decimating low-end jobs everywhere. They can work on some very compelling projects that could revolutionize Indian education, up-skilling and so on, and I am not at liberty to discuss them. Suffice to say that these could turbo-charge the Indian software industry and get it away from mundane, routine body-shopping type jobs.ConclusionThe Trump tariff tantrum is definitely a short-term problem for India, but it can be turned around, and turned into an opportunity, if only the country plays its cards right and focuses on building long-term comparative advantages and accepting the gift of a mis-step by Trump in geo-economics.In geo-politics, India and the US need each other to contain China, and so that part, being so obvious, will be taken care of more or less by default.Thus, overall, the old SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. On balance, I am of the opinion that the threats contain in them the germs of opportunities. It is up to Indians to figure out how to take advantage of them. This is your game to win or lose, India!4150 words, 9 Aug 2025 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

The Unlikely Doctor by Timoti Te Moke Born into love but then thrust into violence, and shaped by struggle, Timoti Te Moke was never destined to be a leader. After an early start as a bright boy in the eastern Bay of Plenty, nurtured by his reo Māori-speaking grandparents, Timoti's life changed sharply when his mother took custody of him when he was six. He survived abuse, state care, gangs and prison, his life marked by trauma and pain. By fourteen, he was behind bars. By twenty, he'd crossed the Tasman, trying to leave his past behind. But it was a moment in a prison cell — a glimpse of blue sky — that sparked a life-altering question: What if this isn't all there is? Through grit and an unyielding drive for justice, Timoti transformed his life. He returned to Aotearoa, became a paramedic and, after facing racism and an unsupported manslaughter charge that nearly derailed his life, became a medical student in his fifties. Timoti is now a fully qualified doctor — proof that brilliance can come from anywhere, and that our society must change to allow it. A powerful, confronting memoir of injustice, identity and the cost of lost potential, The Unlikely Doctor is not just Timoti's story — it is every child's. Because when we remove the barriers for success, we don't just help individuals — we help reshape a nation. The Stars Are a Million Glittering Worlds by Gina Butson Thea, a young woman crushed by guilt, flees to Central America to escape her life in New Zealand. In Guatemala, she meets the charismatic Chris and his partner, Sarah, and the three of them form a tight bond. While the rest of the world is caught in the grip of the global financial crisis, the three friends find a false reality in the backpacker party town of San Pedro. Surrounded by the dark volcanic beauty of the Guatemalan highlands, Thea starts to come to terms with her past. But everything changes when a tragedy occurs. Knowing she has to leave Central America, but not ready to return home, Thea settles in Tasmania and into a new relationship. Bonded by grief, she and her partner make a life for themselves in Hobart. But years later, when tragedy strikes again, all Thea's old grief and guilt - together with unanswered questions - come to the surface. Against the backdrop of the pandemic and lockdowns, Thea begins to question the trust she has in her partner. She realises that if she wants to know the truth, she will need to come clean about her past. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everyone wants to visit Italy! Brent shares some of the best things to eat and drink in Florence, Venice, and the Bay of Naples off the Amalfi Coast. Except these aren't the typical tourist haunts. There's a literary cafe in Florence that has finally reopened, islands that are better than Capri, and hunting truffles in Tuscany. Plus dishes like grass pea soup, braised rabbit, and an alternative to Aperol Spritz [Ep 349] Show Notes: Destination Eat Drink Foodie Travel Guides at Buy Me a Coffee Taste Florence food tours Katie Parla's books, tours, and podcast Monica's Venice cocktail and food tours Pete's Trips2Savor tours of Tuscany and Puglia.

Producer Justine Murray flexes her tastebuds on traditional kai cooked up at Otawhiwhi Marae where food and stories came together as part of this year's Flavours of Plenty Festival. It's the first time a marae has taken part in the Bay of Plenty's annual foodie event. You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.With thanks to:Reon Tuanau and Oscar NathanMake sure you're following us on your favourite podcast app, so you don't miss new episodes every Friday evening.Want to chat to us or find out more about RNZ Podcasts? Join the RNZ Podcasts Discussion Facebook group where we share behind the scenes info about our series, and invite you to share feedback, recommendations and ask us questions.Send us your feedback or get in touch at country@rnz.co.nzGo to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

This week Country Life takes a look at efforts to save soil on farms at both ends of the country and takes you to taste some traditional kai in the Bay of Plenty. You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.In this episode:0:36- 'Planning key' to getting winter grazing right10:00 - Rural News Wrap15:52 - The Soil Hacker - one farmer's quest to outsmart the weather30:55 - Kōrero and Kai - sharing stories and flavours on the maraeWith thanks to:Karl Erikson and Brad Thomas, Environment SouthlandStephen NewmanReon Tuanau and Oscar NathanMake sure you're following us on your favourite podcast app, so you don't miss new episodes every Friday evening.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The story of the CIA, told from the inside out by veteran agent Eloise Page. Starring Kim Cattrall, Ed Harris and Johnny Flynn. In Episode 8... A young President takes office, but the shadows of the Cold War are closing in. John F. Kennedy inherits a covert CIA plot to remove Fidel Castro—an operation born under Eisenhower and fuelled by anti-communist zeal. Pressured to act but desperate to avoid open war, Kennedy green-lights a quiet invasion. What follows is a catastrophic failure on Cuban shores: the Bay of Pigs. In his first major test, Kennedy is pulled into the deep end of Cold War deception—and blood is already in the water. Cast: Eloise Page..........Kim Cattrall Allen Dulles..........Ed Harris Richard Helms..........Johnny Flynn Frank Wisner..........Geoffrey Arend Young Eloise Page..........Elena Delia John ‘Jack' F. Kennedy..........Armand Schultz President Eisenhower..........Kerry Shale Bob McNamara..........Rob Benedict Richard Bissell..........Ian Porter Tracy Barnes..........Adam Sina James Jesus Angleton..........Philip Desmeules Adlai Stevenson.........Patrick Poletti Annie Bissell..........Carlyss Peer Elizabeth..........Laurel Lefkow Pilot.......... Walles Hamonde JFK's Secretary..........Jennifer Armour Bissell children.......... Hugo & Leela-Grace Dryden All other parts were played by members of the cast.Written by Greg Haddrick Created by Greg Haddrick & Jeremy Fox Directed by John Scott Dryden Original music by Sacha Puttnam Sound Designers & Editors: John Scott Dryden, Adam Woodhams, Martha Littlehailes & Andreina Gomez Casanova Script Consultant: Misha Kawnel Script Supervisor: Alex Lynch Trails: Jack Soper Sonica Studio Sound Engineers: Paul Clark & Paul Clark Sonica Runner: Flynn Hallman Marc Graue Sound Engineers, LA: Juan Martin del Campo & Tony Diaz Director: John Scott Dryden Producer & Casting Director: Emma Hearn Executive Producers: Howard Stringer, Jeremy Fox, Greg Haddrick and John Scott Dryden A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4

Retail success isn't just about having a fantastic product—it's about understanding the business of selling. On this special encore episode of The Voice of Retail, I welcome Liza Amlani, renowned retail strategist and co-author of The Whole Sale: Profitable Wholesale Strategies for Brands. Liza shares insider insights from her 20+ years in buying, merchandising, and retail consulting, helping brands navigate the complexities of wholesale expansion.In a rapidly changing marketplace, many direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands struggle to break into wholesale partnerships, unsure how to negotiate terms, optimize product placement, or manage markdown strategies. Liza outlines the critical retail fundamentals that brands must master to thrive in major retail environments like Walmart, Target, and specialty stores.During this insightful conversation, Michael and Liza discuss:The most common mistakes brands make when entering wholesale and how to avoid them.Why strong retail partnerships are the key to long-term success.How to negotiate product placement, pricing strategies, and markdown terms with major retailers.The role of merchandising strategy in maintaining shelf space and increasing sales.The wholesale vs. direct-to-consumer debate—why it's not just about margins, but about growth and exposure.With firsthand experience as a buyer for iconic brands like Ralph Lauren, Holt Renfrew, and Club Monaco, Liza brings a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to get "retail ready." She explains how emerging brands can scale strategically, leverage retail insights, and position themselves for long-term profitability.If you're a brand looking to expand into wholesale—or a retailer aiming to strengthen vendor relationships—this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you succeed in today's competitive retail landscape.

Marcus and Corey What You Know 'Bout That trivia game for Friday August 8th, 2025.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. On tonight's edition of Obbligato on APEX Express, which focuses on AAPI artists, musicians, and composers in the classical music world, host Isabel Li is joined by LA based performer and composer Richard An, who plays and creates new avant-garde music, usually with the ensemble House on Fire, and his music has been performed by the LA Phil and the Calder Quartet to name a few. Join us in our conversation, exploring the possibilities of avant-garde music, raising questions regarding Asian identities in the classical music world, and Richard's insights on art making during a time when Trump's cuts to the NEA are affecting artists and institutions nationwide. Featured Music: Sonatrinas: https://richardan.bandcamp.com/album/sonatrinas i got the electroshock blues: https://rasprecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-got-the-electroshock-blues   RICHARD AN (b.1995) is a performer and composer, born and raised in Los Angeles. Richard plays new music – usually with House on Fire – co-founded the tiny backpack new music series, and has performed with Monday Evening Concerts' Echoi Ensemble, Piano Spheres, The Industry and on Bang on a Can's LOUD Weekend. Richard plays piano and percussion, and has been known to sing, conduct, and teach. Richard's music has been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Calder Quartet, HOCKET, C3LA, and more. His music has been released on CMNTX Records. Richard has a BM in Composition from USC and an MFA from CalArts. He is on faculty at the Pasadena Waldorf School, Glendale Community College and Harvard-Westlake. He plays taiko and tabla, and makes YouTube videos. Learn more about Richard's work on his website: https://richardanmusic.com/ Richard's social media: https://www.instagram.com/richardanmusic/ If you are in LA and want hear Richard's work, he's playing with House on Fire at the Sierra Madre Playhouse on August 17! https://www.sierramadreplayhouse.org/event/richardan2025   Transcript Opening: [00:00:00] APEX Express. Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the APEX Express. 00:00:46 Isabel Li Good evening and welcome back to a new episode of Apex Express on KPFA, 94.1 FM. We are bringing you an Asian and Asian American view from the Bay and around the world. I'm your host, Isabel Li, and tonight is a new edition of Obbligato, which explores AAPI identities and classical music. Tonight I'm joined by LA based performer and composer Richard An, who plays and creates new avant-garde music, usually with the ensemble House on Fire, and his music has been performed by the LA Phil and the Calder Quartet to name a few. Join us in our conversation, exploring the possibilities of avant-garde music, raising questions regarding Asian identities in the classical music world, and Richard's insights on art making during a time when Trump's cuts to the NEA are affecting artists and institutions nationwide. 00:01:41 Isabel Li Welcome to the show. Welcome to APEX Express, Richard. My first question for you is how do you identify and what communities would you say that you're a part of? 00:01:50 Richard An My name is Richard An I use he/him pronouns and I'm a second generation Korean American. My parents are both Korean. My dad came from Busan, which is a large city in South Korea, and my mom was born in Seoul and then moved to South America and then made her way up to Los Angeles where they met. And as for identity, like, I think Korean American would be the most accurate one. This is and I think an ever evolving part of first of all my identity and the way that it intersects with my practice and also I think that's the case with many Asian American artists, I mean artists from immigrant families, you know, the the matter of your identity, especially if you feel more distanced from it for one reason or another, is like an unsolved question for everyone like there is no one answer. That works for people and that's a thing that me people like myself I think will be exploring for our entire lives. When I introduce myself to people, I say that I'm a classical musician. And at the very core of it, that is true. That's not a lie. And I am, you know, a part of the classical music community in Los Angeles. But as time goes on, I have noticed and realized. That I tend to align myself more with like the avant-garde and experimental contemporary music communities of Los Angeles, which has certainly an overlap with the classical community, both in practice and historically, but yeah, I I would say those are the sort of two biggest ones, classical musicians and experimental avant-garde, contemporary musicians, whatever label you want to use for that. 00:03:47 Isabel Li Yeah. Some of our listeners might not know what avant-garde music entails. Can you — how would you describe avant-garde music to someone who might not be as familiar with this particular movement? 00:03:57 Richard An Yeah. So avant-garde music, a sort of flippant and joking way to to talk about it is ugly music or music. You know, my dad, for example, wouldn't like, but I think. It's music that either interfaces with elements or confronts facets or issues in music that aren't typical of other kinds of music. The music that you might hear that is labeled of on guard might be noisy or dissonant or uncomfortable, or any kind of, you know, adjectives that are synonyms for noisy or ugly, but I have come to love that kind of music, you know 1. Because of the the kind of questions that they might ask about our perceptions of music and two, because I guess one way to put it is that to be a classical musician, you need to be in a practice room for many hours a day for many years and go to what is unfortunately a college, which is usually very expensive and I guess for lack of a better term, paywalled for like you need to have the kind of resources that allow you to attend a four year undergrad and then a two year masters and then a three-year doctorate. But avant-garde music, contemporary music, experimental music doesn't necessitate that kind of thing. Often those musicians do have a background that gives them some amount of, you know, virtuosity or facility in an instrument. But like some of the best experimental musicians. Alive and some of the best ones that I know have no, like extensive training in a particular instrument and some may not have a degree in music at all. And that's one thing that I in like that separates it from classical music is that. 00:05:44 Richard An Classical music can be, unfortunately a little bit exclusionary. I don't think by any one specific design, but the fact that you need so many hours and very specific instructions from a mentor that necessitate that kind of relationship. But experimental music, I think does a little bit better job of diversifying or making it feel more equitable. 00:06:12 Isabel Li That's a great point, actually. One of my questions following up with that was what do you think is possible with this genre, which you kind of mentioned earlier with perhaps how this genre makes classical music a little bit more equitable for those who are interested in this field. In your experience, composing, what do you think makes the genre special, and how do you go about it? 00:06:35 Richard An One thing that I've noticed about being involved in the sort of contemporary experimental avant-garde music sphere is that it makes me a better listener, and I think other people who attend these concerts will agree. Like for example a large part of this kind of music is drone or repetition or, you know, like long spans of unchanging sound. And if the the sound that is being produced at face value is not changing, well then what do you notice about it? What do you grab on to and one of the most, I think, gratifying experiences is listening deeper and realizing that, ohh, even though you know for example this piano playing two notes for 30 minutes might not like the instructions will say to do the same thing for 30 minutes, but your experience as a human being will certainly change over those 30 minutes, even if the the notes are not like you will notice the slight fluctuations in the way that someone is playing, you will notice the beating patterns in the pitches on an instrument that may not be perfectly in tune, you will note other ambient sounds, you will note like you will notice so much more about the world when you are confronted with the kind of music that you know. You can say it forces you to listen to these sounds but also invites you to listen to these things. And I think that's really, really special. That's not to say that that can't happen with other kinds of music. Or even with classical music. Surely you know there are many, many ways to listen to everything. But I've noticed this within myself. When I listen to long, repetitive drone based music that it really opens my ears and makes me a more active participant as a listener. 00:08:30 Isabel Li It's a great point actually. Part of my work– because I studied music, history and theory in college– was how music can engage various listeners to participate. Have you composed anything that perhaps engages the listener in this more of a participatory setting? 00:08:47 Richard An Yeah. So I guess in order the some of the stuff that I've done to engage the audience, I guess both literally, and maybe more figuratively is, I wrote a piece last year for the Dog Star festival, which is a a contemporary and experimental music festival that is actually happening right now, at the time of this recording. It's a multi week long festival that focuses on music of this type that was founded by people in the sort of CalArts music world. But I wrote a piece for that last year for three melodicas, which are these basically toy instruments that look like keyboards, but you blow into them and you blowing air through these makes the sound happen. It's basically like if you cross a harmonica and a piano together. But I I wrote a piece for three of these, playing essentially the same notes. And because these instruments are pretty cheap, and they're often considered toys or, you know, instruments for children, they're not tuned to the exact way that, like a piano or a vibraphone or an expensive instrument might be. But I wanted to use that for my advantage. For example, if I play an F# on one melodica the same F# on another melodica will not be exactly the same and playing those two pitches together will produce what's known as a a beat or beat frequency. Which is, you know, a complicated, you know, mathematic physics thing, but basically 2 notes that are really, really close, but not quite together will create a kind of third rhythm because the the pitches are so close. Like, for example, if if I play an A at 4:40 and another A at 441, you will notice that difference of 1 Hertz inside of your ears. And that's a really cool phenomenon that happens explicitly because you were there listening to the piece. They don't happen necessarily, you know, like in, in recorded formats like, it's a very difficult thing to capture unless you are in the room with these instruments. And the fact that we had this audience of, let's say, 40 people meant that all forty of these people were experiencing these beat frequencies and another really cool factor of this is depending on where you are located in the room. With the way that the beats will sound in your ears are different and purely by the fact of acoustics like a wave bouncing off of the wall over on your left, will feel really different if you are closer or further from that wall. So not only do the audiences ears themselves, you know, invite these this this participation, but the pure physicality of each listener means that they will have a very slightly different experience of what the piece is, and again like this will happen in any concert. If you're at a classical show, if you're at a rock show if, if you're further from the stage, if you're further to the left or right, you will get a slightly different position in the stereo field that the musicians are playing in, but pieces like what I wrote and many others that exist emphasize this kind of like acoustic phenomena. That is really, really fascinating to listen to. 00:12:23 Isabel Li That's fascinating. And to get a sense of Richard's work, we'll be hearing coming up next. The short excerpt from his album Sonatrinas. This is the duo excerpt performed by Wells Leng, Katie Aikam, Kevin Good and composer Richard An himself. [COMP MUSIC: Sonatrinas (Excerpt: Duo)] 00:17:38 Richard An And so the back story for this piece is this was written for one of my recitals at CalArts. I was planning on playing this piece by Michael Gordon called Sonatra, which is a really, really beautiful and difficult piece for solo piano that I gave myself as an assignment, which I was not able to do with the amount of time. And, you know, like I just didn't give myself enough time to do this thing, so I still had this program of several pieces written with the idea of having this Michael Gordon Sonatra in the middle, but now that that sort of middle part was gone, there was a bunch of pieces about a piece that didn't exist. So in order to fill that hole, I wrote this piece called Sonatrinas which is a cheeky nod to the Michael Gordon Sonatra, but also to the fact that each part of this is kind of a diminutive Sonata form. Everything has a sort of ABA– here's some idea. Here's a different idea, and now we go back to that first idea. Every single part of this has a little bit of that in it. 00:18:51 Isabel Li Yeah, that's fascinating. Even the name itself reminds me of Sonata form in classical music, where it's kind of like an ABA section. As you sort of talked about earlier. And it's really cool that you're adapting this in a more avant-garde context. This is a reminder you're listening to Apex Express. Today we are interviewing composer and musician Richard An. 00:19:12 Isabel Li I think the general question that I have next is can you tell me a bit about what drew you to music and how you got your start in music, how you got introduced to it and what things have inspired you over the years? 00:19:24 Richard An Yeah. So a real quick sort of, I guess, history of my involvement with music is that I started piano lessons when I was pretty young, either three or four years old. I continued that until I was 12 or 13. I decided I really wanted to become a musician. I started taking composition lessons with this composer, AJ McCaffrey, who is really responsible for a lot of what I know and my successes, if you can call it that. He got me into a lot of the music that I am into now and set the foundation for what I would study and what I would write he was one of the instructors for this program called the LA Phil Composer Fellowship program, which back when I was a participant from 2011 to 2013, was a program hosted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic that took 4 high school age students every two years. And you know, they they taught us, you know, everything. How a young composer needs to know how instruments work, how to write a score, how to talk to musicians, how to do everything that a that a composer needs to learn how to do and at the end of this program, after the two years the young composers write a piece for the at the LA Philharmonic. So I was extremely lucky that by the age of 17 I was able to write a piece for orchestra and get that played and not just any orchestra, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, you know, undisputedly one of the best orchestras in the world. Right. And then after that I I went to USC for my undergrad and then went to CalArts for my masters. And then here we are now. And that those are sort of the like, you know if someone writes a biography about me, that's what we'll be, you know, involved in the thing. But I really started to develop my love for music in my freshman and sophomore year. In high school I I started to get into more and more modern composers. I started to get into more and more noisy things and a lot of this coincided actually with the passing of my mother. She died when I was 14 and you know that in any human the death of a parent will cause you to reevaluate and rethink aspects of your life. Things that you thought were certainties will not be there anymore. So for me, I stopped taking piano lessons and I sort of went headfirst into composition and which is why my degrees are specifically in composition and not piano. Had my mother's passing not happened, you know, who knows what I would be doing now? Maybe I'm not a composer at all. Maybe I'm not into avant-garde music at all, but because things happen the way that they did, I suddenly took a quick turn into avant-garde music and my involvement there only grew more and more and more. Until you know where I am today, I'm almost 30 years old, so I've been listening to and a participant of this music for maybe 15 years or so and I'm quite happy. 00:22:43 Isabel Li That's awesome to hear. 00:22:45 Isabel Li And perhaps a testament to Richard one's very versatile compositional style and avant-garde music coming up next are three pieces from his album i got the electroshock blues. There are five pieces in the album in total, but we will be hearing three of them. The first one called “feeling, scared today,” the second one, “pink pill,” and the fifth one, “la la.” [COMP MUSIC: i got the electroshock blues: 1. “feeling, scared today”, 2. “pink pill”, 3. “la la”.] 00:36:41 Richard An Earlier last year, I released a collection of live recordings under the title of I got the Electroshock Blues. Electroshock Blues is a song by the band Eels I encountered at a pivotal moment in my life. This was right around the time that my mother passed and this record and this song is heavily centered in grief. The main musician in the Eels, Mark Oliver Everett, was dealing with the passing of multiple family members and people who were close to him so it hit me in just the right way at just the right time. And because of that, this song specifically has stayed with me for many, many years. I found myself coming back to the contents of this song as I was composing and all the pieces on this album, of which there are 5 heavily take material from this song, whether that's words, chords, the melody. I really, you know, take it apart, dissect it and use those as ingredients in the pieces that I have written here and all of these are live recordings except for the first piece which was recorded in my studio. I just sort of overdubbed the parts myself, and there are credits in the liner notes for this album, but I just want to say that. The first piece which is called “feeling, scared today,” was originally written for the Hockett piano duo, which is a duo comprised of Thomas Kotcheff and Sarah Gibson. Sarah Gibson was a really close friend of mine who passed away last year and now this piece which in some way came out of a feeling of grief now has renewed meaning and another facet or aspect of this piece is centered in grief now. Because this was dedicated to Thomas and Sarah. Yeah. So these pieces are all derived from this one song. 00:38:57 Isabel Li That's a beautiful response. Thank you so much. Kind of following along your background and how you got to where you are. How do you think your identity has informed your work as a composer and musician? And this could be– you can interpret this in any way that you wish. 00:39:11 Richard An Yeah, this is a really interesting question. The question of how my identity interfaces with my music. In my art, particularly because no person's answer is quite the same, and I don't necessarily have this figured out either. So for a little bit of I guess for a little bit of context on me, I'm second generation Korean American, but I've never been to Korea and I never went to Korean school. My parents never really emphasize that part of my education. You could call it assimilation. You can call it whatever, but I think they valued other aspects of my growth than my explicit tie to Koreanness or, you know my specific identity as a Korean or Korean American, and because of that, I've always felt a little bit awkwardly distanced from that part of my identity, which is something that I will never be completely rid of. So in in a world and the field where whiteness is sort of the default part you know, particularly because you know, classical music does come from Europe, you know, for hundreds of years, like all of the development in this particular kind of music did happen in a place where everyone was white. So because of that background of where I come from and where my musical activity comes from, whiteness has been the default and still feels like it is. So me looking the way that I do as, an obvious not white person, as a person of color will always have a little bit of an outsider status to the thing. And with that comes the question of what are you bringing to classical music? What do you bring to the kind of music that you're creating? Like for example, the most I think the most well known East Asian composers are people like Toru Takemitsu or Tan Dun, people who will interface with their Asianness, in many different ways, but that often involves bringing, for example, a Japanese scale into your classical composition, or bringing a Japanese instrument into your classical composition. Those are, you know, examples of of of pieces by Toru Takemitsu, and other, you know, very successful. Asian American composers now may do similarly. Texu Kim is maybe someone who can also give insight into this, but nothing about me feels explicitly Korean, maybe besides the way that I look. And besides, the way that I grew up a little bit like I've never been to Korea. What right does that give me as a Korean, to for example, use a Korean instrument or use a Korean scale? I've never studied that music. I've never studied that culture. I in in some arguments I would be guilty of cultural appropriation, because I, you know, have not done the work to study and to properly represent. And for example, like Pansori, if I were to use that in any of my music. 00:42:46 Richard An But then the the the difficult question is well, then who does have the right? Does being Korean give me all the license that I need to incorporate aspects of my identity? And if I am not Korean, does that, does that bar my access to that kind of music forever? Another way of looking at this is, I've studied North Indian Classical Hindustani music for a while. I've played tabla and and studied that music at CalArts and I really, really love playing tabla. It's it doesn't make its way into my composition so much, but it is certainly a big part of my musicianship and who I am and, like, but am I barred from using ideas or aspects of that music and culture and my music because simply for the fact that I am not Indian? Many musicians would say no. Of course you've done your homework, you've done your research. You're doing due diligence. You're you're representing it properly. And many people who study this music will say music cannot go forward if it's not like the innervated and continued and studied by people like me who are not explicitly South Asian or Indian. That's an example of the flip side of this of me using or representing the music from a culture that I am not a part of, but again, am I really Korean? I've never been there. I wasn't born there. I speak the language conversationally. But this is an extremely long winded way of saying that I feel a tenuous connection to my Korean this my Korean American identity that hasn't been solved, that isn't solved and probably will never be completely solved. But I think that's exciting. I think that's an evolving aspect of my music and will continue to be that way as long as I continue to be involved in music and as as long as I continue to write. 00:45:05 Isabel Li Yeah, absolutely. That's a wonderful response. Actually. I was, as I was studying different types of world music and learning how people kind of borrow from different cultures. There is this always, this kind of question like ohh, like which types of musical elements from which cultures can I incorporate and obviously the aspects of personal identity definitely play into that a little bit. And part of my senior thesis in college was studying AAPI artists in classical music, and specifically that there are a lot of Asian-identifying musicians in the classical music world. But as you kind of mentioned earlier, I think classical music is very much still like grounded in whiteness and has this kind of air of elitism to it just because of its roots. How do you think this kind of identity intersects with the classical music world? And forgive me if you've already kind of talked about it before, but it's an interesting juxtaposition between like, for example, musicians who identify as AAPI or Asian in this kind of genre that is very– it's very associated with whiteness. Could you kind of talk about the dynamics of how these two aspects of like culture kind of interplay with one another? 00:46:26 Richard An Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, there are ways that I personally feel like I intersect with classical music with reference to my identity, and that also plays with the sort of cultural expectations, like there are stereotypes of Asian musicians, of Asian classical musicians. But there are not necessarily the same the same kind of stereotypes with white classical musicians. A very dominant like stereotype that you'll run into is the young Asian prodigy who practices 10 hours a day and may therefore be labeled as mechanical or unfeeling or, you know, are involved in in this a lot. So much so to the fact to the to the point where to excel an Asian American classical musician or as an Asian classical musician, in general, seems to always carry that stereotype. Like you know, Seong-Jin Cho's success as a pianist may not necessarily be attributed to his musicianship or his skill as a pianist. Because he is an Asian person, an Asian guy. Like how much of his success is because of the perceived tiger mom-ness that he might have existed under? How much of it is attributed to the same type of stereotypes that are labeled like that that label the five year old pianist on YouTube that that is clearly better than I am? Like some of these stereotypes help and some of these don't, but the I think it's undeniable that they exist in a way that doesn't in a way that doesn't carry for white people in the classical music sphere. And I think part of that is that classical music is still rooted in its Eurological identity. I think I'm using that correctly. That's an idea from George Lewis. Eurological versus Afrological. The context that I'm using Eurological right now is specifically in reference to George Lewis, who is a composer, trombonist, and musicologist who, I think coined the two terms to differentiate the roots of different styles of music, and you know, I haven't read enough to confidently say, but classical music is Eurological by example and like jazz would be Afrological by an example and the contexts in which they develop and exist and grew up are fundamentally different, which is what makes them different from each other. And again like this needs a little bit more research on my part. 00:49:23 Richard An Yeah, and because the classical music is so rooted in this thing, I don't believe that the stereotypes that exist for Asian classical musicians exist for white people. And I think that is something that will naturally dissipate with time, like after another 100 years of Asians, and, you know, people of color in, you know, every country in the world, with their continued involvement and innova otypes will disappear like this. You know, it may require certain concerted efforts from certain people, but I do believe that after a while these things will not exist. They'll sort of equalize right in the same way. That the divisions that we make between a Russian pianist and a French pianist and a German pianist, though you know people still do study those things like those aren't really dividing lines quite as strong as an Asian composer or an Indian composer might be. 00:50:27 Isabel Li Thank you for that perspective. I think it's, I think these are conversations that people don't kind of bring up as much in the classical music world and it's great that, you know, we're kind of thinking about these and probably possibly like opening some conversations up to our listeners hopefully. And so my next kind of pivot here is as you know with our current administration, Trump has canceled millions of dollars in National Endowment of the Arts grants, and it's been affecting arts organizations all over the nation. And I was kind of wondering, have you been affected by these cuts to arts programs and what kinds of advice would give upcoming musicians or composers in this era? 00:51:07 Richard An Yeah, that's a yeah, that's a big thing. And like, you know, changing day by day, right. So the Trump administration's effects on my life as a musician is simultaneously huge and also not really that much. So in one way these grant cuts have not affected my personal musical life because I haven't ever received a government grant for any of my arts making. So in one way like my life is the same, but in many, many, many other ways it has changed. Like I am involved with and I work with concert series and organizations and nonprofits that do rely on NEA funding and other government arts based funding. And if they have less money to fund their next season, that means certain projects have to be cut. That means certain musicians have to be paid less. That means certain programs have to change, especially if these funding cuts are aimed towards DEI or quote and quote, woke programming like that is, you know this that will by design disproportionately affect people of color in this field, which already you know, like is in a Eurocentric urological tradition like this is already something that people of color don't have a head start in if the funding cuts are aimed at certain types of programming that will disadvantage already disadvantaged groups of people, well then I don't know, that's even–we're starting even later than other people might be, and you know, like, if a musicians, if a person's reaction to this is despair, I think that's reasonable. I think that is an absolutely, like that's an appropriate reaction to what is fundamentally an attack on your voice as an artist. But I I have for as long as I can, you know, I have always worked under the impression that I will have to do the thing myself, and that's in the piece of advice that I give for a lot of people. You shouldn't necessarily wait for this ensemble to come pick you to play or or to to, you know, commission you to write a piece if you want to write the piece, you should do it and figure out how to put it on yourself. If you want to perform you know music by a certain composer, you should do it and then figure out how to do it yourself. That certainly comes from a place of privilege, like I can do this because I have enough work as a musician to be able to pay for the the passion projects it comes from a place of privilege, because I live in Los Angeles and the resources and musicians and other people who I would like to collaborate with live here, so you know, completely acknowledging and understanding that I I do believe that it's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. I think if you're a young musician and are feeling some despair about these funding cuts and you know the many, many, many other transgressions against humanity by this current administration. 00:54:38 Richard An I recommend you just go out and do it yourself. You find your people, you find your community, you pull favors, you work long nights and you do it and the reward will firstly be the good you're putting out into the world and then the the art you're making. But also this will be paid in kind by the community you're building, the musicians you're working with. And the the connections you make like you know I I have, I am currently conducting this interview from a studio space that I am renting out in Pasadena that I have built over the last two years that I do all of my rehearsals and my performances in, and that I, you know, host rehearsals and performances for other people, and this cannot happen and could not have happened without the goodwill and help and contribution from other people. When I say go out and do it yourself, I'm not saying that you as a human being are alone. I'm saying you don't need to wait for institutional approval or permission to go out and do these things. Get your friends and do them themselves. And my optimistic belief is that the support and the work will follow. 00:55:53 Isabel Li Richard, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives and your voice on this show today. And thank you to our many listeners of KPFA on tonight's episode of Obbligato on Apex Express. Which focuses on the AAPI community of the classical music world. There were some inspirational words on arts and arts making by Richard An musician and composer based in Los Angeles. 00:56:18 Isabel Li Please check our website kpfa.org to find out more about Richard An and his work as well as the state of the arts during this period of funding cuts. 00:56:29 Isabel Li We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world, your voices and your art are important. 00:56:41 Isabel Li APEX Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by Isabel Li. Have a great evening. The post APEX Express – 8.7.25 – Obbligato with Richard An appeared first on KPFA.

This week, @VinnieSuds and @misfit8690 are back to discuss the next episode of @TheBayTheSeries! We are reviewing Season 6, Episode 3. The seeds are planted for a season of stories based in reality! While Pete is still trying to get answers from Adam, Patty comes to the ER with a mysterious disease. Sara is meeting her granddaughters, Reagan and Frankie, and talking about family history. All this and so much more!The Bay: The Beginning can be found on Amazon Prime!The Bay can be found on Tubi TV, Amazon Prime, Peacock, and Popstar. We have a new sponsor! Dubby Energy is now partnered with Suds Media to bring clean energy and hydration drinks straight to you! Just go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dubby.gg⁠⁠⁠ use the promo code SUDSMEDIA for 10% off your order!We are officially an affiliate for WWE Shop, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠suds-media.com/wrestlingmerch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to shop with our official affiliate code.Are you looking for some help with your relationship or your sex life? Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ coachingbylorie.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code WELCOME for 20% off your first session.Go to our Linktree for an All Access Pass to all our stuff!⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/sudsmedia⁠⁠©2025 Suds Media

In this flavourful episode of The Food Professor Podcast, host Michael LeBlanc welcomes Shruti Priya Agarwal and Akshay Kalekar, the co-founders of Whipdd, a rising Canadian food startup transforming the humble butter into a flavour-packed experience. Born from a spark in a home kitchen in India, their story is one of culinary creativity, entrepreneurial hustle, and cross-continental ambition.Shruti, a trained chef with over a decade of experience in the pastry world, first started crafting flavoured garlic butter for friends and family. The rave reviews led to the idea for a scalable product. Upon moving to Canada during the pandemic, she reconnected with Akshay, a fellow business school alum and serial entrepreneur with a background in hospitality and fresh food delivery. Together, they brought Whipdd to life.What started as a kitchen experiment has become a full-fledged brand now carried nationally in Whole Foods Market locations across Canada, thanks to distribution support from Tree of Life and national brokerage by Sinn Solutions. Their product line features five standout flavours: Herb & Garlic, Smoked Chilli, Strawberry, Honey Cinnamon, and Real Strawberry — all crafted with high-quality Canadian dairy and clean, simple ingredients.Michael samples each on mic (yes, it's mouthwatering!) while Shruti and Akshay discuss the importance of natural ingredients, consumer feedback, and flavour innovation. They reveal how they're rapidly scaling up, with upcoming product extensions including a 250g herb & garlic butter brick and single-serve portion cups for airlines and hotels.Their vision goes beyond groceries. The duo is actively exploring foodservice partnerships, airline catering, and big-box retail listings with the likes of Costco, Farm Boy, and Sobeys. And with global interest bubbling up, the Whipdd team is positioning itself for an international takeoff. The Food Professor #podcast is presented by Caddle. About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph's Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre's Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa. Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada's Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael's cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

Tonight, we'll read the opening to the short story “At the Bay” written by Katherine Mansfield, published in 1922. Mansfield was a New Zealand writer, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages. Her prose is often described as impressionistic, capturing fleeting moments and shifts in mood with a painter's sensitivity. “At the Bay” is part of her final collection, The Garden Party and Other Stories, and is set in a sunlit coastal settlement reminiscent of the bays near her hometown of Wellington. In it, the dawn opens over a household stirring awake, and the reader is invited into a world of sensory immediacy—shifting light, sea breezes, and the subtle interplay between family members. — read by 'V' — Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we're talking the Bucs' signing of veteran QB Teddy Bridgewater, standout performers from camp, and react to the team's first official 2025 depth chart.

Excitement, anticipation, fear, nerves, adrenaline. What did Laura get up to this past weekend? Oh, was it walking in one of her dearest held dreams? Yes. Yes it was. Bay and Laura discuss the high points and the vulnerable aftershocks of Laura's performance with her band at the 2025 Rosendale Street Festival in Rosendale, NY. P.S. Falling Inn Vermont Retreat: https://wonderlandandcompany.com/fall-retreat 

Join us as we recap and chat about Bob's Burgers Season 9 Episode 1 Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now and Season 9 Episode 2 The Taking of Funtime One Two ThreeDid you know "Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now" is the first episode to officially mention the show's setting as Seymour's Bay? Prior to this episode, it was implied that the town was named Oceanside (First Oceanside Savings and Loan and the Oceanside Times newspaper)Wiki page for the episode:Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for NowThe Taking of Funtime One Two ThreeLinks, articles, and videos mentioned in this episode:Join our Book Club and get access to exclusive content on PatreonFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TiktokFollow us on Bluesky

From Newport, New South Wales, Australia, Derek Hynd is known for his unconventional approach to surfing and all else. Hynd was a pro surfer in the late 1970s and early '80s, making his name both for his surfing in a jersey and for the pieces he wrote for the surf mags of the era. In 1980, while competing in South Africa, he suffered a brutal injury that resulted in the loss of vision in his right eye. He retired after the 1982 season and became a coach, first for Billabong, then for Ripcurl. In 1992, Hynd came up with The Search, Rip Curl's iconic film series starring Tom Curren. Around this time, Hynd bought a prime plot of land at Jeffrey's Bay and built an architectural marvel of a house looking straight out to Supertubes. Design experimentation led Hynd to FFFF, aka Far Field Free Friction, aka finless surfing. Today, he lives near Byron Bay, where he practices his latest obsession: mat riding. In this episode of Soundings, Hynd sits down with Jamie Brisick to talk about his career as a professional surfer, unconventional surfcraft, writing, childhood's golden moments, J-Bay, the allure of going finless, sharks, and how he lost his eye.

Canadian officials are in Mexico, hoping to strengthen economic ties. A former Mexican diplomat tells us how the trade tensions with the U.S. makes that friendship more important than ever.She delivered bad news about jobs statistics -- and found herself out of a job. Now, an expert on stats says Congress needs to investigate Donald Trump's firing of the country's top labour statistician.A Democratic Texas lawmaker tells us why she thinks the best way to oppose proposed changes to the congressional map in her state is by leaving the state -- along with her colleagues. We remember Razia Jan who opened a free school for girls outside Kabul. Her friend and colleague says that was risky business, but Ms. Jan somehow made it look easy. A resident of an island in the Bay of Fundy tells us why a local shed filled with hundreds of free books is a symbol of community -- and honours the legacy of a beloved resident.The United States Department of Agriculture is trying to ward off wolves by blasting AC/DC -- and a particularly intense spat from the film "Marriage Story."As It Happens, the Tuesday edition. Radio that objects to the strategy on quarrel grounds.

In this special encore episode we revisit an insightful conversation with Janet Hayes, CEO of Crate and Barrel Holdings as she shares her career journey and the brand's $5B growth ambitions. From their visionary Flatiron NYC flagship to enhanced digital design services and significant tech investments, the iconic 60 year old home retailer furnishings retailer is modernizing for a more remarkable future.”Janet shares leadership lessons from a remarkable career with brands like Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Nike, and Gap and, now, in her current role driving growth as the CEO of Crate & Barrel, CB2, and Hudson Grace. We delve into her perspectives on the role of technology, the changing nature of work, and more. We also get a glimpse into the drive forces behind their latest flagship store in New York's Flatiron District.  About UsSteve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling authro of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada's Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael's cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

The SPCA isn't just dealing with animal abuse its staff are increasingly in the firing line; facing verbal and physical threats. There has been 70 incidents reported so far this year, but the animal welfare protection agency believes the numbers are much higher with some staff just putting up with daily abuse. In one case a worker in Hawke's Bay had a cat thrown at them. SPCA general manager for animal services Dr Corey Regnerus-Kell spoke to Lisa Owen.

A long time Auckland environmentalist won the battle to protect a bunch of berms he has planted in an urban style jungle over decades. But plants on another grass verge will be removed by Auckland council after complaints from some residents in a nearby apartments. Freeman's Bay resident Mark van Kaathoven has been working on the berm gardens outside his home and neighbouring properties for more than three decades. Auckland Council has now given most of the berms protected status under its restorative gardening initiative, meaning they can't be removed. Mark van Kaathoven spoke to Lisa Owen.

This week on Backstage Bay Area, Steve Roby sits down with Nikki Fruth and Jon Stenz from Silverset, a rising San Francisco indie rock trio making waves with their dreamy, energetic sound. The band, rounded out by guitarist Grant Hespeler, has quickly gained attention with their debut single “Wherever You Are, Wherever You Go,” which has already surpassed 10,000 Spotify streams.In this episode:The origin story of Silverset: how Nikki, Jon, and Grant came together and found instant musical chemistry.The meaning behind the band's name and the metaphor of “finding beauty beneath the rubble.”Nikki's unique musical influences, from Gregorian chants to modern indie icons.Insights into the band's collaborative songwriting and self-produced debut EP.The role of Jon's brother, Jared, in the band's recording and live performances.A deep dive into their debut single and the creative process behind it.A sneak peek at their upcoming single “Akamea” (dropping August 8th), inspired by Nikki's adopted cat and themes of unexpected love.What to expect at their high-energy release party at Kilowatt in San Francisco on August 15th—including spontaneous jams, dancing, and plenty of good vibes.Silverset's future plans: a fall EP release, a short tour (NYC and LA dates TBA), and work on a full-length LP.Upcoming Dates:New single “Akamea” out August 8thRelease party: August 15th at Kilowatt, San Francisco (Doors 6 pm, Show 7 pm) – kilowattbar.comConnect with Silverset:Stream on SpotifyFollow on Instagram for updates on new music and showsStay tuned to Backstage Bay Area for more exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes stories from the Bay's vibrant music scene!

Triathlon New Zealand's claimed hosting rights for pinnacle events in Tauranga over the next three years. A World Triathlon Cup will take place in the Bay of Plenty next year, before a top-level Championship Series race in 2027 and the Series' Grand Final in 2028. Triathlon NZ chief executive Pete de Wet says they could see upwards of 3000 Kiwis racing across age groups and the all-comers race in 2028. He told Mike Hosking there's a big interest in the sport from an age group perspective, and it's great for the athletes to be able to compete at home instead of having to chump on a plane. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marcus and Corey What You Know 'Bout That trivia game for Tuesday, August 5th, 2025.

My guest this week is Scott Barmby [35:56], director of the Orvis Chesapeake Fly Fishing Schools, who educates us on threats to the Bay's population of striped bass, and also the many fly-fishing opportunities in the Bay. It's a vast ecosystem that I didn't know much about, so it was interesting to me and I am sure it will be to you. I think you'll learn some surprising things about this national treasure.   In the Fly Box this week, we have lots of comments and tips from listeners as well as questions, including: A listener reminds people of the importance of making your presence known on the river A listener gives some other tips for night fishing for trout and smallmouth bass. A listener reminds us that catch-and-release is a valuable tool in certain fisheries, for both management and economic reasons. Do you have any tips on keeping track of what leader you have on your line? Do you think trout that are close to a hiking path avoid that side of the river because they are constantly spooked? A listener wants to know which vintage Orvis reel he should put on a small stream rod. Can you give me some tips on keeping the deer hair on top of the hook shank when tying Sparkle Duns? After making a cast with tight line nymphing, how do I tell when my point fly is on the bottom? Is a 6-weight rod strong enough for Labrador brook trout? Do you know of any way to remove rust from a hook eye to prevent abrasion of the knot?

Due to major cuts to Medicare, wildfire season, looming earthquakes, public health needs, and the increasing number of Californians without health insurance, now is the time to strengthen local health ecosystems statewide.  Join us to hear from leaders of social impact organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area about how they are building partnerships to address these challenges by working together and leveraging technology to build creative solutions to improve lives. About the Speakers  Isabel Navarrete is a sustainability analyst at UCSF Health; she has a deep passion for advancing sustainability in healthcare. Navarrete oversees the organization's municipal waste program and has led impactful diversion initiatives, including launching a blue wrap recycling program, expanding medical donation efforts, and enhancing the collection of reprocessed materials. Navarrete received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, San Diego. She currently co-chairs the UC Health Zero-Waste Working group. Katelyn McMeekin-Jackson is the new executive director of Clinic by the Bay, a free volunteer-powered health clinic serving the medically underserved in the San Francisco Bay Area. She brings over a decade of nonprofit leadership across healthcare, education, and faith-based organizations. Currently pursuing her MBA at UC Berkeley and serving as a resource family for children in foster care, she is dedicated to creating nurturing, safe spaces where all of our neighbors can receive the care they deserve. Jiwon Min is the chief technology officer at Every.org, a nonprofit platform that allows all nonprofits to accept all donations. She previously served as an engineering leader at a supply chain technology company focused on humanitarian aid logistics. She spent a summer consulting with the Private Sector Humanitarian Alliance (PSHA), supporting cross-sector efforts to improve coordination in humanitarian response through technology and innovation. Min recently earned her Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) from NYU Wagner, where she focused on the intersection of technology and social impact. Eric Talbert, CEO & co-founder of MedCycle Network, has over 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience as a philanthropic advisor, board member, and co-founder. He has worked with hundreds of organizations globally and locally to increase access to health and to protect our planet by addressing old problems in new ways that often involve new technology. In addition to philanthropic, development, and nonprofit governance acumen, Talbert has also been interviewed by international, national, and local news media as well as podcasts. Moderator: Lila LaHood is executive director of San Francisco Public Press and has worked as a nonprofit consultant, freelance writer and editor. LaHood has an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in international relations from Stanford University. She is a current member and past-president of the board of directors of the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. A Social Impact Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. OrganizerIan McCuaig  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trailblazer and visionary, Faatimah, joins the show to talk about her journey founding the WPBA — the Women's Premier Basketball Association — a league striving to become the WNBA's version of the NBA's G League. We dive into the WPBA's mission, what sets it apart, and the powerful new documentary highlighting the league's recent international experience in Medellín, Colombia.Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at the movement, the players, and the upcoming Town Takes World screening happening August 15th in Oakland at the Oakland Hills Campus Performing Arts Theatre.For more information please visit: https://www.womenspba.com & follow the WPBA on instagram @WomensPBA 

On today's 8.01.25 show Chidi joined us for Chidi's tweets, the new way a woman caught her man cheating, a robot that folds laundry, it took a man 43 proposals to get his gf to marry him, Justin Bieber is ready for another baby, an event that was in danger of being canceled is still happening in the Bay, Justin Timberlake revealed medical diagnosis, Jess's fiance left on a boys trip, we play our Chug Wheel Game and more!

In this special summer edition of the Remarkable Retail podcast, hosts Michael LeBlanc and Steve Dennis return to the mic for a jam-packed Month-in-Review episode. With interviews from the CommerceNext Growth Show rolling out all summer long, the duo takes a break from the regular cadence to reflect on the key developments dominating retail headlines.Kicking things off, Michael and Steve catch up on their summer travels, from retail safaris to personal DIY projects, before diving into on-the-ground observations from recent store visits. They note intensified promotional activity, flagging department store performance, and struggling retailers like Kohl's—whose housekeeping and inventory issues speak volumes about the deeper structural challenges facing legacy banners.A major theme is the ripple effect of evolving tariff policies. Steve breaks down the shifting landscape of trade "deals"—or lack thereof—impacting everything from apparel to automobiles, including the end of the de minimis clause that could reshape the business model of players like Shein and Temu. While retailers have largely absorbed tariff costs for now, Q4 pricing and profitability are big question marks, particularly for cash-strapped players.The conversation turns to macroeconomic conditions and a surprisingly resilient U.S. consumer. However, Steve warns against viewing “the consumer” as a monolith, emphasizing growing bifurcation between income brackets. The luxury market underscores this divide—Hermès continues to thrive, while Gucci and more aspirational brands struggle, and Saks Global faces mounting losses and vendor tensions.The episode also unpacks Amazon's latest earnings, with standout 23% growth in ad sales, despite investor jitters around AWS and an uncertain outlook.Other hot takes include AI's expanding role in customer interaction, the controversy around American Eagle's “gene/jeans” ad featuring Sydney Sweeney, and the headline-grabbing soap opera surrounding Hudson's Bay's failed resurrection attempt in Canada.Looking ahead, Michael and Steve preview August retail earnings, the fall retail conference season, and the ongoing evolution of AI-enabled search.  About UsSteve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling authro of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada's Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael's cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries new kingdoms emerged in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Sovereignty in these new kingdoms was expressed in terms we understand today as coming from ‘Theravada Buddhism'. Crucial to this tradition was the Pali language. Anne Blackburn's new book, Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena 1200-1550, examines the ‘intensification of connections' between these polities in the region she calls, the ‘Bay of Bengal-Plus': that is, the Bay of Bengal, the Coromandel Coast of India, Sri Lanka, the maritime and riverine areas of Burma, and the Mon and Tai territories of mainland Southeast Asia. The book highlights the importance of Pali textuality for the emerging Buddhist kingdoms of Dambadeniya, Sukhothai, Haripunjaya (present-day Lamphun in northern Thailand), Chiang Mai, Ayutthaya, and Hamsavati in lower Burma – Bago today. This was the heartland of what Blackburn calls, the ‘Pali arena'. This book is an important contribution to the emerging scholarship on the intellectual history of the early Theravada Buddhist kingdoms in South and Southeast Asia in the second millennium CE. 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

Rapper, Bay Swag joins the ladies of Lip Service this week to promote his latest album 'Damaged Thoughts.' Bay opened up about heartbreak, getting caught cheating, squirting disasters, and much more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Title: How to Make Millions with Vending Machines with Mike Hoffman Summary: In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman delve into the world of vending machines as a business opportunity. Mike shares his journey from a Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur in the vending industry, highlighting the evolution of vending technology and the potential for passive income. They discuss the importance of location, understanding demographics, and the scalability of vending routes. Mike emphasizes the need for upfront work and learning before delegating tasks, while also addressing the misconceptions surrounding passive income in the vending business. In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike discuss various aspects of entrepreneurship, particularly in the vending machine business. They explore the importance of capital raising, the journey of self-discovery, influences that shape business decisions, and the definition of success. The dialogue emphasizes the significance of flexibility, discipline, and focus in achieving entrepreneurial goals, while also touching on financial milestones and the attributes that distinguish successful entrepreneurs. Links to Watch and Subscribe:   Bullet Point Highlights: Mike's journey from a classic Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur. The evolution of vending machines from traditional to smart technology. Understanding the importance of location in the vending business. The analogy of baseball levels to describe starting in vending. Scaling up from single A to big leagues in vending routes. The significance of demographics in product selection for vending machines. The potential for passive income with proper systems in place. The need for upfront work before achieving passivity in business. Vending is not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires dedication. The future opportunities in the vending industry are expanding rapidly. Raising capital can dilute ownership but may be necessary for rapid growth. Self-discovery often leads to unexpected career paths. Influences in business can come from personal experiences rather than just mentors. Success is often defined by the ability to prioritize family and flexibility. Entrepreneurs work harder than in traditional jobs but gain flexibility. Discipline is crucial for saying no to distractions. Successful entrepreneurs often focus on niche markets. High foot traffic locations are ideal for vending machines. AI is transforming business operations and efficiency. Networking and connections can lead to valuable opportunities. Transcript: Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:04.898) Mike, what's going on buddy? Doing great brother, doing great. How about you?   Mike (00:06.748) Don't worry,   Mike (00:11.664) Good, I'm a little flustered. I usually have my mic set up over here, but I guess we just moved and it's not here today. I guess, yeah, new office and it's been a whole hot mess.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:19.822) New office or what?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:27.862) Nice man, nice. I see you got the whiteboard cranking back there. Love to see that.   Mike (00:33.114) Always. I love your background. That's sweet.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:38.03) Thanks man, yeah, I'm on camera all the time so I like I need to just build this out instead of using like a green screen so Made the investment made it happen   Mike (00:44.86) Totally.   Yeah, absolutely.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:49.442) Have we met in person or not? I don't know if we've met at a Wealth Without Wall Street event or I couldn't tell. Okay. No, I did not go to Nashville last year.   Mike (00:58.478) I don't think so. don't think you're... Were you in Nashville last year?   Mike (01:04.634) No, okay. No, I don't think we've met in person. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:08.256) Okay, all good, man. All good. Well, cool. I'll just go over the format real quick. We'll do kind of a shorter recording. We're do like 30 minutes, something like in that range. And then we'll just kind of like break. And then I'll, want to record a couple of other quick segments where I call it Million Dollar Monday. I'm kind of asking you about how you made your first, last and next million. And then 1 % closer, which would just be kind of what separates you, what makes you the   top 1 % in your particular vertical. So we'll just kind of record those separately. Those will be real short, like five minutes or so.   Mike (01:44.924) Okay, yeah, I'll follow your lead. All good.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:47.15) Cool. Cool. Let's see. I think I already have this auto recording. So we're already recording. So I'll just jump right in.   Mike (01:55.377) Okay.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:57.782) Welcome to Raise the Bar Radio, hosted by yours truly Seth Bradley. We today we've got Mr. Passive, Mike Hoffman. Mike, welcome to the show.   Mike (02:08.189) Thank you for having me fired up to be here.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:10.855) Absolutely man, really happy to have you on. I know it's been a little bit of a trek here to get our schedules lined up, but really stoked to have you on today, man. I see you said you moved into a new office. You've got the whiteboard cranking, so love to see it.   Mike (02:25.372) yeah, whiteboards are the only place I can get my thoughts down.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:29.399) Yeah, man, it makes a difference when you actually write something rather than type it or even on a mirror board where you're doing it online. just there's something about physically writing something down.   Mike (02:41.328) You know, I'm glad you said that because yesterday I flipped to Seattle for a quick work trip and I didn't have wifi and I literally had three pages of just, I, was so like the clarity of some of these kinds of bigger visions I have now from just being able to write for an hour on a flight was, I was like, man, I gotta do this more often.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:00.363) Yeah, for sure. The key though is once you write it down, it just doesn't go into the trash or into a black hole somewhere where you never see it again. So that's kind of the disadvantage there. If you have it on your computer and you're taking notes or you have it on a mirror board, at least it's there to reference all the time. If you write it down on paper, sometimes, I've got my Raze Masters book right here for notes, but it's like, it might go into the abyss and I'll never look at it again. So you gotta be careful about that.   Mike (03:27.184) Yeah, yeah, I need to check out the Miro boards. I've heard a lot of good things about them.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:31.467) Yeah, yeah. Awesome, Mike. Well, listen, for our audience who doesn't know anything about you, maybe just tell them, you know, tell them a little bit about your background. Tell them about your your main business and we can take it from there.   Mike (03:43.354) Yeah. So I think for those that don't know about me, I'm a classic Midwest farm boy started with a classic, you know, showing cattle at the county fair and all of that and had a lemonade stand growing up. And then my first job was actually at McDonald's, you know, thinking about the whole success of that business model. But when I was coaching and, out of college, I got my first rental and I was like, wow, this is crazy. making money without.   really much time involved. and then with my work in Silicon Valley, know, Seth, was classic Silicon Valley, you know, cutthroat job that, startup life and traveling three weeks out of the month. And I was on, I was in airports all the time. And was like, these vending machines I would run into at airports were just so archaic. And so I went down this path of like unattended retail and kind of the future of, of that. And that's really where I just see a huge opportunity right now.   And so it's kind of what led me into all these different income streams that I'm passionate about.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (04:49.431) That's awesome, man. Well, let's dive into that a little bit deeper. me about these income streams. It centers around vending machines, right? But I'm sure there's a lot more to it. I'm sure there's a lot of different entry points for people. Maybe just kind of give us a general synopsis to start out.   Mike (05:06.78) Yeah, so I think the big thing with, you know, if we're talking vending specifically as an income stream, you know, most people think of vending as the traditional machines where you enter in a code, you put your card on the machine and then a motor spirals down a Snickers bar or a soda and you go into the chute and grab it.   Nowadays, there's these smart machines that literally you just unlock the door, or even if you go into, land in the Vegas airport right at the bottom of the escalator where it says, welcome to Las Vegas, there's a 7-Eleven with gates and AI cameras, and there's no employees in the 7-Eleven. And it just tracks whatever you grab and to exit the gate, you have to pay for it. So like, there's just this huge market now where we just installed it in urgent care.   less than two months ago and we can do over the counter meds in that machine because it doesn't have to fit into a motor. It's just shelf space. You identify with the planogram with the AI cameras like, okay, Dayquil in this slot or Salad in this slot and then whatever they grab, gets charged to the person that pulls it from it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (06:15.469) That's interesting, man. Yeah, I mean, my initial thought too, was just like the traditional old vending machine where you're getting a candy bar or a cola out of there. But yeah, nowadays, now that you mentioned that, you see this more and more every single day where you've got these scanners, you've got kind of self-checkout, that sort of thing. So that's kind of, that expands that world and really opens it up to the future, right? Like it just really, that's what we're trying to get to, or at least we think we wanna get there, where we're kind of removing humans and...   kind of working with technologies and things like that.   Mike (06:49.488) Yeah, and I think, you know, removing the whole human thing. mean, those machines still got to get stocked and you know, there's not robots running around doing that. But I just come back to, I was a Marriott guy when I was on the road all the time and I'd go to these grab and goes at a Marriott and grab a, the end of the night, I'd grab like a little wine or an ice cream sandwich. And I literally had to go wait in line at the check-in desk behind three people checking in just to tell them, Hey, put these on.   room charge and I was like if I had a checkout kiosk in that grab-and-go I could have just removed all the friction for this customer experience.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:27.772) Right, 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's a place and time for it and there's more and more applications for it that just pop up every single day and you can kind of spot that in your life as you're just kind of moving through, whether you're checking into your hotel or whatever you're doing.   Mike (07:41.456) Yeah, yeah. So that's just kind of what excites me today.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:45.973) Yeah, yeah, so when a stranger asks you what you do just in the street, what do you tell them? Because I have a hard time answering that question sometimes too, but I'd love to hear what your answer is.   Mike (07:56.804) Yeah, I would just say it depends on the day. You know, what do you do or what's your, you know, it's like at the golf course when you get paired up with a stranger and they're like, tell me about what you do for your career. And I just say, I'm a classic entrepreneur. And then I'm like, well, what do you do? And it's like, well, tell me about the day. You know, what fire are you putting out? Like today we just got the go ahead for five more urgent cares for our local route. But then, you know, we have a community of operators across the country that we help really build.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:57.933) haha   Ha ha ha.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:09.879) Yeah. Yeah.   Mike (08:25.616) Vending empires and so we had a group call this morning. So literally, there's a lot of just, you know, it's classic entrepreneurial life. You never know what the day's script is gonna be.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:36.161) Yeah, for sure. And you focus a lot on not only on your own business, but also teaching others, right? Teaching others how to kind of break into this business.   Mike (08:45.402) Yeah, that's my passion, Seth. When I got into my first investment out of college was a $70,000 rental, you know, putting 20 % down or 14K and using an emergency fund. like my background in going to college was as a coach. like I knew I wanted to kind of take that mindset of like coaching people, you know, teach them how to fish. I don't want to catch all the fish myself. It's just not fulfilling that way. So that's really where my passion is.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (09:15.373) Gotcha, gotcha. tell me about like, tell me about step one. I mean, how does somebody break into this business? Obviously your own personal business is probably very advanced. There's probably a lot more sophisticated investing strategies at this point and you've got different layers to it. But somebody just kind of starting out that said, hey, this sounds pretty interesting. This vending machine business sounds like it can be passive. How do you recommend that they get started?   Mike (09:40.57) Yeah, so I'm always, I view like the whole vending scale as similar to Major League Baseball. You got your single A all the way up to the big leagues. And if you're just starting out, I always recommend like find a location where you can put a machine and just learn the process. Like to me, that's single A analogy. you know, that always starts with, people want to jump right to like, well, what type of machines do you recommend?   products, how do you price products? And the first question I'll always ask Seth is, well, what location is this machine going in? And they're like, well, I don't know yet. I was just going to buy one and put it in my garage to start. And it's like, no, you need to have the location first. So understanding that, is it a pet hospital? Is it an apartment? Is it a gym? Where is the foot traffic? And then you can cater to what's the best machine for that type of location.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:36.887) Got it, got it. Now is this a kind of a rent, you rent the space to place the machine with that particular business or wherever you're gonna place it or how does that all come together?   Mike (10:47.644) not typically, some people are kind of more advanced, like apartment complexes are used to the revenue share model. So they're going to ask for a piece of the pie for sure, for you to put the machine in their lobby. but like, you know, when we're talking urgent carers or even pet hospitals are viewing it as an amenity. And so we probably have, I don't even know how many machines now 75 now, and we, you know, less than half of those actually,   Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:50.423) Okay.   Mike (11:15.1) us rent or ask for a revenue share to have them in there. So I never leave lead with that, but we'll do it if we need to get the location.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (11:23.989) Interesting gotcha. So it's really a value add for wherever you're gonna place it and that's how most people or I guess most businesses would look at that and then you're able to capture that that space   Mike (11:27.366) Mm-hmm.   Mike (11:34.236) Yeah, absolutely. So, um, a great case study is we have a 25 employee roughing business here in Oregon. And you might think like, only 25 employees. It's not going to make that much money. Well, we do $1,200 a month. And the cool thing about this, Seth, is the CEO of this roughing company literally did napkin math on how much it costs for his employees to drive to the gas station during their 20 minute break. And then   How much they're paying for an energy drink at the gas station and then how much gas they're using with the roofing like the work trucks to get to and from the gas station So he's like I want to bring a smart machine into our warehouse Set the prices as half off so that four dollar monster only costs his rofers two dollars and then we invoice him the the business owner every month for the other 50 % and so he actually   Calculated as a cost savings not asking for money to rent the space   Seth Bradley, Esq. (12:35.597) Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. I love the baseball analogy with the single A, double A, triple A, even into the big leagues here. know, a lot of the folks that listen to this are already kind of, you know, in the big leagues or maybe think about some capital behind them. Like how would they be able to jump right in, maybe skip single or double A or would they, or do you even suggest that? Do you suggest that they start, you know, small just to learn and then maybe invest some more capital into it to expand or can they jump right to the big leagues?   Mike (12:48.891) Yeah.   Yeah.   Mike (13:03.966) I think they can jump right to the big leagues. this is, I'm glad you brought this up because just listening to some of your episodes from the past, there's no doubt that you have people that could buy a route like a off biz buy sell today. And I think this is a prime opportunity. it's very similar to flipping a house. you, you know, there's a route in Chicago, I think it was for $1.1 million, you know, whatever negotiating terms or seller financing or, or what have you, got a lot of, your, your   audience that is experts in that. But the cool thing about these routes is they have the old school machines that have the motors and that are limited to, this type of machine, you can only fit a 12 ounce cannon. Well, guess what? The minute you buy that route, you swap out that machine with one of these micro markets or smart machines. Now you just went from selling a 12 ounce soda for $1.25 to now a 16 ounce monster for $4.50.   Well, you just bought that location based on its current revenue numbers and by swapping out that machine, you're going to two or three acts your revenue just at that location. And so it's truly just like a value play, a value upgrade, like flipping the house of, okay, there's a lot of deals right now of these routes being sold by baby boomers where it's like, they got the old school Pepsi machine. Doesn't have a credit card reader on it. They can't track inventory remotely via their cell phones. So   They're not keeping it stocked. Like all those types of things can really play in your favor as a buyer that just wants to get to the big leagues right away.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:37.651) I love that. When you say buy a route, what are you really buying? Tell me about the contractual agreement behind that. What are you really buying there?   Mike (14:47.184) You're just buying the locations and the equipment associated with it. So like this Chicago route, it's like, we have machines in 75 properties all across the Chicago suburbs. And they could be medical clinics. could be apartments. could be employee break rooms at businesses, but that's when you start diving into those locations. It's like, I have a snack machine and a soda machine here. Well, you swap that out with a micro market that now instead of.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:49.279) Okay. Okay.   Mike (15:13.626) that machine that'll only hold a small bag of Doritos that you charge two bucks, well now you get the movie size theater bags that you can really put in there in a micro market. Like naturally just that valuation of that route based on those 75 machines current revenue, I mean you're gonna be able to two or three X your revenue right by just swapping out those machines.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (15:35.959) Wow, yeah, I love that analogy with real estate, right? It's just like a value add. It's like, how can I bring in more income from what already exists? Well, I need to upgrade or I need to put in some capital improvements, whatever you want to call it. Here's the vending machine upgrades or a different kind of system in there. And you get more income. And obviously that business in itself is going to be worth more in a higher multiple.   Mike (15:58.396) Absolutely. mean, a great example of this is we had a machine in an apartment complex and it was your traditional machine with the motors and you have to enter in the code. Well, we could only put in four 12 ounce drinks and then chips. Well, we swapped that out with a micro market. Well, now that micro market, we literally put in bags of Tide Pods for laundry, like these big bags of Tide Pods. We'll sell those like hotcakes for 15 bucks. And our old machine,   Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:25.281) Yeah, let's say those aren't cheap.   Mike (16:27.246) Yeah, our old machine Seth, it would take us to get to 15 bucks, we'd have to sell eight Snickers. That's one transaction.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:33.547) Right, right. Yeah, yeah. How do you do an analysis kind of based on like what you think is gonna sell there, right? Like you're replacing, let's say a Dorito machine with Tide Pods, you know? So you have to individually go to each location and figure out what will work, what will sell.   Mike (16:47.738) Yeah.   Mike (16:51.834) It's all about demographic. Absolutely. So, you know, we have, we have, we have a micro market and a manufacturing plant that's, it's a pumpkin farm and there's a ton of Hispanic workers. So we do a lot of like spicy foods, a lot of spicy chips. do, we do a ton of, mean, the sugar or sorry, the glass bottle cokes. They do, they love their pastries.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:53.431) Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:06.349) Yeah.   Mike (17:15.868) So we just doubled down on the demographics. So yesterday I was filming at one of our micro markets that's in a gym and they crushed the Fairlife protein shakes, like the more modern protein shakes, but they won't touch muscle milk. So we're literally taking out one row of muscle milk just to add an extra row of Fairlife shakes. So you're constantly just catering to the demographics and what's selling.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:40.632) Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I mean, this is literally just like real estate, right? Like you go and you find a good market. You're talking about demographics, right? Find the market, see what they want, see how much you can upgrade, how you can upgrade. If it's an apartment, it's a unit. If it's here, it's the product that you're selling and the type of machine, or maybe it's a mini market. A lot of things to kind of tie your understanding to here.   Mike (17:45.926) Yeah.   Mike (18:05.904) Yeah, absolutely.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (18:07.615) Yeah, awesome, man. Awesome, Where are you at in your business? Like what, you know, what are the big leagues looking like right now? You know, what are you doing to expand your business, raising the bar in your business?   Mike (18:18.692) Yeah, I'm going after that's a really good question. I'm going after kind of these newer markets and we're kind of past that point of like, okay, let's pilot in this location. For example, that urgent care, we didn't know if it was going to be a good location two months ago when we installed. Well now it's already crushing it. Well, there's six other urgent cares in town and we just got to go ahead on five of those six. So like for me, it's doubling down on our current proof points of where.   okay, we know that manufacturing plant, the pumpkin farm does really well. So let's start getting intros to all their, manufacturers of the products they need to grow pumpkin. know, like we're just doubling down on scaling because now we have the operational blueprint to really just kind of to go after it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:03.917) Gotcha, gotcha. Tell me about how passive this can really be, right? So I used to have, before we switched over to the new brand, Raise the Bar podcast, it was the Passive Income Attorney podcast, right? I was really focused on passive investments, focused on bringing in passive investors into my real estate deals, things like that. And I think that word passive gets thrown around quite a bit, right? And sometimes it's abused because people get into things that are not truly passive.   Mike (19:18.427) Yeah.   Mike (19:28.784) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:33.517) What's your take on that as it relates to the vending business?   Mike (19:38.49) Yeah, so I think as far as with the vending business, there's clearly upfront leg work that needs to be done, whether that's finding locations or any of those things. So I have a route that is here in Oregon, and then we bought a route last year in Illinois and have scaled that route. I spend 30 minutes a week on each route now. that these urgent cares and stuff, like we have an operator that's running the whole route.   Here's the problem, Seth. It's like people are so scared to build systems to ultimately systemize things or they're too cheap to hire help. And I'm the opposite. like, you know, kind of like Dan Martell's buy back your time. Like I have like a leverage calculator and like I constantly think about is this worth my time? Cause as you know, you're busier than me. Like it's so limited.   for me, my routes, I would consider them passive, like one hour a week is, is nothing in my mind. But as far as like, you know, I'm, I'm also a passive investor on, we're building a, an oil loop station in Florida and I sent my money a year ago to, to my, active investor and I haven't talked to him since. Like that's actually truly probably passive now, you know, I'm not doing anything, but there's, there's different levels to that. And I'm a huge believer like.   don't delegate something until you know what you're delegating. So people that want to start with the vending routes, sure, if you want to buy a route that already has an operator, that's one thing. but these, if you're starting a vending route for your kid or for your stay at home wife or whatever, as a side hustle, like get in the weeds and install that first machine. So when you hire help to take over the route, you know what you're delegating.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:09.773) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:27.021) Yeah, that's key. That's key. And you you described just like any other business, right? I think that's kind of where people get themselves into trouble. That sometimes they get sold the dream that is truly passive. And eventually it can be. I mean, you're talking about an hour a week. To me, that's pretty damn passive, right? But you know, upfront, you you've got to learn the business. You've got to know what you're getting yourself into. Like you said, you've got to learn before you delegate so that you know what you're delegating.   There is going to be some upfront work and then as you're able to kind of delegate and learn Then you can make it more and more passive as you go   Mike (22:00.88) Yeah, I mean, it's no different than what's the same when people tell you that they're busy. I mean, you're just not a priority. Like that's a fact. you're not. People say it's the same thing when people come to me and they're like, I'm so busy. It's like, okay, well let me, let me see your schedule. Where are you spending your time? You know, it's like when people are like, I can't lose weight. Okay, well let me see your food log. What did you eat yesterday? Did you have ice cream? Like this is like the same kind of thing. That's where passive I think has been really abused.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:16.097) Yeah. Yep.   Mike (22:29.638) To me, the bigger issue is like, vending is not get rich quick. And so like, if you're expecting to leave your nine to five tomorrow and vending is going to make up for that in one day, like that's not going to   Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:41.089) Right, Makes sense. Speaking of passive, do you raise capital or do you have any kind of a fund or have you put together a fund for something like this?   Mike (22:51.48) We haven't put together a fun, we're definitely buying routes is definitely becoming more and more intriguing. And I know there's some PE players starting to get into the vending game, but it's something we've been definitely considering and on our radar of do we want to.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:58.541) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:10.231) Gotcha. Cool. I mean, you brought in money partners for some of those routes yet, or is that still something you're exploring too?   Mike (23:18.168) No, I think it's just something we're thinking about. mean, what do you recommend?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:21.089) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd recommend I mean, it depends, right? Like I'm I'm scared to turn you by trade, but I don't like to say you should always raise capital no matter what. Right. Like you've been able to scale your business as you have and grown it to where it is without bringing outside capital. It sounds which is great because you own 100 percent or with whatever business partners you might have. You know, when you start raising capital, you're giving a large chunk of that piece away, not necessarily your whole company. But if you're buying   you know, a set of routes or that sort of thing. You you're gonna give a big piece away to those past investors if you're starting a fund or even if it's up. Even a single asset syndication here for one of these, you know, these routes, you could put it together that way. You know, it's just something to consider. But a lot of times when people are looking to scale fast, right, if they wanna grow exponentially, you've gotta use other people's money to get there or hit the lottery.   Mike (24:08.294) Mm.   Mike (24:15.856) Absolutely, no, agree. That's spot-on and I actually before you know the Silicon Valley company That I was part of we had a we went through probably series a B C D C ground   Let's just say we weren't very fiscally responsible. So I come from the, you know, it's like the ex-girlfriend example. I don't want to just start taking everyone's money.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (24:42.413) Yeah, yeah, that tends to happen with some startups, right? Like before you get funding, you're super frugal because it's your money and every single dollar counts. And you're like, I don't want to pay, you if it's software, you don't want to pay the software engineers. I'm going to out, you know, put it, you know, hire Indian engineers, that sort of thing. And then once you get a few million bucks that you raised in that seed round, then it just goes and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, let's hire 20 people. You know, it's you got to be careful about that.   Mike (25:05.606) Yeah   Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great take on it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:11.245) Yeah, it's, yeah. It's a question I love to ask and I think it's about time for that. So, in a parallel universe, tell me about a different version of you. So a different but likely version, right? Like, for example, for me, I went to med school for a year and a half and then I dropped out and I ended up becoming an attorney. So that was like a big turning point, right? So I could have easily at some point just said screw it and became a doctor and that would have been a totally different route than I'm going down right now.   What's an example of something like that for you?   Mike (25:42.524) Wait, are you being serious about that? I took the MCAT too. I got into med school and then I, yeah, I was pretty mad in school. And then the more I learned about exercise science, I was like, organic chemistry is not fun.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:44.321) Yeah, totally.   yeah? There you go.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:57.39) It is not fun. I did not love that. I majored in exercise physiology and then I ended up switching to biology because it was just a little bit of an easier route to get my degree and go into med school and I went for a year and a half and then I dropped out because I absolutely hated it. I knew I didn't want to do it. I was just more attracted to business and that sort of thing.   Mike (26:16.346) Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome. parallel universe. I, that's a really good question. I don't know. I, kinda, I have two kids under three and the other side of me wishes I would have traveled more.   you know, I mean, we'll get there hopefully when they get out of high school and someday. But right now I just think there's so many different cultural things and ways to skin the cat. And it's just fascinating to learn some of those things.   Mike (26:55.352) yourself in those cultures.   go to different cultures and really like understand how they did things for a time, a period of time to really just learn their thinking.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:07.777) Yeah, I love that man. I had a similar experience of what you're describing. I didn't travel abroad really other than like, you know, Canada and Mexico until I studied abroad in Barcelona during law school and I got to stay there for a couple of months. So you actually had some time. It wasn't like you're just visiting for a week or a weekend or anything like that. You got to kind of live there right for a couple of months and it just totally changed my, you know, my outlook on life and just the way that you see things like I feel like we're in the US and we just think   Mike (27:19.627) Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:37.76) US is number one and there's only one way to do things the way that we do things that kind of attitude. And then when you go to Western Europe and you see that culture and you drive or get on a train, it's like an hour away and you're in a totally different culture and they're doing it a certain way as well and it's working. You just see that other people are doing things differently and still being successful at it, still having a thriving culture and it's just awesome to see.   Mike (28:03.312) Yeah, absolutely.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (28:06.251) Yeah. Tell me about some major influences in your life. What turned you or got you into that, the vending business? It's not one of those typical things. mean, I know you're in the education business, so you're kind of really spreading the word about this type of business. But I would say when you started, there might not have been a mastermind or educational courses around this. mean, how did you kind of get drawn into that? Were there any particular people or influences that brought you in?   Mike (28:29.308) you   Mike (28:36.188) Yeah. So the, biggest influence for me to get into vending, uh, wasn't actually a person. It was actually, was, um, I had landed, I was coming back from the Pentagon from a trip back to the Bay for the startup we were talking about. And I was in the Denver airport and 11 PM, you know, our flight was delayed. And then they're like, Hey, you have to stay in the airport tonight. The pilot went over their hours for the day, blah, blah, blah. So I went to a vending machine and I remember buying a bottle of water.   I think it costs like at the time three bucks or something. I knew that bottle of water cost 20 cents at Costco. And I was like, there is someone that's at home with their kids right now making money off me and they're not even at this mission. Like the machine is doing the work. So I had like an aha moment of like, what are my true priorities in life? And like, why am I chasing this cutthroat startup from.   Palo Alto and trying to make it when reality was my priorities are freedom to spend more time with my family. So that's really kind of what led me into this path of starting a vending machine side hustle to keep our lifestyle as we had kids. We wanted to have a nanny and we wanted to be able to still go on dates and things like that as a couple with my wife. So that's really kind of my family and just like...   having the freedom to do things. Like that's what I'm really passionate about.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (29:59.084) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, building on that, and you may have already answered that, but what does success look like for you?   Mike (30:01.766) next   Mike (30:06.268) an empty calendar.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:08.621) Good luck with that. Good luck with that.   Mike (30:11.516) Oh man, I was gonna say, how do we crack that code? No, yeah. No, but I think success to me is doing things like picking up my daughter at three and even being able to say no to the things that aren't gonna get you to where you need, like the discipline piece of this too.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:15.708) man.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:33.995) Yeah, yeah, mean, you know, for me, it's kind of similar, right? It's not going to be able to empty that calendar. Not yet, at least maybe here in the future. But for now, it's pretty filled. But it is it's flexible, right? Like us as entrepreneurs, you know, we probably work more than we ever worked when we were in our W-2s. But at the same time, it's you know, we're working in our own business for ourselves, for our families. And we have the   Flexibility, a lot of people will say the freedom, right? But we have the flexibility to move things around. And if you want to pick your kids up at school at three, or you do want to take a weekend off, or something comes up in your schedule, you have the flexibility to do that. Whereas if you're kind of slaving away at the nine to five, you can't really do it.   Mike (31:04.486) Yeah. Yeah.   Mike (31:20.198) Yeah, that's spot on. mean, I just wrote that down, but flexibility is, cause you're right. When you started becoming an entrepreneur, this is what I tell people all the time when they want to get a venting around is like running your own business. You are going to work harder than you do for your boss currently at your W-2. Like you have to do payroll. You have to do, like you gotta like make sure there's money to actually do pay, you know, like all those things that you just don't even think about when you have a W-2. It's like, today's   Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:39.543) Yeah   Mike (31:48.89) You know, this Friday I get paid. Well, when you run a business, mean, that money's got to come from somewhere.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:51.905) Yeah   Right, yeah, 100%, man, 100%. All right, Mike, we're gonna wrap it up. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Tell the listeners where they can find out more about you.   Mike (32:05.286) Yeah, so thanks for having me. This has been great. I have free content all over the place. can find me on the classic Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, but I also have vendingpreneurs.com is where we help people that are more interested in actually the vending stuff. But I've been really trying to double down on YouTube lately because there's just a lot of content and you can't get it off a one minute reel.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:32.417) Love it, man. All right, Mike, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show.   Mike (32:35.91) Thanks for having me.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:37.227) Hi brother. Alright man, got a couple more questions for you. We do like a quick, kind of do the full podcast episode and then I'll just do kind of a quick episode that'll follow up on a Monday and then another one on a Friday. Cool.   Mike (32:55.814) See you.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:59.693) We out here.   Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars?   Mike (33:20.922) Yeah, Seth. It was probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short-term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:25.229) Mm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:37.079) Gotcha, cool. Yeah, real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in that primary business or not, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million?   Mike (33:53.956) Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. So that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit with it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:57.57) Right. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:16.215) Gotcha. Cool. that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes?   Mike (34:23.32) Exactly. Yeah. Buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets charging, with different products and what would fit in a vending machine, like more of the unorthodox, you know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of, go and add it in a different way.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:49.857) Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's gotta be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right?   Mike (35:01.102) Yeah, I think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:05.387) Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:27.521) Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars?   Mike (35:34.3) I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their, their vending routes. that is applicable to any, small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:06.209) Yeah, totally makes sense. mean people that are not paying attention to AI whether it's simply using chat GPT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's gonna look like five years from now the way that things are moving.   Mike (36:23.132) It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software into the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is pretty   Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:43.479) Yeah, 100%. We're gonna, I predicted within five years, everybody's gonna have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled and they're gonna be doing physical things for us at our homes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 100%. Awesome, All right, moving on to the next one.   Mike (36:50.181) Yeah!   Mike (36:57.917) I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco get all our groceries do our do our laundry The dishes   Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:11.501) You're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do, Mike. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field?   Mike (37:19.056) Ooh, that's a good question, Seth. I think it's just discipline, know, discipline and focus. One of the hardest things is being able to say no with the things that don't align. And when I was growing up, I had a quote that has really stuck with me. That's like, it's better to be respected than liked. And I think that really resonates. Like naturally as a human, you want to be liked and help people, but the 1 % are really good at saying no.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:47.649) Yeah, I love that man. That's a great answer. Kind of building on that, what do you think the number one attribute is that makes a successful entrepreneur?   Mike (37:57.468) probably focus. Yeah. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:59.212) Yeah, focus. Yep. The one thing, right? The one thing.   Mike (38:04.186) Yep. That's why you come back to like the most successful entrepreneurs. They always niche down and they niche down because they just, got hyper-focused. Like this is kind of why for me, you know, I started this passive Mr. Passive on social media before I even got into Vendi. Well, now everyone's like, well, how passive is Vendi? And well, it's like, what's really interesting is I was posting all these different, what I thought passive income streams in the time, but everyone, 95 % of the questions I got about   Airbnbs are all my different investments was about bending. So I just niche down on, on bending and I just looked back on that and I was like, it really forced me to focus.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (38:43.263) Awesome, awesome. What's one thing someone could do today to get 1 % closer to success in the vending machine business if they are really interested in learning more?   Mike (38:53.892) tap into your connections and find a location that has high foot traffic, whether that's a friend that works at an urgent care, a sister that lives at an apartment. You know, you take your kid to that gymnastics studio that has a ton of foot traffic between 4 PM and 8 PM. Like all those locations are prime locations to put one of these modern smart machines in. so, tapping into your connections, well, you know,   Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:24.567) Love that man. Awesome. All right, Mike, I appreciate it, brother. We'll to meet in person sometime,   Mike (39:30.574) I would love to. Where are you based, Seth?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:31.789) I'm in San Diego, where you at?   Mike (39:34.78) I am in Eugene. Yeah, Oregon. I'll come down your way though.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:37.39) Cool We're planning on doing yeah, we're planning on doing so me and my wife we have a Sprinter van and Last May we did we did going back to the flexibility piece, right? We did 32 days in the van up through Wyoming Montana and then into like Into Canada and they're like Banff and Jasper and all the way up to Jasper and then we circled back on the west coast Through Vancouver and then down back to San Diego Yeah   Mike (40:05.52) What?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:06.829) Pretty wild, pretty awesome. And the reason I brought that up is this year we're gonna do shorter trip. We're probably gonna do two, maybe three weeks at the most, but we're gonna do kind of the Pacific Northwest. So Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver and all those parks and stuff up there.   Mike (40:17.254) Yeah.   Mike (40:21.744) Yeah, you definitely have a, have you been to Bend before? Bend is like my, that whole area, Central Oregon is, and even Idaho, like all those kind of, yeah. That's awesome. Please let me know when you're up this way. I mean, I'll come meet you wherever. That'd be amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:24.641) Yeah, yeah I have.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:38.861) Sure man grab a coffee or beer. I appreciate it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah all right brother great to meet you and I will send the information on when this is gonna get released and give you you materials and all that stuff so we can collaborate on social media   Mike (40:51.964) Okay. Okay. Yeah. Is a lot of your audience, like passive investors?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:58.593) So most of that, so now I'm rebranding. I rebranded because I'm gonna be speaking more towards like active entrepreneurs, Active entrepreneurs, people raising capital, that sort of thing. Whereas before it was based on passive investors and people really focused on attorneys. So I'm an attorney and I was raising capital from attorneys for my real estate deals. Now I'm really more into selling shovels. I'm scaling my law firm. I'm chief legal officer for Tribest, which is, we've got a fund to fund.   Mike (41:20.262) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:28.085) legal product there as well. So we're really trying to bring in active, active entrepreneurs and people raising capital.   Mike (41:29.777) Yeah.   Mike (41:36.572) Okay, because I got that, I was just thinking through when we talking about that oil development project, that could be a good, the guy that runs that fund could be a good interview for you. Just thinking through your audience, because he's always looking for investors into his fund and like these oil lubs are just crushing it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:49.901) Cool. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:58.464) Yeah, cool. Who is it? Just, I don't know if I know him or not.   Mike (42:02.183) Um, Robert Durkey, he's out of Florida. has, his problem is he's sitting on a gold mine that has no, like he's old school, doesn't know social media, any of that. So that's why I think he'd be perfect for you. Cause I think you could help him and he could definitely help you with some kickback. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we meet soon. Okay. See you Seth. Bye.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:05.645) I don't think I know. I don't think I know.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:13.889) Yeah. Gotcha.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:20.705) Cool, okay, sounds good man. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction.   Yeah, all right brother. Talk soon. See ya. Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive

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