Podcasts about by july

Another 3,150 Tropical North Queensland tourism jobs in Australia will be lost by Christmas shrinking the tourism workforce to half its pre-pandemic size, according to new research from the Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF). Tourism Tropical North Queensland (TTNQ) Chief Executive Officer Mark Olsen said tourism had employed 15,750 full and part-time staff and, with indirect tourism spend, supported a total of 25,500 jobs before the pandemic in the Cairns region. By July 2021, we had lost 3,600 permanent staff, even with the support of JobKeeper and a returning domestic market,” Mr Olsen said. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/etn/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/etn/support

Rovio Entertainment, a video game developer company, experienced failure after failure before they eventually found success. From when they were founded in 2003 to the launch of Angry Birds in 2009, Rovio only knew failure. Rovio had released 51 new games before they released Angry Birds, all of which failed to become popular (Source: Fast Company).  However, with each failure, Rovio looked to the future. Instead of giving up, instead of letting their past mistakes consume them, they pushed forward. Because the developers at Rovio looked to the future with faith and hope, their company eventually earned millions. By July 2015, the Angry Birds games had been downloaded more than 3 billion times collectively. (source: Wikipedia). In 2015, they launched Angry Birds 2, which has already generated more than $600 million (Source: PocketGamer). Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-let-go-of-the-past-and-focus-on-the-future/ 

“We've had massive amounts of little guys buying, they bought the covid dip, they bought this 2-month bottom, they're like little geniuses; the hodlers are outdoing the so-called whale-trader conspiracy...the little guys are really nailing it.”— Willy WooLocation: RemotelyDate: Thursday 29th JulyProject: HypersheetRole: Co-FounderSince mid-May, Bitcoin has ranged between $30k-$40k, following a build-up of negative news, from bans in China to concerns about energy use. While on-chain analysis showed strong signs of accumulation during this time and pointed to the bull run not being over, the price kept grinding lower.By July 20th, the price again dropped below $30k and held below this crucial level for the longest period since the dip began. With sentiment heavily bearish and many calling for a further dip to ~$20k, what started as a small rally turned into a $10,000+ move after shorters were forced to close their positions. The price on one futures exchange hit as high as $48k on the back of the liquidations. Bitcoin has been sat at $40k, another crucial level, for several days now, and with on-chain metrics showing a massive influx of new entrants and FUD wearing thin, market sentiment seems to be flipping positive.So has the bull run recommenced? And is this cycle different?In this interview, I talk to on-chain analyst and the co-founder of Hypersheet, Willy Woo. We discuss accumulation by small holders, the recent bullish move and why this might be the last cycle.This episode's sponsors:Gemini - Buy Bitcoin instantlyBlockFi - The future of Bitcoin financial servicesSportsbet.io - Online sportsbook & casino that accepts BitcoinCasa - The leading provider of Bitcoin multisig key security.Exodus - The world's leading Desktop, Mobile and Hardware crypto wallets.Ledger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware walletRevolut - A better way to handle your money-----WBD379 - Show Notes-----If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:Become a Patron and get access to shows early or help contributeMake a tip:Bitcoin: 3FiC6w7eb3dkcaNHMAnj39ANTAkv8Ufi2SQR Codes: BitcoinIf you do send a tip then please email me so that I can say thank youSubscribe on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | Deezer | TuneIn | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the show and episodes with your friends and familySubscribe to the newsletter on my websiteFollow me on Twitter Personal | Twitter Podcast | Instagram | Medium | YouTubeIf you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.

Born Marcus Dixon, better know as Big Bad Marco on stage, Marco grew up with his mother, father, sisters and brothers in the parish of Portland in a little community known as skibo. Marco grew up watching father Boby Dixon better Known As Fire Pan and older brother Ricardo Dixon known as Sir Rick singing their songs in the yard and going to stage shows and Marco got inspired and started making songs of his own. After finishing high school in 2014 Marco started to takes his music more seriously and has grown to be a very versatile artist capable of making songs in multiple genres. Marco realized that he didnt have enough money to pay recording or production fees to get his songs done professionally and so he decided to learn to produce his own music. He built a little home studio at home in 2019 and started producing and uploading his songs to youtube. By July 2019 Marco got his first local hit “East” which although it didnt rack up the numbers on social media, was very popular among local fans, in the local areas and his songs were playing in all the local parties and he got booked for stage shows. 2020 was looking like a promising year for Marco until Covid 19 put the world on pause. But that didnt stop Marco, he continued to record an release songs on youtube. By the ending of 2020 Marco was approached by Dancehall Passport's management team and produced his first Official Track and Music Video “Nuh Relationship” which generated some attention and ran up some views on youtube.The song is also played repeatedly on multiple Radio Stations globally, a good end to the year. He kicks off 2021 with a new Tracks and Videos, which are all doing well on youtube and radio. Big Bad Marco can be reached at dancehallpassport@gmail.com

After hatching, baby robins spend up to 15 days in the nest. By July, many young American Robins have left the nest, or fledged. But they aren't ready to make it entirely on their own yet, and they follow their parents around, learning to fend for themselves. Outside of the breeding season, robins tend to form large flocks, often feeding on berries and fruits. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

In March 2020, as COVID-19 started to grip the nation, fitness entrepreneur Amanda Kloots was settling into a new city (Los Angeles) with her husband Nick Cordero and their new baby. By July 2020, Amanda would become a very public COVID widow. Some of what happened to Amanda and Nick during those four months played out in incredibly personal posts and videos on Amanda's Instagram feed. But there is so much more to Amanda's pandemic story and the improbable death of her young, fit Broadway star husband who was just 41-years-old when he died from COVID-19 complications. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie talks with Amanda about her new memoir, “Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero,” which Amanda wrote with the help of her sister Anna. Katie and Amanda talk about the writing process, about Nick and their marriage, about grieving live on Instagram and finding heartbreak and healing in a community of strangers. You can find out more about “Live Your Life” and find out where to buy your copy at HarperCollins. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

In March 2020, 33-year-old Rebecca Borkowski ended her relationship with her boyfriend, Joshua Aide. The breakup wouldn't be easy. By July, they had agreed to give each other back their things. By August, a fatal shooting would occur. Sponsors in this episode: Straight Talk Wireless - With Straight Talk Wireless, you can get a Samsung Galaxy A51 for just $199. Plus, get the $45 unlimited talk, text, and data plan with NO contract on America's best networks for up to 50% less. Peloton - Get started on your Peloton journey. Go to onepeloton.com to learn more. Talkspace - Get $100 off your first month and show your support for the show by using the code COURT at talkspace.com. Jordan Harbinger Show - Search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode was researched and written by Polly Kotowski with Law & Crime. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @PollyKotowski. Please consider supporting Court Junkie with as little as $3 a month via Patreon.com/CourtJunkie to receive ad-free episodes. Help support Court Junkie with $6 a month and get access to bonus monthly episodes. Follow me on Twitter @CourtJunkiePod or Instagram at CourtJunkie.

On this week's episode of the Northeast Newscast we're joined by Northeast Community Center's Development Director Kyla Pitts-Zevin and Executive Director Laura Shultz. By July 1, Kyla will transition into the role of executive director as Laura retires. Laura shares how the Community Center has grown in her years there, the addition of Harmony Project KC, and the crucial support they provide their students and families. Harmony Project, a youth music education program, is participating in Kansas City's Make Music Day on June 21 with a concert at Concourse Park. More details at northeastnews.net.

Bitcoin (BTC) remained under pressure as traders react to latest news. The cryptocurrency is still down about 36% month to date. Price recoveries have remained limited to below $40,000 as the broader uptrend weakens. Slowing momentum has been the dominant theme this year as bitcoin failed to maintain all-time highs.#Bitcoin #BTC #IndependenceDay~Bitcoin Independence Day | BTC to $40k By July 4th? ~⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺Subscribe on YouTube ✅ https://bit.ly/PBNYoutubeSubscribeFacebook

This episode is an example of what the Roofstock Academy Mastermind sessions look like. Mastermind groups have long been a powerful tool that successful people use to support each other and advance their goals. Gathering a group of motivated individuals with a diverse range of skillsets to focus on one person at a time helps shine fresh light on challenges, uncover new solutions and provide accountability. The Mastermind group is just one of the many benefits we offer inside the Roofstock Academy. --- Transcript Tom: Greetings, and welcome to Roofstock Academy. My name is Tom Schneider. And I'm joined by Michael Albaum, Ryan Minekime and Dean West, and today we're going to be walking through a template of a mastermind group.   So this is a mastermind session that lasts about an hour. And we're going to be going through the regular activities where everyone is going to provide an update on their successes, their challenges. We're going to go into specific action items. And then we're going to put Ryan on the hot seat and talk about what he's working on. We're going to grill them, we're going to give them some feedback, all that good stuff. All right.   Dean: All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Dean West, a Roofstock Academy coach. And I have been investing in a couple markets now. Primarily Atlanta and Indianapolis. I believe I'm the the remotest real estate investor. I'm currently in Cape Town, South Africa, while investing in the US.   Ryan: Hello everyone, I'm Ryan Minekime. I'm also coach at the Roofstock Academy. I've been investing for about seven or eight years, I started out investing in California. And now I'm doing bur investing in the Indianapolis market as well. And I live in the Bay Area, California.   Tom: Hey, my name is Tom Schneider. I'm also a coach at Roofstock Academy. I have been investing for about 10 years, and I invest remotely in the southeast of the United States as well as the North East.   Michael: Hey, everybody, I'm Michael album, I'm also a coach at the Roofstock Academy. I like Ryan got my start investing in Southern California about a decade ago and do value add multifamily investing all over the country with a emphasis and focus on the Midwest on some of those Midwest markets.   Dean: Alright. So I'm really excited today to on behalf of rootstock Academy to be introducing mastermind groups. And a mastermind group is something that's actually quite near and dear to my heart. It's It's when I first started out several years back, I was in my own mastermind group with three other people. And that's the one thing that really spurred me to take action on my real estate investing and pushed me both professionally and personally.   So the mastermind group what it is, it's a accountability group of like minded people. So groups typically consist of three to five people. And there's certain roles within the group. And how it's broken down is it's broken into four major sections. And the sections talk about kind of the week overview, talking about, you know, some of the challenges and successes that you've had during the week goes then into talking about, you know, what, what your major or epic goal is that you're trying to achieve. And it doesn't just have to be in real estate, I actually I encourage people to talk about not just real estate, but also kind of personal if you're looking to lose 10 pounds or something like that, as well as invest in a property in Dallas, Texas. Great, put it out there. And I think it's something that's, that's really helpful for people to grow.   One of the big things we do in a mastermind group is what's called the hot seat, the hot seat is kind of a deep dive. So every week on a rotating basis, and the hot seat is chosen for one person and and that person talks about any challenge that they're having that they're trying to overcome. And they use the rest of the group as a sounding board, or as a way of soliciting feedback to try and overcome that challenge. And if you don't have challenges for the week, that's fine as well. You can talk about your, your kind of your roadmap to success and just see what what people have to say about, you know, the structure that you've put in place to achieve that epic goal.   And then the last section is is talking about what are you committing to? What are you committed to from next week? What are you going to achieve before the next mastermind group. And I think it's really important to to set a goal. But ultimately, if you like myself, we don't always follow through with it and mastermind groups, hey, I don't quote me on this here. But there was a study done when the University of California University is talking about how, you know, if you set a goal, that's great, but if you set a goal with in a mastermind group, you're 76% more likely to actually achieve that goal.   So I think that that resonates really well with me, just being my personal background of getting introduced to mastermind groups, and I really hope it's a success for all of you.   Michael: And I think it was something like 37% of statistics are made up on the spot, but that probably wasn't one of them.   Dean: Absolutely not. Not this one. Yeah, so I think what we're gonna do now is just give you a bit of a taste of a dry run of a mastermind group in action. So this is the first time we're meeting together as a formation of this, this mastermind group. So the first meeting is always a slightly different than the second, the third meeting, we have a template that will be going through the four roles, which I should touch on as well says the moderator, which I will be today, the moderator is typically in charge of setting up the meetings, and really just helping to facilitate the discussion move things along during the call.   The second piece is the timekeeper. So Michael will be our timekeeper for today, very important.They are the ones that are tracking minute by minute, you know that making sure we're on schedule. And if we are running off schedule, or someone's speaking a bit long, they will help gently remind them that they're going over their allotted time.   The third role is the the note taker. So Tom will be our note taker today. They will be the responsible for filling out the template, jotting down what people's commitments are epic goals, and then at the end of the mastermind group, they will, they will then share that document with the rest of the group.   And then fourth is the hot seat. So Ryan will be in our hot seat today. And that, again, is just talking about about half the time has spoken about just a challenge or a roadmap that they're trying to achieve. And they'll be walking through that.   Michael: And Dean do these positions rotate from meeting to meeting. Are they consistent throughout the life of the group?   Dean: Yeah, absolutely. So they do rotate to keep things you know, make sure everyone gets a fair a fair say throughout the sessions. So every week it typically rotates. And at the end of the meeting is typically when we decide on on the hot seat for next week who the facilitators timekeeper, etc.   Michael: Awesome.   Dean: Great. Awesome.   All right. So let's dive right in. Like I said, I'll be the moderator today. Tom, the note taker, Michael, the timekeeper, and then Ryan, the hot seat. And so kicking off is our overview section. So this in this section here, we talk about our, our challenges and successes, we typically don't want to talk for a second, I think for 5 minutes. So we only want to talk for about a minute or so about, you know, just some highlights some of the successes or the highs and lows of the week. And just to help inform the group.   Michael: Gentlemen, five minutes on the clock, start your engines.   Dean: Thank you, Michael.   So I can I can kick it off. So my my challenges and successes of the week. I guess I'll start off with my successes. I always like to start off on a high note. And is twofold. Actually, I last week, I rented out to my units that were vacant. So that is all taken care of now, which I'm very excited about. And then my second success is taxes cuz I like to cross donate and taxes. I've been pushed back a month. But that's didn't help me because I just pushed it my work back a month as well. So pretty much done to my taxes. And then one of my challenges for the week is just a personal challenge. Just the motivation to to work out on my side. Michael, you want to kick us off next?   Michael: Sure. So a high for me was I celebrated my two year wedding anniversary this past week, which was a lot of fun my wife and I did something really nice and special. My challenged that I had this week was I had a selling a six unit property that I bought as a buy and hold originally, but really turned it into a fix and flip over about a course of a year and a half. And that fill out a contract kind of went sideways due to a massive utility bill spiking and throwing off all of the valuations of the property. Because it's a multifamily commercial building, it trades based on cap rates and noi, and the noi got vastly decimated by this utility bill. So it's an estimated building, we're trying to figure out what to do with it, we're probably just going to take it off the market try to re stabilize it get the tenants in line, possibly even mass or sub meter everything or institute a rubs which is a ratio utility billing system and get the noi back in line and then bring it back on market at the end of the summer here.   Dean: Tom Do you want to go next?   Tom: I've been just dragging my feet like nobody's business on getting my insurance updated. I use the initial insurance that was provided to me and I, I knew that I wanted to change it and it's literally like years and years later. So I have officially bundled that with my personal through a big insurance broker. So kind of a big, big win for something that's just lasted way too long. And I'm also gonna I'm going to glob on to that success of getting taxes. That's something that I like to drag my feet on as well. But I have that submitted some challenges is I have a lot of balls in the air right now. With refinancing three properties, and it's a little bit ambiguous to me right now on where all of them sit, like I've been responding to emails as they come in, but I think it could be a little more proactive in reaching out to my lender. So I'd say the challenge is just being a little bit too passive in the process. Because, you know, I think there's there could be some timing considerations with, you know, making sure the loan rate lock and all that stuff. So, yeah, it's a challenge is just being a little bit more organized on some of these less organized than I should be on some of these refinances.   Michael: Is this all with the same lender, Tom or different lenders?   Tom: All the same lender.   Dean: Yeah. All right, Ryan.   Ryan: So I will start with challenges. And then we can end on a high note on my challenges. I think I've put in three offers over the past 10 days or so. And all of them got outbid by like, 40k on like, 150k purchase price. So just everything's getting taken very quickly. So that was a challenge is getting a little defeated there and putting in offers on the successes, I started looking at off market properties, which we'll jump into when I get in the hot seat. But I got two appointments that this week with potential sellers. So that was a positive note.   And then also my wife and I are said to have a baby on Thursday. And so this past weekend, we just did like everything as our last time before kids. So like we went to a brewery and we're like, Okay, this is the last time I'm going to burger for kids. We went to out to dinner, we're like this is our last date and like 18 years so. So we just, we went through and sort of did a bucket list of things we wanted to we wanted to do.   Tom: Just say Congrats. I joined the the dad club like a year and a half ago and the water's warm. It's It's It's awesome. My one my recommendation would be getting one of those giant yoga balls that you can sit on is one of the few things a dad can you know, to calm a baby like, you know, the bouncing up and down. Mom's got some special tools built right into her to help calm a baby. But yeah, I'd get one of those big yoga bouncy balls. But congratulations. That's really awesome.   Ryan: Yeah. Thank you exciting.   Dean: All right, Michael, how are we doing on time here?   Michael: We got nine seconds we crushed that guy's. Perfect,   Dean: Look at that. All right. So the next section is commitment. So we talk, this is about a 10 minute section roughly. And it's broken down to these three subsections. Again, the first one, this is our first mastermind group meeting, it will be slightly different.   But for this meeting, we'll be talking about our epic goals. Like I said, again, it doesn't just have to be real estate focus, think about you know, something in your personal life that you want to achieve, whether it be changing careers, or you know, losing weight, or whatever it is, and on top of your real estate goals as well.   So that's your your epic goal. We talked about also, it's what's called last week's commitment. Since we didn't have a commitment last week, we won't speak about it. And then if that commitment was completed, yes or no.   So I'll start off. Again, what's the timeline for the epic goals? It's it's pretty important like we talked about in restock Academy, setting your SMART goals and making sure it's realistic, timely, etc.   Ryan: What's the timeline for the epic goals?   Dean: You want to set a timeline around it, say epic goals typically, in your three to six month period is typically what you will try and shoot for. Alright, so starting off myself. So my first, it's not really an epic. I would call it more of a grand goal. And so one notch down from an epic goal. But you know, within the next three months, I do want to do a 401k Roth IRA conversion, as well as doing a cost segregation, potentially do a cost segregation study on my four Plex if the numbers make sense.   So what I'm trying to do as much as I can this year, as I'm shooting for my real estate, tax professional status, is I want to try and drive up as many expenses or deductions that I can this year in order to kind of offset my my wife's income. And number two is. So within the next three months, I also want to take over the management of my Indianapolis portfolio. And that's a couple of reasons but number one is an a bit underwhelmed with my PM at the moment, especially after doing my taxes just kind of seeing where things lie. And it also drive up my net operating income for my portfolio.   And then the third reason actually one of the more important ones is the reason I want to do this is because I need more hours for my tax professional status. I think we need 750 hours. And so I want to make sure that I reach that. My last goal and personal goal for me is that within the next three to four months, I want to be able to meditate everyday consistently for at least 15 minutes. And my mind is always on so many different places at once and I'd really like to kind of take a deep breath and kind of be able to focus. And I think meditation is a good aspect for that. So those are my epic goals, or grand goals.   Michael?   Michael: Awesome. So, by July 31, I would like to have my development projects completed, finished and started to get rented. So I've talked about this on a lot of other podcasts, a lot of other episodes, I'm redeveloping a 20,000 square foot commercial use, or mixed use building and creating 15 residential units and two commercial spaces out of that it has been a long, sweaty, bloody tear field road, that we're not quite done yet, but starting to get there. So I'm trying to get that over the finish line. By July 31. I'm going to speak that into reality.   Then I just got a flip property under contract, I'm doing a flip inside of my Roth IRA, something I wanted to try my hand at. So I just got a small property under contract, I'm looking at have that completed, that flip completed and marketed within the next 45 days, we're due to close in two weeks. So that's a pretty aggressive timeline, but I think it can be done.   And then on a more personal note, similar to Dean, I want to focus more on sleep, I've definitely noticed over time, my sleep has deteriorated, I think mostly to be me being in my own head. So many things like Tom and Dean, I've got a lot of balls up in the air and constantly thinking about that. And I need to really help separate for myself, the personal world, from the business world and the sleep world from the business world, which I find hard to do, I'm not really not good at condense or condensing is wrong word. But, boxing, if you will, different different aspects. And I'm always thinking and always switched on. So I need to really help focus on on switching off. So that's definitely a big focus of mine over the next three to six months.   Dean: Right. Awesome, Michael? Thank you, Tom?   Tom: Yeah, so in going through the reef eyes that I'm doing, I need to redeploy that capital on the cash that I'm getting back. So I'm expecting to have those funds in the bank sometime in early May. So I'd love to have it two to three properties in contract by the end of May. You know, I guess, being sequential about this, I've been an SFR guy for a long time. And I was thinking about doing a little bit of either small commercial or, or like a four Plex. I see. I see Michael, he's, he's excited about that. So I really need to sit down and kind of finalize that plan. So I might put some time on Michael's calendar and thinking through that.   So having those funds in when they hit the bank account like not, because I'm paying for that, right. But that debt is running, having a very locked in plan in place, they either continue to add a couple more SFR or go multifamily. And I think they're putting a date to that, I think by the mid May, so May 15. Like I have to have a very specific and I keep looking at you know, properties down like different strategies like looking at SFR and looking at commercial stuff. So I guess really locking that down and then executing that. So number one is going to fit Yep, building finalizing that, where I'm going to just tribute the new funds for these, this next round of acquisitions.   And my other goals that I have is just have my second vaccine coming up pretty excited about that. And just starting to reengage with some friends that I haven't seen in a while still, you know, wearing masks and doing doing all the right precautions, but after getting the second vaccine starting to, to re engage with some friends and some more outdoor stuff. So I love being specific about it. So all say having, you know, two events in a row of friends. Yes, that's gonna be my my non my my fun one. So.   Dean: That's very topical. And that's, that's Adam will go on a lot of us are dying to get out there again and re engage with the world like we used to back in the day. Right, Ryan? How about yourself?   Ryan: Yeah. So on a personal note, going back to being a dad on Thursday or sooner, just trying to be as supportive as possible in all of that was my wife. So taking care of the cooking and the cleaning and everything that I can do. Maybe some some midnight shifts, if I'm been tapped for that, but whatever, whatever it takes on that end, and then on the real estate side. So just working on getting this off market deal finding process up and running. So specifically, I want to put two properties under contract either buying holds or flips by we'll call it mid June. So get two properties under contract.   And then also I'm trying to figure out a way to monetize the leads that I don't want to keep. So what I've found is there's a lot of leads coming in that are probably good deals, but I just don't want them and so trying to figure out a way to monetize that without becoming like a wholesaler like very minimal touch way to at least break even on all my marketing spend for deals that I don't want to keep.   Dean: Awesome, you know, your, your your personal goal of cooking and waking up midnight. Now that you've said it in the mastermind group and as soon as Tom writes it down, it's a kind of set in stone. So you know, we're holding you to it, Ryan.   Ryan: Luckily, I'm not a great sleeper like all of you sounds like us some of that time and go do my midnight shift then.   Dean: Alright, excellent. So we set out epic goals. So what we can do so moving forward, once the group have set their epic goals, you typically use that as your kind of baseline that you kind of go against, and all your commitments that you commit to throughout the week should be committing to, you know, essentially a small version or a sprint goal that essentially leads to your epical eventually.   And since we didn't, like I said, do a mastermind group last week, we weren't we weren't talking about last week's commitment. And and hopefully next week, when we meet, we will say we've completed it and get together. All right, I think we're at time, Michael, how are we doing?   Michael: Yeah, we got two minutes left. So again, we did a nice job there.   Dean: Excellent. Okay. On to the deep dive the hot seat, Ryan. So again, this is just a challenge. Or if you don't have a challenge for the week, you're kind of your success or roadmap to success that you can kind of solicit feedback from from the group. So, Ryan, why don't we dive right in?   Ryan: Perfect. So like I mentioned, I'm trying to find off market deals. And I started this about a month and a half ago. And I think part of the issue right now is I'm just a little bit scattered. And so I have a cold caller that's basically cold, calling six hours a day to just find leads. And what I've found is that I'm running through my potential options pretty quickly. So again, I'm investing in Indianapolis. And my criteria is pretty narrow. It's like three bedroom, one and a half bath in certain neighborhoods. And there's only so many phone numbers that you can call. So I'm finding that I'm running through those leads pretty quickly. And I'm not finding the quality of leads that I wanted. And then now I've also started to try out direct mail campaigns as well.   And I think part of my issue is I'm just not quite focused, because I feel like I'm running out of leads in one spot or the other. So I'm just trying multiple things to see what sticks. But nothing, nothing is clicking as easily as I hoped it would or thought it would. And so I'm having a little bit of trouble there just like actually turning leads into appointments and getting the deal closed.   As I sort of mentioned in my epic goal, one of the pieces I'm trying to do is have this direct marketing source be sort of self funding. So if I can figure out a way to, if I get 10 leads, and maybe one or two look good for me, how do I get rid of the other eight without just throwing them away, like passes up someone that wants them, whether it's a relationship based thing, or actually sell them to someone. So I've been experimenting with a couple things on that end, for example, one I found someone local and IndY that can sort of track leads down. I've tested that out with a couple of them. Another one is I'm talking to the wholesaler that I normally use of actually selling him the leads, and then getting a commission on the downstream.   So those are the two approaches I've gone after. But it's just too early to tell right now if either of those will really work. So all of this, I would say I'm like early on in the game, but I don't know how people continue to do this year round and make it work because there's there just doesn't seem to be that many deals out there.   Dean: It's one of those things that inventory, not as Indianapolis I invest as well. So I noticed scarcity there, but just across the US is so scarce right now that people are going to cold calling and skip tracing, do all these other things that they can try and do to try and find some kind of deal out there. And so I can certainly empathize with your situation.   Ryan out of curiosity, what what um, what do you use for your cold calling? What's the I know, we spoke about deal machine, but I don't think it was that. What do you use right now?   Ryan: It's a company called scale and grow. And I think they're brand new, but I actually went to an investor meetup in Indianapolis last November, so and I happen to be sitting at a table with one of the guys who was just trying to kick that off the ground. And so it's very small right now. I think they have five or six school colors in the Philippines and they just sort of rotate those between they'll do the skip tracing for you and, and all that. So that's what I'm using right now. And I'm using prop stream. I mentioned I tried out one direct mailer. I'm using prop stream for that.   Michael: Ryan, I'm curious why your criteria just about your criteria that three, one and a half. Can you get into that a little bit and maybe we can try to figure out if we can't expand that a little expand the scope?   Ryan: Yeah, that's a good question. So honestly, I'm just a sucker for like three, one and a half brick building. So part of it is just personal preference. Like whenever I see those, I always jump on them.I really liked the one a half bathroom, it's more than one and a half bathroom than anything else. And so I feel like overall just attract a little bit better clientele of a renter, if I'm trying to keep that long term. And it's more attractive to sell if I want to flip it. So it's a little bit more the one and a half bathroom than anything else.   One thing I started to look at last week is expanding out to two beds, one and a half baths that are bigger in size. So 1000 square feet, so I can, if that's where you're going try and build a third bedroom on or maybe try to build a second bathroom on. But I almost feel like the building a third bedroom is probably easier than building a second half bath, just because of plumbing and everything else. But that's definitely an option or an opportunity to expand there.   Michael: That's exactly where I was going with that. And for everybody listening or watching, but Ryan's talking about is, is buying something that has enough square footage to add an additional bedroom, maybe it has a formal dining room or just a large living room that you can corner off or build some internal walls without changing the exterior footprints, because that's much easier to do is changing the interior footprint. And then adding a third or fourth or fifth bedroom, whatever size your heart desires. And that can add a tremendous amount of value both on the rental side and on the resale side of things.   So I think that's a really good way to expand the scope, I would not be shocked if your lead list doubled. As a result of that. I don't know what the housing stock looks like specifically in Indianapolis. But I said that weird Indianapolis. Indeed, but I think it could be could add a lot of names to your list.   Ryan: Yeah, just to give you a sense for the size, when I just did the three, one and a half. And I'm also doing over 25% equity. So people that aren't like leveraged up completely and would actually want to sell this at a discount. There was about 8000 people on that list. But given that 8000 people on cold calling, I actually don't even know the stats, I should notice that but a very small percent answer and then a very small percentage of that are willing to actually sell.   And so that's why I'm having trouble, like the 8000 actually run through pretty quickly with direct mail. I'm sure it lasts a little bit longer. But at least on cold calling, I'm running through that list pretty quickly.   Tom; That's a great segue into my comments, do you like so much of this business is like knowing your funnel and like what your conversion rates and like understanding what like baseline should be. Because I mean, you get to that point. And it's sort of just like an equation like, Okay, I know, if I do like, you know, a 10th of 1%, I need to put this many leads in or there's like, I think those metrics are super important to understand in this kind of a strategy, not only for like working backwards on hitting your goals, but also to monitor your partnerships that you're using, especially a newer company that's just kind of getting off the ground, I think it's really important to have kind of know what the industry baselines like of that type of either a cold call or a mailer. And then you can go back to talk to them and kind of see how they're performing against it.   Because I mean, there's so many different chains in the in the flow here, where there could be issues, where it's super important to have kind of a baseline of expectations on industry and kind of working working backwards. From there, I think that's also going to just add a lot of sanity of, of just being data driven about it instead of you know, just looking at the end of the day from the very start to the very end, but looking all those little like sub parts.   Ryan: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think I definitely need to investigate that. I asked the company themselves, but they didn't give a good answer on baselines, probably because they're new. And they don't do it that much yet. But I think that's a really good point. And another thing I've been trying to do a little bit is sort of a b test, at least with different neighborhoods to say like, Alright, this neighborhood, I'm going to try cold calling this neighborhood, I'm going to try direct mail and see what gives a better response. So kind of testing within the two strategies that way, but I think knowing the industry benchmarks.   Tom: And the different layers of the funnel, right, so like, okay, what's the pickup rate? What's the actual like, talk about rate, you know, you know, I'm saying like getting as granular as you can there. I think that's gonna help identify, you know, where there are issues, issues in the flow, where you, you know, get as granular as possible that we might be my feedback on.   Ryan: Yeah, that's a really good plan.   Dean: And Ryan, what about So you said right now you're, you're limited to kind of your buybox to specific area of India, East nd Have you looked at other regions like this, the South, the east is obviously a lot more affordable and then the South has also kind of one of the places we talked about Greenwood. Southport, I think you have a place there, that you're gonna have some affordability even the West, I know there's some really good neighborhoods that are somewhat affordable still. And have you thought about expanding your your markets or your different neighborhoods?   Ryan: Yeah. So the 1000 I mentioned before is all of Indianapolis, including the west side, one thing I did start doing recently is expanding cells, as we talked about a little bit. So going down to Greenwood, the, the constraint I was working with in there is trying to keep it within the neighborhoods that I know my property manager manages. And so I basically reach out to them, ask them, which neighborhoods they expand to. And I've tried to stay within that just because I didn't really want to go down the headache of finding a new property manager and a new contractor and all that good stuff. So I want to try and keep it within the system. To the extent possible.   Dean: If you did find a place outside of the zone of where your pm works, would you be open to just flipping it and then kind of passing it on for profit moving on?   Ryan: Yeah, yeah, I'm not, I'm not necessarily sold on buying hold as a strategy for all these. It's more just an overall income stream. So I'm more than happy to, to flip, if I see an opportunity that comes up, or even potentially wholesale something, if it, if it works out, I'm trying to keep it sort of my overall goal is to not spend a lot of effort on this sort of keep systematize it as much as possible so I can sort of stay out of it, but just have extra leads coming in to myself as sort of a lead flow more than anything else.   Michael: This might be a bit of a naive question. But as someone who's never worked with cold callers, or hired a company like that, how much of this deal flow conversion rate do you think is a result of the physical person on the other end of that phone? Who's calling the lead?   Ryan: I'm sure it's a lot of it. Because I personally get cold callers, like calling me every day. And some of those almost all of them, I hang up immediately, but like some of them just something about, I mean, are you just like, Alright, well, what would you offer me and like, you just go a little bit further with them. And it's something about the person on the other side. So I think that's probably a big piece of it. And I think that back to Tom's point of like, knowing the industry benchmarks would probably add a lot of value there just to know if like, if this company is coming in at half the rate or if they're actually on par, and it's just a small funnel that you have to work with?   Dean: And what about the other thing, that from a personal experience, like yourself, I have to be hanging up on the cold callers and always get that call interested in selling my property? What about text messaging, you know, that's, that's less, it's a bit more formal, but it's, it's the only messages I've ever responded to on text. And that's definitely I don't like to speak to people, you know, potentially a precious situation of trying to sell my home. But if done via text, it's a bit more informal, that more relaxed, the seller could be the more relaxed by giving out information and being a bit more willing to speak to you.   Ryan: Yeah, I think that that's another good point. I actually have a friend who has sort of a text message business for a different industry. And so I was picking his brain a little bit on like how this might work for real estate, I just, I need to talk to him to see what the options are. I know, there are some legal things recently about texting that kind of made it a little bit tougher than it used to be.   But I definitely need to talk to him and talk to someone about this. I think overall, I should just talk to someone who does direct marketing, because I haven't necessarily done that. Like, I've watched a lot of YouTube videos, and I've read a lot of things about it. But I haven't talked to someone who's actually good at it that can probably like, help me skip over like two or three of the like learning steps that I'm going through and probably wasting money on right now.   Tom: I think that's a great like segue that kind of into like, another piece of advice is like, what, what parts of this do you want to be good at? And which parts do you want to outsource? You know, I think naturally like we're inclined to like to be sort of a jack of all trades and do everything but you know, this could be a good spot for you, right? And you don't want to spend too much time on it. Just find people that are already doing this, that already good at it. If the ultimate goal is deal flow, you know, let somebody else work, you know that you can vet and trust, like manage the sausage factory, where you just kind of be on the other side. Now, sure, you'll probably end up paying a little bit more for this, but I'd say for your time, it's probably worth it.   Ryan: Yeah. 100%. And the the piece that I'm trying to stay out of is like getting on the phone with potential sellers everyday like I have no business being in that I'm not good at it. And I don't want to be good at it. And so I've been trying to find someone that is willing to do sort of that piece of it. But it's just it's hard to find that when you don't have a track record of closing deals yet. You're like, hey, do you want to jump on the phone and talk to a bunch of random people that may or may not sell their house? And then maybe I'll give you a cut of it. So I think figuring out what that piece looks like and finding someone that I trust is definitely a big step in it.   And I've been trying to do that a little bit. I've talked to probably three or four people that are like local Indianapolis investors that are willing to jump on the phone and talk to people. But I think finalizing that piece of it is definitely worthwhile and definitely good plan.   Michael: Is this how wholesalers find their deals?   Ryan: It's basically wholesaling. But I'm trying not to do the work of wholesaling for like, I'm not trying to take it to fruition and actually sell the deal on the other side. Just take the lead and keep it for myself.   Michael: Right. Right. Well, so my guess is that the wholesaler that you buy from locally in India is probably not going to want to chat with you about how they source their deals. What about or do you think that they would? Would that be a good a good source to chat with?   Ryan: Well, so they're definitely not going to give me tips on how to get better at it. But what I think I mentioned this at the beginning, but one of the things I'm doing now is actually passing the lease that I don't want off to them, because I know they'll pretty much buy anything. And so we've actually worked out a deal, where they'll give me a cut on the back end of a deal that I've passed to them, and then they end up selling, which is a very low touch way to hopefully at least break even on this thing. But it's just too early to tell how many of those they're going to close.   Michael: So you're wholesaling to your wholesalers.   Ryan: Yeah, selling leads to my wholesaler. And then potentially buying it from them on the back end of   Michael: Full circle. Yeah, I I've got to imagine that there are wholesalers because I know that they're, you know, professional wholesalers in other markets, maybe on bigger pockets that you could try reaching out to just to see, kind of like Tom, the analogy, Tom uses the sausage factory, what components are they using, and they're a sausage factory, I've got imagine it's relatively homogeneous throughout the country, what that process looks like, I'm sure you're going to tailor it to slightly towards individuals and to different markets. But I think at the high level, just that the deal flow and the lead acquisition process, I would guess is is relatively done. And so trying to rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or build your own wheel, there's there have got to be folks out there that you can get on the phone to chat with.   Ryan: I think 100% I can and I read like a wholesaling book, which kind of got me there. But it's definitely more tailored to like how do you double close and all that kind of stuff? And so I think just the beginning of the process like that lead gen funnel, definitely worth talking to someone. And yes, that is exactly what they're doing. So I think that would probably be a good place to start. Probably someone not in Indianapolis, but I don't think I'm trying to steal their business.   Michael: Poach their deals. Yeah.   Ryan: Yeah, exactly.   Michael: And just people who don't know, Ryan, what's a double close?   Ryan: So the way I understand it on wholesaling, there's sort of two ways you can do it, you can either get the deal under contract and then assign it to someone else and have an assignment fee on there where it's very clear on the transaction that you are making 5k or 10k on this deal, or there's a double close where you technically close on the house, and then you immediately sell it to the end buyer. But you still don't need to bring any money to the table because they're sort of using the funds from the third transaction to from the first transaction. So there's sort of two ways to close on that from a wholesaling perspective.   Michael: Awesome.   Dean: This is a bit I kind of outside the box but I just remember listened to a podcast and I forgotten the name of the gentleman who does the study is quite an ingenious way you always have people flooding you with you know sell your house like speak to me like there's always people soliciting your business in the way do you want to stick out from the crowd right? You don't want to be just another one of the people asking do you want to sell your house and this one guy he used to send mail mail letter with often you know I want to buy your house etc. But he also left like a little Rubik's cube with it. And his tagline was, let's figure this out together. And I thought that was quite brilliant that they stuck out in his head and maybe like it they went into right now but when they are interested they will probably go back to that guy or left to like a weird little puzzle piece with their mail and just kind of makes you stick out from the crowd.   So I wouldn't say necessarily go down that route of mating off Rubik's Cubes or chess pieces but you know something similar can help you in the long term. Stick out from the from the card like that.   Ryan: Yeah, that's a great idea. My wife actually had a similar idea this weekend. She's like what if you just mail everyone cookies? I'm like I don't think we want to mail 8000 cookies to the city of Indianapolis.   Dean: Or candy!   Tom: Carmel, wrapped Carmel get like you know   Ryan: But yeah, no, I think something like that. So you're not just one other mailer and the 10 mailers they got this week is definitely, definitely a good idea.   Tom: I've got a sweet deal for you!   Dean: I know you're probably in Indianapolis. Aren't you heading to Indianapolis soon? Meet the buyer, at some point.   Ryan: Oh, I have an appointment set up. Yeah, but someone else is my product during the appointment.   Dean: Okay, I think the other thing is it's been more manual, but you know, highs, I'm driving for dollars, you know, driving past places where, you know, there's overgrown bushes, or you know, the grass is too long. And you can kind of see it, you know, just people who, you know, aren't picking off the place that may be on the verge of foreclosure, that you could potentially help them alleviate from a sticky situation.   So you could do a very targeted marketing that way as well, just to kind of another option.   Ryan: Yeah, I think there's a bunch of ways to do it. And it's just finding the right figuring out which one works for me. And then just sticking with that.   Michael: Wouldn't that be awesome if the grass front lawn grass link was public record, and you could search that?   Dean: I think it sounds like we have a few action items that you can work with. And then try and utilize to see what might be the best cold calling method or kind of wholesaling to wholesalers type of method that you can utilize for your for your investing.   Ryan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I'm gonna try and talk to a wholesaler gonna try and figure out what some of those industry benchmarks are. And just try to narrow in on some of the details, at least give myself some sanity on whether I'm actually just spinning here. Or if this is just the normal process.   Michael: With the industry benchmarking, I would push that company a little bit more on it, because I've got to imagine the whole reason they got into business in the first place was because they were trying to accomplish some goal, or they saw a niche in the marketplace that they could add value. So there's no way that they don't know what the industry benchmarks are like that just seems pretty naive to start a company and have no idea or not be able to give your clients a pretty straightforward answer of what's reasonable for the for the market.   Ryan: Yeah, that's a good point.   Dean: All right. Well, Ryan, you were speaking about some your your goals or what you plan to do. That segues well into our next topic, which is this coming week's commitment. So we'll kind of go around again in the same order. But working looking at your epic or grand goal, my case, you know, what you're committing to every week should be essentially biting away at the goal that you're trying to achieve eventually. So what you're trying to set for yourself, your commitments should kind of align with those, those epic goals.   So for my, for my commitments, I talked about my epic goals of doing the 401k, Roth IRA conversion and doing a cost seg. And I think, what I want to do next week, well, this coming week is run the numbers to see if cost segregation for my four plex would be worth spending the money to get it done. And so that's what I want to do this week to help achieve that goal.   And the second one is I want to read this is my second goal was to take over management about my portfolio is to read the first 30 pages of the book on managing rental properties. And so I have that collecting dust somewhere around here. And that I want to pick up and read.   The third one. I'm one meditate, set a commitment to meditating at least twice this week. And that's what I plan to do. And in terms of the next pieces is talking about your actionable next steps. So it's great to kind of set these these small goals. But let's go even further like how what do you need to do to achieve that commitment this week?   So like, what's that bite size or your most important next step to achieving that goal, or that commitment for next week. So kind of an auto just went down for my actionable next steps. Michael sent me a contact for a one of his people that helped him with the cost segregation study. And so I'm going to my actionable next step is to reach out to that contact, send them an email and introduce myself and kind of tell them what I'm trying to do the next actionable next step or most important next step about reading my book is to find the book. It's a crucial, crucial step in achieving that goal.   I just moved. Yes, I have boxes and boxes full of stuff I'm going to try find that book. And then my third one about meditating. I'm gonna set an alarm on my phone for two times this week to, to make sure I'm going to be meditating at that at that time so that I can't kind of back up. So that is my next week's commitment and my actionable next steps.   Michael?   Michael: Are you using any kind of assistance for to meditate any kind of app or book or music?   Dean: Yeah, yeah, I, I use an app. Right now. Actually, I download I used headspace last year, I tried to get into it. I wasn't really feeling it as much. So I downloaded Comm. app. It's another one of those very popular apps out there. And I part of my meditation rituals, I kind of set a little candle in front of me and just kind of focus on the breathing and look at the candle kind of zone out.   Tom: Love it and that when   Dean: I will livestream it as I'm meditating defeats the purpose. But anyway. Yeah. All right, Michael, what is your commitment this week?   Michael: So commitment this week is to make additional headway on the redevelopment projects going to push the contractor to make additional progress. And I'll talk about how to do that in my here in a minute. I want to get additional legwork done on the flip as well. And I'll talk about that in just a minute and then going to commit to watching some there's a TED talk or I think some YouTube videos on things you can do when you're having trouble sleeping. So I'm going to be watching some of those this week and trying to implement those.   So what I'm going to be doing stepwise actionable stepwise to get the contractor moving along. This whole time we've been on time and materials, he's been building me time and materials, which is basically how much time his crew spends, and whatever the materials cost. That's what he builds me, I'm gonna be moving to lump sum payments going forward. Because the longer they take, the more money they make, versus now when it's a lump sum, they are now incentivized to finish the project as quickly as possible, because that's when they get paid.   So for this whole time, there was just a lot of unknowns. So they said, Hey, we can't give you a lump sum number, we got to do TNM. So I said, Okay, and now we're past all of the major hurdles, knock on wood. So we should be able to, he should be able to give me a number. And that's really what I need.   Then I'm going to be getting a scope of work for the flip from the project manager out there, who's also the property manager and the agent. And so I said, Okay, I need you to commit to a number. Again, this is if it goes over, you're paying the bill. So I'm not playing these games anymore with these flips. So Ryan, off the chat with you offline about how the best way that you've done that with your burrs is and then yeah, I just watched those TED talks and YouTube videos on on things I can do to implement sleep, better sleep and then utilizing them throughout the week as needed.   Dean: Great. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate you walking us through that. Tom. How about you? What are you committing to this week?   Tom: I was just lastly on sleep. My goal, like I like breaking a sweat can be kind of helpful, like in the evening, like, like, sometimes I'll do like a night run. And I don't know, I find it helps a little bit. I don't know. Anyways.   Michael: Meditation is right.   Tom: Yeah. Meditation is a big is a big part of my spiel.   Michael: You can meditate in the sauna and do both for the price of one.   Tom: Oooh, meditate in the sauna, while running on a treadmill. Just defeat the purpose.   Dean: Yeah, but highly, highly interesting.   Tom: Alright, committing to this week, so I am committing to getting uber organized on my refinances that are going on right now. So like, I'm going to be able to say like exactly what the close date is set for. For those different and you know, they're all occupied units. So it's, you know, making sure that the right appraiser is is in contact is there just a clear date on closing, so getting very organized with my refinancing on knowing that capital is going to hit into the bank.   And the other I think kind of social one, right was like, scheduling a little, you know, safe little friendly outdoor thing with some friends. So I'm gonna get a little text, get set of dates. For my little outdoor, I'm typing my notes as well, outdoor, outdoor Hangout. So the specific actions I'm going to do to fulfill these next commitments is I'm going to call my lender and just walk through every single property and make sure that they have everything and that the, the appraisal has been scheduled.   And then for my actual step for a little social thing is I'm going to get a text thread going with my, my group of people, they're going to do a little, I don't know, either like wine tasting or some random outdoor thing. So get my get a text message thrown. So that'll be my text, spread text thread going with those friends. So, okay, done.   Dean: That's awesome, Tom. Now I have one of those things. And it's it's breaking down those bite sized chunks makes it so much more achievable as whenever you set a goal for yourself, even if it's small, you know, just taking that first step allows one to just be a bit more committed to kind of fulfilling it, you're a lot more likely. What do we say? 37%? More likely, if I'm making a random statistic now to be fulfilling that small goal.   Have you been vaccinated on that you have you gotten your vaccines yet?   Tom: I got my next one coming in the very beginning of May. I will say putting in the, you know, commitments to doing like fun things is pretty fun. I like that.   Dean: It's important as well. I mean, we totally we get sometimes it's not it's not just about work and try to get as much money as possible. It's, it's also about you know, what, you know, what your personal life is, and trying to kind of focus on taking a step back and focus on that as well. So that you feel that way.   Ryan? How about yourself?   Ryan: Yeah. So on my personal goal of becoming a father, I don't think there's really anything I need to do that's actionable to make that happen. Yeah, go to the hospital, pack the bags. On the on the real estate one, I think my goal is to talk to two leads and schedule one appointment in the next week. And then also just understand some of the benchmarks and everything a little bit more. And so I think my actionable steps are, I'm going to network with at least one wholesaler, or someone who's done lead generation through cold calling. So I'm going to just network with one person that's done that.   And then on the benchmark side, Michael, I'm just going to follow up and ask him again and say like, how do you not know this, like you should know this. So reach out to the company directly, as well as figure out, find another way to get industry benchmarks for that. So that I can compare it against something.   Tom: I might have a contact for you on on some industry benchmarks I went to, there was another mastermind I went to last year and actually just reached out randomly about being on the on the podcast. So I've got another contact for you who I'm sure has a pretty good handle on wholesaling benchmarks.   Ryan: That'd be awesome.   Dean: Real time feedback. This is one of the benefits of mastermind groups.   Ryan: That'd be awesome, Tom, thanks.   Dean: All right. So I think my problem better we're ahead of schedule. We're on time, right?   Michael: Yep. Still on time.   Dean: Excellent. So the last, the last thing we like to do is the last minute or two is just to talk about setting the next meeting date and time, I would typically recommend you sticking just to one, like weekly occurrence at at a specific time. Because if everyone's like, oh, let me check my calendar and try and figure it out, then it's not going to get done. We're all busy. And it's the way to getting this done and without fizzling out is setting a specific weekly, date and time every week. And then the other thing we do in this section is speak about who's going to be the next week's rolls. So I typically just kind of rotate it based on the attendee order.   And so we can, we can do that now. And for so for next week. We can commit to the same date and time. And then Ryan barring any kind of hospital occurrence at that time, but for the roles. Let's let's do Michael as the as the moderator, Tom, let's put you in the hot seat. Ryan, you can be the timekeeper. And I'll be the note keeper. Note Taker.   Michael: Perfect. Sounds good.   Dean: That's it. That is how you run a mastermind group session.   Tom: Beautiful.   Ryan: Great.   Dean: And I was just gonna say mastermind like I said it's it kind of resonates personally for me just because this was one thing that really pushed me to be more specific. I literally committed to booking a flight to Dallas, Texas, to check out real estate in that area when I was touring that back in the day and I pulled theTrigger because I had my meeting coming up, and I'm like, Alright, I better commit to this, I'm going to do it. And I booked my ticket and met a couple real estate agents there and did all the stuff. And so that's kind of my first step I took towards real estate investing with mastermind group.   So to me, it kind of resonates Well, it's, it's, I think it's a really important way to, to challenge yourself and to be held accountable to those challenges.   Michael: Absolutely. I think I've never participated in a formal mastermind, I have a couple of accountability buddies that I have calls with standing calls on a weekly basis. And if somebody misses a call, they got to pay the person 10 bucks. And we just talked about what the goals are for the week and what you know whether or not we accomplish them and why we didn't, did or did not accomplish them.   So just to piggyback off your point, the and I think that the localization of what your goals are, I think that there's a lot of science behind that just speaking them to yourself, but then even more, so speaking them to somebody else. Now, I'm not just letting myself down. I'm letting down my accountabilibuddy, who is holding me to an expectation so i think it's it's huge.   Dean: I like that, uh, that the accountabilibuddy, that's a very catchy.   Michael: That's great. It's great. Ryan, I'm curious, just doing like a live quick post mortem. On the session? Was that feedback helpful? Was that were those things that you hadn't thought of? On your own yet?   Ryan: Yeah, um, some of them. So there were things that I hadn't thought of. And then there were other things that I had thought of, but I kind of like wrote off in my mind, I was like, ads, probably not gonna go anywhere. But like hearing you guys say him again. I was like, Okay, I probably should go investigate that. I probably should, like industry benchmarks. I was like, I should know that. But like, whatever. If it's working at the end of the day, it's working, but like just understanding that knowing that, so I think it was really helpful. Yeah.   Dean: Don't forget that Rubik's Cube, you know, fundamental.   Ryan: Yeah. Got your sweet deal.   Dean: That's right. That's right. And one of the important things as well, mastermind groups just being able to people showing up in time, being held accountable to just speak in that time, and then it kind of ending on time as well. I think it's also it's one of the things that's really important. You know, one of the toughest things with mastermind group is just keeping people going and making sure people that doesn't fizzle out and the by kind of cutting the chit chatter a bit or just kind of sticking to the script or the the the template really helps keep people focused and keeps people coming back.   And so yeah, that is a first session. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Appreciate your time.   Michael: Alrighty, everybody, that was our episode, a big thank you to coach Ryan, Tom and Dean, that was a lot a lot of fun. I know I got a lot of value out of it sounds like Ryan did as well. We're going to be hopefully doing these continuously going forward. probably not going to be recording them, but we're still gonna be participating in the mastermind groups. Again, at this summit. You're interested in being a part of come check us out at rootstock. academy.com and we look forward to seeing you in the next one. Happy investing.

Wolf Blitzer interviewed Dr. Fauci and discussed where we are in regards to the pandemic using baseball as a timeline. White House seeks 70% vaccination rate By July 4th. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By July 31, 2015, Richard Smith's co-workers at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida were getting concerned. They hadn't seen Richard since he left work days earlier. Police arrived at his family home to find a horrifying sight: Richard, his mother, Voncile, and brother, John - all brutally murdered. Investigators had an interesting first thought: could this be a Wiccan ritual killing, prompted by a rare blue moon? Could it be the work of witches? Find out in this fascinating episode featuring Mercedes Nagel. Check out our Instagram, @crimaryschool, for visual guides and sources!

In this episode of Intermittent Fasting Stories, Gin talks to Cynthia Guerra from Missouri City, TX. Cynthia has lost 110 pounds thanks to intermittent fasting.Let me tell you about the Delay, Don’t Deny Social Network! Besides the freedom of IF, community is what I most want to offer the world. Instead of relying on the big social network most of us have been on for years, we now have a community that is completely separate and just for us. Members of the DDD Social Network have access to all episodes of Intermittent Fasting Stories within the DDDSN platform, ad-free! That’s just one reason to join. Visit dddsocialnetwork.com to see what else we offer in our membership community. An annual membership is $59.95 and you have access to dozens of groups that we created with you in mind. You can join as many groups as you want and connect with members who share your interests. If you aren’t ready to fully commit for a year, join for $9.99 a month and you can cancel at any time. If you know you’ll want to stay forever, we also have a lifetime membership option available. IF is free. You don’t need to join our community to fast. But if you’re looking for support from a community of like-minded IFers, we are here for you at dddsocialnetwork.com. Cynthia is a stay-at-home mom of two kids. She always struggled with her weight. While she was successful with diets, she would always gain back whatever she lost.By July of 2019, Cynthia had reached her highest weight of 240 pounds and felt miserable. The turning point came for her while on a trip to New York with her husband. A woman on their Brooklyn Bridge tour had to stop because she was out of breath and could not continue. The entire group had to wait for her, and Cynthia realized she herself was on her way to the same scenario. It was time do something different.Her doctor had suggested intermittent fasting as a way to lose weight, and Cynthia began immediately once they returned. Cynthia found the Delay, Don't Deny Facebook group and listened to the Intermittent Fasting Stories podcast. Hearing the success of others was very motivating for Cynthia. She began with a 16:8 protocol, gradually moving to 18:6. Cynthia has lost an astounding 110 pounds!!The health benefits Cynthia has experienced: improved sleep, her joints no longer ache, she has sustained energy throughout the day, and her allergies have improved.Cynthia's advice to new IFers: "Give yourself time to try it. IF is going to take time. Don't just try it for a few days. It's a process, not a sprint. Tweak things if you're not losing. And remember: IF is not always about weight loss."Get Gin’s books at http://www.ginstephens.com/get-the-books.html, including her New York Times Bestseller, Fast. Feast. Repeat., available wherever you buy books! Share your intermittent fasting stories with Gin: gin@intermittentfastingstories.com Follow Gin on Twitter @gin_stephens Follow Gin on Instagram @GinStephens Visit Gin’s website at ginstephens.com Check out Gin’s Favorite Things at http://www.ginstephens.com/gins-favorite-things.html

On today’s show we are talking about how market cycles form and the effect it can have on the economy and a business. How do you know when you are in a bubble and how do you protect against catastrophe when you are surrounded by insane market conditions? Market cycles are often driven by an irrational fear. We saw it last year during the early weeks of the pandemic. Grocery store shelves were emptied of paper products, of hand sanitizer, of cleaning supplies. Last night I went to the grocery store and the shelves were full of toilet paper. Not only that, toilet paper had taken over the seasonal shelf that last week had been full of Easter candy. Like many, we had a three month supply of toilet paper. Are we using more toilet paper than last year? Clearly the answer is no. So it stands to reason that if toilet paper sales in 2020 were $2B above 2019, then at some point toilet paper sales will fall to $2B below the average. That represents a fall of $4B from the peak sales in 2020. You’re probably thinking ok that’s toilet paper. What does that have to do with my business? What does that have to do with real estate? The market conditions a decade ago are a distant memory. Back then you could go to auctions on the court house steps and pick up half a dozen distressed properties over your lunch hour. You could buy properties for 60% less than construction cost. The population had not changed. People still needed a place to live. How did the demand evaporate and create these strange market conditions? The question is, with new supply coming into the market at the rate of about 1.2-1.5 million homes a year in the United States, and roughly 1/4 million housing starts in Canada, will there be enough demand to absorb the new supply in the locations where that supply is being added? This is the classic question of assessing the headwinds and tailwinds in a market segment. Unlike toilet paper, which can easily be shipped to meet the demand, houses are firmly planted in the ground. You could have a housing boom in Fort Lauderdale at the same time that you experience a housing recession in Detroit. That has more to do with migration trends than it does population growth. The lack of supply could be real, or perhaps artificial. Was there really a lack of toilet paper last year? Not really. People were hoarding toilet paper. They were buying toilet paper to hold. They were not selling it, and they were not using it any faster than normal. The question is, are people buying more real estate than they need and just holding it. How many people from the NE USA are buying second homes in Florida or the Carolinas? Those condos near the beach sit empty for most of the year. Perhaps they compete with hotels in the short term rental market. That does not constitute new household formation, but it does absorb inventory. How many young adults under age 30 are still living at home with their parents? This is a shocking statistic. In February of 2020, 47% of young adults between 18-29 were living with at least one parent. By July of 2020, that number had grown to 52% of young adults between 18-29 were living with their parents. Those are numbers that have not been seen since the Great Depression in the 1930’s . So what household formation trends can we expect? We know that the median age of first marriage has grown by two years in the past decade. The median age for men is 30 and 28 for women. So when we go from a shortage of toilet paper to a surplus, could you have predicted those market conditions? When real estate markets will go from low inventory to a surplus, what forces will drive that shift? Could you have seen those forces in hindsight?

In this episode of Intermittent Fasting Stories, Gin talks to Beth Wray of Sammamish, WA.Let me tell you about the Delay, Don’t Deny Social Network! Besides the freedom of IF, community is what I most want to offer the world. Instead of relying on the big social network most of us have been on for years, we now have a community that is completely separate and just for us. Members of the DDD Social Network have access to all episodes of Intermittent Fasting Stories within the DDDSN platform, ad-free! That’s just one reason to join. Visit dddsocialnetwork.com to see what else we offer in our membership community. An annual membership is $59.95 and you have access to dozens of groups that we created with you in mind. You can join as many groups as you want and connect with members who share your interests. If you aren’t ready to fully commit for a year, join for $9.99 a month and you can cancel at any time. If you know you’ll want to stay forever, we also have a lifetime membership option available. IF is free. You don’t need to join our community to fast. But if you’re looking for support from a community of like-minded IFers, we are here for you at dddsocialnetwork.com. Beth is a moderator in the Delay, Don't Deny Facebook group, and is currently attending school to become a health coach.Beth struggled with her weight after having her now-grown children. She yo-yo dieted for many years, counting calories, trying various diets, and maintaining a vigorous exercise routine. She would lose weight easily, but could never maintain the loss.By July of 2019, Beth was about to give up. Discouraged, she heard about intermittent fasting from a friend. At first, Beth thought it sounded crazy, but she decided to give it a shot. She eased her way into IF, and never had a set window. Varying her fasts has made IF feel like a flexible lifestyle. Beth has lost 35 pounds, and easily maintains within a comfortable weight range. Her relationship with food has completely changed. She no longer obsessed with food, and it no longer controls her. Beth's advice for new IFers: "Be consistent. Don't have the same schedule everyday. Switch things up because this is a lifestyle."Get Gin’s books at http://www.ginstephens.com/get-the-books.html, including her New York Times Bestseller, Fast. Feast. Repeat., available wherever you buy books! Share your intermittent fasting stories with Gin: gin@intermittentfastingstories.comFollow Gin on Twitter @gin_stephens

Audio source: https://anchor.fm/spotify-rd/episodes/00-The-most-epic-battle-in-music-history-es7j2l (10 minutes in)- I Disappear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Disappear#Release- Metallica v Napster Inc. lawsuitHighly recommend subscribing to this Spotify miniseries, it is excellently produced and Episode 2 has nice technical detail on the founding of Spotify from Daniel Ek.Gustav Soderstrom: [00:00:00] In fact, Sean estimates that about 70 million people were using Napster at the height of its popularity, but not everyone was a fan. Lars Ulrich: [00:00:07] We were all completely in over our heads. Gustav Soderstrom: [00:00:10] That's Lars Ulrich. You may know him as the drummer in Metallica, or you may know him as a plaintiff in the now historic Metallica versus Napster lawsuit.Lars Ulrich: [00:00:18] It's easy to sit 20 years later and see the chain of events and how one domino would cause another domino and cause another domino to fall and so on and so forth. And then we ended up. Basically in this shitstorm  and ended up, suing each other and ended up being on Capitol Hill and blah, blah, blah.And it was such a circus. You know,Gustav Soderstrom: [00:00:50] the circus started when Lars got a call about an unreleased Metallica track. called "I disappear" from  long time manager, cliff going, "There's Lars Ulrich: [00:00:56] a radio station in St. Louis, Missouri, that's playing "I disappear"".  That was if he had called up and started speaking Russian to me. So a day or two later, I get a call back going well, there's a company called Napster who offer the service over the internet, where you can go and download songs and then people can play him. Basically long story short, we tracked down the fact that this I disappear song. That was a work in progress.We hadn't even decided which version of the song we were going to share with the world at leaked through this Napster. And then now I think subsequently 20 or 30 radio stations in America were playing the song. We felt so,  I guess violated, is the right word because the song wasn't even done and then all of a sudden it's being played on all these radio stations.So these people took our song. So we're like, well, let's get our song back.Gustav Soderstrom: [00:02:03] What followed was were both Lars and Sean referred to as a back alley, brawl. A back alley brawl that was about to get much, much bigger than just one song. In April, 2000 Metallica, officially filed charges. They accused Napster of "copyright infringements, unlawful use of digital audio interface, device, and violations of the racketeering influenced and corrupt organizations act".And they sought a hundred thousand dollars per illegally downloaded song in damages. Two weeks later, Lars showed up unannounced at Napster's office. A rundown old bank building in San Mateo, California, with a special delivery for Sean and his co-founder a complete list of the 335,435 Napster users who had illegally downloaded Metallica songs, all neatly printed out on 60,000 sheets of paper.Lars Ulrich: [00:02:56] This cavalcade of black SUV shows up and Lars, or it gets out of them with the sunglasses on. And ceremonially marches in with the first box followed by an army of people carrying the other boxes of names  and  made a point to do this in person, the Gustav Soderstrom: [00:03:13] camera. So they clearly knew how media worked.The Lars Ulrich: [00:03:15] San Mateo police had had come because there were crowds of protesters who were angry at Metallica. And then there were crowds of Metallica supporters who were cheering them on, and then they weren't just like casual kind of looky-loos who were, who were. You know, interested in the spectacle. And, and so I, I was there when, when Laura's walked those names into our office and sort of like glanced at me and glanced at Sean, the other Sean, and it was sort of the extent of it.Then we snuck out. So the two of us went outside and just put like hoodies on and walked across the street and just watch this bizarre spectacle, Gustav Soderstrom: [00:03:50] but Lars wasn't the only one adept at working the media. Sean struck back hard Napster did ban the Metallica fans on largest list, but when they open up the app, every single band user, all 335,000 of them.So a popup window that simply said band by Metallica. This was like a punch in the stomach to Lars for decades, Metallica private itself on being fan friendly. And now overnight, they were being presented as the symbol of corporate greed. The effect was immediate and devastating. We Lars Ulrich: [00:04:21] made it about Metallica, Napster, Napster made it about Metallica and our fans.And that was the smartest move that they could do because they, they took themselves out of the equation. But it was this thing of you're either for Napster or you're against Napster. If you're against Napster, you're greedy. And if you're against Napster, you're a Luddite and you don't understand technology.And if you're for Metallica, then it's about money. We had always been, so fan-friendly we had always been into tape trading and we had been into sharing music through cassettes, and we had encouraged people to come and record our shows for free. And we were really pro bootlegging and all this type of stuff.And we were sitting there going, what Metallica they talking about? We've spent 20 years being the most fan friendly band on this planet, I mean, it was so surreal because we couldn't correlate who they were talking about in the press to who, how we viewed ourselves at the time.we may not be against giving our music for free. But you should ask us that question before you make our music available. Gustav Soderstrom: [00:05:31] The back alley brawl had become nothing less than a national conversation about the future of music.By July, 2000, Laura's even found himself testifying in front of the us Senate judiciary committee. Lars Ulrich: [00:05:41] We should decide what happens to our music, not a company with no rights in all recordings, which has never invested a penny and on music or anything to do with its creation.The choice has been taken away from Gustav Soderstrom: [00:05:54] us. And then in 2001, just two short years after Napster had first launched a circuit court in California, ruled in favor of Metallica and issued an injunction against Napster to delete every single Metallica track from its users libraries, a task that was by definition, impossible on a peer-to-peer network.Instead Napster voluntarily ended service and eventually filed for bankruptcy. But Sean knew instinctively what every good product person strives to understand what the consumers actually want. And once the consumers had tried it, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. 

02/26/21 - Host Doug Stephan and Dr. Ken Kronhaus of Lake Cardiology (352-735-1400) talk about February being Heart Month, but many have been putting off heart health, due to COVID. FDA says that Johnson & Johnson COVID Vaccine is on the fast track for approval. News is that "Re-infection Protection" is good for three months. By July, the Vaccine should be available to everyone. Here are common post-vaccination symptoms that you could experience: fatigue, difficulty breathing and pain in the arm that received the vaccine. When asked about the differences between the vaccines, Dr. Ken suggests that you should just take the first one that becomes available to you. Studies show that Americas mental health is in poor condition. Finally, a listener asks Dr. Ken to offer his opinion on the best vitamins and supplements to take to improve testosterone levels. His answer...Exercise.

By July 1776, American revolutionary John Dickinson maintained that he did not entertain any doubt whether America should declare independence, only when. He opposed, in his words, “only the time of the declaration, and not independence itself.” His reasons for this opposition were weighty, well-considered, and shared by many. For one last time, he presented those reasons to his fellow delegates in the Continental Congress.

  Watts born May 16 1985, Shanann Watts, born Jan10 1984 They met in 2010   they were married 2 years later Shanann gave birth to Bella Marie Watts (born 17 Dec 2013  second daughter Celeste Cathryn or "CeCe" Watts (born 17 July 2015).    In June of 2015 the couple filed for bankruptcy  Watts was working as an operator for   Anadarko Petroleum, while Shanann worked from home selling a product called Thrive,    Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant with a son named Nico Lee.  June 2018: Watts starts talking to Nichol Kessinger Chris wraps Shan’ann in a blanket and carries her to his truck.  He puts the kids in the backseat  Kessinger works at Anadarko Petroleum  he came by her office and struck up a conversation..   They meet outside of work later that month.   By July 2018: their relationship becomes sexual, seeing her about four or five times a week    August 9,: Shan’ann leaves on business to Arizona  Aug 11  Watts hires a babysitter and goes out with Kessinger  Shanann returned home. At 1:48a.m. on August 13,    Also on August 13,: Watts kills Shan’ann and their daughters        He then smothers Celeste in a blanket.    He then does the same with Bella in another tank. Chris also buries his wife’s body in the ground nearby  Shan'ann is reported missing at around 1:40 p.m. by Nickole Atkinson.Shan’ann’s phone, keys and purse are found at the house  Her car, was in the garage.Shanann's wedding ring was found on her and Christopher's bed.  he told investigators about the affair & admitted to strangling Shanann to death. Watts tried to falsely blame Shanann for her daughters' murders claiming that he had seen her killing them on the baby monitor in their bedroom & he attacked her in a blind rage.  Chris  pleaded for their return:  Chris fails a polygraph test   August 16, The three murdered bodies are recovered at Chris’ worksite. References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_family_murdershttps://www.insider.com/chris-watts-murder-timeline-2018-12https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7520985/Chris-Watts-chilling-letter-confessing-killed-family.htmlPhotographs:https://www.google.com/search?q=chris+watts+pictures&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU936AU936&oq=chris+watts+pictures&aqs=chrome..69i57.10755j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8Resources:https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/mentalhealth/Pages/contact-service.aspx#24-hourhttps://www.beyondblue.org.auhttps://www.betterhelp.comThanks for listening :  Find us at:Twitter: #OrsolvedInstagram: SolvedunsolvedorspookyFacebook: Solvedunsolvedorspooky Email us at: podcast@solvedunsolvedorspooky.comSupport the show (https://pod.fan/solved-unsolved-or-spooky)Support the show (https://pod.fan/solved-unsolved-or-spooky)

By July of 1948 Jack Webb was twenty-eight and bored. After emceeing the short lived Jack Webb Show and One Out of Seven for ABC in San Francisco, he’d collaborated with writer Dick Breen in the cult hit in Pat Novak, For Hire. Early in 1947, Pat Novak’s success took Jack Webb home to his native Los Angeles. With Novak still airing from San Francisco, Webb and Breen teamed up again for Mutual with Johnny Modero, Pier 23. It debuted in April and was Webb’s first coast-to-coast show. Although it only lasted five months, it allowed Webb to work with some of the most talented people in Hollywood radio. He began to act in CBS’ Escape, and was soon doing bit parts for William Spier on Suspense. In July of 1948, Webb was back at it again with writer E. Jack Neuman in Jeff Regan, Investigator. It aired on CBS’ west-coast network into December. However, after playing one hard-boiled P.I. after another, Webb was looking for a role he could really sink his teeth into. That summer, Webb was cast as a forensics specialist in the film He Walked By Night. He became friends with the police technical advisor Detective Sergeant Marty Wynn. Their conversations became the inspiration for a new police procedural—one that would become one of the most famous shows in radio and tv history, and turn Jack Webb into an American icon. Webb spent the entire fall doing his own leg work, He hung out at police stations, took night classes, and rode with detectives on house calls. NBC skeptically green lit an audition. They thought the idea sounded flat. Like with Richard Diamond, booze, innuendo, and shootouts were the spice that made detective shows interesting. To help secure the deal, Webb got cooperation from the LAPD. So long he didn’t go out of his way to portray the department in a negative light, they’d allow him to use closed case files. In January of 1949 Jack Webb intimated to Radio Life that his days playing guys like Novak were almost over. His next character would be “Joe Friday.” Dragnet premiered, coat-to-coast on Friday June 3rd, 1949 at 10PM eastern time over NBC. it was the first of its kind—A realistic, documentational portrayal of the Los Angeles police force at work. NBC sustained production costs for the first thirteen weeks during its Summer run. By the time the seventh episode aired on July 21st, the show had found its rhythm. Barton Yarborough played Sgt. Ben Romero and Raymond Burr was Chief Ed Backstrand. Jack Webb leaned on James Moser for writing and Bill Rousseau for early direction. Vic Perrin was an often-featured guest-star. This episode featured Parley Baer in a masterpiece performance. NBC finally had a hit. It wasn’t long before Liggett and Myers tobacco signed on as sponsor. CBS took notice. A month after Dragnet’s premiere, they shifted Broadway is My Beat to Hollywood and put it under Elliott Lewis’ direction.

Ep. 83Cecil hotel/ Stay On Main Hotel Welcome my friends to the first episode of 2021! We hope you all enjoyed our last episode of 2020, we did! We hope you all made it to the new year safe and sound. We're alive and well and we're going to take a much needed vacation. Where are we headed you may ask? Well we are going to head to sunny Los Angeles! Hopefully you passengers hang on and come with! Los Angeles, the city of angels, and tons of weird people and rich movie types that are better than we are...eh… Fuck em. We're not headed there for a tour of stars' homes, we're not headed there to further Jeff's acting career with casting couch auctions in some seedy office with a casting couch, no my friends were heading specifically to 640 south main street l.a. california! What sits at that address you may be wondering. Well it's none other than The Cecil hotel, aka The hotel Cecil, aka The Cecil, aka The stay On Main Hotel, aka whatever the fuck the next name is gonna be. That's right, the famous, or maybe infamous Cecil hotel. If this sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, well get to what's most recently made this place famous in a bit. But first buckle up cus here we go! The Cecil was built in 1924 by hotelier William Banks Hanner with partners Charles L. Dix and Robert H. Schops. It was supposed to be a destination hotel for international businessmen and social elites. Designed by Loy Lester Smith in the Beaux Arts style, and constructed by W. W. Paden[7] the hotel cost $1.5 million to complete and boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. The three hoteliers invested about $2.5 million knowing several other similar hotels had been constructed and opened in the area. They had the utmost confidence in their venture. Unfortunately for them, only a few years after opening the hotel disaster would strike. Not only would it strike the three hoteliers, but the nation as a whole. The country was plunged into the great depression. The Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession.[4] Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor countries. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade fell by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and in some countries rose as high as 33% While this was happening the Hotel hung on as best it could to it's roots of being a destination for wealthy socialites, unfortunately those were heard to come by at that point. As the depression wore on, the area around the hotel became the infamous Skid Row. Now we're not talking the Sebastian bach fronted band that had so many great jams back in the day. To give you an idea of the area that the hotel was in and had to deal with while trying to keep clientele, here's a brief history:     At the end of the 19th century, a number of residential hotels opened in the area as it became home to a transient population of seasonal laborers.[13] By the 1930s, Skid Row was home to as many as 10,000 homeless people, alcoholics, and others on the margins of society.[12] It supported saloons, residential hotels, and social services, which drew people from the populations they served to congregate in the area.[14] In June 1947, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) chief Clemence B. Horrall ordered what he called a "blockade raid" of the whole Skid Row area. Over 350 people were arrested. Assistant Chief Joseph Reed, who claimed that "at least 50 percent of all the crime in Los Angeles originates in the Skid Row area," stated that there had been no "strong arm robberies" on Skid Row as late as one week after the raid. Long time residents, however, were skeptical that the changes would last.[15] In 1956, the city of Los Angeles was in the midst of a program to "rehabilitate" Skid Row[16] through the clearance of decaying buildings.[17] The program was presented to property owners in the area as an economy measure. Gilbert Morris, then superintendent of building, said that at that point the provision of free social services to the approximately one square mile of Skid Row cost the city over $5 million per year as opposed to the city average of $110,000 per square mile annually.[16] The city used administrative hearings to compel the destruction of nuisance properties at the expense of the owner. By July 1960, the clearance program was said to be 87% complete in the Skid Row area.[17] With increased building codes during the '60s, owners of residential hotels found demolition to be more cost-effective than adhering to repairs. The total number of these buildings is estimated to have dropped from 15,000 to 7,500 over the following decade.[18] Many residents of the area found themselves homeless with the loss of half of the affordable housing provided by hotels.[18] 1970s through present EditSkid Row was established by city officials in 1976 as an unofficial "containment zone", where shelters and services for homeless people would be tolerated.[19] During the 1970s, two Catholic Workers — Catherine Morris, a former nun, and her husband, Jeff Dietrich — founded the "Hippie Kitchen" in the back of a van. Over forty years later, in March 2019, aged 84 and 72, they remained active in their work feeding Skid Row residents.[20] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, many veterans of the Vietnam War found themselves drawn to Skid Row, due to the services and missions already in place there, and feeling outcast from other areas. Like those after World War II, many of them ended up on the streets. It was around this time that the demographics of Skid Row shifted from predominantly white and elderly to those here today Now that only takes us through the 70s but we can tell you, it didn't get any better after that.  The reason we went through a small history of Skid Row is to show how the area had changed and the type of people that inhabited the area. The reason to show this will become evident…. Right… about… Now! By  the 50s the hotel had become a place known to house transients and drug dealers and many unsavory types. This would lead to a history of murder, suicide and other tragedy. That would ultimately lead to takes of the hotel being haunted. The hotel would more recently become the location of a story that would capture the attention of the world due to its strangeness. So without further ado let's get into the craziness! Murders and murderers at the Cecil: One of several noteworthy guests of the hotel was Elizabeth Short, who you may know as the “Black Dahlia” after her 1947 murder in Los Angeles. She reportedly stayed at the hotel just before her mutilation, which remains unsolved. What connection her death may have had to the Cecil is not known, but what is known is that she was found on a street not far away on the morning of January 15 with her mouth carved ear to ear and her body cut in two. Some people say that this sorry of Short staying or being seen at the hotel are untrue but we like to think there's a connection, however we cannot confirm nor deny the validity of this claim and there is much conflicting reporting on this. There are some reports of sorry saying at a nearby hotel and just doing into the Cecil bar from time to time.  Next up a confirmed and also unsolved murder at the Cecil. Georgina "pigeon" Goldie Osgood. On June 4th a 79 year old retired telemarketer named Goldie Osgood was found in her hotel room dead. The autopsy showed that she was beaten, stabbed and choked with a rag. Her hotel room was ransacked. Friends say they talked her merely minutes before her death. She was known for feeding pigeons at a nearby park and that’s how she earned her nickname “Pigeon Goldie”. She was staying at the Cecil hotel, where she was very liked and was a long time residence. Not much information can be found about her death. Only that a man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was arrested a few hours after her body was found. He had been seen walking in the same area Ms. Osgood would feed pigeons. He was covered in blood, but was later released due to lack of evidence. Several serial killers have called the Cecil home as well. Chief among them… good ol Richard Ramirez, the fucking Night Stalker. Now if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know who Ramirez is, we question why you're here! But as a refresher:           Ramirez was a Satanist and a particularly awful human, even for a serial killer: He seemed to have no M.O. except to be as sadistic as possible.His victims — men, women, children — were chosen randomly and killed in a variety of ways, with whatever weapon was handy, often after a sexual assault. Most reports suggest that he influenced as a teenager by his cousin Mike, a Green Beret who bragged of committing horrific acts in Vietnam, and who later shot his wife to death in front of Ramirez.The Night Stalker was ultimately caught after a rape victim who’d been left alive got a look at his getaway car, a stolen Toyota that was found abandoned and connected to Ramirez by a single fingerprint. Once they had a suspect, police broadcast his name and face widely and Ramirez was recognized and beaten by a mob in East Los Angeles.He was convicted in 1989 of 13 counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries, and sentenced to death. To which he said: “No big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.”Ramirez spent the next 23 years on Death Row at San Quentin, but died of Lymphoma in 2013. He was 53. “The Cecil and the Alexandria and the Twin Rosslyn hotels just become these giant coral reefs of the worst people in the world,” says Richard Schave, who runs Esotouric bus tours with his partner Kim Cooper, and makes the Cecil a featured stop on the “Hotel Horrors and Main Street Vice” package. “By 1990, the LAPD won’t go into [t hese places]. It was like, ‘If we’re called we’ll go in. But we’re not patrolling.’”That’s how a guy like the Night Stalker could operate there. Ramirez would return to the Cecil after a killing and ditch his blood-soaked clothes in the dumpsters out back, then walk into the hotel either naked or maybe in his underwear, none of which would have raised an eyebrow since the Cecil in the 1980s, as Schave put t, “was total, unmitigated chaos.”After all, that dumpster probably contained far worse things, and it wouldn’t have been weird to see a half-naked man wandering around a hotel renowned for vice and where the police rarely ventured. Drug dealers worked openly inside. The bodies of overdosed residents could linger in the hall for days. “No one wanted to be the person who called the cops,” Schave says. Another serial killer was known to live at the Cecil. In 1991, six years after Ramirez was caught and sentenced to death, a 41-year-old Austrian journalist named Jack Unterweger checked into the Cecil while he worked on a story about crime in L.A. for an Austrian magazine. Unterweger used his reporting work to secure ride-alongs with LAPD vice cops and those trips were revealed as scouting missions when it was later discovered that Unterweger was also a serial killer with a penchant for strangling prostitutes. It is suspected (but was never proven) that he chose the Cecil because of its connection to Ramirez.When Austrian police connected the strangulation deaths of three L.A. sex workers with a series of six unsolved murders back home — all of them prostitutes who’d been sexually assaulted and strangled with their own bras, using a distinct ligature — Unterweger fled and was arrested in Miami in February of 1992. Unterweger, it turns out, had started abusing prostitutes in his youth, and at age 24 he was convicted of strangling an 18-year-old German woman with her own bra, and sentenced to life in prison.Behind bars, Unterweger had been a model inmate, publishing poems, plays, and an autobiography that became a movie and his popularity made him a cause célèbre in the European arts community, which began to lobby passionately for his release. In 1990, after serving 15 years, Unterweger was granted parole, and almost overnight became a popular TV host and journalist. Within a year, he was in California, killing women again.In June 1994, an Austrian court convicted Unterweger of 11 murders and sentenced him to life with no chance of parole. That night, he killed himself in his cell — with a poetic twist. “He tied the ligature,” Schave said. “The signature ligature by which he killed all the prostitutes in Los Angeles and Vienna. That was his confession.” So those are murders and murderers connected and possibly connected to the Cecil. But the tragedy doesn't end there. There are many other crazy deaths from the Cecil. Mostly all suicides. During the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of Americans took their own lives during the late 1930s, creating the highest-recorded level ever—more than 150 per one million annually in 1937 and 1938, and In the 30s the Cecil had its share of suicides.  In 1931, a guest, W.K. Norton, 46, was found dead in his room after eating poison capsules. A week prior, he had checked into the Cecil under the name "James Willys" from Chicago.  This seems to be the earliest case of suicide at the Cecil. The following year, 25-year-old Benjamin Dodich was found by a maid in a room, dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In 1934, former Army Medical Corps sergeant Louis D. Borden was found with his throat slashed—he had written several notes about suicide while in the room including one that cited poor health as a reason for the suicide. In 1937, the body of Grace E. Magro was discovered wrapped in the telephone wires around the hotel. She later died at the now-demolished Georgia Street Receiving Hospital. Police were unable to determine whether Magro's death was the result of an accident or suicide.  A year later, the body of 35-year-old US Marine Roy Thompson was found on the skylight of a nearby building after he also jumped from his room. He had been staying at the hotel for several weeks.  In 1939, Navy officer Erwin C. Neblett was found dead after ingesting poison; he was 39 years old. Moving past the thirties we find more craziness and fuckery.      In January 1940, teacher Dorothy Sceiger, 45, ingested poison while staying at the Cecil and was reported by the Los Angeles Times to be "near death." No further reports were published about her condition.     In 1944, one of the youngest victims at Cecil Hotel had their life taken from them. Dorothy Jean Purcell, 19 years old, was staying as a guest at the hotel when she threw her newborn son from a window. Purcell did not know she was pregnant and woke in the middle of the night with stomach pains when she was sleeping next to her partner, 38-year-old shoe salesman Ben Levine. Not wanting to wake Levine, she went to the bathroom and delivered the baby herself. Purcell believed the boy was dead, and that’s when she got rid of the body from a great height. The lifeless baby was found on a roof adjacent to the building. Purcell was arrested, but after psychologists determined she was “mentally confused,” she was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. In November 1947, Robert Smith, 35, died after jumping from one of Cecil's seventh-floor windows. On October 22, 1954, San Francisco stationery firm employee Helen Gurnee, 55, jumped from the window of her seventh-floor room and landed on top of Cecil's marquee. One week prior, she had registered at the hotel under the name "Margaret Brown." On February 11, 1962, Julia Frances Moore, 50, jumped from the window of her eighth-floor room. We found the newspaper clipping announcing her death, it reads as follows:       "A woman leaped to her death from an eighth-floor window of the Cecil Hotel, 640 S Main St., early Sunday morning, her body landing on a second-floor roof in the light well of the building. Police identified her from a hotel registration card and papers in her purse as Julia Frances Moore, about 50. Det. Sgt. Paul LePage said the woman, who left no notes, had registered at the hotel on Wednesday. Her purse and a small over night bag were found in the room. Although the purse contained only 59 cents, a bank book showed she had nearly c $1,800(around $15,000 today) in a Springfield (II.) bank. Sgt. LePage said he also found a bus ticket stub in dicating she had come here from St. Louis. Other papers I containing two home ad dresses in St. Louis were also found. The officer said he would contact St. Louis police in a an effort to locate the woman's relatives." Also in 1962, October to be exact, another strange death occurred. On October 12, two bodies were found dead on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. One of the bodies was that of Pauline Otton. She was staying on the 9th floor of the hotel. She was 27 years old and had just had an argument with her estranged husband Dewey. The other body was not that of Dewey. It was the body of 65 year old George Gianinni. Initially police suspected the pair jumped together. After some investigation however there found that Ol George has his haha on his pockets and his shoes were still on. They said that if he had jumped his shoes would have fallen off during the fall or when he landed, also who jumps with their hands in their pockets? Well turns out that after her argument Pauline decided it wasn't worth living any more and jumped from the window of her room on the 9th floor. George however was just walking by the hotel about to have the worst, and last, day off his life. Pauline jumped and landed on George as he strolled by killing him. Talk about your bad luck, no wonder some people think the place is cursed. On December 20, 1975, a still-unidentified woman, approximately 23 years old, jumped from her twelfth-floor window onto the Cecil's second-floor roof. She had registered at the hotel on December 16 under the name "Alison Lowell" and was staying in room 327. On September 1, 1992, a man was found deceased in the alley behind the Cecil. Authorities believe the decedent either fell from, jumped from, or was pushed from the hotel's fifteenth floor. At the time of his death, the decedent was five feet, nine inches tall and weighed around 185 pounds. He was wearing blue sweatpants and a black sweatshirt over a gray t-shirt. The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office placed the decedent's age at twenty to thirty-two years. The decedent's true identity has never been established. On June 13, 2015, the body of a 28-year-old man was found outside the hotel. Some conjectured he may have committed suicide by jumping from the hotel, although a spokesperson for the county coroner informed the Los Angeles Times that the cause of death had not been determined. Now in between those last two there was another incident. This incident is probably the most well known one. Thanks to the internet the incident spread fast and there is tons of discussion and speculation about what really happened. The official cause of death was listed as accidental drowning although most people don't by that. If you haven't figured it out already we are talking about the death of Elisa Lam. Wwe could probably do an entire episode on this story so we'll just give you the basics and maybe hit the story a little harder in a bonus for our patreon.   On Jan. 26, 2013, Elisa Lam arrived in LA. She had just come by Amtrak train from San Diego and was headed to Santa Cruz as part of her solo trip around the West Coast. The trip was supposed to be a getaway from her studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she was originally from. Her family had been wary of her traveling by herself but the young student was determined to go at it alone. As a compromise, Lam made sure to check in with her parents every day of the trip to let them know that she was safe. That’s why it struck her parents as unusual when they didn’t hear from their daughter on Jan. 31, the day she was scheduled to check out of her LA hotel, the Cecil. The Lams eventually contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. The police searched the premises of the Cecil but couldn’t find her. Police soon released surveillance footage taken from the cameras at the Cecil Hotel on their website. This is where things took a turn into the truly bizarre. The hotel video showed Elisa Lam in one of its elevators on the date of her disappearance acting rather strangely. In the pixelated footage, Lam can be seen stepping into the elevator and pushing all the floor buttons. She steps in and out of the elevator, poking her head out sideways toward the hotel’s hallways in between. She peers out of the elevator another few times before stepping out of the elevator entirely. The last minutes of the video show Lam standing by the left side of the door, moving her hands in random gestures. Nobody else was captured on the video, except Lam. On Feb. 19, two weeks after the video was published by authorities, maintenance worker Santiago Lopez found Elisa Lam’s dead body floating in one of the hotel water tanks. Lopez made the discovery after responding to complaints from hotel patrons about low water pressure and a weird taste coming from the tap water. According to a statement by the chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, the tank in which Lam’s body was found had to be drained completely and then cut open from the side to remove her five-foot-four frame. Nobody knows how Lam’s corpse — floating lifelessly next to the same clothes she wore in the surveillance video — ended up in the hotel’s water tank or who else might have been involved. Hotel staff told authorities that Lam was always seen by herself around the hotel premises. At a nearby shop, eerily named The Last Bookstore, owner Katie Orphan was among the last to see Elisa Lam alive. Orphan remembered the college student buying books and music for her family back in Vancouver. When the autopsy results for Lam’s case came out, it only served to ignite more questions. The toxicology report confirmed that Lam had consumed a number of medical drugs, likely to be medication for her bipolar disorder. But there were no indications of alcohol or illegal substances in her body. Soon after the toxicology report came out, amateur sleuths began poring over any information they could find in hopes of solving the mystery behind the death of Elisa Lam. One person noted that she seemed to not be taking her medicine previous to her death. It is an important finding to note given that the use of antidepressants to treat bipolar disorder can risk inducing manic side effects if done without caution. Some sleuths have understandably latched onto this detail and suggested it was a likely explanation behind Lam’s strange behavior in the elevator. Hotel manager Amy Price’s statements in court strongly support this theory. During Lam’s stay at the Cecil Hotel, Price said that Lam was originally booked in a hostel-style shared room with others. However, complaints of “odd behavior” from Lam’s roommates forced Lam to be moved to a private room by herself. David and Yinna Lam filed a wrongful death suit against the Cecil Hotel several months after their daughter’s death was uncovered. The Lams’ attorney stated that the hotel had a duty to “inspect and seek out hazards in the hotel that presented an unreasonable risk of danger to [Lam] and other hotel guests.” The hotel fought back against the suit, filing a motion to dismiss it. The hotel’s lawyer argued that the hotel had no reason to think that someone would be able to get into one of their water tanks. Based on court statements from the hotel’s maintenance staff, the hotel’s argument is not entirely far-fetched. Santiago Lopez, who was the first to find Lam’s body, described in detail how much effort he had to exert just to find her body. Lopez said that he took the elevator to the 15th floor of the hotel before walking up the staircase to the roof. Then, he had to first turn off the rooftop alarm and climb up on the platform where the hotel’s four water tanks were located. Finally, he had to climb another ladder to get to the top of the main tank. Only after all that did he notice something unusual. “I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying face-up in the water approximately twelve inches from the top of the tank,” Lopez said, as reported by LAist. Lopez’s testimony suggested that it would have been difficult for Lam to make it to the top of the water tank on her own. At least, not without anyone noticing. The hotel’s Chief Engineer Pedro Tovar also made it clear that it would be difficult for anyone to access the rooftop, where the hotel water tanks were located, without triggering the alarms. Only hotel employees would be able to deactivate the alarm properly. If it was triggered, the sound of the alarm would reach the front desk as well as the entire top two floors of the hotel. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Howard Halm ruled that the death of Elisa Lam was “unforseeable” because it had happened in an area that guests were not allowed to access, so the lawsuit was dismissed. All of the talk of the difficulty on even getting to the water tanks, especially the fact that no alarms were triggered only fueled more conspiracies and speculation. We may never know what really happened and it's another feather in the crazy creepy cap of the Cecil! There are  stories of cold spots and shadowy figures. A news story went around a couple years ago of a ghost photograph, showing a shadowy figure outside of a window of the Cecil Hotel, looking like it was about to jump.There are stories of people saying that they see a woman who looks like Elizabeth Short and feeling like they’re being watched in the hotel. It’s a creepy place even though there are renovations and rebranding (the Cecil Hotel was renamed the Stay on Main), but, well, it’s hard to shake the sort of stories of the Cecil. Also early in 2021 the discovery channel is kicking off it's streaming service with a new episode of everyone's favorite… Ghost Adventures… Those idiots are at it again.   The hotel and the Elisa Lam footage was the inspiration for the Hotel season of American horror story. It was also the inspiration behind the movie Barton Fink starring John Goodman and Johnathan Turturro.  The hotel can also be seen in two popular music videos. The streets have no name by U2, where the brand performs on the roof of a building next to the Cecil. And in Blink 182 video for The Rock Show. The band is shown throwing money off of a single story building next to the Cecil, which may or may not be the same building u2 played on… Probably was though. Top hotel horror movieshttps://www.ranker.com/list/best-horror-movies-about-hotels/ranker-film

On this episode of Battles & Banter, Avery, Codie & Tony discuss one of the most dramatic events of the Second World War: the "Miracle at Dunkirk". Taking place between May 26-June 4, 1940, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the European mainland (codenamed Operation Dynamo) was one of the most successful military undertakings in world history. However, it came on grim tidings as France began to fall to Nazi Germany at the same time. By July 1940, Great Britain would stand alone against the Axis Powers. The guys discuss the significance of Dunkirk, while also comparing it to Christopher Nolan's 2017 film of the same name. Also, Tony possibly gets abducted by Harry Styles of One Direction, Codie sings a song that Jonathan Groff would either love or hate, and Avery effectively butchers various European accents with the help of IPAs. Enjoy!

The coronavirus pandemic’s tumultuous reach continues to upend higher education. This podcast looks at the disruption that has happened in the areas of scholarship, financial aid and fundraising. The podcast’s guests are Keith Brown and Alania Cater. Brown is the assistant director for special awards part in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Office of Student Financial Aid. He manages and maintains the UW-Madison scholarship management system.  Cater is the director of product management at Blackbaud. Supporting Students in a Crisis COVID has changed the scholarship process in higher education. The biggest change has been a shift to supporting emergency funding or grants. This includes CARE grants, external funding that the university is helping to raise that is earmarked to support students during this time, or departmental funds that are being shifted around to help fund students. Additionally, institutions are having to identify how to support students virtually. Universities are no longer able in many instances to advise students about the scholarship process in person or to hold outreach events about campus scholarships. Institutions are having to find new ways to adjust, and many are relying on Zoom and Microsoft Teams for online meetings. Revising Scholarship Processes The process of awarding scholarships also has moved into the virtual realm with reviewers, applicants and administrators. Some larger scholarships that require in-person interviews have moved these conversations to a virtual setting. Many institutions and applicants have had primarily positive feedback on this new process, leading many to believe that the virtual interviews may be here to stay. One interesting byproduct of the online transition is that administrators are now spending more time with reviewers than in the past, but this includes their doing more hand-holding, as well as logging into systems and confirming that the work can be done online. While this seems simple, it can be complicated. Additionally, the scholarship review process is being affected in some cases because of multiple people are working from home. Reviewers are dealing with conflicting priorities (such as children at home or caregiving) while some applicants are having difficulty getting everything in on time due to conflicts. This has required institutions to extend deadlines, especially during the spring semester when the pandemic first hit. This extension allowed the institutions to compensate for what was happening in the world, and created enough time to process and review applications while the university was focused on moving students off campus and moving all classes online. Universities like to have clean processes with breaks between the close of a cycle and the beginning of another one. However, the pandemic has made that impossible. Institutions have had to become flexible in working with incoming students. Admission deadlines had to be pushed back. Students had to weigh the decision of whether to come to campus in the fall or defer enrollment for a year. That led to a lot of shuffling in the scholarship realm. This made Fall 2020 an unprecedented time for many university admissions offices and for the awarding of scholarships. Another challenge was students’ access to technology at home. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Office of Financial Aid tried to meet students where they are. This involved scheduling a lot of virtual meetings and fielding a lot of calls through the online phone service. The number of emails also have increased significantly. The campus also tried to be flexible to allow in-person visits when safely possible.   Making Changes Blackbaud has seen an increase in demand for online scholarship application processes. While many institutions did not had this new process ready when the coronavirus struck, administrators and staff now understand that the scholarship application process needs to be online so more institutions are transitioning away from a reliance on paper applications. Institutions now believe this is a change that needed to occur and the pandemic offered the impetus. As a silver lining, institutions who have moved their processes online also have identified money that was going unawarded. Previously, many departments working with scholarships were having difficulty tracking all of the various donor wishes, all of the funds and where they are being allocated and to whom, and which funds were not being used. With the increasing cost of education as well as the current environment caused by the pandemic, it’s a shame not to utilize all available scholarships and financial aid. Taking CARES Many institutions received a large influx of funds from the CARES Act, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison worked as quickly as it could across campus to use these funds. Additionally, while the CARES funding was coming down the pipeline, UW-M worked with its foundation to raise emergency funds and scholarship funds for students. The institution tried not to wait and instead focused on getting those funds out as quickly as possible. By July, UW-M had awarded close to $10 million. However, their efforts didn’t stop there. The university also tried to award funding to students who were not eligible for CARES Act funding. To do this involved shuffling funding across campus to support international students and undocumented students who were caught up in the crisis. Knowing that both the regulations and policies are changing, institutional leaders tried to not let these changes stop the decision-making process and tried to remain agile in supporting students. Flexibility also is being seen as foundations are going back to donors to discuss revising awarding requirements. A number of donors previously have stipulated that their scholarship funds could only support certain types of recipients, but fundraising officials are now working with donors to make those stipulations more flexible to deal with issues impacting students and families due to COVID-19, including altering education requirements for merit-based scholarships and SAT requirements. While these conversations allow the university to gain more flexibility in using these funds, they also offer an opportunity to touch base with donors. This helps institutions continue to foster these important relationships. Changing How Scholarships Are Awarded The change in the use of SAT/ACT scores is changing institutional scholarship evaluation processes. This year, UW-M is making the scores optional and students must self-report these scores. This also is having an impact on how the institution is using Blackbaud to bring consistency around scholarship processes across campus. This will result in greater reliance on admissions data, information on admissions applications and integration of other systems to look at benchmarks. Ultimately, this effort will lead to a more holistic review instead of a strong reliance on test scores. This change also sends a signal to high school students that they need to apply themselves throughout their academic career instead of relying on getting a high SAT score. In fact, studies have found that a high SAT score is not a predictor of success in college. There are better indicators, such as a higher GPA in high school or a resume that shows work outside of school that highlights fortitude and responsibility. Next Generation of Scholarships and Donations The biggest change is the approach to fundraising. Whereas most of the funds being awarded are endowed scholarships, there may be a move to creating more scholarships that are need-based and focused on supporting students who are in crisis. In the future, scholarships also may be more general in regards to award criteria. State schools also are anxiously watching for the budgetary guidance in relation to state budgets and how it will change in the upcoming academic year. While most fundraising continues to come from major donors (and should continue going forward), there is a shift to more peer-to-peer fundraising, more outreach fundraising and more engagement across a broader constituent base. In addition, there are efforts to engage more donors at a lower donation amount. This is important in fundraising in relation to emergency fundraising and students in need; this differs from endowed funds and annual campaigns. Moving into the spring term, agility is going to be key to deal with issues created by the pandemic as well as the changing environment that relies on technology. Recommendations for Higher Education Leaders Brown suggested three takeaways for higher education leaders: Create clear and consistent messaging at the micro-level (the scholarship office) and from the campus. It’s important to provide clear guidance to students and their families. Meet students where they are. This includes providing support that they can access on their phones and other types of technology. Money is needed to support students who are caught in crisis because of the pandemic as well as student employees. Fundraising efforts and financial aid/scholarship work are critical. Cater offered the following points: University presidents should listen to and talk to the students. Technology investment is going to be key for future success. It’s important to have a connected campus. Money to make these upgrades is critical. Recommendations for Students Brown suggested two takeaways for students: Ask for help from the financial and student support perspective. Students have to stay informed on a lot of changing information; much of that could be falling through the cracks so it’s important to ask for help proactively. Persistence is key. It’s a challenging year emotionally and financially, as well as academically. Cater added the following points: There is a lot more money that is available than most students think. Don’t forget to ask for help. When overwhelmed, seek assistance. If a student needs to drop their course load to deal with the pandemic-related issues but is afraid that it will affect the financial aid package, it’s important to ask for guidance and support. Institutions are being flexible. Bullet Points The scholarship process in higher education is shifting to supporting emergency funding or grants. This includes CARE grants, external funding that is earmarked to support students during this time, or departmental funds that are being shifted around to help fund students. Institutions are moving the scholarship review and selection processes. This is helping increase efficiencies and also allowing institutions to identify pots of money that have not been being awarded. The pandemic has created numerous opportunities, including the influx of CARES Act funds. In addition, institutions are raising more funds and also having conversations with donors about revising criteria for selection to allow scholarships to be used for students who are in crisis. Many institutions are making SAT/ACT scores optional. This will result in greater reliance on admissions data, information on admissions applications and integration of other systems to look at benchmarks. It’s also sending a message to the applicant that it’s more important to have a strong high school GPA or a stellar resume that showcases work responsibilities. While most funding is coming from major donors, other philanthropic trends are emerging, including a shift to peer-to-peer fundraising, outreach fundraising and engagement across a broader constituent base. In addition, institutions are increasingly trying to engage more donors at a lower donation amount. Links to Articles, Apps, or websites mentioned during the interview: University of Wisconsin-Madison Keith Brown Blackbaud Alania Cater Guests Social Media Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alaniacater/ The Change Leader’s Social Media Links: Website: https://thechangeleader.com Website: https://changinghighered.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdrumm/ Twitter: @thechangeldr Email: podcast@changinghighered.com Keywords: #Education #University #HigherEducation #Fundraising

This is the eighty-eighth episode of the GameDev.tv Community Podcast. “Anyone can actually follow along with steps but putting the steps into practice on your own is what really matters.” -Sebastian BeltraminiI'm Sebastian and I'm from Argentina. I've been working in the software development industry for 22 years under different roles (developer, architect, manager).By July last year, I started to dig into the 3D world for the first time and got hooked into it, it's become an exciting hobby for me. It was uncharted terrain for me, having no arts nor CG background and a real adventure.My goal is to use 3D art as a form of expression, something akin to traditional painting and sculpting.Some of my works can be seen here: https://www.artstation.com/sebastian1066Outside of CG, I enjoy the great outdoors, trekking and climbing both in summer and winter. I should get more project ideas from the things I get to see while doing that! I'm also a keen PS4 gamer.Level Design Lobby: https://gumroad.com/a/100856947Unreal C++ Course:https://www.gamedev.tv/p/unreal-engine-c-developer-4-22-learn-c-and-make-video-games/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Unreal VR Course:https://courses.gamedev.tv/p/unrealmultiplayer/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Unreal Multiplayer Course:https://courses.gamedev.tv/p/unrealvr/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Unity 3D Course:https://courses.gamedev.tv/p/complete-unity-developer-3d/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Unity 2D Course:https://courses.gamedev.tv/p/complete-unity-developer-2d/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Unity RPG Course:https://courses.gamedev.tv/p/unity-rpg/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Blender Course:https://www.gamedev.tv/p/blender/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6Blender Character Course:https://www.gamedev.tv/p/blender-character-creator-2/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6GameDev.tv Official PodcastEnjoy the Podcast!Support the show (https://www.gamedev.tv/p/complete-unity-developer-3d/?product_id=1319848&coupon_code=The_K_B&affcode=45216_dezckag6)

To join this club you have to make a pledge: “There is no right or wrong, there is only what I like and don’t like.” In 2011, in an industry full of pretention, Justin Dry and Andre Eikmeier founded an online wine community with down-to-earth ideals. By July 2016 Vinomofo had 450,000 members and set its sights on overseas markets. In this first part of the Vinomofo story, Justin Dry explains how Vinomofo fought off the big wine sellers by offering some of the very best wines at great prices – and built a passionate following in the process. Business Essentials Daily is produced by: SoundCartel soundcartel.com.au +61 3 9882 8333 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Carlos, Matt and the King of all things Aviation Captain Jeff for this week's show. In this week's show we discover there's talk of Quanta's International services being grounded until July 2021, Wizz Air decides to take on EasyJet at Gatwick Airport and a man is arrested after driving under a taxiing aircraft. In the military, the Royal Air Force receives a high-end full motion simulator simulator for its P-8 Poseidon fleet (built in the US and transported to the UK by a Russian-made airplane) and we see even more flights of the legendary (and not so retired) F-117 Nighthawk in support of an exercise in Nevada The Microsoft Flight Sim is finally released and Producer John has been having a go and Matt talks to Captain Al and Dan Holley about Turbulence in this week's Plane Truth. Why not get involved? Our chatroom is where are wonderful community all interact and shape the conversation on the show each week. We wouldn't have such fun on the show without them. Check out our website redesign that Matt and the team have worked on over the past few weeks. https://www.planetalkinguk.com Let us know what you think! Hope to see you all on Friday! Search social media for 'PlaneTalkingUK' Whatsapp Number - +44 757 22 491 66 Email - podcast@planetalkinguk.com Website - www.planetalkinguk.com Cap'n Al Twitter - @airbus_al Dan Holley Twitter - @danholley_ Here are the links to the stories we featured this week : COMMERCIAL QANTAS SEES INTERNATIONAL SERVICE GROUNDED UNTIL JULY 2021 AND EMIRATES SAYS IT WILL SERVE 100% BY JULY 2021 https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2020-08-20/qantas-sees-international-service-grounded-until-july-2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/emirates-says-it-will-serve-100percent-of-its-destinations-by-summer-2021.html RYANAIR CUTS CAPACITY FOR SEPTEMBER https://www.flightglobal.com/networks/ryanair-cuts-20-of-sept-oct-capacity-as-restrictions-hit-demand/139792.article MAN ARRESTED IN PORTLAND AFTER DRIVING UNDER A TAXIING AIRCRAFT https://simpleflying.com/man-arrested-in-portland-after-driving-under-a-taxiing-aircraft/ WIZZ AIR TAKES ON EASYJET AT GATWICK AIRPORT https://apple.news/Au83LxIEGQ1GKjjx58o-1zg BOEING 737 MAX ORDER FROM ENTER AIR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-enter-air-orders/boeing-scores-years-first-737-max-order-with-polish-airline-enter-air-idUSKCN25F28A https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=130724 MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR TURNS BUCKINGHAM PALACE INTO BLOCK OF FLATS https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2020/08/19/microsoft-flight-simulator-turns-buckingham-palace-into-block-of-flats LONDON CITY AIRPORT £500 MILLION MAKEOVER ON HOLDhttps://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/london-city-airports-500million-makeover-22546198   MILITARY   FIRST SIMULATOR ARRIVAL BOOSTS RAF POSEIDON OPERATIONS https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/first-simulator-arrival-boosts-raf-poseidon-operations/139820.article FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY ISRAELI COMBAT AIRCRAFT HAVE LANDED IN GERMANY TO TAKE PART IN BLUE WINGS 2020 EXERCISE https://theaviationist.com/2020/08/17/for-the-first-time-in-history-israeli-combat-aircraft-have-landed-in-germany-to-take-part-in-blue-wings-2020-exercise/ F-117 NIGHTHAWKS NOW APPEAR TO BE FLYING AS ADVERSARIES IN RED FLAG AERIAL WAR GAMES https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35748/f-117-nighthawks-now-appear-to-be-flying-as-adversaries-in-red-flag-aerial-war-games RUSSIA'S 'HUNTER' IS UNLIKE ANYTHING IN AMERICA'S ARSENAL https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a33548209/russia-hunter-combat-drone/

Before the April 24th, 1989 release of ‘Full Moon Fever’, Tom Petty was coming off of a pretty rough period in his life both professionally and personally. His last album with the Heartbreakers ‘Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)’ didn’t live up to its expectations and his record label wasn’t happy. But that paled in comparison to what Tom had to deal with in the spring of 1987. On May 17th of that year Tom and his family were sitting down to breakfast that morning when they began to smell smoke. Within moments, Petty's Encino, Calif., home was engulfed in flames. He got his wife and 5-year-old daughter out safely, but the fire burned through the house quickly. The only room that survived was his basement studio.The Pettys had lost nearly everything. He lost an estimated $1 million dollars damages. It was devastating but not the last of the bad news. This was no accident. According to a report, an arsonist had drenched the house's back staircase in lighter fluid. But Tom wasn’t ready to give up yet and he had some very loyal and talented friends who would be right by his side, in the studio the whole way. By July of 1989, Tom Petty was not only back on top, he was bigger than he’d ever been and it all came thanks to the album we’re about to discover – ‘Full Moon Fever’.SIDE ONE:1. "Free Fallin'" 2. "I Won't Back Down" 3. "Love Is a Long Road"4. "A Face in the Crowd" 5. "Runnin' Down a Dream"SIDE TWO:1. "Feel a Whole Lot Better"2. "Yer So Bad" 3. "Depending on You"4. "The Apartment Song"5. "Alright for Now"6. "A Mind with a Heart of Its Own" 7. "Zombie Zoo"Find DISCovery on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheDISCoverypodcasthomeThe DISCovery theme song "Woo Hoo" by Reebosound (https://reebosound.bandcamp.com)Please give the show a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to DISCovery!

Happy Friday! This week the gang gets together to taste some delicious beers from Chatty Monks Brewing Company. A local favorite of ours, Chatty Monks is located on the hip West Reading Street of Penn Ave, right in the heart of Berks County. Chatty Monks offers a rotating tap of fresh new beers regularly as well as a tasty menu with many options. Their brewery on Penn Ave provides a nice welcoming cozy place to relax, enjoy a meal and try out some of their many brews. Beers are available on location or to go in crowlers or growler fills.From their website, Chatty Monks gives a little history of how they came to be: "It all started with Joe & Rob. Nearly every weekend, there they were, tasting every craft beer under the sun, along with a pint or twenty under the moon. And then they heard the calling from the sky (or perhaps from their empty glasses): “brew, and ye shall be blessed.” Not ones to ignore such powerful signs, they quickly set to work in their Beer Bunker (others might call it a kitchen), concocting their own tasty Belgian style ales.By July of 2013, the Chatty Monks were receiving an abundance of requests to open a tasting room in the Wyomissing area. While this appeared to be quite a daunting task, they took the challenge upon themselves and, not surprisingly, owned it like the Chatty Monk Brethren that they are."For us, Chatty Monks is a hometown favorite and we highly suggest checking them out. If you're ever in the Reading area and need a place to locally support, Chatty Monks is near the top of the list of places to go to. Let us know if you check them out or have been there before! We would love to hear what you think!Chatty Monk's website - LinkSupport the show (http://keystoneeats.com)

In Hubei province of China, close to 29,000 citizens were evacuated as a nearby reservoir dam is showing signs of deformation, and began to slide. The incident is taking place amid continuing heavy rains in China. Near the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, which has been overflowing as well, the water level at the BaiYange Reservoir in HuangGang City of Hubei rose to dangerous levels, and the dam began to slide and to show signs of deformation, putting an area of over 620 square miles at risk. The reservoir was built in 1958, spans several villages, and can hold around 78 million cubic feet of water. And in other parts of China, reservoirs impacted by floods are making the floodwaters worse. By July 5, around 1,094 reservoirs just in Hubei had exceeded their limits, and more than 11 counties and cities including Wuhan, the epicenter of the CCP Virus, the new coronavirus, issued red-code flood warnings. One other city, Xiantao, also evacuated its residents in the middle of the night. These stories and more in this episode of Crossroads. ⭕️ Subscribe for updates : http://bit.ly/CrossroadsYT ⭕️ Donate to support our work: https://www.bestgift.tv/crossroads ⭕️ Join Patreon to Support Crossroads: https://www.patreon.com/Crossroads_Josh

As I’m preparing this archival program for rebroadcast at the end of June, 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce his government’s annexation of major areas of the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian West Bank. This is Prof. Edward Said’s last major speech on Palestine given at UC Berkeley seven months before his death on September 25, 2003. He was born in Jerusalem in 1935, lived in exile in the US and was professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In this conclusion of his speech Edward Said gave a report on GAZA, still under military occupation. He also referred to the first and second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, and the beginning of the building of the separation wall. The building of Israeli settlements, the major cause of conflict and suffering, continues to this day. By July 2020 more than 800,000 settlers are estimated to live in 150 exclusively Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank including East Jerusalem all of which are considered to be in violation of international law by the International Court of Justice. The West Bank is home to 2.16 Palestinians. Since Said spoke in 2003 many analysts and even some governments have pointed to international law codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention that states: “The occupying power shall not … transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.” Article 49 of that same convention also protects the legal right of Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation. Said ends with a very personal description of the healing collaboration between him and the Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim. The youth orchestra that they founded together in 1999 to bring Palestinians and Israelis together still performs in 2020.

Especially in modern textbooks and broad historical surveys, the Mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242 is presented as the Mongols ‘disappearing into the mists of the east,’ as far as the Europeans were concerned. But in the immediate wake of the 1242 withdrawal, Europeans needed to know more about this new foe. Rather than a ‘Mongol disappearance’ from the European mind, European diplomats and representatives made the trip to the Mongol Empire on behalf of Kings and Popes- even to distant Mongolia. A number of these travellers wrote down accounts of their journeys, providing us yet another viewpoint to events within the Mongol Empire. In this episode, we will discuss three of these accounts from the 1240s and 1250s- that of John de Plano Carpini, Simon of St. Quentin and William of Rubruck. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Our first journey is that of John of Plano Carpini, or Giovanni da Pian del Carpine. Like today’s other accounts, Plano Carpini was a member of a religious order, in this case the Franciscans, an influential group of Christian mendicants founded in the early 13th century by St. Francis of Assisi. Known for their rejections of wealth, simple brown habits, or robes, and often going about barefoot, since the lifetime of St. Francis they had worked closely with the Catholic Church in Rome. John of Plano Carpini was a leading figure among the Franciscans, having been at the forefront of their expansion into Germany. The impetus for Plano Carpini’s journey could not have come from a higher authority, that of Pope Innocent IV. This Pope had in 1245 organized the First Council of Lyons, one of those great ecclesiatical gatherings held every few years in the High Middle Ages to determine church doctrine and how to react to temporal matters. At Lyons in 1245, the biggest topics on the menu were two great foes of the Pope: Frederick II Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Mongols. While Innocent’s main concern was the Kaiser, there was great worry over the mysterious horsemen. On the initiative to learn more about them and establish diplomatic ties to avert a repeat of the horrors in Hungary, Pope Innocent sent the 65 year old John of Plano Carpini on the long road east in late 1245.   Aided along the way by the King of Bohemia and the High Duke of Poland, Carpini soon reached the Prince of Volhynia, Vasilko. Vasilko and his brother, Daniel of Galicia, were the westernmost princes of Rus’, and who escaped most of the destruction suffered by the other Rus’ principalities. With Vasilko, Carpini was provided the most up-to-date information on the Mongols one could have in Europe. Passing the ruins of Kiev and an emptied countryside, only at Kaniv did Carpini reach territory under direct Mongol rule. As official envoys of the monarch the Mongols dubbed “the great Pope,” Carpini and his small company were provided escorts and use of the yam system, the great continental messenger route.     Once on the yam, Carpini’s route picked up speed. They rode day and night over the steppe, changing horses three or four times a day as they reached yam stations. By April 4th 1246, they were in the camp of Batu. Batu did not return to Mongolia after the invasion of Europe, instead setting up his camp in the great swath of grassland along the Volga River which made up the middle of his territory, where he held immense power.  Carpini saw that Batu used King Bela IV’s linen tents as his own, taken as booty after the victory at Mohi. At Batu’s camp their letters from the Pope were translated into Russian, Persian and Mongolian, and then they were sent on their way. This stage of the journey is one Carpini had little love for. They rode their horses day and night, sometimes eating nothing except millet with water and salt, or only drinking snow melted in kettles.  They passed the ruins of the cities of the Khwarezmian Empire, the names of which Carpini had no chance to learn before they had moved on.    By July 1246, they were in Mongolia. The hard ride had a purpose, for Carpini arrived in in time for the election of the new Great Khan, Guyuk. As messengers of the Pope they were treated well, provided their own tent and provisions. Carpini gives a fantastic description of Guyuk’s enthronement and the accompanying ceremonies- one detail is a sudden hailstorm postponing Guyuk’s official enthronement until August 24th.  He noticed representatives of powers from across Asia: the Rus’ Prince Yaroslav of Suzdal’, Chinese and Korean representatives, princes from the Kingdom of Georgia and the ambassador of the Caliph of Baghdad, among many others. Carpini’s embassy spent little time with the new Great Khan, offering only a brief description of him: quote, “The present Emperor may be forty or forty-five years old or more; he is of medium height, very intelligent and extremely shrewd, and most serious and grave in his manner. He is never seen to laugh for a slight cause nor to indulge in any frivolity, so we were told by the Christians who are constantly with him.”   On the matter of Chrisitianity, Carpini shares rumours that Guyuk was on the verge of converting. Guyuk did have affinity for the religion, as some of his closest advisers were Christians of the Nestorian flavour. No such baptism for Guyuk was forthcoming, however. As for Carpini’s actual mission to Guyuk, it proved less successful. Guyuk explained that the slaughter wrought in Hungary and Poland was due to the failure of the Europeans to submit to Heaven’s will and Mongol authority. Further, more would come, and when Carpini departed Guyuk’s camp for Europe in November 1246, he left utterly convinced that Guyuk was intent on marching on Europe.    With this fear in mind, Carpini tailored his work as a manual to prepare for the Mongol return. He wrote a very accurate description of the appearance of the Mongols, their culture and society, to detailed descriptions of their armour, tactics, and strategy. He follows this with recommendations on how they should be countered. His solution is that European armies needed to copy the organization of the Mongols and their discipline: literally, they should adopt the decimal organization system and instil the same punishment for desertion or failure to advance. The importance of crossbows were emphasized; the need to not allow themselves to be flanked and to watch for feigned retreats; maintain reserve units to assist the line and always have the army covered by scouts to alert to Mongol movements. If relying on fortifications, they needed to be built in places inaccessible to siege weapons. Care should be shown to captured prisoners: using the descriptions he provides, he argues that Europeans needed to learn to identify the Mongols from those subject peoples forced to fight for the Khan. These peoples, Carpini says, would fight against the Mongols if provided the chance.   When Carpini is describing things he did not directly observe, he falls easily into accepting myths and rumours. In his account Jesus Christ and the scriptures are honoured in China (which he never visited), there are literal monsters under Mongol control, and the Mongols were repulsed from Greater India by its Christian King, Prester John. However, he provides a keen eye at Mongol politics at the start of Guyuk’s reign, listing the top chiefs and mentions Mongke and his mother Sorqaqtani, who he says “among the Tartars this lady is the most renowned, with the exception of the Emperor’s mother [Torogene], and more powerful than anyone else except Batu.”  On his return journey, Carpini remet with Vasilko of Volhynia and Daniel of Galicia, who sent with Carpini letters and envoys to Pope Innocent for cooperation, leading to Pope Innocent crowning Daniel King of Ruthenia, or Galicia-Volhynia, a brief flirtation of Orthodox and Catholic unity. Innocent provided no support for the newly independent monarch beyond this, and Daniel saw his autonomy crushed at the end of the 1250s with a major Mongol attack.   Carpini’s account, written on his return to Europe, was hugely disseminated through Carpini’s own efforts and its inclusion in one of the most popular medieval encyclopedias, Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale. It's clear, detailed descriptions of the Mongols, based entirely on observation, was hugely influential on the writings of other travellers. Some have even argued it spurned the beginnings to more analytic, scientific descriptions of the world, in part as it brought a detailed presentation on a world outside of Europe. It was not exactly a friendly world, mind you. Carpini returned with a letter from Guyuk demanding the submission of the Pope and all the monarchs of Europe, immediately, and in person- with the direct threat of horrific consequences if they failed to do so.   As Carpini returned from the Mongol Empire in 1247, another embassy reached the Mongols in what is now Armenia. Pope Innocent ordered a party of Dominican friars from the Crusader states to bear a letter to the Mongols, opening a second diplomatic front in the event Plano Carpini did not return. The Dominicans were another mendicant order founded in the 13th century, famous both as preachers and inquisitors, and visually distinctive in their black cloaks over white habits.  This group of Dominicans was led by a Friar Ascelin, but the account was written by another member of the embassy, Friar Simon of St. Quentin. An online translation has been made accessible online by our friend of the podcast Dr. Stephen Pow- check out www.simonofstquentin.org to read the full account, with maps!    The Dominican embassy arrived in the camp of the Mongol commander of the Caucasus- Baiju Noyan, on the 24th May, 1247. Learning of their arrival, Baiju sent a representative to enquire as to their purpose, and things immediately got off to a poor start. Upon being asked who they were the representatives of, Friar Ascelin replied, “I am the envoy of the Lord Pope, who among Christians is considered superior in dignity to all men and to whom they show reverence as to their father and lord.”   To which Baiju’s representative became immediately annoyed and responded, “How, speaking with such proud words, do you say that your lord pope is the greatest of all men? Does he not know that Khan is the son of God and that Baiju Noyan and Batu are his princes and thus their names are made known and exalted everywhere?” To which Friar Ascelin replied that the Pope knew none of these names, and that they were simply instructed to find the nearest Mongol army -wherever that might be- and to present a letter from the Pope urging a cessation to the slaughter of Christians.   From here, the meeting devolved. The representative returned to Baiju with the message, and returning in a new set of clothes, asked what gifts the Pope had sent for Baiju. The embassy had failed to provide any, stating that in fact, people sent gifts to the Pope! When he returned from Baiju, again in a new set of clothes, he scolded them for failing to show up with gifts- then inquired if they were at the head of any European armies being sent into Syria.  Before allowing the embassy to meet Baiju, they were then ordered to genuflect before him- which the Friars refused to do, fearing it was idolatry. One in their party who had some experience with Mongol customs informed them it wasn’t idolatry they were asking for- just a sign of the submission of the Pope and Catholic Church to the Khan. On this, the Friars proudly stated they’d rather be decapitated than imply the submission of the Church. They would genuflect and even kiss the soles of Baiju’s feet on the condition that he became a Christian. The response was… not ideal.   “You advise us that we become Christians and be dogs like you. Isn’t your pope a dog and aren’t all you Christians dogs?” the Mongols shouted at the party, and upon learning of this insolence Baiju ordered them all to be killed. Baiju’s advisers urged mercy- don’t kill all four of the friars, only two! Another suggested it would be better to skin the lead friar and send him back to Rome stuffed with straw. Or, have two of them beaten by sticks by the whole Mongol army! Another voice said the wisest course was to place them at the front of the army during a siege, and allow them to be killed by enemy missiles. Murder was only abandoned when one of Baiju’s wives talked him down from it- reminding him quite rightly it was poor conduct to kill envoys, and it would bring him into trouble with the imperial court.    Brought back from the brink- and this was still only the first day, mind you- Baiju’s representative inquired what would be an appropriate way for them to worship Baiju. No solution could be reached. The Mongols could not understand the stubbornness of the Christians in this regard: from their point of view, the Christians worshipped wood crosses and stone churches, and could not comprehend why the same respect could not be shown to Baiju, chosen by the Great Khan who was chosen by Heaven itself! The Friars’ explanations turned to theology, how St. Peter granted the keys to the Pope and so on. Lost in translation, the arguments went nowhere, until it was decided that Acelin would hand over the Pope’s letters but not appear before Baiju. The letter then needed to be translated for Baiju, which required Friar Ascelin explaining it word by word to Greek and Turk translators, who then explained it to Persian translators, who then translated it into Mongol, who then read it out for Baiju.   Annoyed by the initial proceedings, Baiju showed them disrespect after that. Left waiting in the hot sun, they were initially told they would be allowed to leave on the 12th of June, 1247, but this was rescinded when Baiju learned of the approach of Eljigidei to be his new superior. Eljigidei was a close ally of Great Khan Guyuk, sent west to resume military operations in the region.  Given only minimal bread and water, they could only wait. And wait. And wait. With no sign of Eljigidei and Ascelin fretting over continued delay, he finally got a councillor to plead on their behalf with promises of gifts. Baiju prepared a letter to send to the Pope, and things looked just about ready for the Dominicans to depart… when Eljigidei finally arrived. Then followed 7 straight days of feasting, drinking and celebrating before finally, some nine weeks after their initial arrival, on the 25th of July 1247 the Friars left Baiju’s camp.    Like Plano Carpini, Ascelin returned with a letter from the Mongols, this time from Baiju, and within it were only the strictest of demands. The Pope was to come himself, in person, and submit to the Mongols. Failure to do so meant he was an enemy to the Great Khan, and only one fate awaited the enemies of the Great Khan. By the end of the 1240s Pope Innocent IV had at least two letters from top Mongol leaders- one of them the Great Khan, Guyuk- demanding his immediate submission.  That’s a fairly strong indication that the Mongol high command was intent on the subjugation of Europe. Much like Carpini, Ascelin’s colleague Simon recorded considerable detail on the customs, habits and warfare of the Mongols, with information on the strategies and tactics they used in their expansion over Iran, the Caucasus and Anatolia- much of it from first hand sources. As much as they were failed conversion and diplomatic efforts, they were valuable sources of intelligence on a foe they had frustratingly little information on. The impression garnered over the 1240s was of an immensely antagonistic power interested in nothing less than mastery of the world.   Our final traveller for today is William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar who also made the long trip to Mongolia carrying a letter from the King of France Louis IX- though insisting the entire time he was not a diplomat, merely holding the letter for a friend.  Rubruck’s mission both in structure and situation differed from his predecessors. There is no indication he ever met John de Plano Carpini: he was familiar with his work, but not enough that he could get Carpini’s name correct in his own account, referring to him as John of Policarpo. Rubruck provides one detail about himself in his own account: that he was rather on the large side. Stationed in the Holy Land, he joined  the crusading King Louis IX in Cyprus in winter 1248, and went with him on his disastrous Egyptian campaign of 1250- the Seventh Crusade. This campaign was a catalyst to the usurpation of the Mamluks in Egypt over the Ayyubids, something to have major consequences for the Mongols in a few years. Rubruck’s accounts do not indicate he was among them during the debacles further down the Nile in 1250, during which Louis was captured by the Mamluks, held for ransom and released. The following years the French King spent restoring local fortifications in Palestine, humbled and penitent. It seems in this period Rubruck spent quite some time with the King and Queen. Louis had already been in contact with the Mongols, having sent the Dominican friar Andrew of Longjumeau to the Great Khan’s court in the 1240s, and received envoys from Eljigidei in early 1249. This led to nothing: Guyuk was dead before the Dominican reached his court, and Eljigidei, as a close ally of Guyuk, was soon to follow him on Mongke’s orders.   Rubruck, as a good Fransciscan, was keen to spread the word of God among the heathens and had learned from Andrew of Longjumeau’s report of German miners carried east as slaves by the Chagatai prince Buri during the invasion of Hungary.  Keen to bring salvation to the Mongols, and peace to these slaves, it was Rubruck’s own initiative to travel to the Mongol Empire in 1253. Before he left King Louis provided Rubruck a letter to the Khan, as a sort of “while you’re going that way,” rather than an official embassy.. Learning that a Jochid prince, Sartaq son of Batu, was a Christian, Rubruck decided to make a stop at his court first, perhaps hoping to seek his assistance for the long trek. Taking his leave of King Louis likely at Jaffa, Rubruck set out north and reached Constantinople in April 1253, there getting a chance to preach in St. Sophia, the modern Hagia Sofia; he spoke with other men who had gone as envoys to the Mongols; and there picked up a companion, another Franciscan named Bartholomew of Cremona. Sailing across the Black Sea to Crimea, he travelled north into the steppes to the camp of Sartaq.    Sartaq was the first of many disappointments for Rubruck. His Chrisitanity Rubruck found lacking, and his secretaries admonished Rubruck for calling him a Christian, telling him “Do not say that our master is a Christian. He is not a Christian; he is a Mongol.” The customary gift giving resulted in much of his possessions being taken or outright stolen. In the four days they were there, they were not even provided food, only airag, fermented mare’s milk, though Rubruck took a liking to it. Rubruck stressed he was not an envoy, merely carrying a letter of friendly intent from King Louis. This made a real mess. This was not an area in Mongol diplomacy their world view accounted for. To quote historian Peter Jackson in his translation of Rubruck’s account, “the Mongols were in fact unable to comprehend why representatives of independent peoples should trouble to visit the imperial court if not to bring submission.” Sartaq, not understanding the purpose of Rubruck’s letter, decided this was a matter for his father Batu to settle. So Rubruck, at this time in his mid forties and trying to travel barefoot as in Franciscan tradition, was forced to follow Plano Carpini’s route over the Volga Steppe to the court of Batu.   He was amazed at the size of Batu’s camp, comparing it to a large city. Taken before the tent of Batu, he gazed upon the second most powerful man in Asia. Sitting upon a golden throne with a wife at his side, Rubruck provides us our only physical description of Batu Khan: “He regarded us with a keen gaze, as we did him. He struck me as being of the same build as the lord John of Beaumont, and his face was covered at this time with reddish blotches.” As numerous commentators have stated, it is a deep shame that we do not know what build John of Beaumont was. Through his interpreter, Rubruck spoke to Batu and the audience, in which he urged Batu to be baptized. Batu gave a slight smile, and the audience began laughing at Rubruck.    Batu interrogated Rubruck, having learned through spies of King Louis’ military expedition to Egypt. Telling the Khan that the purpose was to recapture Jerusalem, Rubruck was given airag and sent to the side. Batu decided it was best to send this representative of the French King right to the highest authority: Mongke Khaan, quite without Rubruck’s consent and with no choice in the matter. “There is no counting the times we were famished, thirsty, frozen and exhausted,” Rubruck says of the lengthy voyage in winter 1253 over Central Asia to Mongolia. Rubruck’s account, unlike that of Carpini, is full of personal opinions on matters: mainly in the form of how much he hated everything. Their hygiene and personal habits, such as relieving themselves in the middle of the open steppe right beside him he found ‘excessively tiresome.’   By the end of December 1253 William of Rubruck was in the camp of Mongke Khaan, some ten days journey from Karakorum. Unlike with Ascelin and Baiju, Rubruck was asked how he would like to make his obeisance to the Khan, per European custom or Mongolian. Rubruck would sing praises to God, then do as Mongke wished. Inside a tent Rubruck describes as covered in gold, the friar provides a brief description of Mongke. The Khan was seated on a golden couch with a wife, dressed in spotted fur, snub nosed, of medium build and about 45 years old. One of Mongke’s daughters was seated on the steps before him: Rubruck says she was very ugly. The initial meeting did not go very far. Alcohol was offered, and Rubruck’s interpreter helped himself. After Mongke’s first statement, “Just as the sun spreads its rays in all directions, so my power and that of Batu are spread to every quarter,” Rubruck’s interpreter was too drunk to translate, and the friar was quickly pushed to the side.   Rubruck did not have a good time in the Mongol court. Provided lodging and food, he found himself interrogated and often mistreated. The Mongols sought information on Europe, on what and how many goods and animals the French possessed, and if the Pope was really 500 years old. Rubruck had gone to convert the heathens and bring salvation to the captured German miners: he succeeded in converting only six people during his stay and learned the Germans were beyond his reach in Central Asia. Rubruck was stuck with Nestorian and Greek Orthodox Christians which he did not take a great liking too, there only to enrich themselves. The priests, among many others, were convinced Mongke was on the verge of converting to their creed. Rubruck saw that the Khan didn’t care for any of them, content to utilize all their prayers. Spending several months in Mongke’s camp and Karakorum, the imperial capital, Rubruck met persons from all over Asia. From ambassadors from the Nicaean Empire, the Delhi Sultanate, Baghdad and China to Europeans brought as captives to Mongolia. He met Hungarians, Germans, Russians and French. One was William Buchier of Paris, a goldsmith highly prized by the Mongols. He designed and built the famous silver tree of Karakorum: literally, a tree made from silver with conduits running through it, at the base through four silver lions and higher up coming down as spouts shaped as snakes. From the lions came airag, fermented mare’s milk; from the gilded mouths of four snakes poured grape wine; qaraqumiss, refined mare’s milk; bal, a honey drink, and a rice wine. At the top of the tree was a silver angel with a trumpet. On command, a man inside the tree would sound the trumpet, alerting stewards in another room to feed the alcoholic beverages through their respectives conduits. Below each animal was a vessel to collect the drinks, and when filled they were carried to the cheery guests, applauding at the show. Aside from this and the Khan’s palace in Karakorum, Rubruck found the city terribly unimpressive, likening it to a small town in France but with a very diverse population.    Rubruck endured a number of almost sitcom-like vignettes during his time there. On one occasion he joined with a Nestorian priest to ‘save’ one of Mongke’s sickly wives through a decoction of rhubarb and holy water. Most notable was a religious debate he took part in, sparked by a conflict between Rubruck and the Buddhist priests at Karakorum. While Rubruck gives a detailed and accurate description of the Buddhist customs he saw, he had little care for the Buddhists themselves. This spat turned into the Mongols hosting a religious debate- on one side, Rubruck representing the Catholic Church, with Nestorian Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslims, and on the other Buddhists lamas. Three umpires - a Buddhist, Christian and Muslim- judged. Mongke, in typical fashion, called for a respectful debate forbidding insulting remarks to opponents, on pain of death.   Rubruck’s version is that he was the star player, deftly disarming the arguments of the Buddhists while his own teammates proved incompetent. We lack any other accounts of this debate, so we should perhaps take it with a grain of salt. He does remark that even though his arguments were like, totally 100% awesome and really effective, no one was convinced to become a Christian because of it, and the debate ended with everyone drinking heavily with half his team singing loudly and presumably, off-key.    The most interesting portion of Rubruck’s narrative is his brief interview with Mongke Khaan, albeit through an interpreter. In this discussion, Mongke provides a fascinating explanation for his religious view:   “We Mongols believe that there is only one God, through whom we have life and through whom we die, and towards him we direct our hearts. But just as God has given the hand several fingers, so he has given mankind several paths. To you God has given the Scriptures and you Christians do not observe them. You do not find in the scriptures, that one man ought to abuse another, do you? And likewise you do not find that a man ought to deviate from the path of justice for financial gain. So, then, God has given you the Scriptures, and you do not observe them; whereas to us he has given soothsayers, and we do as they tell us and live in peace.”   After this, Rubruck was instructed to return to the west with a letter for King Louis, upon which he lamented he had no chance to attempt to convert the Khan. Mongke’s letter to Louis is preserved in Rubruck’s account, and it’s somewhat more cordial compared to the demands of Guyuk. I mean, it still has demands that the Kings of Europe come and submit to him, and that it would be foolish to trust in distance and mountains to protect them.  But it offered something of an apology- well, not quite an apology-  for inconsistent messaging by the envoys of Eljigidei, and for Andrew of Longjumeau’s journey which met not Guyuk Khan, but his widow Oghul Qaimish. On Oghul Qaimish, Mongke stated his opinion on her rather bluntly in his letter: “But as for knowing the business of war and the affairs of peace, subduing the wide world and discerning how to act for the best- what could that worthless woman, lower than a bitch, have known of this?” That he would so openly write this in an official channel- a letter to another monarch- is indicative of the malice he felt to her, and partially explains some of the violence Mongke ordered against the house of Ogedai.   Alas for William of Rubruck, but well for us, was that he was unable to return to King Louis to deliver the message in person. Believing Louis had remained in the Crusader States, after reaching the court of Batu in the Volga steppe, Rubruck cut south through the Caucasus- briefly staying in Baiju Noyan’s camp, where he heard of the approach of Hulegu, Mongke’s younger brother, and a massive army marching through Iran. Learning that Louis had returned to France, Rubruck’s Franciscan superiors ordered him to remain in Acre, forced to send Mongke’s letters alongside a written account of his journey, which luckily for us survives. Unlike Carpini’s account, Rubruck writes little on the warfare of the Mongols, spending more time on their customs and character, with remarkably astute, though not compassionate, descriptions of the cultures and religions he saw throughout his journey. It’s also a detailed geographical and observational survey, challenging views set out by ancient writers. For instance, noting that the Caspian Sea was not an ocean but a lake;  noting the proper courses of the Don and Volga Rivers; connecting the Chinese to the Seres mentioned in antiquity; noted linguistic connections between various groups and, upon finding no evidence for popular medieval monsters like the dog-headed people, argued against their existence. One of the few people to read Rubruck’s account in the 13th century was the English Franciscan Roger Bacon, who met Rubruck in Paris in 1257. Bacon was the first European to record the mixture for gunpowder in 1267. It’s sometimes suggested that Rubruck provided it to Bacon, but as Rubruck mentions nothing of the sort in his account, this is unlikely.    And that is a brief overview of three early European journeys to the Mongol Empire. Not as famous as the slightly later journey of one Messer Marco Polo, but fascinating nonetheless. Our next episode will be an overview of the reign of Great Khan Mongke, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

Michael Devine from the IRS was our guest on People to People on Thursday. Michael joined WKEI to talk about being one month away from this year's extended tax deadline. By July 15th you will need to have filed your taxes or face potential late filing penalties. Michael also talked to WKEI to encourage those who've perhaps simply not filed taxes in several years. The deadline to make sure you file your 2016 income taxes and to still receive a refund if one is owed to you, is also July 15th of 2020. Michael estimates that Illinois residents failed to collect nearly $54 million dollars in tax refunds in 2016.

For two days’ walk a trail of corpses lead from the bridge over the Sajo River. Arrows protruding from fallen Hungarians, limbs bent at unnatural angles, leading to a dense marsh where armoured bodies lay sunk in the bloodied water. Riders picked over the bodies, collecting unbroken arrows, still usable weapons and armours while finishing off survivors. Great piles of loot were made, to be divided among the troops, and Batu Khan, grandson of Chinggis, took the royal tents of the Hungarian King, Bela IV, for himself. Bela had escaped, but the Mongol riders would pursue. In the aftermath of the carnage at the battlefield at Mohi, the rest of the Hungarian Kingdom and Europe itself seemed open to Mongol horsemen. Batu and Subutai may have envisioned leading their men into the cities of Italy, Germany and France, but within  a year they pulled their forces back from Europe. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   The Mongols considered the battle of Mohi, over the 10th and 11th of April, 1241, among their greatest victories, a hard fought battle over a determined enemy. Though the battle over the bridge was close, Mongol losses running high and certain princes wishing to retreat, in the end Batu and Subutai outplayed the Hungarians and destroyed the royal army. Yet King Bela IV had escaped, as had his brother Prince Coloman, and a number of Hungarian nobles had not been present, never providing their troops to Bela in the first place. Nonetheless, the battle’s outcome was a massive disaster for the Hungarians. Alongside the sheer volume in manpower lost, many of the Kingdom’s highest ranking figures had been killed. From top bishops, archbishops, the Knights Templar within the Kingdom, to Bela’s chancellor, were among the fallen. In one stroke, the head of the Hungarian administrative apparatus was nearly severed. Though Bela and his brother Coloman survived, they were on the run, desperate to get as far from the Mongols as possible. In the even terrain of the Great Hungarian Plain east of the Danube River, it was hard to get far enough.    Prince Coloman reached Pest, where the Hungarian army had rode from so confidently a week prior. He urged the inhabitants to flee, but was rebuffed, the wall-less town choosing then to begin building ditches and defences. Coloman rode on to Zagreb in Croatia where he succumbed to his injuries in May. Bela rode to his territories west of the Danube River, near the Austrian border where his wife and young children were. There they were invited to seek refuge in Austria by its Duke, Frederick. Bela headed to the Austrian fortress of Hainburg, where he was promptly imprisoned, the Austrian Duke demanding an exorbitant ransom from the Hungarian King: at least 1,000 marks in coin, another 1,000 in gold, silver vessels, jewels, and five western counties of Hungary to be ceded to Frederick. Bela reluctantly paid, then rejoined his family in Hungary before fleeing south to Croatia. Duke Frederick sought to take these territories by force, but due to local resistance, was only able to hold three. Angered, he began extorting money from refugees seeking shelter in Austria! Bela reached Zagreb around May 18th, in time to bury his dear brother Coloman, in some accounts forced to give him an unmarked grave to avoid it being descretated by the Mongols. In his absence, Hungary was left to the Mongols. In the Hungarian Plain where fortifications sat on level ground and consisted of wood or earthworks, the Mongols were unstoppable. Historical sources and archaeology show horrific destruction, depopulation and indiscriminate slaughter. In some regions of the plain population loss reached as high as 70% , many villages permanently abandoned. Remains of people trapped within burning buildings abound. The few locations built in difficult to access sites, such as mountaintops or thick marshand protected with stone, fared better, but these were rare and of little consolation to the majority. Demographically, this caused a massive shift with refugees flooding out of the plain to western and northern Hungary, territory more rugged and easily fortifiable. We have evidence of desperate, impromptu defenses built around churches, often the only stone buildings accessible. Ditches and earthworks were dug in concentric layers around churches, incorporating the local cemeteries and features. Arrowheads and bodies are always found, indicating only hopeless last stands.   At Pest, Batu and Subutai linked up with Qadan, Burundai and Bojek, the commanders who had campaigned through Transylvania. The hastily constructed defences of Pest were easily penetrated, the town burned down by the 30th of April. From Pest, the Mongols ravaged the cities on the east and north banks of the Danube River, unable to cross it. By July 1241 Mongols riding west along the north bank of the Danube reached the Duchy of Austria. Austria’s Duke Frederick defeated some Mongol parties, in the process making a fascinating capture: an Englishman, banished from England around 1220, who had wandered east, developed a skill for languages and eventually wound up in Mongol service, where he was richly rewarded for his talents. He was sent as envoy to King Bela at least twice, before meeting his fate in Austria. Finding resistance stiff and yet still unable to find an unguarded crossing point over the Danube River, the Mongols soon turned back from Austria.  To terrify the defenders on the west side of the Danube, the Mongols piled bodies of the slain on the east bank, and were said to have speared small children on lances and parade them ‘like fish on a spit.’ Waiting for the river to freeze, Mongol forces were left to harass central and eastern Hungary for the remainder of 1241.   An emotional eye witness account of the horrors of the 1241 occupation is recorded for us by the Archbishop of Varad, Master Roger, sometimes called Rogerius. Written shortly after the invasion, Roger describes his own harrowing journey on the run from the Mongols, including first hand information from other survivors. Roger had fled Varad, modern Oradea in Romania, shortly before the city was destroyed by Qadan. Watching from the forest, he saw Qadan leave only the castle standing before withdrawing. After several days, the castle’s defenders came down from the walls to rebuild the town, thinking their deep moat and wooden towers had scared off the Mongols. One day at dawn Qadan’s riders reappeared,  killing those outside the walls then surrounding the castle, setting up seven catapults which bombarded the walls ceaselessly day and night; towers and newly fortified sections of the walls were all demolished. The defenders were killed, and the women and survivors who fled into the church were trapped when the Mongols set it aflame. Withdrawing again, the Mongols waited several days before returning again to kill those survivors who had come out for food.  Roger saw this carried out several times; a German village on the Çris River which he nearly stayed in was obliterated shortly after his departure; Cenad, where he hoped to flee, was destroyed before he could arrive; and for a while he found refuge at a fortified island, accessible only by a narrow passage and gates. After his servants abandoned him, stealing his money and clothes, Roger left the island for the nearby forest, from where he watched Mongol forces arrive. Setting up on one side of the river, the Mongols tricked the defenders into mobilizing there, anticipating the Mongols would try a river crossing. Then, another group of Mongols struck the now undefended gates, striking the defenders from the rear and taking the island. Horrific slaughter ensued, and once again after a few days the Mongols returned to kill those survivors who, through hunger, were forced to come out to search for food.    Knowing many people hid in the forests, the Mongols sent captured persons into the forests with messages that they would spare anyone who gave themselves up before a set deadline, allowing them to return to their homes.  Having found the Royal Seal from the corpse of Bela’s Chancellor at Mohi, they dispersed forged documents in the name of the King, sending this message to discourage flight.   “Do not fear the ferocity and madness of the hounds and do not dare to leave your houses, because, although on account of some unforeseen circumstances we had to leave behind the camp and our tents, yet by the favor of God we intend gradually to recover them and fight a valiant battle against the Tatars; therefore, do nothing except pray that merciful God may permit us to crush the head of our enemies.”    Starving and scared, many complied and returned to their villages, Master Roger among those leaving the forests. The Mongols appointed basqaqs to govern these regions, both Mongols, subject peoples and Hungarians who had sided with them. Roger describes attaching himself to a man who had “already become a Tatar in deeds.” In this way, the well educated churchman accompanied his new master to weekly meetings of the overseers, who installed, over summer 1241, a regional administration. Courts and local governments were established to maintain a sort of justice- one which involved the overseers collecting numerous beautiful women for their own purposes. The villagers were to resume life and bring in the harvest. Once collected, the Mongols rode out, took what they needed for their own men and horses, and burned the rest. With a cold winter and continued depredations in spring 1242 preventing planting, a horrific famine followed.   Roger makes this interesting statement after the Mohi battle: “First they set aside Hungary beyond the Danube and assigned their share to all of the chief kings of the Tatars who had not yet arrived in Hungary. They sent word to them on the news and to hurry as there was no longer any obstacle before them.” Evidently, the Mongols anticipated not just raiding Hungary, but allocating its territory and people to the princes and the Great Khan as they had elsewhere. Over 1241 at least, the Mongols were still expecting to stay in the region and continue to expand.    With much of his kingdom left in the hands of the Mongols, King Bela tried to organize some sort of resistance. While in Zagreb in summer 1241 Bela corresponded with the Pope , Gregory IX, for help from the west. Gregory essentially shrugged off Bela’s pleas, informing him no help would come as the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II Hohenstaufen, were locked in conflict. The Kaiser in his letters to King Henry III of England and  Louis IX of France did say they should unite against the incursion, and his son Konrad, King of Germany, collected a crusading force, but this all came to naught. Konrad’s army advanced some 80 kilometres east of Nuremberg in July 1241 before dispersing, the Mongol threat to Germany proper having dissipated for the time being. By September, the German nobility was rebelling against Konrad and civil war breaking out, while the Saintonge War between France and England began in early 1242. While Pope Gregory had ordered the preaching of crusade against the Mongols, he died in August 1241, his successor surviving only three weeks, leaving the position vacant until Innocent IV’s election in 1243.  Bela would see no aid from the west.   The winter of 1241-1242 was brutally cold, exacerbating the famine and suffering in eastern Hungary. The few fords and ferries over the Danube River were guarded by Hungarian defenders on the river’s west bank, but as the temperature dropped precipitously and ice began to form on the river, they knew it impossible to watch the full length of the frontier. Despite efforts to break the ice, the Danube froze around Christmas 1241. To test the ice, the Mongols left a group of horses unguarded, and when they saw Hungarians cross the ice to herd the horses back over the river, they knew it was safe to cross. Batu and Subutai took their riders over the river, falling on the untouched western edge of Hungary.  Once more, unfortified sites and villages suffered greatly from Mongol riders. But here the terrain was more rugged, fortifications more common and there had been time to improve defenses and plans.    In the first days of 1242, Batu directed his energies against Esztergom, the kingdom’s preeminent political and religious centre. Hungarian prisoners were sent forward to build a wall of bundles of twigs before the moat, to screen 30 siege engines. The population felt confident behind their moats, walls and wooden towers, but stones lobbed from the catapults destroyed the towers and homes within the city. Next, they hurled bags of dirt into the moat, the garrison unable to clear it due to the precision of Mongol archers. With it apparent that the walls would soon be breached, the townsfolk set fire to the suburbs, destroyed the fine fabrics, buried gold and silver, killed horses and generally hid everything of value, then retreated to the citadel. Once Batu learned he had denied his prize, he was furious. The stone citadel was surrounded with wooden palisades, but they were unable to take it- a Spaniard named Simon led a skilled defence with able balistarius, referring either to crossbowmen or counter siege engines, keeping the Mongols at bay. Perhaps with good reason, it was a commonly held belief in Europe that crossbows were a weapon feared by the Mongols.   The Chinese catapults the Mongols utilized were designed for use against walls of pounded earth- common in China and Central Asia, and highly effective against earth works and wooden walls, as among the Rus’ principalities. A stone walled fortress however, proved resilient. See, the Chinese catapult was a traction catapult, sometimes called a mangonel, and was powered entirely by manpower. Large teams of men, each holding a rope, would pull on one end of the catapult arm, thus propelling the given projectile. Such a machine was, comparatively speaking, easy to build and take apart, and could be fired relatively quickly. To increase the velocity of the projectile, it was a matter of increasing the size of both the team and the machine. However, their range and strength was less than the cunningly designed counterweight trebuchet, which began to appear in the 13th century. The Mongols would, in time, require these counterweight trebuchets in order to take the greatest of Song Dynasty fortifications, Xiangyang, as the classic traction catapult proved insufficient to the task of those mighty walls protected by wide moats. Likewise, it seems stone fortifications, which in Central and Western Europe were often built on high points difficult to access, proved beyond the means of the traction catapult. Esztergom’s outer walls had fallen, but the stone central castle withstood their efforts, and if the defenders had their own counter batteries, Batu may have been infuriated to watch his own men and machines for the first time targeted by enemy catapults. Batu was certainly in a foul mood: when 300 ladies from the city came out in their finest clothes to beg for mercy, Batu ordered them robbed and decapitated before finally leaving the city. Nothing stood of Esztergom except the citadel, the surrounding suburbs a smoking ruin.    Szekesfehervar, one of the Kingdom’s chief cities, similarly withstood a brutal assault. Everything outside the city walls was obliterated but the able garrison, possibly a group of Hospitaller Knights, built their own siege weapons to counter those of the Mongols. The siege lasted only a few days before the Mongols moved on. The ferocious pace the Mongols had taken  cities in Eastern Hungary was not repeated in the western part of the Kingdom, where the enemy refused to meet the Mongols in the open field. With depleted numbers Batu may have lacked the will to conduct prolonged, bloody sieges, his siege weapons struggling against stout stone walls. With the garrisons refusing to rush out for feigned retreats, Batu found his operational abilities reduced.   While Batu struck Esztergom at the start of 1242, Qadan had been sent south to hunt down Bela IV, who had moved on from Zagreb.  After a flight down the Dalmatian coastline, Bela took refuge on an island just off shore before finally going to sea, narrowly avoiding Qadan’s riders. At one point, he sailed close to the shore to view Qadan’s army, who could only watch in frustration. Early in the season with limited pasture, Qadan only had a small force, but took out what anger he could, burning down numerous settlements from Zagreb itself past Dubrovnik, before abandoning the pursuit in March. Qadan cut through the Serbian Kingdom and the southern edge of the Hungarian Kingdom, taking Belgrade, before meeting with Batu in Bulgaria.    And it is the end of March, 1242 that we reach the most controversial topic of the campaign, as Batu began to pull back from Hungary, having found no great success in the territories beyond the Danube. This was no hurried rush to escape the country however. The earlier mentioned Master Roger was still in Mongol service at this point, recording that up until the withdrawal began, he was under the impression Germany was to be the next target. Roger then describes the journey as slow, loaded with booty, weapons, herds of cattle and sheep, methodically searching hiding places and forests to find both persons and goods they had missed in their first advance. Upon returning to Transylvania, where the rugged region and thick forests provided much cover for survivors, and castles had since been refortified, Batu ordered a renewed onslaught. Roger states succinctly, “With exception a few castles, they occupied the whole country and as they passed through, they left the country desolate and empty.”   Orda and Baidar returned through Poland, burning Krakow a second time. Batu reached Bulgaria, where the King, Ivan Asen II, had died in July 1241, leaving only young heirs and anarchy to succeed him. With the kingdom already in chaos the Mongols were fuel to the fire, and Bulgaria may have submitted to them. A Mongol army reached the borders of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, where Emperor Baldwin II defeated them, only to be defeated in a second engagement. We lack information on the meeting beyond that: as per the suggestion of historian John Giebfried, this may perhaps be a description of Baldwin falling for a feigned retreat. Baldwin, it must be noted, had granted shelter to Cumans fleeing Hungary, a cardinal sin in the eyes of the Mongols. The attack seems to have been limited, though Baldwin must have felt in a tenuous position with Mongols on his northern border and soon on his eastern with Baiju’s subjugation of the Seljuqs in 1243.    Before reentering the steppe, the Mongols began reducing rations for their many prisoners- at this juncture, anticipating the worst, Master Roger fled into the woods. The rest were told they may return home, and the jubilant crowd made it several kilometres down the path before the Mongols rode them down for sport. In the steppe, Batu’s route was slow, allowing men and horses to rest after years of hard campaigning. His younger brother Shingqur led Mongols forces in the suppression of a Qipchaq rebellion later in the year, pursuing them all the way to the northern Caucasus. Batu and his army wintered in that same region before marching north, in 1243 reached the Volga River where he set up his encampment. He never returned to Mongolia.         I’m sure you sat through that whole section screaming “But what about Ogedai’s death!” Ogedai Khaan died on the 11th of December, 1241. It’s often presented that the army had to hurry back in order to elect Ogedai’s successor as per custom.  But as we have just noted above, the Mongols continued to campaign in Eastern Europe after they pulled back from western Hungary. In fact, based on the time it took Batu to reach the Volga steppe, his pace was downright leisurely- and he never returned to Mongolia, Subutai himself staying with Batu for a few years. Ogedai’s successor, his son Guyuk, was not elected until 1246, and Guyuk had left the army in 1240 before even the fall of Kiev. To put simply, the withdrawal in 1242 was not in order to elect the new Great Khan. We must ask if a messenger could have even reached Batu before his withdrawal began at the end of March 1242.  Assuming the messenger left immediately on the discovery of Ogedai’s body in December 1241, that’s less than four months to cross the entirety of the Eurasian steppe in the middle of winter, a tough ride even for a Mongol. Sources such as Rashid al-Din indicate Batu didn’t learn of Ogedai’s death until well after the departure from Hungary.        If not withdrawing because of Ogedai’s death, then what was the reason? Numerous theories have been proposed, some more convincing than others. Some have suggested the attack was never intended as more than a raid, though we have pointed to statements suggesting otherwise. Historian Denis Sinor suggested the Hungarian plain provided insufficient pasture for the Mongols’ vast herds of horses, though Sinor’s math for the matter leaves something to be desired. Based on environmental data, Nicola di Cosma suggested an exceptionally wet spring forced the Mongols to turn back. While the data may suggest a wetter spring, the historical sources do not indicate this was an issue for the Mongols in 1242. They certainly do mention occasions when it was an issue for the Mongols, such as the so-called ‘second Mongol invasion of Hungary,’ of Nogai Khan, where numerous sources reference foul weather hamphering Mongol efforts.  Of course, every nation in Europe likes to claim their heroic efforts inflicted so many losses on the Mongols that it forced them to turn back. Despite the campaign being a greater effort than popularly portrayed, the Mongols were routinely victorious in field battles, so support from that quarter is rather lacking.       Historian Stephen Pow has recently offered a new explanation based on close examination of the historical sources. He suggests a shift in Mongol goals over 1241-2, a realization based on Mongol losses and frustration with continuous sieges and strong stone fortresses. The withdrawal, in his view, was not a full retreat with intent of never returning, but a temporary strategic retreat. Recall, if you will, our episode on the final conquest of the Jin Dynasty, wherein, due to struggles with the mighty fort of Tongguan, Ogedai, Tolui and Subutai temporarily withdrew from the Jin Empire for a season to restrategize. With a new plan of attack, the Mongols successfully bypassed Jin defences and overwhelmed the empire. Pow’s suggestion is essentially that this was the intention as to Europe. Finding their catapults and efforts having little success against stone fortifications, and having suffered losses over the continued campaigning, Batu and Subutai decided to pull back in early 1242 to rest men and horses and determine a new plan to overcome Europe. They considered Hungary conquered, and once reinforcements had been gathered, they fully intended on returning and extending their rule. The campaigning on their departure from Hungary was to consolidate the conquered territory. However, political matters evolving in the aftermath of Ogedai’s death meant Batu’s attention was drawn away from Europe for the time being. If you found that all a bit confusing, don’t worry- we’ll be interviewing Dr. Stephen Pow himself in the next episode to discuss his theory, and the other suggestions, in greater detail.     As for Hungary, King Bela IV returned to his kingdom late in 1242 once he was sure the Mongols were gone. What he found was a shattered hull, the Great Hungarian Plain mostly depopulated through massacre and flight.  Bela spent the next decades rebuilding his kingdom and preparing defences. The erection of stone castles by both him and the nobility was encouraged, the great majority of which were built west of the Danube on the border with Austria where most of the population now was. The Danube itself was to be a great defensive line, fortifying the important crossing points. To defend the now depopulated Hungarian plain, Bela invited the Cumans back into Hungary almost immediately, granting them this empty pasture. To secure their loyalty, Bela married his son, Stephan, to the daughter of a lead Cuman Khan -possibly a daughter of Khan Kuthen. Further marriage ties were organized with neighbouring states, with unsuccessful efforts to build an anti-Mongol coalition, all for the inevitable return of Mongol armies.But that is a topic for another episode; our next task is an interview with historian Stephen Pow on the theories of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast and to continue helping us bring you more outstanding content, please visit our patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. Thank you for listening, I am your host David and we will catch you on the next one!

By July 4, amusement parks and festivals could be open for business in Indiana, while pools in Kentucky would remain closed. WDRB.com reporters Chris Otts and Marcus Green explain why Kentucky and Indiana's governors have taken different approaches to reopening, and whether their lack of coordination complicates efforts to contain the new coronavirus. 

SARAH BROADHEAD: “To-day we heard that the Rebels were crossing the river in heavy force, and advancing on to this State.”    In the 1730s and 40s, Scots-Irish and German settlers began laying roots in what was then known as the Marsh Creek settlement. Eventually, Samuel Gettys opened a tavern on the Marsh Creek Road, the major east-west road in the area. In 1761, he was fined for running a tavern without a license. In 1769, the Baltimore-Shippensburg road was laid out and an intersection was created at the tavern. Twenty five years later, in 1786, his son James would lay out  210 lots, including a town square, referred to as “The Diamond”, around the tavern. This new town would be known as Gettysburg.   In 1800, Gettysburg became the county seat of the newly formed Adams county, named for then-president John Adams.    The 1860 census shows that Gettysburg’s population numbered around 2400 and was primarily made up of German, Scots-Irish and free blacks.    Prior to the war, the people of Gettysburg engaged in a diverse economy, the primary industry in town being carriage making which attracted related tradesmen such as wheelwrights, trim and canvas shops and silversmiths. Many of Gettysburg’s carriages were purchased by people south of the Mason-Dixon line, some ten miles south of Gettysburg. As the war loomed, the industry in Gettysburg began to tighten.  But by 1863, the war had all but eliminated the carriage industry,. Gettysburg’s port for goods and services was Baltimore, which was a city of divided loyalties and political unrest These two factors disrupted the town’s economy.   The overwhelmingly Christian population of the town worshipped in eight congregations and seven churches.    As the center of Adams County’s legal business, Gettysburg was home to several lawyers.    Education was well covered in Gettysburg. A number of primary and secondary schools, private schools including Carrie Sheads’s on the Chambersburg Pike and Rebecca Eyster’s on the corner of  High Street and Washington, Pennsylvania College, established in 1832, and the Lutheran Theological Seminary educated the youth from near and far.    To support the large amount of farms in the surrounding townships, various merchants kept shop there. Some people, such as Mary McAllister, made money by reselling cured meats she had obtained from the farmers of the area to her fellow Gettysburgians. Others owned butcher shops, like James Pierce who lived on the southwest corner of Baltimore and Breckinridge Streets; a candy store, like Philip “Petey” Winter’s on the first block of Chambersburg Street; a photography studio like Charles and Isaac Tyson had on York Street. Dry goods, general merchandise and grocers also made Gettysburg hum with activity. James Fahenstock and two of his brothers owned the largest General store in town on the corner of Baltimore Street and Middle Street. In 1860, the census listed dozens of people whose occupation was “shoemaker” or cobbler. Yet, contrary to legend, there was no shoe factory or warehouse full of shoes in Gettysburg in 1863. Tanneries, ironworks, brickyards, blacksmiths, hotels, inns and taverns rounded out the more common businesses found in town.    Local curmudgeon and former town constable, John Burns, had a few odd jobs. One of those jobs was as a cobbler at the boot and shoe shop of town council president David Kendlehart. Burns, a veteran of the War of 1812, was not known to be a friendly neighbor with a kind word to offer.   Among his other jobs, John Burns pumped water for the Gettysburg waterworks.    Gettysburg had the latest technological advances in communications, media, gas lighting and transportation. In 1858, the railroad had come to town and, by 1863, Joseph Broadhead was an Express Messenger, on the Hanover Junction, Hanover and Gettysburg Railroad. This railroad made the economy of Gettysburg boom when it was built and, in 1863, the line was in the process of being continued westward out of town. By July 1, the progress made on this extension would be forever immortalized as “The Railroad Cut.”    There were two telegraph offices in town: one at the railroad station and the other in the back of the home of John Scott on Chambersburg Street.    Gettysburg had three newspapers. The Star and Banner, edited by John T. McIlhenney [mac uhl henny] and the Adams Sentinel edited by David Buehler, both had a Republican bias. The Compiler, had a Democrat bias and was edited by Henry J Stahle [staylee].    Republicans were very pro-Union while the Democrats took a softer stance on the idea of Southern secession. Neither side was keen about the idea of equality for blacks, ironically evidenced by the fact that when, years prior to the war, free blacks attempted to join the local white anti-slavery societies and were denied entry. And, so, those who were anti-slavery and black formed the Slave’s Refuge Society. SLAVE’S REFUGE SOCIETY: “we feel it our indispensable duty to assist such of our brethren as shall come among us for the purpose of liberating themselves, and to raise all the means in our power to effect our object, which is to give liberty to our brethren groaning under the tyrannical yoke of oppression. Resolution of the Slave’s Refuge Society.”    A total of ten roads led into Gettysburg, each one leading to and coming from other important cities and towns, such as Carlisle, Harrisburg, York, Hanover, Baltimore, Emmitsburg, Fairfield and Hagerstown, Cashtown and Chambersburg and Mummasburg. All of these roads funneled, eventually, into the heart of Gettysburg.    The layout of the town was typical for that time period with the higher valued properties being in the blocks closest to “The Diamond”, with wide, tree-lined streets of dirt flanked by paved sidewalks. The streets and roads were laid out like the spokes of a wagon wheel with the Diamond being the hub. Homes along the main roads had no front yards and came right up to the sidewalks. Most of the lots in the first few blocks off the square in any direction were developed and, therefore, presented an unbroken front. Back yards were surrounded by highboard fences and contained a small stable or carriage house, a well and an outhouse, or “privy”, as well as a small garden for the kitchen. All of this restricted free movement to the streets or alleyways.    Gettysburg, by 1863, was a large town for the area with a vibrant population that loved, hated, squabbled, showed kindness, gossipped, rallied together, made local celebrities out of the best looking or most gregarious while making pariahs out of those of lesser fortune, just like any other society at any other point in history. Unlike most of those other societies, Gettysburg will endure a crucible of worry, turned to terror, turned to misery. And that all began on June 15, 1863, when Brigadier General Albert Jenkins' Confederate Cavalry Brigade crossed the Potomac and headed for Chambersburg _____________________________________ Addressing Gettysburg: INVASION! June, 1863, Part 2 was Written, narrated and produced by Matt Callery   Narration Directed by Pearle Shannon   Historical figures voiced by: denise chain, trent walker, Ron Bailey,  bob steenstra, kelly steenstra, the History Dame, Keith Harris and Pearle Shannon. Recorded at the Destination Gettysburg Studios.    Historical consultation by Licensed Battlefield Guides Tim Smith, Bob Steenstra and Lewis Trott, with additional consultation provided by John Hoptak and Matt Atkinson. Music by Dusty Lee Elmer, Sarah Larsen and Danny Stewart, Kelly Shannon, The California Consolidated Drum Band, the Federal City Brass Band/26th North Carolina Band, The 8th Green Machine Regiment Band from George Mason University. “Bear Waltz”- written by Sarah Larsen. Performed by Sarah Larsen and Danny Stewart “Forward To The Heights’ written and performed by Kelly Shannon Special thanks to Tim Smith for assistance with script revisions.     To book a car or bus tour with a  licensed battlefield guide, send an email to matt@addressinggettysburg.com This episode is brought to your for free by our sponsors and the generous support of our Patrons at Patreon. Click here to be a monthly subscriber and to unlock more content! Or, support the show without spending a red cent more than you want to by always going to www.addressinggettysburg.com, clicking the Amazon banner at the top of the page, and shop as you normally would.  Copyright 2020. All rights reserved 

I used Oskar Schindler in my third TEDx talk along with a few others as examples of people who took risks to do what they considered right—and that I think nearly all of us do. People like Rosa Parks and those who operated the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. I'm going to share about Oskar Schindler in a bit so you learn more than the movie showed.The video of the talk is being edited and should go up soon. I researched more about Dunkirk, as you'll see in the video, but I looked up a bit about Oskar Schindler.Why do we make movies about people like him and not the millions of others who saw what was happening but didn't act, hoping someone else would? Why not, if not to emulate him when the chips are down? There were many like him, but still few. Do you think if you lived then that you would have acted as he did? Don't you like to think you would?In my fifth year of not flying, I estimate I've talked to about 1,000 people about not flying. About 998 of them said they couldn't avoid flying. Suddenly with the pandemic, with their own health at stake, people find they can.I've had dozens of conversations lately and read more articles about people saying how much they enjoy the simplicity they're finding not traveling. I can't tell if I feel more gratified or frustrated at how many say with joy and gratitude—serenity, I remember one guy saying—almost exactly what I told them would happen.When will people get the pattern: acting by your values looks hard. Most people never do, but those that do wish they had earlier and want to share their joy with others.For us to act to stop degrading Earth's ability to sustain life and human society is easy compared to Oskar Schindler. We don't have to risk our lives—only change our diet, our travel plans, walk a bit, have one child.From Wikipedia:Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories in Poland, Bohemia and Moravia. He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and its 1993 film adaptation, Schindler's List, which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit, who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication to save the lives of his Jewish employees.In 1939, Schindler acquired a factory in Kraków, Poland, which employed at its peak in 1944 about 1,750 workers, of whom 1,000 were Jews. His Nazi connections helped him protect them from deportation and death in concentration camps. He had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe.By July 1944, Germany was losing the war; the SS began closing camps and deporting the prisoners. Many were murdered in Auschwitz and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Schindler convinced SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth, commandant of the nearby Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, to allow him to move his factory, thus sparing his workers from almost certain death in the gas chambers. Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent the execution of his workers until the end of the war. By then he had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies for his workers.Schindler moved to West Germany after the war, where he was supported by assistance payments from Jewish relief organisations. He moved with his wife to Argentina, where they took up farming. When he went bankrupt in 1958, Schindler left his wife and returned to Germany, where he failed at several business ventures and relied on financial support from the Schindler Jews he had saved during the war.Initially Göth's plan was that all the factories, including Schindler's, should be moved inside the camp gates. Schindler, with diplomacy, flattery, and bribery, prevented his factory from being moved and led Göth to allow him to build (at Schindler's own expense) a subcamp to house his workers plus 450 Jews from other nearby factories, safe from the threat of random execution. They were well fed and housed, and were permitted to practice religion.Schindler was arrested twice on suspicion of black market activities and once for breaking the Nuremberg Laws by kissing a Jewish girl, an illegal act. The first arrest, in late 1941, led to him being kept overnight. His secretary arranged for his release through his influential Nazi contacts.What we can do is nothing compared to what he did. Nothing. Eating lentils instead of steak. Having at most one child for a few generations. Going camping or visiting a place nearby instead of flying around the world. Yet the danger to human life is much larger. Billions of lives are at stake now. This pandemic is nothing compared to what will happen if we don't act.Wouldn't you rather follow Oskar Schindler's lead than his neighbors who did nothing?He came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication to save the lives of his Jewish employees. Be Oskar Schindler. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this edition, WFMJ reporter Corey McCrae speaks with Monsignor John Zuraw of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, about the condition of Bishop George Murray, whose leukemia has recently returned.Murry, the bishop of the Youngstown Diocese since 2007, which includes Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Stark, Portage, and Ashtabula counties, was first diagnosed with acute leukemia in 2018. By July 2019, his leukemia had returned. In October, he was declared to be in remission and in January, he returned to full-time work.In this podcast, Bishop Zuraw discusses the current status of the Catholic Diocese, and spoke about the financial status of several churches, and what they are doing to make it through these trying times. The bishop also mentioned ways that you can still contribute to church finances.

Hey Medicare Nation! We're smack in the middle of a Corona Virus Pandemic! The Medicare Nation I wanted to give you an episode that is full of USEFULL information. I know you've been hammered by the news, internet and newspapers about the Corona Virus. Let's start with a very important fact: Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. The 1960's people! the coronavirus gets its name from a distinctive corona or in a scientists world…a “Crown of Sugary Proteins,” that projects from the surface of the virus. There are four main types of Human Corona Viruses Alphacoronavirus,  Betacoronavirus,  Gammacoronavirus, and  Deltacoronavirus. The first two only infect mammals, including bats, pigs, cats, and humans.   Gammacoronavirus mostly infects birds such as poultry (chickens) and Deltacoronavirus can infect both birds and mammals. Do you recognize the Virus named SARS? Severe acute respiratory syndrome abbreviated as …. (SARS-CoV) SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus.  Guess what it causes?  It causes severe… acute…..respiratory syndrome, SARS was first recognized as a distinct strain of coronavirus in 2002. The source of the virus has never been clear, though the first human infections can be traced back to the Chinese province of Guangdong in November of 2002. The virus then became a pandemic, causing more than 8,000 infections of an influenza-like disease in 26 countries with close to 800 deaths. In the United States, only eight persons were laboratory-confirmed as SARS cases. There were NO  SARS-related deaths in the United States. All of the eight persons with laboratory-confirmed SARS had traveled to areas where SARS-CoV transmission was occurring. By July of 2003….. the World Health Organization declared the outbreak over. On February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization announced an official name for the disease that is causing the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, first identified in Wuhan China. The new name of this disease is….SARS-COV-2 aka coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19.  ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona,’ ‘VI’ for ‘virus,’ and ‘D’ for disease. The Medicare Nation COVID-19 is a new disease, caused by a novel (or new) “coronavirus” or strain of “Corona Virus” that has not previously been seen in humans. What are the Symptoms of COVID-19?  The CDC (Centers of Disease Control) have listed these as the most common symptoms of COVID-19: Fever Cough Shortness of breath Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure. Reported illnesses have ranged from mild symptoms….like a dry cough…. to severe illness, with high fever and shortness of breath, requiring hospitalization and there have been deaths reported for confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases.   Currently……according to the WHO… as of March 13th….there are over 132, 758 reported cases of    COVID-19 …. Worldwide. Of those cases….. there are 4,955 Deaths worldwide. Over 80% of the reported cases are recovering. In the U.S…… there are currently 1,629 reported cases…… in 47 of the 50 States. No reported cases yet….in Idaho, Alabama and West Virginia. There have been 41 Deaths reported in the U.S. ….. with 37 Deaths coming from the State of Washington. The deaths mainly being reported from a nursing facility, with those being elderly and having underlying medical conditions prior to contracting the CoronaVirus. What do we mean by Underlying medical conditions????  If you have a blood disorder.... like sickle cell disease... or ... you have chronic kidney disease.... you're currently receiving chemotherapy or radiation. You may have congestive heart failure or coronary artery disease. You may have chronic asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or you may need oxygen at home. All of these conditions..... as well as many more..... may raise your risk of contracting COVID-19. You may NOT contract the virus. Just be more cognizant of your surroundings and who you are in contact with. What do you do if you believe you have symptoms of the COVID-19? NUMBER 1…. Call your Primary Doctor. Speak with the Nurse or Physician’s Assistant. Tell them your symptoms and they will advise you of what to do.  IF You CANT get Through to your Doctor……. If you have a Medicare Advantage Plan…… the Plan most likely has a 24 hr. Nurse’s Line.  CALL THEM!!  Tell the nurse  your symptoms. They will advise you. Call your STATE Health Department for Advise. Each State has an information line dedicated to the COVID-19 Crisis and will be able to assist you with answering question. If you have any severe symptoms….. as in Difficulty Breathing, fluid in your lungs, High fever of over 104 degrees…. CALL 911!   If you do have symptoms, and your doctor wants you to have the test to confirm COVID-19…. Where do you go?? According to the FDA….. here is the current list of laboratories across the U.S. that will be offering testing for the COVID-19 very soon  Advent Health Laboratories  Lab Corp Quest Laboratories As well as many other public health, university and private labs will be available on the FDA list of laboratories to test for the COVID-19. Medicare IS Covering the Test for COVID-19 as a Preventative Diagnostic Test….and therefore ….. you will have NO COPAY when you take the test. There are currently  TWO Testing Codes for the COVID-19 Test Is for having the Test at a Public Health Lab ( your local community Health Department) which is U0001 The 2nd is for having the test at a commercial or private lab (like Lab Corp) which is U0002.   If you are diagnosed with COVID-19, self-quarantine yourself in your home, away from your family members and pets, until you have tested negative. We ALL need to SELF-Police ourselves and HELP STOP the Spread of COVID-19….. so we can curtail the spread and help stop the pandemic.  Remember to Drink lots of fluids….. eat plenty of chicken soup and crackers ….. and get lots of REST!! The Medicare Nation You can go to the Center for Disease Control website for daily updates on the Corona Virus 19 situation ….. go to….. www.CDC.gov   You can also go to the World Health Organization website…. Go to …. www.who.int   AND…. PLEASE go to your STATE”S Health Department website for local information by “Googling” your State.  That’s all for today Nation. Call your Parents….. Make sure they’re ok and help them subscribe to Medicare Nation…. So they can hear this episode as well as over 100 other episodes about Medicare and it’s Resources. Thank you for listening to Medicare Nation! If you are part of my “Sandwich Generation,” Share this show with your parents and/or grandparents. They have many questions about Medicare and this show will answer them! Buy them a “Smart Phone,” and introduce them to Medicare Nation! If you are a Baby Boomer, share Medicare Nation with other “Baby Boomers.” I want to educate as many of you as I can about Medicare! I certainly can use  your help in putting the word out! If you have any questions, send them to Support@TheMedicareNation.com If I can answer it in one email - I will personally answer you! If your question requires research or additional contact with you, I do offer consulting if you would like me to assist you in that manner. Want to hear a topic on Medicare Nation? A special guest? Let me know and I'll do my best to get them on the show! Thanks again for listening!      

Who here has spent all day shopping at Market and realized, quite painfully, they wore the wrong shoes? My guest today got her “retailer start” by going to Market to help her mom sell furniture. There she began her under-the-table shoe business by hooking up other women who were shopping with her comfortable shoes from Mexico. I can’t wait for you to meet a fellow creative retailer, Neely Powell, the founder of Charleston Shoe Company. After going to shoe design school, Neely opened her first store in Savannah in April 2010, borrowing the first and last month’s rent from her mother. By July of that year she opened a second store on King Street in Charleston.  Now she has 26 locations and as a wholesale product line in 300 boutiques. This is so impressive because she did it with very little marketing budget, a baby on her hip, and not many employees. In this conversation, she shares how she attracted customers to her store wearing two different shoes… how the power of referrals built her empire … and why the store atmosphere is so crucial to the customer experience. I know you’ll find so much inspiration and encouragement from hearing her “accidental shopkeeper” journey. She’s overcome many obstacles but her fighting spirit is always willing to turn failure into opportunities. “I love to say I’m a 22-year-overnight success because this didn’t all happen yesterday.” Links Mentioned in this Episode: https://charlestonshoeco.com/ https://www.instagram.com/charlestonshoeco/ Let’s Continue the Conversation Rockstar Creative Shop Owners Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rockstarcreatives/ Want to meet up in person? Join other retailers at the CEO Retreat March 24-26 in Orlando A few seats left: https://wendybatten.com/spring-ceo-retreat2020/

Kyle Baudoin was born and raised south of Lafayette, La and it was there that he met and married his wife Laura Thomas Baudoin. It is where their family began and where the couple really always thought they would probably stay and raise their two children - Porter, 8, and Camille, 4. Then in mid 2016, life threw them a large curveball and during that tough time, there were many moments of reflection that led to them deciding to make a move. By July 2017 they were residents of Laura’s hometown, Shreveport, LA. Seven years ago Laura and her mother Martha opened up a women’s retail shop named M. Five years later, in September of 2017, Kyle and Laura opened up L.E. & CHALK, a men’s store. They love living and working in the South Highlands neighborhood and are excited for the future of the City of Shreveport.

How do we help people in despair overcome emotional pain and reconnect to purpose through an on-line intervention? Connection is the answer. Technology is the tool. Our on-line technologies can have a whole spectrum of impact on our behavior — from helpful and healthy to harmful and hurtful, and the data we derive from our engagement with technology tells a powerful tale. When “13 Reasons Why” came out on March 31, 2017, I didn’t know anything about it. Five days later it had swept the globe, and the suicide prevention community became very concerned. By July 2017, a JAMA report looked at Google search trends during the 19 days after the show launched. Many terms related to suicide were significantly higher than expected and included increases in help-seeking (e.g., “suicide hotline number” was up 21%) and suicidal thoughts (e.g., “how to commit suicide” was up 26%). It wasn’t until April of 2019, however, did researchers conclude, “The release of 13 Reasons Why was associated with a significant increase in monthly suicide rates among US youth aged 10 to 17 years. Caution regarding the exposure of children and adolescents to the series is warranted.” Google has partnered with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, so searches for phrases like “I want to kill myself” bring up graphic and phone number for this hotline. Facebook has a “report” and “support” functions for friends who are concerned about another’s suicidal on-line posting. Now, through the power of artificial intelligence, they are building algorithms that help them predict who is at risk for suicide. For more on social media and suicide prevention read: http://insurancethoughtleadership.com/social-media-and-suicide-prevention/. My interview this week is with Anne Moss Rogers. After losing her son Charles to suicide, digital marketing expert, Anne Moss decided to use social media and SEO skills to reach those Googling “ways to die” with the goal of saving lives. The results have been remarkable and unexpected. Anne Moss Rogers B&W.png About Anne Moss Rogers Anne Moss Rogers is also known as the “emotionally naked speaker” is a blogger, TEDx Talk storyteller and a brain tumor survivor. She is the author of “Diary of a Broken Mind", a mother's story, a son's suicide, and the haunting lyrics he left behind. In other words, she is an inspiration of resilience. As a motivational speaker she helps people foster a culture of connection to prevent suicide, reduce substance misuse, and find life after loss. Despite her family’s best efforts, Anne Moss’ 20-year-old son Charles died by suicide June 5, 2015 after many years of struggle with anxiety, depression, and ultimately addiction. Anne Moss started a blog, EmotionallyNaked.com, and chronicled her family’s tragedy in a newspaper article that went viral. She has been featured in the New York Times, and was the first suicide loss survivor ever invited to speak at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). She is also a trainer for the 4-hour evidence based training called safeTALK.

Command Service Module-101 started through the manufacturing cycle early in 1966. By July, it had been formed, wired, fitted with subsystems, and made ready for testing. After the Apollo 1 fire in January 1967, changes had to be made, mainly in the wiring, hatch areas, and the forward egress tunnel. It was December before the spacecraft came back into testing. CSM-101 passed through a three-phase customer acceptance review; during the third session, held in Downey on May 7th 1968, no items showed up that might be a “constraint to launch.” North American cleared up what few deficiencies there were (13) and shipped the craft to Kennedy on  May 30th 1967…

Creating a vivid vision statement is a practice I believe is necessary both personally and professionally. What do you want your future to look like? What will it take to get you there? Dreaming about your future is powerful. I walk through the steps to take in this episode of Agent Rise. Don’t miss it! Outline of this great episode [0:35] Planning for 2020 [1:25] Vivid vision statement [5:15] Write out goals to achieve [7:05] Why you need coaching [9:30] Build one bridge [11:00] A vision leads to clarity [12:00] Learn to say no What is a vivid vision statement? I define a vision statement as what it’s going to look like when you arrive where you want to go. This is where you get to dream big. Sit down in a quiet place and write down what you want your future to look like. Do you want to travel? Pay off debt? What do you want your business to look like?  I have a dream of publishing a book and buying an RV to travel the country with my family doing book signings. Note that I said these are dreams—but dreams that I believe will become reality. If you find yourself doubting that your dreams will come true, note it, and move on. You’re going to overcome those limiting beliefs.  Set goals to achieve your vision Once you have a dream in place, write out step-by-step goals you can work towards and a timeline to complete them by. As you reach these goals, you are moving one step closer to the vision you’ve set for your future. I have a clear vision with a clear date in sight: By July 15th, 2020 my family and I will be traveling the country in an RV.  Simplify to Amplify Once you have clear goals in place to reach your vision, you must focus on simplifying. What does that mean? Learn how to say no to the things that don’t help you achieve those goals. It will allow you to march towards milestones. Once you’ve simplified, it allows you to amplify the things that will propel you forward. What do you excel at? Put your time into your sphere of influence, and chase and attraction pillars. You need to clarify the “do’s and don’ts” to find direction.  Get systems in place, delegate where you can, and find accountability with a coach. Build one bridge—don’t split your focus into multiple areas. You don’t want a bunch of half-built bridges and never reach where you’re trying to get.  What is your vivid vision statement for 2020? Recommended Resources How To Build A 6 Figure Real Estate Business That Eliminates The Commission Roller Coaster, Without Forcing Yourself To Do Things You Hate Easy Agent Pro - to get a website like mine (neilmathweg.com) go to www.easyagentpro.com/oj Shred Media - to take your digital marketing to next level go to www.ShredMedia.com To hear more great shows like Agent Rise visit www.industrysyndicate.com. Check out the Service for Life Real Estate Tool for a 10% discount! Join the Agent Inner Circle Community Resources and Links mentioned in this episode Go to AgentOnTheRise.com to check out my free masterclass! To get my listing presentation tips, text “LISTING” to 44222 Join the Agent Rise Facebook Group (free) at www.Facebook.com/groups/agentrise To learn more about coaching, go to www.neilmathwegcoaching.com If you want to see my website as a REALTOR in Madison Wi go to www.ILoveMadisonHomes.com Connect with Neil! And connect with me on ANY of the following social channels. I LOVE social! Instagram (@neilmathwegcoaching or @neilmathweg (personal) Facebook.com/AGENTRISE Facebook.com/neilmathwegcoaching Twitter Check out my YOUTUBE channel: all new content! And finally, if you would be so kind - leave a rating and review for the Agent Rise podcast on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes)

Today on Sojourner Truth, we continue our two-part series featuring constitutional and public interest lawyer, public speaker, political activist and educator Daniel Sheehan. Sheehan serves as Chief Counsel of the Romero Institute, where he has advocated on behalf of the Lakota People's Law Project. He also teaches at UCSC (the University of California Santa Cruz), delivering lectures on climate change, the potential impeachment of Donald J. Trump and the Standing Rock Movement against the Dakota Access pipeline, among others. Today, you will hear Part 2 of Sheehan's Trajectory of Justice course offered in 2019, focusing on the Robert Mueller report and the Special Counsel investigation. The Special Counsel investigation was an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and incriminating links between Donald Trumps inner circle and Russian officials. It was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. Since July 2016, the FBI covertly investigated activities by Russian operatives and by members of Trumps presidential campaign, using the code name Crossfire Hurricane. In May 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Within eight days, following a call to action by Democratic lawmakers and revelations by Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, to take over the FBI's investigation. The investigation officially concluded on March 22, 2019, when the Mueller Report was submitted to Attorney General Bob Barr, who many say misrepresented the reports findings. By July 2019, Mueller testified to Congress that Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice (or other crimes) after he left office. Since then, efforts to impeach Trump based on the Mueller investigation have floundered. Today, Sheehan discusses what the Mueller investigation missed and what he thinks is next for the future of Trump and the United States.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we continue our two-part series featuring constitutional and public interest lawyer, public speaker, political activist and educator Daniel Sheehan. Sheehan serves as Chief Counsel of the Romero Institute, where he has advocated on behalf of the Lakota People's Law Project. He also teaches at UCSC (the University of California Santa Cruz), delivering lectures on climate change, the potential impeachment of Donald J. Trump and the Standing Rock Movement against the Dakota Access pipeline, among others. Today, you will hear Part 2 of Sheehan's Trajectory of Justice course offered in 2019, focusing on the Robert Mueller report and the Special Counsel investigation. The Special Counsel investigation was an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and incriminating links between Donald Trumps inner circle and Russian officials. It was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. Since July 2016, the FBI covertly investigated activities by Russian operatives and by members of Trumps presidential campaign, using the code name Crossfire Hurricane. In May 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Within eight days, following a call to action by Democratic lawmakers and revelations by Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, to take over the FBI's investigation. The investigation officially concluded on March 22, 2019, when the Mueller Report was submitted to Attorney General Bob Barr, who many say misrepresented the reports findings. By July 2019, Mueller testified to Congress that Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice (or other crimes) after he left office. Since then, efforts to impeach Trump based on the Mueller investigation have floundered. Today, Sheehan discusses what the Mueller investigation missed and what he thinks is next for the future of Trump and the United States.

By July, 1969, the "Manson Girls” saw Charlie as more than a leader, he was the second coming of Christ. Manson’s cult gospel called them to prepare for a fast approaching race war called Helter Skelter that would burn Southern California to the ground. And if the war didn’t start on its own, they would light the fuse. Parcasters - Don’t miss all of our special Summer of ‘69 episodes by subscribing to Parcast Presents: Summer of ‘69, on Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts! Sponsors! Embrace Pet Insurance - Get your FREE quote at EmbracePetInsurance.com/CRIMINALS right now! Zola - Build your free wedding website on Zola and get $50 toward your registry at ZOLA.com/CRIMINALS.

This episode is brought to you by Female Criminals, a Parcast Original. For more episodes like this one, subscribe to Female Criminals on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. By July, 1969, the "Manson Girls” saw Charlie as more than a leader, he was the second coming of Christ. Manson’s cult gospel called them to prepare for a fast approaching race war called Helter Skelter that would burn Southern California to the ground. And if the war didn’t start on its own, they would light the fuse.

Have you tried growing the herb chervil? Chervil tastes similar to tarragon - it's sometimes called gourmet parsley. It has a wonderful fern-like leaf which turns red in the fall which is another plus.  August is a wonderful time to sow chervil - so keep that in mind. The 1884 Dictionary of English Names of Plants lists chervil as “the shepherd’s clock’’ because the blossoms open at five in the morning and then close up around eight in the evening.   The word chervil is derived from a Greek word meaning “the herb of rejoicing’’ or “the cheer leaf."      Brevities #OTD  It's the birthday of the English naturalist, Gilbert White, who was born on this day in 1720. White kept a journal for almost three decades where he recorded observations of his garden.  It was eventually published as a Calendar of Flora and the Garden, followed by the Naturalist’s Journal. People immediately recognized White had a gift for observation and for describing with vivid clarity the goings-on in the natural world.  Here's a little of what he wrote in his journal on this day in 1781; his 61st birthday:  "Farmers complain that their wheat is blited.  In the garden at Dowland’s,...  stands a large Liriodendrum tulipifera, or tulip-tree, which was in flower. The soil is poor sand; but produces beautiful pendulous Larches.  Mr R’s garden, ... abounds in fruit, & in all manner of good & forward kitchen-crops.  Many China-asters this spring seeded themselves there... some cucumber-plants also grew-up of themselves from the seeds of a rejected cucumber thrown aside last autumn.  Mr R’s garden is at an average a fortnight before mine."   #OTD  Today is the anniversary of the death of the author and gardener Jane Austen. Austen loved gardens. She had a heart for ornamentals, herbs, and kitchen gardening.  Her family always had a garden - growing their own food and beautifying their homes with flowers. In every single one of her books, Austen included gardens. We know from Austen's letters to her sister, Cassandra, that gardens brought her joy and they were also regulating. In 1807, she wrote about the redesign of her garden:  "I could not do without a syringa... We talk also of a laburnum. The border under the terrace wall is clearing away to receive currants and gooseberry bushes, and a spot is found very proper for raspberries." In 1814, she wrote about the garden outside her rented room, "The garden is quite a love... I live in the room downstairs, it is particularly pleasant...opening upon the garden.  I go and refresh myself every now and then, and then come back to Solitary Coolness."   #OTD   It was on this day in 1863 that the father of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, walked the battlefield of Gettysburg, just 15 days after the battle. Olmsted was the General Secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) - overseeing the support of sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army during the Civil War. At times, Olmsted personally treated the battlefield wounds of soldiers.  Olmsted was handpicked for the job thanks to his success in designing and overseeing New York City's Central Park, one of the country's largest public works projects. A week after the battle at Gettysburg, Olmsted arranged for 40 tons of supplies to flow into Gettysburg every day - bringing in items like surgeon’s silk, fans, butter, shoes, and crutches.   By July 18, the scene had settled down enough that Olmsted could walk the fields of Gettysburg. In Martin's biography of Olmsted, he shared that Olmsted, "was struck by the scale of the place; everything had happened across distances far greater than he had supposed."  Ever attuned to the landscape, Olmsted also noted that, "The hills were gentle and rolling, so very out of kilter with the carnage that was everywhere still in evidence... Olmsted came across spent shells and twisted bayonets, broken-down wagons and half-buried dead horses. Particularly touching, to Olmsted, was the random strew of Union and Confederate caps, often together on the ground, shot through with bullet holes."   Unearthed Words Recently, I've started collecting cuttings from my garden to make my own potpourris and sachets. Here's a quote from Eleanor Sinclair-Rhode about this lovely garden pastime: "No bought potpourri is so pleasant as that made from ones own garden, for the petals of the flowers one has gathered at home hold the sunshine and memories of summer, and of past summers only the sunny days should be remembered."     Today's book recommendation: A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence As much as I love to garden, there are days when it's just too hot or humid to go out there. I draw the line when sweat starts to trickle into my eyeballs - then it's time to call it a day. Lawrence's Southern Garden is a classic. This is Lawrence's personal experience with gardening - my favorite kind of gardening book. Although Lawrence's growing zone isn't always applicable to where you might be gardening, I guarantee you'll learn something. Her writing about gardens and gardening is conversational, thoughtful and charming.     Today's Garden Chore Do a summer check of all your irrigation systems and repair anything broken. I sooo wish I would have done this last summer.  By the time I discovered a leak, we had a big water problem to address. In the garden, too much water can be just as harmful as too little. Throw in temperature extremes, and you have a perfect storm - inviting many other problems.      Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart On this day in 1908, Maxfield Parrish Print, called The Botanist, appeared on the cover of Colliers Magazine. The image shows a full-length profile of a man wearing a long botanical green coat. In his raised right hand he is holding a plant and in his left hand he is clutching a magnifying glass while a few open reference books are tucked under his arm. He has a specimen case slung over his back. The classic image was made into poster-sized prints in the 1970's.     Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

“Am I living out my purpose?” That's the question Amanda Heritage asked herself as she assessed her career in physical therapy. When she realized the answer was “no,” she knew she needed to make a change. Despite the naysayers who told her it was impossible to create a successful cash-based PT practice in southern New Jersey, she decided to give it a go.  She began looking online to learn how to build a profitable, cash-based practice that could meet the needs of an underserved market. By July 2017, she left her job and launched a cash-based practice focused on PT for pelvic health. In less than a year, her original vision of a thriving niche PT practice that enables her to fulfill her purpose has become a reality!   In this interview, Amanda shares her key insights from the past year and the special considerations that come with marketing a niche business. She explains how she's built her referral network and what she did to manage an unexpected surge in business last October. And she offers her strategies for keeping the right mindset as you find your way.

Apple may be prepping the Mac Pro for its big reveal...don’t miss our WWDC 2019 hardware expectations. This week: Apple may be prepping the Mac Pro for its big reveal... don’t miss our WWDC 2019 hardware expectations! Plus: the pros and cons of the 2019 MacBook Pro... we discuss. And did you know all the best Get a Mac ads never actually aired? We’ll tell you the odd reason why... All that and SO MUCH MORE. This episode supported by It is hackable? From laptops and webcams to drones, virtual-reality headsets, and smart plugs, that's the question the Hackable podcast asks every single week, and no gadget is safe. Check out new episodes on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The NETGEAR Nighthawk WiFi 6 router gives you ultra-fast speeds and wider coverage throughout your home – it’s the biggest revolution in WiFi ever. Check it out today at Netgear.com/wifi6. CultCloth will keep your iPhone X, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time use code CULTCAST at checkout to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co. On the show this week @erfon / @lkahney   This week's stories Latest MacBook Pro blows away its predecessors The top-tier new MacBook Pro employs a Intel 9th-generation Core i9 processor, which just debuted. It’s clocked at 2.4GHz with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz. This is Apple’s first 8-core laptop, and the promotional materials promises “40 percent more performance than a 6-core MacBook Pro.” Geekbench benchmark scores are now confirming that this macOS laptop is around 30 percent speedier depending the the tests look at. The multi-core score for this device is around 29180. Last year’s speediest 6-core version of the MacBook Pro topped out at 22620, indicating that its predecessor is 29 percent faster. The single-core score for the new model is around 5900, up from about 5350 in the 2018 version. That’s almost a 10% improvement. One YouTuber reported the new MacBook Pro is beating his base iMac Pro in some tests! 2019 MacBook Pro teardown reveals minimal keyboard changes Keyboard seems largely the same, though iFixit has confirmed Apple has changed some of the material used in the dome switch mechanism and keyboard condom. Steve Jobs didn’t want the ‘Get a Mac’ ads to be too funny Justin Long was recently on a episode of People Magazine’s TV show called Couch Surfing reciting why all the best Get a Mac ads never aired. Though 66 ads aired, apparently they filmed over 300! According to Long, it was Steve Jobs who kept the best ads off the air because they were just too funny. “One, in particular, I remember Zach Galifianakis played a drunken Santa Claus and I was dying to see this one,” Long said on the episode, which aired on Sunday. “Basically, Steve Jobs preferred when they weren’t super funny. It’s because he thought that would detract from the point of the commercial. He thought if people were too focused on humor, they would lose sight of the product.” But the commercials worked! Apple experienced a sales increase of 200,000 Macs after the first month of the campaign in May 2006. By July, Apple sold 1.3 million and at the end of the fiscal year, there was a 39 percent increase from the previous year’s Mac sales

At the beginning of June, you reveal your summer bucket list, which makes your children cheer with anticipation. By July, you can’t find your list and by August, you’re tempted to check out until a new season starts. It’s no surprise we need the gospel to shape every expectation we have as we think about our summer plans. In this episode, Emily and Laura look towards the next three months and offer challenges to help us keep the right perspective as we plan, hope, and dream for summertime. We’re living for something much bigger than our summer plans, and God’s grace will sustain us as we persevere in motherhood—and to September.   VIEW TRANSCRIPT Risen Motherhood on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter Find all of the links & related resources from the show HERE

I was looking at the cute brass plant labels on the Target website the other day - I was trying to find the link to that adorable garden tote I was telling you about and I thought about the evolution of a gardener when it comes to using plant tags.   First you start out needing the labels - is that dill? What does basil look like again?   Then you label only the newcomers or the look alike  parsley or cilantro - who can tell without smell?   Sometimes a new gardener will visit. Or you’ll have people tour your garden. Folks appreciate knowing what they are looking at.   Pretty soon, you realize you’re labeling as a kindness to your garden guests.   If you’re like me, no matter how long you’ve been gardening, cute or clever plant labels are always a lovely find. Brevities #OTD Today is National Licorice Day.    The botanical name for licorice means “sweet root” and in Dutch name, it's zoethout, (“Zoot-Howt”) which means “sweet wood.”  The secret to the flavor (which is 50 times sweeter than sugar) is hidden in the very long roots and rhizomes of the plant. Thus, children who grew up chewing on licorice root would suck out the sweet sugars and spit out the pulp.   The licorice plant is actually a perennial shrub in the legume or pea family. Don’t confuse it with the annual trailing dusky licorice plant that gets popped in containers.   The glycyrrhetinic acid in licorice causes the body to hold salt and water.  Throughout history, armies would give licorice to soldiers and horses when water was in short supply.  Licorice is used as a remedy for coughing - Hippocrates used it that way.  It regulates digestion - Napoleon used it for tummy troubles.   #OTD It’s the birthday of Zina Pitcher (April 12, 1797, in Sandy Hill, New York – April 5, 1872, in Detroit).   He managed to pack a lot of living and incredible relationships into his 75 year life.     He established the Detroit public school system.  He taught at West Point.  He was Michigan’s most prominent doctor and became a president of the American Medical Association  He was mayor of Detroit; twice.   He was a tireless member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan and was praised as the longest serving and hardest working of the 12 original regents.   As regent, it was Pitcher’s vision that made him an early advocate of acquiring John J. Audobon’s“The Birds of America”for the U-M Library.    An amateur botanist, Pitcher had discovered plant species, including a thistle - now called Pitcher’s Thistle (Carduus Pitcheri or Cirsium Pitcheri) in his honor.  The white-to-pale-pink flowering thistle is familiar to beachcombers throughout the Great Lakes.    While he was a regent, his love of horticulture came in handy when it was time to hire professors. The name Asa Gray floated to the top of their list. Gray was mentored by the nation’s top botanist: John Torrey.  When Gray arrived in Michigan, his first stop was at Pitcher’s home in Detroit. Accepting the job, Gray needed to push back his start date by one year to finish his studies in Europe.  This would give the University time to get building facilities on campus.  In the meantime, the regents asked Gray to buy books for the school while he was abroad. How fun! Gray shopped his bachelor buttons off; shipping over 3,700 books back to Ann Arbor.   Sadly, when his year in Europe was over, Gray never made it to Michigan. Harvard stole him away. But his ties to the University and all those books he bought helped create the school library and a fine reputation to attract young scholars.   Today, the street, Zina Pitcher Place in Ann Arbor is named in his honor OTD, 1810, Thomas Nuttal, just 24 years old, left Philadelphia by coach.He had recently immigrated from England, and Professor Benjamin Smith Barton of the University of Philadelphia wanted him to spend the next two years studying the flora of the Northwest.   Given a salary of $8 per month plus expenses, Nuttal set about collecting and writing detailed accounts of the flora he discovered. By July 29, he jumped in a birch bark canoe with Aaron Greely, the deputy surveyor of the territory of Michigan, and they paddled to Mackinac Island arriving two weeks later on August 12.  Nuttal spent several days on Mackinac - He was the first true botanist to explore at the flora of Michigan, and certainly of Mackinac Island. He documented about sixty species - about twenty were previously unknown. One the new Mackinac discoveries was the dwarf lake iris(Iris lucustris), which became the state wildflower of Michigan. Unearthed Words #OTD On this day in 1748 William Kent (Books By This Author)died. A pioneer of the English landscape garden, it was William Kent who said, Nature abhors a straight line. All gardening is landscape painting. Garden as though you will live forever. A garden is to be a world unto itself, it had better make room for the darker shades of feeling as well as the sunny ones. William Kent wrote a cute little ditty about the origin of the Inigo Jones gateway and how it came to be moved to Chiswick. The story goes that in 1621, the arch was created for Beaufort House.  When his friend Hans Sloane was demolishing the house, Lord Burlingtonspied the arch and wanted it for himself.  Ho! Gate, how came ye here? I came fro’ Chelsea the last yere Inigo Jones there put me together Then was I dropping by wind and weather Sir Hannes Sloane Let me alone But Burlington brought me hither This architecton-ical Gate Inigo Jon-ical Was late Hans Slon-ical And now Burlington-ical Today's book recommendation  If you are interested in other early naturalists of Michigan, there is a terrific book by Dr. Edward G. Voss entitled “Botanical Beachcombers and Explorers: Pioneers of the 19th Century in the Upper Great Lakes,” published in 1978 by University of Michigan Herbarium. Today's Garden Chore You can grow plants with hints of licorice scent in your garden by growing: Anise(it tastes just like licorice) and Little Adder Anise or Hysso is a charming plant with beautiful flowers.  In fact, when there’s no licorice available, anise oil can be used as a substitute.   Purple Ruffles basil is fun to grow, offers rich color contrast, and adds a hint of licorice to the sweet basil flavor.   Another herb, fennel, has a mild licorice flavor. You can think slice fennel and add it to salads. The stems can be made into a pesto.  Something new to try this season.   Finally, chervil offers that licorice or aniseed flavor and is perfect for damp, cool spots in the garden. It is best in spring and fall.  Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart In the early 1840s, a boy with a badly broken arm had been brought to Detroit from northern Michigan. Untreated, his condition had grown so grave that the doctor he saw prepared to amputate.   At the last minute, when the boy was strapped down for surgery, Dr. Zina Pitcher was consulted. After a careful examination, he asked if he might try to save the arm. Pitcher’s intervention succeeded.   The boy, Peter White, grew up to be a regent of U-M himself, and long afterward, he saw to it that Zina Pitcher’s grave in Detroit was planted with blossoming flowers every spring. Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

  Welcome to episode seventeen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at “Money Honey” by the Drifters. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  —-more—- Erratum At one point in the podcast I say “Calhoun was the most important figure in the musical side of Atlantic Records”. Obviously I meant “Stone was…” — Charles Calhoun was only a pen name, and I refer to Jesse Stone as Jesse Stone everywhere else in the episode.   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. In this case, two tracks are slightly different from the versions I used in the podcast — I accidentally used copies of Clyde McPhatter’s 1960s solo rerecordings of “Money Honey” and “Such a Night” in the Mixcloud. The versions I excerpt in the podcast are the originals. Some of the material here comes from Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Nick Tosches. It’s not a book that I like to recommend, as I’ve said before. Other material comes from  Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues, and The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett. But given the absence of any books on the Drifters or McPhatter, the resource I’ve leaned on most for this is Marv Goldberg’s website. There are many compilations of McPhatter and the Drifters. This one is a decent one.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There’s a thought experiment, popular with the kind of people for whom philosophical thought experiments are popular, called the Ship of Theseus. It asks if you have a ship, and you replace every plank of wood in it as each plank rots away, so eventually you have a ship which doesn’t share a single plank with the original — is that still the same ship that you had at the start, or is it a totally new ship? A little while ago, I saw a Tweet from a venue I follow on Twitter, advertising The Drifters, singing “all their great hits”. There’s only one problem with this, which is that no-one currently in the Drifters has ever had a hit, and none of them have even ever been in a band with anyone who had a hit as a member of the Drifters. Indeed, I believe that none of them have even been in a band with someone who has been in a band with someone who was in a version of the Drifters that had a hit. This kind of thing is actually quite common these days, as old band members die off — I’ve seen a version of The Fourmost which had no members of the Fourmost, a version of the Searchers with none of the original members (though it did have the bass player who joined in 1964 — and it would have had an original member had he not been sick that day), The New Amen Corner (with no members of the old Amen Corner), all on package tours with other, more “authentic”, bands. And of course we talked back in the episode on the Ink Spots about the way that some old bands lose control of their name and end up being replaced on stage by random people who have no connection with the original act. It’s sad, but we expect that kind of thing with bands of a certain age. A band like the Drifters, who started nearly seventy years ago now, should be expected to have had some personnel changes. But what’s odd about the Drifters is that this kind of thing has been the case right from the beginning of their career. The Drifters formed in May 1953. By July 1955, the band that was touring as the Drifters had no original members left. And by June 1958, the band touring as the Drifters had no members of the July 1955 version. An old version of the band’s website, before someone realised that it might be counterproductive to show how little connection there was between the people on stage and the people on their famous records, lists fifty-two different lineups between 1953 and 2004. In the future, everyone will have been lead singer of the Drifters for fifteen minutes. We’re going to look at the Drifters quite a bit over the course of this series — they had hits in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and some of them were among the most important records of their time. And so the thing to remember when we do that is that whenever we’re talking about the Drifters, we’re not talking about the same band as we had been the time before. Indeed, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for what this is worth — I value their opinion fairly low, but in this case it’s an interesting indicator – actually inducted the Drifters as *two separate groups*. They’re in as “The Drifters” and as “Ben E King and the Drifters”, because the Hall of Fame didn’t consider them as being the same group. Today, we’re mostly going to talk about the second lineup of the Drifters, the one that was together from July through October 1953, and which had only one member in common with the May 1953 lineup of the band. That member was Clyde McPhatter, and he was already something of a star before the Drifters formed, as the lead singer of Billy Ward and his Dominoes. [excerpt “Do Something For Me” — Billy Ward and his Dominoes] Billy Ward was an exceptional man in many ways — he was one of the first black people to graduate from the Juilliard School of Music, and he was a hugely talented pianist and arranger. And while he wasn’t a particularly strong singer, he *was* a great vocal coach, and so when he noticed that vocal groups were becoming the new big thing in rhythm and blues, he hit upon a surefire way to make money. He’d form a group, featuring his best students, and pay them a salary. He and his agent would own the band name, and they could hire and fire people as they wished. And the students would all work for cheap, because… well, that’s what young people do. Indeed, it would go further than them working for low pay. If you were a member of Billy Ward and his Dominoes, and you messed up, you got fined — and of course the money went straight into Ward’s pocket. The Dominoes started out as an integrated group — their name was because they were black and white, like the spots on a domino. But soon Ward had fired all of the white members, and put together a group that was entirely made up of black people. The music they were performing was in the style that would later become known as doo-wop, but that wasn’t a term that anyone used at the time. Back then, this new vocal group sound was just one of the many things that were lumped together under the rhythm and blues label. And as this was still the early stages of the music’s development, it was a little different from the music that would later characterise the genre. Doo-Wop started as a style that was strongly influenced by the Ink Spots — and by acts before them like the Mills Brothers. It was music made by impromptu groups on street corners, sung by people who had no instruments to accompany them, and so it relied on the techniques that had been used by the coffee-pot groups of the twenties and thirties — imitating musical instruments with one’s mouth. These days, thanks largely to its late-fifties and early-sixties iteration in which it was sung by Italian-American men in sharp suits, there’s a slight aura of sophistication and class around doo-wop music. It’s associated in a very general sort of way with the kind of music that the Rat Pack and their ilk made, though in reality there’s little connection other than the ethnicity of some of its more famous performers. But doo-wop in its early years was the music of the most underprivileged groups — it was music made by people who couldn’t afford any other kind of entertainment, who couldn’t afford instruments, who had nothing else they could do. It was the music of the streets, in a very literal way — people, usually black people but also Latino and Italian-Americans, would stand on street corners and sing. Doo-wop would later become a very formalised genre, and thus of less interest, but early on some of the music in the genre was genuinely innovative. Precisely because it was made by untutored teenagers, it was often astoundingly inventive in its harmonies and rhythms. And the particular innovation that the Dominoes introduced was bringing in far more gospel flavour than had previously been used in vocal group music. The earlier vocal groups, like the Ravens or the Orioles, had had very little in the way of gospel or blues influence — they mostly followed the style set by the Ink Spots, of singing very clean, straight, melody lines with no ornamentation or melisma. The Dominoes, on the other hand, were a far more gospel-tinged band, and that was mostly down to Clyde McPhatter. Clyde McPhatter was the lead singer on most of the band’s biggest records — although he was billed as Clyde Ward, with the claim that he was Ward’s brother, in order to stop him from becoming too much of a star in his own right, and possibly deserting the Dominoes. McPhatter was actually a church singer first and foremost, and had expressed extreme reluctance to move into secular music, but eventually he agreed, and became the Dominoes’ star performer. Their biggest hit, though, didn’t have McPhatter singing lead, and was very different from their other records. “Sixty Minute Man” was, for the time, absolutely filthy. [Excerpt of “Sixty Minute Man”] Now, that doesn’t sound like anything particularly offensive to our ears, but in the early 1950s, that was absolutely incendiary stuff. And again, along with the fact that radio stations were more restrained in the early fifties than they are these days, there is cultural context that it’s easy to miss. For example, the line “they call me loving Dan” — Dan was often the name of the “back door man” in blues or R&B songs — the man who’d be going out of the back door when the husband was coming in the front. (And “back door man” itself was a phrase that could be taken to have more meanings than the obvious…) The song was popular enough in the R&B field that it inspired other artists to change their songs. Ruth Brown’s big hit “five-ten-fifteen hours” was originally written to have her asking for “five-ten-fifteen minutes of loving” until someone pointed out that in the era of “sixty minute man” fifteen minutes of loving didn’t seem very much. “Sixty Minute Man” was remarkable in another way — it crossed over from the rhythm and blues charts to the pop charts, which was something that basically *never* happened in 1951. I’ve seen claims that it was the first rock and roll record to do so, and I suppose that depends on what you count as a rock and roll record — Louis Jordan had had several crossover hits over the previous few years — but if you’re counting rock and roll musicians as only being people who started recording around 1948 or later, then it may well be. If it’s not the first, it was certainly *one* of the first, and like all big hits at the time it inspired a wave of imitators. However, Bill Brown, the lead singer on the song, quit in 1952 to form his own band, the Checkers. He took with him Charlie White, who had sung lead on an early Dominoes track, this duet with Little Esther: [excerpt: Little Esther and the Dominoes “The Deacon Moves In”] With both the other main singers having left the band more or less simultaneously, Clyde McPhatter was left as the default star of the show. There was no-one else who was even slightly challenging him for the role by this point, and the Dominoes’ records became a showcase for his vocals. Once McPhatter was the star, the band moved away from the more uptempo rock style to a more ballad-based style which suited McPhatter’s voice better. But they still had a knack for controversial subject matter and novelties, as one of their biggest hits shows: [excerpt: “The Bells”, Billy Ward and his Dominoes] That kind of over-the-top display of emotion, taken well past the point of caricature, would soon become one of the hallmarks of the more interesting black vocalists of the period. You can hear in that song the seeds of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, for example — and James Brown would often perform “The Bells” in his early shows, even pushing a pram containing a doll, representing the dead woman in the song, across the stage. But what’s also obvious from that record is that McPhatter was clearly a remarkable singer. He was the star of the show, and the reason that people came to see Billy Ward and the Dominoes — and soon he decided that it was unfair that he was making $100 a week, minus costs, while Ward was becoming rich. He didn’t want to be an interchangeable Domino any more, he was going to make his own career and become a star himself. He stayed in the band for long enough to train his replacement, a new young singer named Jackie Wilson who had been discovered by Johnny Otis, and then left. (At the same time a couple of other band members left. One of their replacements was Cliff Givens, who had previously been a temporary Ink Spot for five months between Hoppy Jones dying and Herb Kenny replacing him). The Dominoes continued on for quite some time after McPhatter left them, but while they scored a few more hits, the way the band’s career progressed can probably best be summed up by their sequel to “Sixty Minute Man” from 1955: [excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes “Can’t Do Sixty No More”] Jackie WIlson, of course, was a fantastic singer and if you had to replace Clyde McPhatter with anyone he was as good a choice as you could make, but McPhatter was sorely missed in their shows. Shortly after the lineup change — indeed, some have claimed on the very first day after McPhatter left — Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records went to see the Dominoes live, and saw that McPhatter wasn’t there. When he discovered that the lead singer of the biggest vocal group in the North-East was no longer with them, he left the venue immediately and went running from bar to bar looking for McPhatter. As soon as he found him, he signed him that night to Atlantic Records, and it was agreed that McPhatter would put together his own backing group — which became the first lineup of the Drifters. That first lineup was made up of people from McPhatter’s church singing group — one of whom, incidentally, was the brother of the author James Baldwin. That lineup — Clyde McPhatter, David Baughan, William Anderson, David Baldwin, and James Johnson — recorded four tracks together, but only one was ever released, “Lucille”: [excerpt “Lucille”, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters] Hearing that, it doesn’t sound like there was anything wrong with the band, but clearly Atlantic disagreed — I’ve heard it claimed by some of the later members of the group that Atlantic thought this first version of the Drifters had voices that were too light for backing McPhatter. Either way, there was a new lineup in place by a few weeks later, with only McPhatter of the original band, and that lineup would last a whole four months and get a hit record out. Their first session included versions of five songs, including the other three that were recorded but never released by the initial lineup. But one of the two new songs was the one that would make the band stars. That song, “Money Honey”, was written by Jesse Stone, or Charles Calhoun to give him his pen-name. You’ll remember we discussed him in episode two, talking about how he wrote “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”, and in episode four, talking about how Louis Jordan ended up taking Stone’s entire band and making them into the Tympany Five. Stone was a fascinating man, who lived a long, long, life that spanned the twentieth century almost completely — he was born in 1901 and died in 1999 — and his entertainment career lasted almost as long. He’d started performing professionally in 1905, at the age of four, in a trained dog act — he’d sing and the dogs would perform. Apparently the dogs were so well trained that they could perform the act without him, but that’s the kind of thing that passed for entertainment in 1905 — a singing four-year-old and some dogs. By 1920 he was the best piano player in Kansas City – and that was the opinion of Count Basie, a man who knew a thing or two about piano playing — and he was making a living as a professional arranger — he later claimed that he’d written a large number of classical pieces but that no-one was interested in playing them, but he could make money off the music that became rock and roll. It’s been claimed by some jazz historians that he was the first person ever to write out proper horn charts for a jazz band’s horn section, rather than having them play head arrangements, and while I don’t *think* the timeline works for that, I’m not enough of an expert in early jazz to be confident he wasn’t. If he was, then that makes him responsible for the birth of swing, and specifically for the kind of swing that later ended up becoming rhythm and blues — the kind with an emphasis on rhythm and groove, with slickly arranged horn parts, which came out of Kansas. Stone worked as an arranger in the thirties and forties with Chick Webb, Louis Jordan, and others, and also started dabbling in songwriting. It was a discussion with Cole Porter that he later credited as the impetus for him becoming a serious songwriter. Porter had discovered that Stone was writing some songs, and he asked what tools Stone used. Stone didn’t even understand the question. He later said “I didn’t know what he was talking about. I had never even heard of a rhyming dictionary..I didn’t know what a homonym was. I didn’t know the difference between assonance and alliteration. ‘Tools?’ I said. ‘Hell’, he said, ‘if you’re gonna dig a ditch you use a shovel, don’t you?’ I began to approach songwriting more professionally”. And the results paid off. His first big hit was “Idaho”, recorded by among others Guy Lombardo and Benny Goodman: [excerpt: Benny Goodman “Idaho”] But unlike most of the successful songwriters of the 1940s, he managed to continue his career into the rock and roll era. Stone wrote a huge number of early rock and roll classics, such as “Shake Rattle and Roll”, “Flip, Flop and Fly”, “Smack Dab in the Middle”, “Razzle Dazzle” and “Your Cash Ain’t Nothin’ But Trash”, many of them recorded by Atlantic Records artists such as Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner. This was because Stone was one of the founders of Atlantic. He’d worked with Herb Abramson before the formation of Atlantic Records, and moved with Abramson to Atlantic when the label started, and he was the only black person on the label’s payroll at first. Stone was credited by Ahmet Ertegun as having been the arranger who had most to do with the early rock and roll sound, and it certainly seems likely that it was Jesse Stone, more than all the other staff producers and writers at Atlantic, who pushed Atlantic Records in a rock and roll direction. According to Stone himself, he took a trip down to the Southern states to see why Atlantic’s records weren’t selling there as well as they were in the coastal states, and he realised that the bands playing in bars were playing with far more emphasis on rhythm than the bands Atlantic had. At first, he wasn’t impressed with this music — as he put it later “I considered it backward, musically, and I didn’t like it until I started to learn that the rhythm content was the important thing. Then I started to like it and began writing tunes.” He adapted the rhythms that those bands were playing, especially the bassline — he later said “I designed a bass pattern, and it sort of became identified with rock’n’roll – doo, da-DOO, DUM; doo, da-DOO, DUM – that thing. I’m the guilty person that started that.” But, other than “Shake Rattle and Roll”, the most well-known song Stone wrote — under his Calhoun pseudonym — was “Money Honey” [excerpt “Money Honey”, the Drifters] That song and arrangement owes a lot to the work that Leiber and Stoller had been doing with the Robins, and like those records the song is very, very funny. And this is something I’ve not emphasised enough when I’ve been talking about rhythm and blues records in this series so far — the sense of humour that so many of them had. From Louis Jordan on, the R&B genre wasn’t just about rhythm, though it was of course about that, but it was often uproariously funny. And it was funny in a very particular way — it was funny about the experience of black people living in poverty in cities. Almost all the R&B acts we’ve discussed so far — especially the ones around Johnny Otis — had a very earthy sense of humour, which was expressed in all their recordings. Songs would be about infidelity, being out of work, being drunk, or, as in this case, being desperate for money to pay the landlord and having your girlfriend leave you for someone who had more money. This is something that was largely lost in the transition from R&B to rock and roll, as the music became more escapist and more focused on the frustrations and longings of horny adolescents, but even where rhythm and blues records were about dancing and escapism, they were from a notably more adult and witty perspective than those that followed only a few years later. While Calhoun was the most important figure in the musical side of Atlantic Records, however, he quit by 1956. Atlantic’s bosses wouldn’t agree to make their first black employee and co-founder of the company an equal partner. In July 1953, though, he was working with the Drifters. The lineup on “Money Honey” was a six-piece group — McPhatter, backing singers Bill Pinkney, Andrew and Gerhardt Thrasher, and Willie Ferbee, and guitarist Walter Adams — who was the third guitarist the group had had. They signed to a management contract with George Treadwell, who was at the time also the manager of another Atlantic Records star, Ruth Brown. They also signed to Moe Gale’s booking agency, but by the time of their first show, on October 9 1953, at the Apollo Theatre supporting Lucky Millinder, there’d already been another lineup change — Ferbee had been in an accident and could no longer perform, and the group decided to carry on with just four voices. And by the end of October, tragedy had struck again, as Walter Adams died of a heart attack. So by the time “Money Honey” started to get noticed and went to number one on the R&B charts, the band was already very different from the one that had recorded the song. This new lineup still had McPhatter, though, and quickly followed up their first hit with another, “Such A Night”, which wasn’t as funny as “Money Honey”, but was raunchy and controversial enough that it got banned from the radio, which made people rush to buy it — that one went to number two on the R&B charts: [excerpt: “Such A Night”] Things were going well for the Drifters… but then McPhatter got drafted. He could still record with the band — he was stationed in the US — and the band continued to tour without him. They got David Baughan from the original lineup to rejoin — he could sound enough like McPhatter that he could sing his parts on stage — and when McPhatter’s armed services commitments meant that he couldn’t make a recording session, they’d record duets with other famous acts, like this one with Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown: “Oh What A Dream”] But eventually the band’s management and Atlantic Records decided that they didn’t need McPhatter to be the lead singer, and it might be more profitable to have the band not be reliant on any particular star — and McPhatter, for his part, was quite keen to start a solo career on his discharge. The Drifters and Clyde McPhatter were going to part. While McPhatter had formed his own group because he didn’t want to be an employee and wanted to have the rights over his own work, he had decided to set things up so that he owned fifty percent of the band’s name, while George Treadwell owned the other fifty percent. When he left the group, he decided to sell his fifty percent stake in the band’s name to Treadwell — which of course meant that the other Drifters were now in precisely the same position as McPhatter had been with the Dominoes, except that there at least the name’s owner had been a band member. Bill Pinkney did later manage to get ownership of the name “the Original Drifters” and many of the fifties members would tour with him under that name in the sixties, but the band name “the Drifters” now belonged not to any of the performers, but to their management. The Drifters went through many, many, lineup changes, and we’ll be picking up their story later, but sadly we won’t be picking up McPhatter’s. McPhatter’s solo career started well, with a duet with Ruth Brown: [excerpt “Love Has Joined Us Together”: Clyde McPhatter and Ruth Brown] Something certainly had joined them together, as Ruth Brown later revealed that McPhatter was the father of her son, Ronald, who now tours as “Clyde McPhatter’s Drifters”. And for a while, McPhatter looked like he would continue being a major star — he had a string of hits between 1955 and 1958, but then the hits started to dry up. He changed labels a few times and would have the occasional one-off hit, but had far more flops than successes. By the early 70s, he was an alcoholic, and Marv Goldberg (whose website I have used as a major resource for this episode) describes him telling someone introduced to him as a fan “I have no fans”, and seeing a show with a drunk McPhatter sitting on the edge of the stage and saying “I’m not used to coming on third; I used to be a star.” He died in 1972, aged thirty-nine, completely unaware of how important his music had been to millions. I said near the start of this episode that I don’t consider the rock and roll hall of fame important, and that’s true, but McPhatter was the first person to be inducted into the hall of fame twice — once as a Drifter and once as a solo artist. Anyone since him who’s been inducted multiple times — people like John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, and Michael Jackson — are referred to as members of “the Clyde McPhatter club”.

  Welcome to episode seventeen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at "Money Honey" by the Drifters. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  ----more---- Erratum At one point in the podcast I say "Calhoun was the most important figure in the musical side of Atlantic Records". Obviously I meant "Stone was..." -- Charles Calhoun was only a pen name, and I refer to Jesse Stone as Jesse Stone everywhere else in the episode.   Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. In this case, two tracks are slightly different from the versions I used in the podcast -- I accidentally used copies of Clyde McPhatter's 1960s solo rerecordings of "Money Honey" and "Such a Night" in the Mixcloud. The versions I excerpt in the podcast are the originals. Some of the material here comes from Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll by Nick Tosches. It's not a book that I like to recommend, as I've said before. Other material comes from  Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues, and The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett. But given the absence of any books on the Drifters or McPhatter, the resource I've leaned on most for this is Marv Goldberg's website. There are many compilations of McPhatter and the Drifters. This one is a decent one.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's a thought experiment, popular with the kind of people for whom philosophical thought experiments are popular, called the Ship of Theseus. It asks if you have a ship, and you replace every plank of wood in it as each plank rots away, so eventually you have a ship which doesn't share a single plank with the original -- is that still the same ship that you had at the start, or is it a totally new ship? A little while ago, I saw a Tweet from a venue I follow on Twitter, advertising The Drifters, singing "all their great hits". There's only one problem with this, which is that no-one currently in the Drifters has ever had a hit, and none of them have even ever been in a band with anyone who had a hit as a member of the Drifters. Indeed, I believe that none of them have even been in a band with someone who has been in a band with someone who was in a version of the Drifters that had a hit. This kind of thing is actually quite common these days, as old band members die off -- I've seen a version of The Fourmost which had no members of the Fourmost, a version of the Searchers with none of the original members (though it did have the bass player who joined in 1964 -- and it would have had an original member had he not been sick that day), The New Amen Corner (with no members of the old Amen Corner), all on package tours with other, more "authentic", bands. And of course we talked back in the episode on the Ink Spots about the way that some old bands lose control of their name and end up being replaced on stage by random people who have no connection with the original act. It's sad, but we expect that kind of thing with bands of a certain age. A band like the Drifters, who started nearly seventy years ago now, should be expected to have had some personnel changes. But what's odd about the Drifters is that this kind of thing has been the case right from the beginning of their career. The Drifters formed in May 1953. By July 1955, the band that was touring as the Drifters had no original members left. And by June 1958, the band touring as the Drifters had no members of the July 1955 version. An old version of the band's website, before someone realised that it might be counterproductive to show how little connection there was between the people on stage and the people on their famous records, lists fifty-two different lineups between 1953 and 2004. In the future, everyone will have been lead singer of the Drifters for fifteen minutes. We're going to look at the Drifters quite a bit over the course of this series -- they had hits in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and some of them were among the most important records of their time. And so the thing to remember when we do that is that whenever we're talking about the Drifters, we're not talking about the same band as we had been the time before. Indeed, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for what this is worth -- I value their opinion fairly low, but in this case it's an interesting indicator – actually inducted the Drifters as *two separate groups*. They're in as "The Drifters" and as "Ben E King and the Drifters", because the Hall of Fame didn't consider them as being the same group. Today, we're mostly going to talk about the second lineup of the Drifters, the one that was together from July through October 1953, and which had only one member in common with the May 1953 lineup of the band. That member was Clyde McPhatter, and he was already something of a star before the Drifters formed, as the lead singer of Billy Ward and his Dominoes. [excerpt "Do Something For Me" -- Billy Ward and his Dominoes] Billy Ward was an exceptional man in many ways -- he was one of the first black people to graduate from the Juilliard School of Music, and he was a hugely talented pianist and arranger. And while he wasn't a particularly strong singer, he *was* a great vocal coach, and so when he noticed that vocal groups were becoming the new big thing in rhythm and blues, he hit upon a surefire way to make money. He'd form a group, featuring his best students, and pay them a salary. He and his agent would own the band name, and they could hire and fire people as they wished. And the students would all work for cheap, because... well, that's what young people do. Indeed, it would go further than them working for low pay. If you were a member of Billy Ward and his Dominoes, and you messed up, you got fined -- and of course the money went straight into Ward's pocket. The Dominoes started out as an integrated group -- their name was because they were black and white, like the spots on a domino. But soon Ward had fired all of the white members, and put together a group that was entirely made up of black people. The music they were performing was in the style that would later become known as doo-wop, but that wasn't a term that anyone used at the time. Back then, this new vocal group sound was just one of the many things that were lumped together under the rhythm and blues label. And as this was still the early stages of the music's development, it was a little different from the music that would later characterise the genre. Doo-Wop started as a style that was strongly influenced by the Ink Spots -- and by acts before them like the Mills Brothers. It was music made by impromptu groups on street corners, sung by people who had no instruments to accompany them, and so it relied on the techniques that had been used by the coffee-pot groups of the twenties and thirties -- imitating musical instruments with one's mouth. These days, thanks largely to its late-fifties and early-sixties iteration in which it was sung by Italian-American men in sharp suits, there's a slight aura of sophistication and class around doo-wop music. It's associated in a very general sort of way with the kind of music that the Rat Pack and their ilk made, though in reality there's little connection other than the ethnicity of some of its more famous performers. But doo-wop in its early years was the music of the most underprivileged groups -- it was music made by people who couldn't afford any other kind of entertainment, who couldn't afford instruments, who had nothing else they could do. It was the music of the streets, in a very literal way -- people, usually black people but also Latino and Italian-Americans, would stand on street corners and sing. Doo-wop would later become a very formalised genre, and thus of less interest, but early on some of the music in the genre was genuinely innovative. Precisely because it was made by untutored teenagers, it was often astoundingly inventive in its harmonies and rhythms. And the particular innovation that the Dominoes introduced was bringing in far more gospel flavour than had previously been used in vocal group music. The earlier vocal groups, like the Ravens or the Orioles, had had very little in the way of gospel or blues influence -- they mostly followed the style set by the Ink Spots, of singing very clean, straight, melody lines with no ornamentation or melisma. The Dominoes, on the other hand, were a far more gospel-tinged band, and that was mostly down to Clyde McPhatter. Clyde McPhatter was the lead singer on most of the band's biggest records -- although he was billed as Clyde Ward, with the claim that he was Ward's brother, in order to stop him from becoming too much of a star in his own right, and possibly deserting the Dominoes. McPhatter was actually a church singer first and foremost, and had expressed extreme reluctance to move into secular music, but eventually he agreed, and became the Dominoes' star performer. Their biggest hit, though, didn't have McPhatter singing lead, and was very different from their other records. "Sixty Minute Man" was, for the time, absolutely filthy. [Excerpt of "Sixty Minute Man"] Now, that doesn't sound like anything particularly offensive to our ears, but in the early 1950s, that was absolutely incendiary stuff. And again, along with the fact that radio stations were more restrained in the early fifties than they are these days, there is cultural context that it's easy to miss. For example, the line "they call me loving Dan" -- Dan was often the name of the "back door man" in blues or R&B songs -- the man who'd be going out of the back door when the husband was coming in the front. (And "back door man" itself was a phrase that could be taken to have more meanings than the obvious...) The song was popular enough in the R&B field that it inspired other artists to change their songs. Ruth Brown's big hit "five-ten-fifteen hours" was originally written to have her asking for "five-ten-fifteen minutes of loving" until someone pointed out that in the era of "sixty minute man" fifteen minutes of loving didn't seem very much. "Sixty Minute Man" was remarkable in another way -- it crossed over from the rhythm and blues charts to the pop charts, which was something that basically *never* happened in 1951. I've seen claims that it was the first rock and roll record to do so, and I suppose that depends on what you count as a rock and roll record -- Louis Jordan had had several crossover hits over the previous few years -- but if you're counting rock and roll musicians as only being people who started recording around 1948 or later, then it may well be. If it's not the first, it was certainly *one* of the first, and like all big hits at the time it inspired a wave of imitators. However, Bill Brown, the lead singer on the song, quit in 1952 to form his own band, the Checkers. He took with him Charlie White, who had sung lead on an early Dominoes track, this duet with Little Esther: [excerpt: Little Esther and the Dominoes "The Deacon Moves In"] With both the other main singers having left the band more or less simultaneously, Clyde McPhatter was left as the default star of the show. There was no-one else who was even slightly challenging him for the role by this point, and the Dominoes' records became a showcase for his vocals. Once McPhatter was the star, the band moved away from the more uptempo rock style to a more ballad-based style which suited McPhatter's voice better. But they still had a knack for controversial subject matter and novelties, as one of their biggest hits shows: [excerpt: "The Bells", Billy Ward and his Dominoes] That kind of over-the-top display of emotion, taken well past the point of caricature, would soon become one of the hallmarks of the more interesting black vocalists of the period. You can hear in that song the seeds of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, for example -- and James Brown would often perform "The Bells" in his early shows, even pushing a pram containing a doll, representing the dead woman in the song, across the stage. But what's also obvious from that record is that McPhatter was clearly a remarkable singer. He was the star of the show, and the reason that people came to see Billy Ward and the Dominoes -- and soon he decided that it was unfair that he was making $100 a week, minus costs, while Ward was becoming rich. He didn't want to be an interchangeable Domino any more, he was going to make his own career and become a star himself. He stayed in the band for long enough to train his replacement, a new young singer named Jackie Wilson who had been discovered by Johnny Otis, and then left. (At the same time a couple of other band members left. One of their replacements was Cliff Givens, who had previously been a temporary Ink Spot for five months between Hoppy Jones dying and Herb Kenny replacing him). The Dominoes continued on for quite some time after McPhatter left them, but while they scored a few more hits, the way the band's career progressed can probably best be summed up by their sequel to "Sixty Minute Man" from 1955: [excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes "Can't Do Sixty No More"] Jackie WIlson, of course, was a fantastic singer and if you had to replace Clyde McPhatter with anyone he was as good a choice as you could make, but McPhatter was sorely missed in their shows. Shortly after the lineup change -- indeed, some have claimed on the very first day after McPhatter left -- Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records went to see the Dominoes live, and saw that McPhatter wasn't there. When he discovered that the lead singer of the biggest vocal group in the North-East was no longer with them, he left the venue immediately and went running from bar to bar looking for McPhatter. As soon as he found him, he signed him that night to Atlantic Records, and it was agreed that McPhatter would put together his own backing group -- which became the first lineup of the Drifters. That first lineup was made up of people from McPhatter's church singing group -- one of whom, incidentally, was the brother of the author James Baldwin. That lineup -- Clyde McPhatter, David Baughan, William Anderson, David Baldwin, and James Johnson -- recorded four tracks together, but only one was ever released, "Lucille": [excerpt "Lucille", Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters] Hearing that, it doesn't sound like there was anything wrong with the band, but clearly Atlantic disagreed -- I've heard it claimed by some of the later members of the group that Atlantic thought this first version of the Drifters had voices that were too light for backing McPhatter. Either way, there was a new lineup in place by a few weeks later, with only McPhatter of the original band, and that lineup would last a whole four months and get a hit record out. Their first session included versions of five songs, including the other three that were recorded but never released by the initial lineup. But one of the two new songs was the one that would make the band stars. That song, "Money Honey", was written by Jesse Stone, or Charles Calhoun to give him his pen-name. You'll remember we discussed him in episode two, talking about how he wrote "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", and in episode four, talking about how Louis Jordan ended up taking Stone's entire band and making them into the Tympany Five. Stone was a fascinating man, who lived a long, long, life that spanned the twentieth century almost completely -- he was born in 1901 and died in 1999 -- and his entertainment career lasted almost as long. He'd started performing professionally in 1905, at the age of four, in a trained dog act -- he'd sing and the dogs would perform. Apparently the dogs were so well trained that they could perform the act without him, but that's the kind of thing that passed for entertainment in 1905 -- a singing four-year-old and some dogs. By 1920 he was the best piano player in Kansas City - and that was the opinion of Count Basie, a man who knew a thing or two about piano playing -- and he was making a living as a professional arranger -- he later claimed that he'd written a large number of classical pieces but that no-one was interested in playing them, but he could make money off the music that became rock and roll. It's been claimed by some jazz historians that he was the first person ever to write out proper horn charts for a jazz band's horn section, rather than having them play head arrangements, and while I don't *think* the timeline works for that, I'm not enough of an expert in early jazz to be confident he wasn't. If he was, then that makes him responsible for the birth of swing, and specifically for the kind of swing that later ended up becoming rhythm and blues -- the kind with an emphasis on rhythm and groove, with slickly arranged horn parts, which came out of Kansas. Stone worked as an arranger in the thirties and forties with Chick Webb, Louis Jordan, and others, and also started dabbling in songwriting. It was a discussion with Cole Porter that he later credited as the impetus for him becoming a serious songwriter. Porter had discovered that Stone was writing some songs, and he asked what tools Stone used. Stone didn't even understand the question. He later said "I didn't know what he was talking about. I had never even heard of a rhyming dictionary..I didn't know what a homonym was. I didn't know the difference between assonance and alliteration. 'Tools?' I said. 'Hell', he said, 'if you're gonna dig a ditch you use a shovel, don't you?' I began to approach songwriting more professionally". And the results paid off. His first big hit was "Idaho", recorded by among others Guy Lombardo and Benny Goodman: [excerpt: Benny Goodman "Idaho"] But unlike most of the successful songwriters of the 1940s, he managed to continue his career into the rock and roll era. Stone wrote a huge number of early rock and roll classics, such as "Shake Rattle and Roll", "Flip, Flop and Fly", "Smack Dab in the Middle", "Razzle Dazzle" and "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash", many of them recorded by Atlantic Records artists such as Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner. This was because Stone was one of the founders of Atlantic. He'd worked with Herb Abramson before the formation of Atlantic Records, and moved with Abramson to Atlantic when the label started, and he was the only black person on the label's payroll at first. Stone was credited by Ahmet Ertegun as having been the arranger who had most to do with the early rock and roll sound, and it certainly seems likely that it was Jesse Stone, more than all the other staff producers and writers at Atlantic, who pushed Atlantic Records in a rock and roll direction. According to Stone himself, he took a trip down to the Southern states to see why Atlantic's records weren't selling there as well as they were in the coastal states, and he realised that the bands playing in bars were playing with far more emphasis on rhythm than the bands Atlantic had. At first, he wasn't impressed with this music -- as he put it later "I considered it backward, musically, and I didn't like it until I started to learn that the rhythm content was the important thing. Then I started to like it and began writing tunes." He adapted the rhythms that those bands were playing, especially the bassline -- he later said "I designed a bass pattern, and it sort of became identified with rock'n'roll - doo, da-DOO, DUM; doo, da-DOO, DUM - that thing. I'm the guilty person that started that." But, other than "Shake Rattle and Roll", the most well-known song Stone wrote -- under his Calhoun pseudonym -- was "Money Honey" [excerpt "Money Honey", the Drifters] That song and arrangement owes a lot to the work that Leiber and Stoller had been doing with the Robins, and like those records the song is very, very funny. And this is something I've not emphasised enough when I've been talking about rhythm and blues records in this series so far -- the sense of humour that so many of them had. From Louis Jordan on, the R&B genre wasn't just about rhythm, though it was of course about that, but it was often uproariously funny. And it was funny in a very particular way -- it was funny about the experience of black people living in poverty in cities. Almost all the R&B acts we've discussed so far -- especially the ones around Johnny Otis -- had a very earthy sense of humour, which was expressed in all their recordings. Songs would be about infidelity, being out of work, being drunk, or, as in this case, being desperate for money to pay the landlord and having your girlfriend leave you for someone who had more money. This is something that was largely lost in the transition from R&B to rock and roll, as the music became more escapist and more focused on the frustrations and longings of horny adolescents, but even where rhythm and blues records were about dancing and escapism, they were from a notably more adult and witty perspective than those that followed only a few years later. While Calhoun was the most important figure in the musical side of Atlantic Records, however, he quit by 1956. Atlantic's bosses wouldn't agree to make their first black employee and co-founder of the company an equal partner. In July 1953, though, he was working with the Drifters. The lineup on "Money Honey" was a six-piece group -- McPhatter, backing singers Bill Pinkney, Andrew and Gerhardt Thrasher, and Willie Ferbee, and guitarist Walter Adams -- who was the third guitarist the group had had. They signed to a management contract with George Treadwell, who was at the time also the manager of another Atlantic Records star, Ruth Brown. They also signed to Moe Gale's booking agency, but by the time of their first show, on October 9 1953, at the Apollo Theatre supporting Lucky Millinder, there'd already been another lineup change -- Ferbee had been in an accident and could no longer perform, and the group decided to carry on with just four voices. And by the end of October, tragedy had struck again, as Walter Adams died of a heart attack. So by the time "Money Honey" started to get noticed and went to number one on the R&B charts, the band was already very different from the one that had recorded the song. This new lineup still had McPhatter, though, and quickly followed up their first hit with another, "Such A Night", which wasn't as funny as "Money Honey", but was raunchy and controversial enough that it got banned from the radio, which made people rush to buy it -- that one went to number two on the R&B charts: [excerpt: "Such A Night"] Things were going well for the Drifters... but then McPhatter got drafted. He could still record with the band -- he was stationed in the US -- and the band continued to tour without him. They got David Baughan from the original lineup to rejoin -- he could sound enough like McPhatter that he could sing his parts on stage -- and when McPhatter's armed services commitments meant that he couldn't make a recording session, they'd record duets with other famous acts, like this one with Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown: "Oh What A Dream"] But eventually the band's management and Atlantic Records decided that they didn't need McPhatter to be the lead singer, and it might be more profitable to have the band not be reliant on any particular star -- and McPhatter, for his part, was quite keen to start a solo career on his discharge. The Drifters and Clyde McPhatter were going to part. While McPhatter had formed his own group because he didn't want to be an employee and wanted to have the rights over his own work, he had decided to set things up so that he owned fifty percent of the band's name, while George Treadwell owned the other fifty percent. When he left the group, he decided to sell his fifty percent stake in the band's name to Treadwell -- which of course meant that the other Drifters were now in precisely the same position as McPhatter had been with the Dominoes, except that there at least the name's owner had been a band member. Bill Pinkney did later manage to get ownership of the name "the Original Drifters" and many of the fifties members would tour with him under that name in the sixties, but the band name "the Drifters" now belonged not to any of the performers, but to their management. The Drifters went through many, many, lineup changes, and we'll be picking up their story later, but sadly we won't be picking up McPhatter's. McPhatter's solo career started well, with a duet with Ruth Brown: [excerpt "Love Has Joined Us Together": Clyde McPhatter and Ruth Brown] Something certainly had joined them together, as Ruth Brown later revealed that McPhatter was the father of her son, Ronald, who now tours as "Clyde McPhatter's Drifters". And for a while, McPhatter looked like he would continue being a major star -- he had a string of hits between 1955 and 1958, but then the hits started to dry up. He changed labels a few times and would have the occasional one-off hit, but had far more flops than successes. By the early 70s, he was an alcoholic, and Marv Goldberg (whose website I have used as a major resource for this episode) describes him telling someone introduced to him as a fan "I have no fans", and seeing a show with a drunk McPhatter sitting on the edge of the stage and saying "I'm not used to coming on third; I used to be a star." He died in 1972, aged thirty-nine, completely unaware of how important his music had been to millions. I said near the start of this episode that I don't consider the rock and roll hall of fame important, and that's true, but McPhatter was the first person to be inducted into the hall of fame twice -- once as a Drifter and once as a solo artist. Anyone since him who's been inducted multiple times -- people like John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, and Michael Jackson -- are referred to as members of "the Clyde McPhatter club".

Last episode we ended with Lenin’s death. The roll out of Communism was well underway and it was time for new leadership. One his last policies before he died in 1924 was the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1922… A mixed economy put in to place in order to reintroduce a level of private ownership into the economy. Individuals could own small enterprises and some private property. Tax in the form of ‘Quotas’ were introduced with people getting to keep and trade what they produced over and above their quota. Lenin had a stroke not long after this, leaving him partially paralysed. This is when Stalin really stepped up being a regular visitor, and Lenin didn’t like Stalin – or his “Asiatic manner”. Stalin was Georgian and a bit of a racist. Lenin wrote to his sister that Stalin was ‘not intelligent’. Regardless, Stalin had support of a large chunk of the Bolsheviks. So…he was needed.   Joseph Stalin ruled from Lenin’s death in early 1924 to 1953 when he too died. What life was like under Stalin was brutal The movie The Death of Stalin is a black comedy about the power grab in the wake of Stalin’s death. The level of paranoia and fear seems a little hysterical (overacted) however it was pretty true for the time. There is a scene Stalin wanted the recording of musical group. It was a horrible event, but it makes light of the oppression people were under.   Between 1924 – 1927 Stalin spent most of his time killing off any challenges to power. Then by 1927, power was consolidated. He saw the solution for getting rid of the dissidents was to imprison them – in the Gulags. There were a few of these operational under Lenin. The number of concentration or forced labour camps grew from about 87 to over 350 Communist Party and The Soviet State considered repression to be a tool of control and enforcement. Securing the normal functioning of the Soviet state system (people toe the line) Preserving and strengthening their policies (redistribution) Keeping control of their social base - the working class (keep them in fear) The GULAG system was introduced in order to isolate and eliminate anyone not toeing the line Class-alien, socially dangerous, disruptive, suspicious, and other disloyal elements, whose deeds and thoughts were not contributing to the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Forced labour as a "method of re-education" was applied. This theory based on one of most famous Marxists in history – Leon Trotsky. Trotsky came up with the solution for dissidents. He was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and Soviet politician – He was one of the ‘old Bolsheviks’ – and mates with Lenin. The Prison Camp idea was based on Trotsky's experiments with forced labour camps for Czech POWs from 1918 He wrote about "compulsory labour service" in his book - Terrorism and Communism   Why does all of this happen? Why am I talking about this part in a show about personal finance? These violent social policies have to go hand in hand with the economic policies of a Socialist or Communist society. It is about the collective and ‘Equality of Outcome’. With force being the only true way to guarantee the outcome. The economic policies of socialism have to be enforced by the State. Follow the logic – Say you don’t pay taxes, you would get notices from the ATO, eventually criminal charges and eventually you get taken away to jail Now imagine you went to the fields (which are meant to be the peoples’ anyway) and picked some left over grain for yourself. People were shot for doing this Or, you made a joke about Scott Morrison – That is 3 years in the Gulag! Any speech or action against the collective is a crime – and it has to be. No freedom can be present if equality of outcome is desired.   Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Gulag Archipelago”. A recount of stories from these camps from memory with first hand testimony from 227 fellow prisoners…it’s a looooooong book, around 70 hours of audio book.   What landed him in jail? He was fighting in WW2 and wrote a letter to his friend about conditions on the front – that was his crime. It wasn’t until 1973 when this was published that the world got to really learn about this. This caused the western world to start to wake up to the lies of communism. Before this, the Socialist plan was also lauded by some members of the Western media, and although much of his reporting was later disputed, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty received the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for his coverage of the first five-year plan.   Back to Stalin’s policies 1927 - 1931 Collectivization and industrialisation – The core of all Socialist policies The word ‘collectivisation’ sounds technical, a little dry, even boring. But, it’s the process of taking what people have, and spreading it around Human consequences were profound and dramatic. How does one achieve this? It is an impossible problem to solve to keep everyone equal at all times – So the only solution is to remove those who are on higher wealth positions on an ongoing basis, to keep redistributing that wealth until there is no wealth left to redistribute. It’s the perfect race to the bottom. The principle was simple. Richer, more successful peasants (Kulaks and Nepmen) had to be ‘liquidated’, by starvation, murder or exile. For equality – Those ‘with’ have to be taken from. But this requires dehumanisation. Sadly, the Soviet Union lagged behind the industrialisation of Western Countries during this period But Stalin argued that collectivisation was simply good Marxism. To build socialism on earth, he said, they needed to smash the peasants. Can’t have a truly socialist society if they still allowed people to farm for themselves and make money   What’s the reason they had lagged behind? Up to now the NEP was in place, but Stalin was not a fan Too free-market – Some people still could make money Kulaks (Rich peasants) and the Nepmen (small business owners) This goes against key socialist or communist policies and the belief in a controlled economy with no ‘evil profit’ 1928 - Stalin starting claiming that the Kulaks were hoarding their grain. The Kulaks were arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February 1928 - The first five-year plan was launched, its main focus on boosting heavy industry; Needed Labour to achieve this Prison Labour – The Gulags To meet the goals of the first five-year plan the Soviet Union began using the labour of its growing prisoner population 1929 – Stalin ordered the collectivisation of the agriculture countryside 1930 – Took measure to liquidate the existence of the kulaks as a class; accused kulaks were rounded up and exiled either elsewhere in their own regions, to other parts of the country, or to concentration camps. By July 1930, over 320,000 households had been affected by the de-kulakisation policy 1932 – About 62% of households involved in agriculture were part of collectives, and by 1936 this had risen to 90% Takes time to do it but once in place it’s hard to get out Productivity slumped, then famine broke out in many areas   Famines: Starvation in Ukraine – 1932 to 1933 1930 – Armed peasant uprisings against dekulakisation and collectivisation broke out in Ukraine, but they were crushed by Red Army – He wanted to truly crush them Stalin’s thugs roamed the fertile Ukrainian countryside, seizing grain that he could sell abroad — which would allow him to buy the industrial machinery he desperately wanted Around 3.3 to 7.5 million died in Ukraine – there are not many records 2 million Kazkhs population (40%) Remember – There were more people starved over one year than Jews who died in the Holocaust over 4 years   I will Skip over WW2 – Check out Ghosts of the Ostfront series by Dan Carlin who covers this well over a few hours WW2 had 70 million deaths in total (soldiers, civilians etc) – 30 million died in the conflict of Russia and Germany alone – Germany lost 5 million troops total in the whole war. 4million of these were on the Eastern front   I’ll also skip over the start of the Cold war – Remember too…governments do have the power to take whatever they want by force – if they write the law to allow it (South Africa and Constitution changes)   What Russia looked like when Stalin died Work-life was rough since unions were shut down as they are a competing power to the State. The irony is that a lot of unions are on the left No longer allowed to strike No concern for working conditions The collectivization created a large-scale famine - herded into vast state-run farms where they would toil ceaselessly for the greater Soviet good, instead of for private profit. Famine led many Russians to relocate to find food, jobs, and shelter outside of their small villages which caused many towns to become overpopulated. Millions dying because of starvation or even freezing waiting in line for rations People stopped having children - decreased the population. The imprisonment of others into labour camps – Not nice places – Especially from other inmates Dangerous prisoners were released and forced into labour camps People were forced to live in communal apartments Without work and the danger of being robbed for the possessions that they did manage to keep. With such living quarters people shared tight spaces with strangers accompanied by many other horrors such as theft, violence and stripped of privacy.   Socialism went on until 1922 – By 1991 more than 60 million had died… which is about a third of the Australian population every decade. These are pretty normal as far as socialist outcomes go.   Be careful what you wish for.

2013 saw the housing market slow greatly because of increased interest rates. Are we following the same trends today?Looking to buy a Home in Northeast Ohio? Search all Northeast Ohio homes for sale.Selling Your Home in Northeast Ohio? Use our home evaluation tool.The 2018 housing market started off much like how the market started five years ago. In 2013, the Federal Reserve saw the real estate market booming and pushed interest rates up to slow down the economy.Currently we are seeing the same inflation in terms of values and prices as we did in 2013. I believe that the federal government is going to once again slow down the economy and the real estate market by raising the rates again. In fact, they have already raised them twice.What this means to you, if you are selling, is that you want to get your house on the market immediately.In 2013, rates started the year at 3.75%. By September of that year, they had risen to almost 4.75%. We sold an incredible amount of homes and had record-breaking sales in the first half of the year, and then the market came to a stop.You can expect to see the same results this year. So far, we have already seen a huge influx of buyers and sales in the first quarter of 2018. The housing market is booming right now, we’re seeing the best prices in years, and we are seeing interest rates increase.Interest rates have already jumped by almost 0.5% within the last six months. For the second quarter, they will continue to go up probably 0.25%.By July, most buyers who are looking will have bought a home. After that, there will be an increase in inventory for the second half of the year, which will slow down the housing market and bring prices down.“If you are looking to sell your house, put it on the market now because the values are up, buyers are out, and inventory is low. ”So, if you are looking to sell your house, put it on the market now because the values are up, buyers are out, and inventory is low. You want to be on the market before the summer months when a huge increase in inventory comes on the market and values come down. If you have any questions about this or want to list your home, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

NASA launched the New Horizons craft on January 19, 2006. By July 24, 2015 it had covered 4.67 billion miles and transmitted a stream of amazing photos as it flew by Pluto at 32,000 miles per hour. The images made headlines in all seven continents, uniting the planet as few events do. Telling the story of the most distant planetary exploration ever undertaken, Stern, principal investigator of the mission, and Grinspoon, author of Earth in Human Hands and inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, give a detailed insiders’ account of this extraordinary project. They illuminate the science and the technical challenges, profile the key individuals, outline the political debates involved, and suggest what to expect when the New Horizons craft passes through the Kuiper Belt in January 2019.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250098962Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Jews living in Warsaw were forced into a walled ghetto. By July 1942, thousands were being deported to the Treblinka death camp. When the tragic news reached the Warsaw ghetto, the remaining Jews revolted. On April 19, 1943, SS troops were ordered to put down the Warsaw ghetto resistance. After four days of fighting, the entire area was destroyed, but the resistance continued for almost a month. It was May 16th before the Germans could announce that the Warsaw ghetto was no longer in existence. Though thousands of Jews had been killed, many had escaped to carry on the resistance. 

Charles Henry King was an Entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Founder of Chadron, Nebraska, a prominent Banker, Wyoming's wealthiest businessman and President Gerald R. Fords biological grandfather. Why Listen Up to today’s show -> Recall we just did an entire show on Fannie O’Linn on our last show 062 Charles Henry King was a Prominent Banker that started a Bank  C. H. King Company and First National Bank of Shoshoni, Wyoming. He was a serial entrepreneur at that time of his passing he was Wyoming’s wealthiest businessman. Charles Henry King was an entrepreneurs entrepreneur -> Get today’s show notes -> MitchellChadrow.com/show063 Sign up at the website for not only the latest podcasts articles and awesome guides but become part of the trusted friend's community at MitchellChadrow.com/signup CH King - today would be known as a serial entrepreneur At the age of 31 in 1884 he and his wife, Martha [Alicia (nee) Porter,] moved to Nebraska and settled a sparsely populated the region is known as Dawes County today we know it as the Panhandle of Nebraska. Their humble home was nicely settled along the White River in an area that we just talked about the brand new town of Chadron. Our startup round is sponsored by Chadron.net To learn more about the founding of the west and get the show notes go to our last show via MitchellChadrow.com/show062 and to learn more about the Chadrow 4 Chadron Project Head over to Chadron.net Now back to the show you will recall that Fannie O'Linn the subject from our last show certainly knew CH as his associates knew him as both helped found the town Chadron You see CH was a merchant pioneer who began trading with the Indians and became a bigtime merchant and wool trader he had one of the most successful entrepreneurial enterprises in Nebraska and Wyoming.  He was founder and president of the Omaha Wool and Storage Company and founder of banks transportation companies and promoter of various enterprises. He had come far born in Pennsylvania on March 13, 1853, in Bradford County. When in Chadron NE he started a general store known as C.H. King's Mercantile. He was described in his day as being shrewd a true businessman, as a business person why study CH make him one of your own case studies well he was a visionary what today we might say a mover and shaker. He was a visionary -> he saw what others could not as he anticipated the arrival of the Chicago and North Western Railroad network into Chadron and the nearby Wyoming territory. He was constantly thinking of how he could expand his commercial enterprises. He executed on this opportunity by stringing together general stores, lumberyards' banks, wool trading companies, a freight hauling business, and much real estate strategically located where the railroad access insured the founding of future towns and cities in addition to Chadron. By July 25, 1886, Chadron was much in the infancy as an organized community -> it was at this time that President Gerald Ford's biological father Leslie Lynch was born to Charles Henry King and his wife Martha in the town of Chadron Our Fast Pitch sponsored by trustsmarter.com Trusts find trust co info on estate planning Book -> MitchellChadrow.com/books Robert Roy Foresman left a message that he was working on a full-length article and publication on Fannie O'Linn. He said it was nice to see the post about her and podcast he said that he has been researching her for over 10 years, and there is a lot of stories to still share.  I’m going to link to robs other books and when his article and book on Fannie O’Linn published will him on in the meantime I provide a link to him here. He Works for the North Dakota State University northern plains ethics institute Even before Wyoming became a state in 1890 CH would become well known as one of the wealthiest men in Wyoming, At one time he amassed a fortune of $20 million in today’s dollars that is considerable but in 1890 it was huge. By 1900 C.H. King was known as a baron among wool traders and a merchant king in western Nebraska the panhandle As I stated earlier he was an entrepreneurs entrepreneur he was ambitious and eager to seize new opportunities, by 1905 he was moving his business HQs to Omaha. Omaha was known as the eastern terminal of the Union Pacific Railroad, and it also had numerous other roads so it became Omaha's western terminal. CH saw Omaha as a city with a great future. His reputation was both energetic but an honest businessman. As startups, business owners, and entrepreneurs we focus so much on wanting to raise or borrow money for our businesses. CH found it relatively easy to raise large sums of capital for new profitable ventures. For example, In 1908, he had a capital fund of $100,000, and the Omaha Wool and Storage Company was founded with C.H. King as president. His son, Leslie, Sr., also owned stock in the company and was named general manager. This was considered a big business for that time having a huge warehouse, 1200 feet long by 150 feet high, it was totally covered with a corrugated iron roof, and we know real estate is location location location CH was sure that the Union Pacific ran a side track up to the Omaha Wool and Storage Co. loading dock. By 1909 wool was being shipped into Omaha from western Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and South Dakota. Charles Henry was what we call today a serial entrepreneur he was driven to create more successful commercial companies/firms: C.H. King Company - > dealt in wholesale food merchandising.  He was known in Omaha as a premier businessmen he entertained big time at Woolworth Mansion a real luxurious home with its ornately decorated ballroom The C.H. King Company and First National Bank Building, also known as Yellowstone Drug, is one of the oldest buildings in Shoshoni, Wyoming. The building was built for Charles Henry King in 1905–1906. King was a central Wyoming businessman who established a lumber business in the building. King is otherwise notable as the biological grandfather of U.S. president Gerald R. Ford. The First National Bank of Shoshoni was also located in the building Our wrap up round sponsored by startupssmarter.com You need help starting up a business from forms to set up your business to getting online with a website my listeners who go over to startupssmarter.com/Mitchell signup will get a free one-page website By signing up get guides articles and information President Ford's biological parents: Leslie Lynch King, Sr. and Dorothy Ayer Gardner marry in Harvard, Illinois. (near Chicago) on September 1912 Their son, president Ford born with the name biological father Leslie King Jr. was born eleven months later in 1913. However, The marriage of Dorothy and Leslie, Sr. lasted only about five months longer. On December 19, 1913, Dorothy obtained a divorce from her husband on the grounds of "extreme cruelty" and was given "sole custody" of their an only child, Leslie, Jr. While Ford's biological father was granted visitation rights Leslie, King Sr. was also ordered by the court to pay alimony attorney fees; and child support Leslie, Jr. or Ford attained his majority at age twenty-one game I will be doing an upcoming show on president Gerald Ford and I will explore several deeper personal questions not covered in this podcast How did all this impact CH in business -> Tremendously! I found myself asking - > Why would such a successful driven gregarious prominent businessman decide to just pick up and leave Omaha at a time when he was at the top of his business game Was it his personal life this tangled tale of President Gerald Fords biological parents divorce which by the way didn’t merely end with a judicial judgment of divorce alimony and child support payment decree. Charles Henry King was a maverick in business but his personal issues due to his son the president's biological father had a tremendous impact on his business these family issues caused CH to become sidetracked that story is so powerful - I will explore all of this on an upcoming show about President Gerald Ford.

By July 2018, Tesla -staffed kiosks will appear in 800 Home Depots across the US. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ecommerceminute/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ecommerceminute/support

It was just two years ago that the Greater Boston region was in the thick of a high-stakes showdown over whether to proceed with a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. In January 2015, Boston was designated the US entry in the global competition for the 2024 Games. It was all downhill from there. The bid's boosters seemed to do just about everything wrong, from adopting a secretive approach to bid documents in a city that demanded everything be put on the table to the mayor disparaging residents with the nerve to ask tough questions as a tiny group of naysaying cranks -- “10 people on Twitter.” By July, it was over and the bid was withdrawn. It was an astonishing fall given the set of Boston political and business power brokers lined up behind the effort. In the end, the public was widely skeptical of the idea, which would have put the city and possibly the state on the hook for any cost overruns. No one did more to plant those doubts than No Boston Olympics, a small group of 30-something-year-old Bostonians who became convinced of the folly of the Olympic pursuit. One of the group's co-founders, Chris Dempsey, has now authored an account of the drama together with Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist. No Boston Olympics: How and Why Smart Cities Are Passing on The Torch is a great telling of a still-fresh piece of Boston history. They came in to talk about the book for this week's Codcast.

On this date in 2005, YouTube was founded. Here are some things you might not have known about the video-sharing site. It was created by three former PayPal employees named Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. The three differ on their inspiration for starting the company. Karim said it was because he couldn’t find video online of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl or of the Indian Ocean tsunami later that year. Hurley and Chen say the original idea was for a video version of a dating site. The first YouTube video was called “Me at the Zoo” featuring Karim at the San Diego Zoo. It’s still available on the site. The site was made available to the public in a beta form in May 2005, and was officially launched on Dec. 15, 2005.  The first video to hit 1 million views was a Nike commercial featuring soccer star Ronaldinho in November 2005. By July 2006, the company said more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day, and videos were viewed more than 100 million times a day. In 2007 it was estimated that YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet in 2000. In October 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.36 billion in Google stock. As of 2016, there were more than 1 billion YouTube users, with several hundred million using the site everyday.  47 videos have amassed more than 1 billion views, with “Gangnam Style” by Psy topping the list with 2.762 billion views. Our question: What artist has the honor of having the most disliked video on YouTube? Today is Valentine’s Day, and Statehood Day in Oregon and Arizona. It’s unofficially National Ferris Wheel Day, National Organ Donor Day, and National Cream-Filled Chocolates Day. It’s the birthday of comedian Jack Benny, who was born in 1894; actress Florence Henderson, who was born in 1934; and actor and dancer Gregory Hines, who was born in 1946. This week in 2005, the top song in the U.S. was “Let Me Love You” by Mario. The No. 1 movie was “Hitch,” while the novel “The Broker” by John Grisham topped the New York Times Bestsellers list.  Weekly question: In what city was UPS founded? Submit your answer at triviapeople.com/test and we’ll add the name of the person with the first correct answer to our winner’s wall … at triviapeople.com. We'll have the correct answer on Friday’s episode. Links Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or our website. Also, if you’re enjoying the show, please consider supporting it through Patreon.com Please rate the show on iTunes by clicking here. Subscribe on iOS: http://apple.co/1H2paH9  Subscribe on Android: http://bit.ly/2bQnk3m  Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_disliked_YouTube_videos https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_14 http://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-on-february-14 http://www.bobborst.com/popculture/numberonesongs/?chart=us&m=2&d=14&y=1940&o= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2005_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Fiction_Best_Sellers_of_2005

Download the mp3 file. In this episode, we discuss the power and potential of LinkedIn for business development in manufacturing organizations. Bill Sterzenbach from Upward shares ideas, suggestions and real stories about how you, the manufacturing marketer, can and should use LinkedIn for business development; more qualified leads, higher conversion rates and a full sales pipeline. or go to mfg.mmmatters.com/ebook   Guest: Bill Sterzenbach, Partner at Upward Brand Interactions Highlights: There seems to be a bias against social media, therein lies a huge opportunity for the industrial enlightened. [2:50] LinkedIn is a place where professional go for growth. [5:50] 62% of B2B marketers find LinkedIn to be the most effective way to engage with their target audiences. The people who get the most benefit are those who understand the people who make up their target audience. [7:00] It's about people talking to people more than a brand talking to an audience. [9:30] Bill shares a case study about Parker Hannifin and Caterpillar are using LinkedIn well and having had great success on LinkedIn. [12:20] Here are three things you can do right now to have better success with LinkedIn: [15:20] Put in a practice to get more followers and set an objective. Post at least weekly on a regular basis. Use your internal team to help promote the channel. Learn about how paid or sponsored content works on LinkedIn. [19:10] It's a good practice to use both pay-per-click and LinkedIn sponsored content. [25:40] Get out there and do it badly, don't wait until it's perfect to start. [26:50] Interview Questions: Question 1 – Let’s start of broadly and talk about social media in general. How should manufacturers view social media when it comes to their business development? Is it table stakes in this day and age? Is it a good way to grow awareness? Is it a waste of time? Question 2 – Let’s zero in on LinkedIn. Rather than assume everyone knows what it is, would you first share, what is LinkedIn? How does it work? Real example of how a manufacturer might use LinkedIn… Question 3 – Sounds like it could be a pretty powerful business development tool. Suppose there is a manufacturing marketer out there listening, they have a LinkedIn company page, but aren’t doing much with it. What are 3 things they could do right away towards using that page for business development? Question 4– I know LinkedIn offers paid advertising. How does that work? A couple of examples would be great. Is there one ad type you recommend over others? (which one and why that one?) Is it for everyone? Challenge Question: Send in your challenge question! This week our challenge question comes in from New York, a manufacturer of industrial gases. Here it is, “I’m the VP Sales and Marketing at a company that manufactures and delivers industrial gases. I listened to your podcast a couple of weeks ago about sharing content to differentiate. Would that work with a commodity like Nitrogen or Oxygen used in an industrial environment? If yes, could you throw out a couple of examples on your next podcast?” Helpfulness is a great differentiator for commodity products. In a survey, purchasing and buyers will choose a company offering helpfulness over all others. The larger, more premier companies value helpfulness most. Better customers value service on the front lines and all around helpfulness. Use social media to prove your brand is helpful. TOMA + credibility + reciprocity = differentiation and bigger market share Takeaways: Set some goals for your social media program. Get buy-in from stakeholders. Offer from Bill and Upward - free lunch and learn in person or via webinar.  Prefer if you can bring at least 20 people. Fill out the form here and request to learn more about LinkedIn. Transcript: Bruce McDuffee: Welcome to Manufacturing Marketing Matters, the podcast produced by the Manufacturing Marketing Institute, the center of excellence for manufacturing marketers. I'm Bruce McDuffee. Thank you for listening.   Hello, manufacturing marketers. A quick reminder today, I'm still offering a free digital copy of my book. It's called "The New Way to Market for Manufacturing." You can get one with a short registration form at mfg.mmmatters.com/ebook. I'll put that in the show notes, too. Now on to the show. Our guest expert today is Bill Sterzenbach. He's a partner at Upward. Welcome Bill.   B. Sterzenbach: Pleasure to be here, Bruce.   Bruce McDuffee: Great to have you on the show today. Looking forward to it. Folks, the topic today is about how manufacturers can use social media. Mainly we'll be talking about LinkedIn, how you can use it for business development. I saw Bill present this topic at FABTECH down in Los Vegas back in November, and I can tell you it's powerful stuff. If you listen up, you can really learn how to use a tool that's available in social media to really grow your business. Before we get in to the interview, Bill, could you please introduce yourself to the audience and a little bit about your expertise and experience around using LinkedIn or other social media to grow a manufacturing business?   B. Sterzenbach: Sure. I'm a partner at Upward Brand Interactions. We've been doing online marketing primarily for about 10 years. I've been at the online marketing business for about 15 years myself. I primarily focus at our place on business growth for global industrial brands. We tend to look at tool systems and processes that can grow the business without respect to channels so much. That's kind of how LinkedIn made its way into our world. We were just looking at the different channels that are available objectively that may help businesses grow their pipeline.   Bruce McDuffee: Great, thanks for background. Bill, I know a lot of manufacturers have put up pages on social media. Probably the most common are Facebook and LinkedIn. I don't hear of too many manufacturers or industrial companies who are on Instagram or Pinterest or Snapchat, for example. Before we can get in to the questions, are you seeing the same type of thing? Or what do you see as far as adoption of social media by industrial companies?   B. Sterzenbach: I do see a strong sentiment or a bias against social media by a lot of the especially industrial B2B folks out there. I see that as a great opportunity for the enlightened marketers ...   Bruce McDuffee: There you go.   B. Sterzenbach: ... because there is quite a bit of opportunity out there. A great example, we'll talk to clients or I'll even talk to guys I know in the space, and they'll say, "Well, okay. Maybe I can do something on LinkedIn, but I'm certainly not going to be on Instagram." I'll say, "I personally just bought a $2,000-tool because of a company I follow on Instagram.   Bruce McDuffee: No kidding.   B. Sterzenbach: It was a B2B tool. So Instagram is a powerful channel as well. I would be hard pressed to name a channel that I wouldn't recommend. People say, "Is this the answer?" I say, "Well, we just need to help you with the question. The answer's always, 'Yes.' You just need to know what's my question. Each channel has its fit in your mix."   Bruce McDuffee: Got it. Good. That's interesting. Frankly, I didn't expect that answer, so we're already off to a great start here.   B. Sterzenbach: Good.   Bruce McDuffee: Let's start broadly and go more into that topic and talk about social media in general and develop [begin 00:03:50] what we were just talking about. How should manufacturers view social media when it comes to business development? For example, is it table stakes this day and age, or is it a good way to grow awareness? Is it a waste of time? Where is it on the spectrum?   B. Sterzenbach: I think it's table stakes if you have a pretty well rounded platform for your marketing. I think the companies that are out there doing it well today are in all the spaces. So I would say if you're playing in a space where they're doing it well, it's table stakes. If you're in, I'll pick on somebody, powder coating, for example, you look at powder coaters, a lot of those guys are working for OEMs and they don't really need to do a lot of marketing, and so it really isn't table stakes for those guys. They're getting most of their business right from two or three large OEM clients, and they're just chugging right along. But if you're in a space where you need to find those new clients, it's a must have. It really is. I think a lot of the folks that are out there doing it but they're doing it so badly that it doesn't really even count as doing it at this point.   Bruce McDuffee: Yeah, I see the same thing. That's interesting. You mentioned earlier that there's a big opportunity here, and I agree with you. It's like everything in manufacturing, not everything but a lot of things in manufacturing marketing, there's so much bad practice out there that there's an opportunity for those, what did you call them, Bill, enlightened.   B. Sterzenbach: That's right.   Bruce McDuffee: A huge opportunity. In this show, folks, we're going to talk about how you can capitalize on that opportunity. Let's zero in on LinkedIn because I know that's a specialty of yours, Bill. I guess we probably shouldn't assume that everybody knows what LinkedIn is, so maybe, Bill, give a good, quick description of what is LinkedIn.   B. Sterzenbach: It's broad. It's a social network for professionals. I used to say it's Facebook for grownups, but now everybody on Facebook is a grownup.   Bruce McDuffee: That's true.   B. Sterzenbach: It is a social network for professionals, but more importantly in terms of how we would look at LinkedIn as industrial marketers it's a place where professionals participate for growth. They might be growing their career, growing their business, or just trying to grow knowledge around the industry, but typically people that are out on LinkedIn participating are trying to grow in some way. If you keep that in mind and everything you do in LinkedIn, you're going to find a much higher success rate as opposed to just yelling at everybody on LinkedIn. If you know they're there to grow, you can tailor what you're putting out there to meet the needs of someone who's trying to grow in one of those three ... or some other way I haven't thought of but primarily in one of those three ways.   The crazy thing about the social media and the LinkedIn space is the greater majority, probably three quarters of B2B buyers are halfway done with their buying process before you hear from them. If they're out there making more than half of the decision before you talk to them, you have to ask what percentage of that decision is being made in the LinkedIn space? Without exception, when you stack LinkedIn up to all the other platforms, it's not even close. I think the latest statistic I looked at said 62% of marketers find it to be the most effective social channel for B2B marketing.   Bruce McDuffee: LinkedIn?   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah.   Bruce McDuffee: Wow.   B. Sterzenbach: There's numbers that are even more telling than that, but LinkedIn is an extremely powerful network. Again, the people that are getting the most benefit from it are the people that understand their target. I tell people sometimes that if you were going to go deer hunting, it's so much more convenient to do it in a Walmart parking lot. You could get your little chair and you could put it in the parking lot. You could have your little cooler and just sit there and be comfortable all day, but that's not where the deer are.   It's a little like LinkedIn. If you're not in it, you have to go in the woods to get the deer, and these people are in LinkedIn. You have to go in to LinkedIn. You have to actively participate. Then one thing I recommend to people all the time is don't be in such a hurry to drag them out of the woods. If you can engage them in LinkedIn and stay in LinkedIn, you're going to find that the engagement's going to be longer and more meaningful as opposed to immediately trying to pull them to your website.   Bruce McDuffee: Interesting. That's a great metaphor: the LinkedIn forest.   B. Sterzenbach: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Bruce McDuffee: Love that. What about, Bill, LinkedIn versus Facebook? Let my share my impression and tell me if you think it's right or wrong. I feel like Facebook is where people go for ... share pictures of their grandkids or their kids. They do family things and talk about vacations and non-professional things. Whereas I see LinkedIn as where you educate yourself on professional aspects. You improve your career. You make professional connections. Is that a clear separation? How do you see it?   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah.   Bruce McDuffee: Yeah?   B. Sterzenbach: I think you're right. I think when you're prioritizing or you're triaging your marketing efforts, you have to start with the most obvious things. If you're just getting started in a social space or you have a limited set of resources, I would definitely start with LinkedIn. But once you've played out the LinkedIn space, once you feel like, "I think we're doing everything we can do on LinkedIn," then I think it does make sense to have a look at Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter. I should have changed the order. Twitter would have been number two and then the rest of the guys. I'm not saying that I feel like your position is this way, but I don't think Facebook is without merit for the B2B.   There's a guy, I think he works at [Etón 00:09:20]. He has this ... I don't know if he came up with it or if he just shared it with me, but he calls it B2I. He says it's business to individual. You have to stop looking at ... No one wants to be talked to by a brand, and nobody wants to talk to a brand. His point is as a brand let's stop talking to demographics and let's stop talking to categories. Let's just understand that people are on all these networks, and it's a matter of using the network in way that's comfortable for the person. If you are going to market on Facebook, you just need to craft your message to fit within that ecosystem. But there is still a place, even on Facebook, for industrial B2B activity.   Bruce McDuffee: You've seen some industrial folks have success on Facebook then?   B. Sterzenbach: I certainly have, yeah. They've been ... I guess the word would be sophisticated in their use. Again, it's an enormous channel. You just have to understand what the audience is there for and what they're after, and there's use there, for sure.   Bruce McDuffee: I guess that's the key. If someone says, "Which channel should I be on?" You should ask, like you said, the people who are in your target audience where are they, and what are they doing on the channels? Is that fair?   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah, that's right. I would start with if a person said to me, "Which channel should I participate in?" I would say all of them starting with LinkedIn, then Twitter, then Instagram, then everything else. You're not probably going to attack them all simultaneously at least not with the same fervor that you would one. A case could be made for going after them all cohesively, but I think it's a little like to go to someone who's just getting into social and say, "Yes, you need to be on LinkedIn, but you also need to be in these other spaces, and let me start telling you about all the work it's going to talk to get there."   It's a little like advertising a Caribbean vacation by showing the guy sitting next to you coughing in the airplane the whole way there. Nobody is going to get excited about the trip. They're going to get excited about the destination. It's nice if they can get in one of the platforms. LinkedIn, obviously, being probably the most immediately effective and they get to sample the destination a little bit without going in to all of that background work that it would take to approach all of the channels simultaneously. While that might be academically a better approach, I just don't think you're going to influence people to do it by having them go through all of those fundamental steps just to prepare for approaching all channels.   Bruce McDuffee: That makes sense. That's good advice. Let's get back to LinkedIn. I strayed a little bit on that. I got excited about you sharing that information. On LinkedIn, could you share a real-life example of a manufacturer or industrial company who's having great success on LinkedIn and how they're getting that?   B. Sterzenbach: I would go straight to Parker Hannifin. They're a pretty large company. They're probably a, I don't know, $9 billion manufacturer. You don't get as industrial as Parker. They are in there. They are doing the stuff in the industrial space in a big way. They've a great brand, and they've got phenomenal products. Their presence on LinkedIn is staggering in a word. I mean they really have done a phenomenal job. They've got ... I haven't looked recently, but a shocking number of followers for their company page, and they get a very high level of engagement from their followers. They're really, really thoughtful in how they use LinkedIn.   We don't do Parker's LinkedIn stuff so this isn't a plug, but when they put something on LinkedIn, you can see the thoughtfulness and the care that they put in to the post. I believe that the readers see that, too. People respect your organization if you show some respect for them and what you put in their feed. They'll tend to stay with you a lot longer if you're putting quality things. Maybe not every single post that you put out there is directly applicable to their need, but if every single post looks like you put some effort into it and you respected their time, they won't unfollow you, so to speak. So I think Parker does a really nice job of working LinkedIn. I'm trying to think if there was another manufacturer that I saw out there. I think Caterpillar actually does a really nice job. I don't know how ...   Bruce McDuffee: Yeah, I've seen that.   B. Sterzenbach: I don't know how orchestrated it is. I don't really follow them too closely but I see them in my feed. Just anecdotally, I've always had a pretty positive impression of what they were doing out there. I don't know what kind of results they're getting, but I feel that there's a couple of companies that are really capitalizing on LinkedIn well.   Bruce McDuffee: Is it fair to say that Parker Hannifin ... are they not pitching their products so much in their feeds and they're more sharing helpful information? Is that one way they're being more thoughtful and engaging?   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah. It's a little bit of a mix. Every now and then you'll see something pop in there that is pretty directly tied to a valve or an assembly or a product, but it's always, not always, but most often when I see it, it's couched in some sort of usefulness or at least plausibly objective usefulness to the reader.   Bruce McDuffee: Fair enough.   B. Sterzenbach: I think that's the key is not being overly pitchy.   Bruce McDuffee: I've heard folks talk about a formula where you share four to one or three to one where four posts for helpful information and then one pitch for your product. I do that with some of my clients. It's pretty effective.   B. Sterzenbach: Then we'll talk a little bit about paid advertising. There's a whole nother channel within LinkedIn there that's even more directly and quantifiably effective. But I know I'm jumping ahead of you a little bit as far as ...   Bruce McDuffee: That's okay. That's okay. It sounds like LinkedIn could be a pretty powerful business development tool. Let's imagine there's a manufacturing marketer out there listening, which I hope there are a lot of them, and they have a LinkedIn company page. They put up the information; they're not doing much with it. Maybe they haven't even posted much at all. What are three things that that person, that manufacturing marketer with a LinkedIn company page could do right away to start leveraging it for business development?   B. Sterzenbach: I would say if you're directly approaching how do we build our company presence on LinkedIn, the first thing would be to start building a list of followers so think about what activity should you be engaging in to just get more followers. Because if you have followers, people are going to see your posts and engagement's going to increase so creating some sort of an objective around building followers.   Now the second thing would be post at least weekly to get started. If you're not posting regularly, habits can't be formed. That's where number three comes in, which is promoting your LinkedIn presence internally. I tell a lot of our clients support starts at home. What often happens is you'll have these marketing groups start a LinkedIn presence and the members of the marketing team aren't even supporting the posts they're putting out there.   Bruce McDuffee: Yeah, I've seen [crosstalk 00:16:12].   B. Sterzenbach: It's not out of some desire to be malicious. It's just everybody's so busy and you can't mandate it. If you tell your team, "You're required; your review will include how many times you've liked our posts," that's not going to work. But you can influence the behavior, and there's things you can do to incentivize your team to participate in your company's presence on LinkedIn without making it feel like some sort of fundatory activity, because nobody wants to participate on a social media platform from a mandatory perspective.   Bruce McDuffee: Fundatory. That's a good word.   B. Sterzenbach: That's right. That's right. It's fundatory.   Bruce McDuffee: So you just got a company page. The three things are, number one, make an objective to get more followers.   B. Sterzenbach: That's right.   Bruce McDuffee: Number two, at least a weekly post on a regular schedule.   B. Sterzenbach: Correct.   Bruce McDuffee: Number three, use your internal people, your employees, and encourage them to share without making it mandatory.   B. Sterzenbach: Exactly. That's why number two comes in to play because if you're not posting regularly, you'll never get your internal teams into a habit of supporting it. If you're only posting once every quarter or once every blue moon, they're not going to get in the habit of jumping out and looking for your posts so they can support them. So the consistency allows them to develop habits as well.   Bruce McDuffee: Makes sense. Can I ask on number one, in addition to posting on a regular basis, are there any other tricks you could share about getting more followers?   B. Sterzenbach: A big one is having folks in your organization that have an existing network to participate. For example, if you have a couple of people on your sales team and they have a pretty good LinkedIn network, going out to them and evangelizing your LinkedIn activities a little bit and asking them, "Could I ask you as a favor to help support our LinkedIn presence? It's going to bring you new leads. It's going to grow our business." So you're generating that activity.   There's a couple of just tactical things you can do. One of them is there's a button that you can download from LinkedIn. It's just a little piece of java script code. You can place that on your webpages of your website, and it just can live anywhere on the page. If the viewer of your website if they're logged into LinkedIn, the button'll say, "Follow." They can click it, and it'll just automatically follow the company without too much fuss. There's a couple of other things like that you can do to promote follows, but the idea is that first you have to start engaging in some activities that could even create an interest.   Bruce McDuffee: Sure. Okay, great. Thanks for that. Finally, I know LinkedIn offers paid advertising. You alluded to it a little bit earlier when you were trying to jump ahead. Let's talk about how does that work. I know a lot of the social channels now you have to pay to play when you're a business to show up. How does the LinkedIn paid advertising work? Maybe a couple of examples would be great.   B. Sterzenbach: I'm a big advocate of the sponsored content campaigns. There's a couple of ways you can use LinkedIn. You can do essentially display advertising, which are the ads that live across the top and down the right side. You can use their InMail platform, which is essentially sending mail. LinkedIn sends mail on your behalf to a list that you've created. Or you can do sponsored content, which essentially places a post in your followers' feeds, and it looks very organic. Now, when you sponsor a post, they're not your followers. They're anyone that you've targeted with the post.   There's some pretty funny stories about how specifically you can target ... The story I like most is a guy who was trying to get a startup going and he was looking for investors. He had a specific investor that he wanted to attract. He went in to LinkedIn and he created a sponsored content campaign. I don't remember the guy's name. Let's say it was Ted Phillips. He created an ad that said, "Ted Phillips, this is next your company. You should invest in it and here's why" or something like that. In the targeting he said, "I want to target my ad to this company, this role, and some other criteria." LinkedIn requires that your list be of a certain size, so it first said, "Your list isn't big enough." So he said, "Okay, also this role." It was CEO and vice president. He had to add vice president. It added two more people to his list. Pretty soon, he was putting this ad right in that person's feed regularly. He actually did secure funding. Ultimately, he said he spent $1.80 on the advertising.   Bruce McDuffee: That's awesome.   B. Sterzenbach: That's how he secured his funding. That's how finitely you can target your advertising. We'll run ads for clients that we say, "Engineers that have eight years of experience that work for companies that have 500 or more employees or 10,000 or more employees that are in these states." I mean you can get really specific. That really is, in my opinion, probably the most powerful aspect of LinkedIn is how tightly you can control that filtering. You're not getting the waste that you get on so many other platforms. You really are putting that ad right in front of the people you want to see it. You're always going to have some people who either accidentally categorized themselves incorrectly or intentionally categorize themselves incorrectly, but by and large the majority of the people who see your LinkedIn ad are exactly the people you want to see it.   We see that evidence playing out time and time again in these campaigns where we'll run a LinkedIn advertisement either for ourselves or on behalf of a client, and the people that arrive at whatever ultimate objective that we set for the program are exactly the kind of people we targeted with the ads. It is remarkably accurate in the targeting. It's one of the things, I think, LinkedIn has done really well.   Bruce McDuffee: Yeah, I agree. I've done some sponsored ads myself, and it's amazing how specific you can get.   B. Sterzenbach: That's true, yeah.   Bruce McDuffee: It's incredible. You're right. That's the real power of LinkedIn paid ads is that selection because I don't think any other platforms get that granular.   B. Sterzenbach: No, they certainly do not. Again, if you're targeting these ads in a way that speaks to someone who's there for growth reasons, you not only target the people that you want to target but you get an actual response. So many platforms, their click-through rate ... and in a lot areas, a 1%-click-through rate is phenomenal.   Bruce McDuffee: That's great, yeah.   B. Sterzenbach: So you're getting a great response rate and the type of people that you want to respond are responding. Another thing that's interesting about LinkedIn, if you're in a business where you would like to attract clients that are growth-oriented or that like to try new things or would like to learn or even if you target a demographic of prospect by the sheer fact that they're active on LinkedIn ...   Bruce McDuffee: Can you?   B. Sterzenbach: Oh, yeah. If they're active on LinkedIn, they are probably interested in growth in some way.   Bruce McDuffee: That's a good point, yeah.   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah. For example, I know a guy who advertises on LinkedIn. He doesn't work through us. He just does it on his own. One of the reasons he uses LinkedIn is that he wants people who are working to better themselves in some way, and so it's a perfect platform for him because most of the people on LinkedIn are there just to do that.   Bruce McDuffee: That's a great point. I never even thought about that. But it does; it's almost a self-selection segmentation.   B. Sterzenbach: It is, yeah.   Bruce McDuffee: That's great. Is one ad better than another? You mentioned sponsored content, InMails, the ads. Is one better than the other have you found in your experience?   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah, sponsored content is head and shoulders above everything else. Now, I haven't done much with the InMail yet. I just haven't really found a good case for it. Not that there isn't one. To be honest with you, we spend so much time on the sponsored content campaigns, we really haven't had a reason to venture into the InMail yet. And people are a little uncomfortable with what they perceive as interrupting their prospects or their clients. So I suspect that InMail might be pretty effective. Personally, I haven't used much of it. We've used it a little but not a lot.   The other thing on the sponsored content, you can choose whether you want to pay by click or by impression so CPM or CPC. Paying per click, at least in our experience, is much more effective. It just looks like you get more at bats when you pay per click because I think economically LinkedIn looks at it like, "Well, if I'm going to get paid every time somebody clicks this thing, I'm going to show up more." It just seems like your ad gets shown a lot more when you go on the pay per click advertising basis.   Bruce McDuffee: I've seen the same thing.   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah, that's funny.   Bruce McDuffee: I've heard also that LinkedIn cost per click is a lot higher on LinkedIn than it is, for example, on AdWords. Is that true?   B. Sterzenbach: It might depend on the company, but our experience has been that that is true. As a matter of fact, we ran a campaign for our company, a test campaign. I basically took on one of my AdWords guys. There's a guy in ...   Bruce McDuffee: Oh, yeah?   B. Sterzenbach: His name's Jerrod, and he's ridiculously competitive. I said, "I'm going to run this LinkedIn program against the AdWords program you're running. I think I'm going to whip you." He was like, "Let's do it. Let's see what happens." He cleaned my clock.   Bruce McDuffee: He did?   B. Sterzenbach: Oh, yeah. The cost per click AdWords, it wasn't significantly lower but it was lower. The difference being, though, that a lot of the clicks on LinkedIn, I still maintain, were probably more directly targeted to the people I would want to see, but I think you can get more looks for the same money on AdWords. I tell everybody it isn't one or the other. It is not an either/or. If I were advising a manufacturer, I would say, "Don't even go near LinkedIn if you don't have a working AdWords program." Start with AdWords because that's just a good foundational advertising activity. Then go to LinkedIn but I wouldn't try to replace AdWords or Bing or [Thomas 00:26:00] with LinkedIn. I would at it as one more channel that I'm using to promote my business.   Bruce McDuffee: Got it. That makes sense. It sounds like from our discussion here, Bill, that every manufacturer out there should be using social media and at least using LinkedIn. Is that fair?   B. Sterzenbach: I would agree with that statement, absolutely.   Bruce McDuffee: That's what I'm getting here. I agree. This is the world we live in. This is the age we live in nowadays. Email's still powerful. You got to still do your email marketing, but you got to be out where your audience is. They're doing that investigation. They're checking out options. You have to be there so they can find you in that 50% of their first part of the buying phase.   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah, I would agree. I would encourage, especially your manufacturing, your industrial marketers, just get out there and do it badly. We work with enormous global brands. It would be easy for us to say, "Don't do it if you can't do it well." But quite honestly, so many things would never get started if that were the requirement.   Bruce McDuffee: Absolutely.   B. Sterzenbach: A buddy of mine I worked with for years used to say ... His parent company was in another country; I won't say where because I'm sure it's not true, but this is how he felt. He said, "They will start nothing perfectly." He said they're masters at planning and planning and planning until it's not even important to do anymore. I think people get caught up in that sometimes. I'd said go out there and do LinkedIn badly for a couple of years. If your option is to do it perfectly or not do it at all, I would say take option three, which is just get out there and start doing it badly. It's better than not doing it at all.   Bruce McDuffee: Absolutely. One of my favorite quotes was by Voltaire, I think in the 17th century, and it's, "Perfect is the enemy of good."   B. Sterzenbach: That's right.   Bruce McDuffee: That's one of my favorites.   B. Sterzenbach: I would agree with that.   Bruce McDuffee: Great. That takes us to the second part of the show here, Bill, and that's the challenge question. Folks, send in your challenge questions. Email them to me: bruce@mmmatters.com or hashtag them on Twitter @mfgmarketing. Any question you have about business development, marketing, even sales, send it in. I'll pose it to one of our guest experts. This week our challenge question comes in from New York. He's a manufacturer of industrial gases. By the way folks, these are usually anonymous. I just give a little bit of background. Here's the question, Bill. "I'm the VP of sales and marketing at a company that manufactures and delivers industrial gases. I listened to your podcast a couple of weeks ago about sharing content to differentiate. Would that work with a commodity like nitrogen or oxygen used in an industrial environment? If yes, could you give me a couple of examples on your next podcast?" Bill, what do you think?   B. Sterzenbach: Absolutely. Every commodity still has differentiators. As the builder of your brand, you get to pick what those are. The one thing I would say that we see time and time again, especially in commodity-type spaces, is a big differentiator is going to be service, or more accurately what we call helpfulness. We recently interviewed a group of, I don't know, I think 11 enormous B2B industrial buyers so procurement and purchasing folks from companies that buy things like valve seals and the components that make up products. One of our questions was, "What's one of the top criteria you have for working with a discretionary partner?" so someone who isn't on some list of 'go here first.' By and large, they said, "Helpfulness."   Bruce McDuffee: Really?   B. Sterzenbach: Yeah. What we heard time and time again was the vendors that are able to help us solve problems and are helpful in walking through our decision process are the vendors that we'll typically select. I was surprised. It isn't surprising when you really think about, but I was surprised to learn the larger, more premier organizations tended to value helpfulness and service, and the smaller, what you might call your core customers, tended to value speed and price. There's no crime in valuing speed and price. It's just when there's a lack of anything else, speed and price are important in a commodity, but if you can illustrate helpfulness or customer service, you are going to differentiate yourself from most of the people in the commodity space.   One of the things that we do with our program is we listen to all calls, and so we listen to literally thousands and thousands of calls every month. One of the things that we find is the evidence that we had ... Actually this is what led us to do this study. We found that better customers typically value services. So you end up with the self-fulfilling prophecy situation where you have organizations that maybe they don't value helpfulness or service and they don't include it in their brand, they don't talk about service, so when customers call, the customer doesn't typically experience great service. So the customers that are wonderful move on, and the customers that are core stay. They end up getting more and more core customers, hiring more and more people who really don't value service because they customers really value price and availability first.   Bruce McDuffee: Self-fulfilling.   B. Sterzenbach: It's just a terrible cycle. It's not a terrible cycle. Some companies really do want to serve those are only after price and availability. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to move up that quality of customer ladder a little bit, the go-to is going to be service. It's not easy either. The first thing that has to happen is your team has to understand that helpfulness and friendliness is part of who you are as a company. If they aren't taught that regularly, they're not going to demonstrate that day-to-day.   To circle back to your question, it feels like we've taken a big loop here, but my point is you can use social media to illustrate that a core component of your brand is helpfulness and service. It's not so much talking about how helpful and what great service we provide, but talking about the things that support that element of your brand. If you say, "98% of our industrial customers have been with us for three years or longer," that says that there's something that's keeping those customers. That's the kind of you can share. Now, that might be a little salesy, but that's the kind of thing you can share on social media where people can scan through, see that, log it away, and move on. You're communicating something other than the typical commodity elements about your brand.   Bruce McDuffee: Great, great answer. I'm going to add in my two cents here, folks, is on that helpfulness aspect. The way you differentiate with content is to develop content that addresses a problem or a pain point that's common to the people in your target audience.   B. Sterzenbach: That's right.   Bruce McDuffee: We've been talking about that today. You've got one company out there that says, "We've got this feature, this feature, this feature. We're low price, and we're fast." Then you come out and say, "Well, let's understand our audience. Let's understand a problem or a pain where we have expertise. We can help you. We're going to help you solve that problem." The problem, of course, is related to the thing you're trying to sell, naturally.   Solve that problem and you get three things from your audience. You get credibility because they're going to say, "These people know what they're talking about." You get top-of-mind awareness because they're going to remember you. Just like Bill mentioned in the LinkedIn feed, you start to see a regular trickle of helpful content. They're going to remember you. You're going to be top of mind when the day comes and they're ready to buy nitrogen or oxygen, you're going to get the call. The third thing they get that you get is reciprocity. When you give a gift of knowledge, helpful content, useful content, the person who received it wants to reciprocate. The way they do that is by buying from you even if it's at a higher price. That's what I would look at. Anything to add there, Bill, before we move on?   B. Sterzenbach: No, I would agree with every bit of that. It's one of those things you almost have to experience to truly believe.   Bruce McDuffee: You do. Once you experience it, boy, is it powerful.   B. Sterzenbach: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Bruce McDuffee: The final part of the show, Bill, is takeaways. I always ask our guest expert to share one or two takeaways. It could be a summary of a couple of things we talked about, or it could be a couple of actionable nuggets to go forward. What do you have for our audience today, Bill?   B. Sterzenbach: I would say the first thing would be to set a goal today. It's going to take five minutes. Sit down and say, "By July, I want to have posted this many posts and gained that many followers." Even if you say, "By July, I'd like to have 10 posts and five followers," set some goal. Then get buy-in from your internal team. You can't force them to do it but you can influence them. Bribe them, beg them, do whatever you have to do to get them to participate in your efforts, but start by just setting a simple goal and move forward with it. I share this people and often they'll say, "But it's just something I write on paper." I say, "Yeah, but it's like a diet." A diet is just an empty wish until we don't eat the first thing. It goes the same way here. Until you do the first thing, which is write your first post, even if it's terrible, you're really not doing it. It isn't that hard if you set out to just do something. Even if it's wrong, just get started.   Bruce McDuffee: And give yourself permission to be bad at it, right?   B. Sterzenbach: That's right. Because you're not going to be as bad as the worst no matter how hard you try.   Bruce McDuffee: That's right. That's true. Great, two great takeaways. Thanks Bill. Before we sign off would you like to share anything about yourself or your company with our audience?   B. Sterzenbach: Sure. To your point of reciprocity, we are big on giving. If there's anyone out there and they have a sales force of 20 people or more, that's where it gets worth it for us to do these complementary lunch and learns, Upwards does offer ... it's a free lunch and learn if you can get 20 teammates to come to either the webinar or in person, and we'll take you through specific things you can do tailored to your organization to grow your pipeline through LinkedIn. You can bring your sales guys into the call. You can bring them into the meeting, and we'll give them actual activities they can start engaging in right away to build their personal pipelines. We've found that either in a webinar or in-person formats, the sales guys walk away feeling like it was a really, really effective use of their time. You can just go to our website at goupward.com and you'll see there's a 'Contact Us' link and just say, "Hey, I'd be interested in having you guys talk to us about LinkedIn."   Bruce McDuffee: Great. That's a great offer. Thanks Bill. I'll put that in the show notes as well, folks, so you can ... I'll put a direct link and you can go sign up if you feel the want. Bill, thank you so much for being a guest today on Manufacturing Marketing Matters. I know I learned a lot today. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience and just thank you.   B. Sterzenbach: Thank you, Bruce. It was great being here.   Bruce McDuffee: That was Bill Sterzenbach, partner at Upward. For more information about Bill and Upward, visit the guest bio page and check out the show notes at mmmatters.com. By the way, if you are subscriber on iTunes for this podcast, consider leaving us a review. It helps us get found and helps us spread the word to help manufacturers advance their practice of marketing.   Thanks for listening to Manufacturing Marketing Matters. If you find this podcast helpful and useful, please subscribe at iTunes or Stitcher.com. You can download this episode of MMMatters and get the show notes and learn more about the podcast at mmmatters.com. I'm Bruce McDuffee. Now let's go out and advance the practice of marketing in manufacturing today.  

Profound Gentlemen is having a profound impact on boys of color through social-emotional learning. How do you raise a successful boy of color, in an age of Trayvon Martin and Philando Castile? Boys of Color are four times more likely to receive out of school suspensions as their peers. They are rarely exposed to men of color in the classroom, despite data that shows that having men of color as role models greatly improves the social, emotional, and academic progress of all students, but especially boys of color. More than a quarter of men of color will leave the education profession after their first year. In 2013, Mario Jovan Shaw was a 7th Grade English language arts teacher. He started a group called The Brotherhood which consisted of 12 – 15 boys of color. Some of the boys were struggling with repeated disciplinary problems while others were performing well in school. They met each Wednesday to talk about how to navigate through life as boys and men of color. This was around the time that George Zimmerman was on trial for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The students told him, “Mr. Shaw, you are our first educator of color.” This had a profound effect on Mario Jovan. He wrote a letter to the Charlotte Observer, laying out the case for the need for more male educators of color. His letter arrived around the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. So the Charlotte Observer featured his letter. This caught the attention of Jason Terrell who was also doing work in the same area. By July 2015, they launched Profound Gentlemen. Profound Gentlemen is creating a cradle-to-career pipeline for boys of color. They work with educators of color to increase the social-emotional learning for boys of color. Their goal is to retain 90% of the Gentlemen in the field of education. The expect 90% of boys of color in their Gentlemen’s mentoring groups will graduate from high school. And 90% of boys of color in the Gentlemen’s mentoring groups will be exposed to diverse career opportunities. They work with boys of color in student groups and in after-school programs. They help boys of color who live in poverty to overcome the barriers in their lives. Profound Gentlemen gives them a chance to experience opportunities that they might not otherwise be exposed to. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Mario Jovan Shaw “Over 80% of our guys who are Profound Gentlemen, were not education majors.” “We not only want to have a great football player, but we want him to understand how he contributes back to society.” “You have to recognize the reality, but you also have to be optimistic.” “In order for us to win, we have to show gratitude.” “The biggest thing I’ve learned on my journey is continuously evolving yourself and your organization.” “Your mission and vision in the first year, is always evolving.” “Jason and I had to become very, very vulnerable.” “My way is not the only way.” “My biggest advice is, continue to allow yourself to grow.” “Whenever we get into a dark place, we know we’re about to experience major growth.” Social Entrepreneurship Resources: Profound Gentlemen: http://profoundgentlemen.org Profound Gentlemen on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profoundgentlemen Profound Gentlemen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profoundgentlemen Profound Gentlemen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PGeducator

Aaron Law is a 3rd generation egg farmer from Atlantic Canada who is helping other farmers and entrepreneurs become Freedompreneur Farmers - living their best life. Aaron, along with a team of other Canadian egg farmers, recently spent a month in Swaziland, helping to build and launch an egg farm to feed the orphaned children and people in rural areas. Why Swaziland?  It is located in southern Africa bordered by South Africa and Mozambique.  The country has a population of 950,000 with an average life expectancy of 29 years.  It has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world at approximately 44%.  HIV/AIDS related illnesses account for 90% of hospital admissions in Swaziland. It is estimated that there are more than 200,000 orphans living in Swaziland with more than half of the total population being orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).  There are approximately 15-20,000 children-run households. Poverty is also a major issue in Swaziland with 65% of the population currently receiving food from international food programs to survive.  The unemployment rate is estimated as high as 70%.  Through their affiliation with Heart For Africa and Project Canaan, Aaron and his colleagues launched an egg farm in January with 2500 hens, providing 70,000 prepared meals a month.  By July of this year, they will have doubled capacity to 5,000 hens, and have plans to scale up to 30,000 within the next few years. During this interview, Aaron shares his experience working on this amazing project, what he learned, and how he was able to use his skills to help teach the local people how to be empowered farmers.  For more information on Heart For Africa and Project Canaan visit: http://www.heartforafrica.org/Project%20Canaan.aspx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MuEzmmhM1E For more information on Aaron and his empowered farming techniques, visit: http://www.theempoweredfarmer.com/  

By the end of June 1940 the Battle of France was over, the British Army had been plucked from the Beaches of Dunkirk, but much of its heavy equipment had been abandoned in France. It looked like Britain would be the next target for the Nazi war machine… Having witnessed the debacle in France a betting man might have put his money on the Germans when it came to invading England. On the 14th of May 1940 Anthony Eden had called on men between 17 and 65 in Britain who were not in military service but wished to defend their country to enrol in the Local Defence Volunteers. By July over 1.5million Britons has volunteered… Another group was also created, a clandestine army that in the event of invasion would be called upon. Britain would be the first nation to have a pre-planed resistance network, the went under the unassuming name of Auxiliary, or Aux Units. I’m joined by Tom Sykes from the ColesHill Auxiliary Research Team.

By July 1918 the Australian Imperial Force or "AIF" was hardened by four bloody years of war – from the beaches and ravines of Gallipoli, to Fromelles, the Somme, Bullecourt, Messines, Passchendaele and Villers–Bretonneux - of the more than 295,000 Australians who served on the Western Front in the AIF - 46,000 would lose their lives and a further 132,000 would be wounded. Dur: 38mins File: .mp3

General MacArthur’s arrival in Australia in March of 1942 was an electrifying event for many Australians. His presence sent a strong signal that the United States was committed to the defense of Australia and to the war against Japan. MacArthur uttered his famous “I Shall Return” promise in Australia, and it was there that he began gathering forces for the next phase of the war. By July 1942, MacArthur had located his General Headquarters in Brisbane. Today, the MacArthur Museum Brisbane commemorates the General’s time in Brisbane and highlights the history of Brisbane during the war. This podcast focuses on MacArthur’s time in Brisbane and features an interview with Col. John Dwyer and Col. Phillip Gould of the General Douglas MacArthur Brisbane Memorial Foundation.

Coming off the release of their debut album, “Real”, unsigned band, The Controversy has seen nothing but success in such a short amount of time with several music award nominations, including categories for Best Pop Artist, Best Rock Artist, Album of the Year, and Artist of the Year. By the end of the night, the two-person group took home the biggest accolade, the Artist of the Year trophy at the first annual Artists In Music Awards in Hollywood, CA on February 10, 2012. In addition to the elusive title, Laura took home the trophy for LGBTQ Person of the Year, a category in which voters could vote for any person in entertainment. Hands down, Laura was the one left standing who won by a landslide with 178 nominations out of 228 total nominations. Among the nominees, people like Madonna, Ellen Degenerous, Christina Aguilera, George Takei, Lady Gaga, and JD Strait were some of the names mention, but only Laura Vall and Adam Lambert received multiple nominations. Lambert came in second with eight nominations, respectively.  The Controversy consists of just two members, Singer/Songwriter, Laura Vall and multi-talented Producer and Musician, Thomas Hjorth. The two met when Laura Vall moved to Venice, CA from Barcelona, Spain to pursue her music career. After meeting with her producer of interest in Los Angeles, Thomas began working on her background music. Eventually, Thomas Hjorth became a vital part of The Controversy.  .   Originally from the Nordic country of Denmark, Thomas discovered an instant chemistry with Laura’s music and both recognized each others talents, thus began their incredible project together. By July 2011, the album was all but complete with two music videos directed and produced by Thomas for the songs, “Real” and “ Little Star”. The album itself is a definite piece of musical art, delivering not only incredible sounds, but the lyrics alone are so engaging and thought provoking, especially the songs, “Real,” which is a song about the inners fears that all people face within. Other songs like, “Little Star” stands out because it is a powerful song about losing a significant person in her life. Along with the songs like, “So Long” and “Speak to Me,” these four tracks are enough to keep you engaged enough to continue to listen to the entire eight-track album.  Learn more about Laura Vall and Thomas Hjorth of The Controversy in a special interview on The Great Unknowns Presents, which was aired live on KGUP 106.5FM in Los Angeles, CA. Find more of The Controversy: Official Website “Like” on Facebook Follow on Twitter Youtube

You Are There presents "The Defeat of the Spanish Armada" 8/11/47 The Spanish Armada was a fleet assembled and dispatched by King Phillip II of Spain in attempt to invade England in 1588. His attempt was unsuccessful. Queen Elizabeth I of England held the defeat of the armada as one of her greatest achievements, assisting the decline of the Spanish Empire. The armada had a mission of both political and religious aims. King Phillip, the leader of the Roman Catholic Spain, was not able to stop a revolt in of his Protestant subjects in the Netherlands, a revolt which began in 1566, aided by Protestant England. By 1586, Phillip had decided that he could not defeat the Dutch until he had defeated England first. Long time religious rivalry between Spain and England was hoped to be resolved by King Phillip in the dethroning of Queen Elizabeth, reconverting England to Catholicism. The plan for conquering had begun. This plan consisted of the coordination of a fleet to sail from Spain and an army from the Netherlands to create a simultaneous invasion of England. His force of 130 ships and more than 30,000 men was to be led by Alonso PerÃz GuzmÃn, duke of Medina- Sidonia. England was aware of the Spanish plans, attacking it at CÃdiz, Spain in 1587, succeeding in delaying it for a year. By July of 1588, the armada was spotted off the coast of England on July 29. Lord Charles Howard intercepted it with a larger English fleet near Plymouth, and for the next week made small attacks on the Spanish in battles off of Plymouth, Portland Bill, and the Isle of Wight. Unable to break the Spanish Armada, they waited for their chance at a big blow. The opportunity finally arrived when the armada anchored near Calais, France, hoping to join troops scheduled to sail from the Netherlands. Ingeniously, Howard ordered ships set on fire to be sent against the armada, producing a panic that broke the Spanish formation. In the ensuing battle of Gravelines, on August 8, the Spanish were defeated by England and the armada sailed home with remaining ships that were heavily damaged to Spain; 67 of the original 130 ships reached Spain, most in poor condition. The War however between England and Spain lasted until 1604, despite the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Yet the defeat brought about English nationalism, securing Protestantism as Englandâs state religion. In contrast, for Spain it was a humiliating defeat, nearly destroying the national treasury of Spain.

Thanks for supporting The Unsigned Countdown and Underground Recap Sessions. We do this because we have a love for pure unfiltered music. Tune in and share away. Join the community and send one of your songs over to us now! #5 Nation of the Pigs By The LabRats From Helsinki, Finland Genre Punk Rock Find Them On SoundCloud Twitter Facebook YouTube InstaGram Deezer iTunes Spotify Song Link https://soundcloud.com/thelabratsss/nation-of-the-pigs The LabRats Info Band Members Daniel Ramström - Guitar and "Vocals" Sami Haimilahti - Solo Guitar and "Vocals" Atte Laakso - Bass Bass Samu Kolehmainen - Drums Rauli Kangas - Driver Punkrock band straight outta North-Helsinki! If you liked our songs please feel free to share and download. THANK YOU already for all of your support, shares and comments! New material coming soon! STAY TUNED! Links SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/thelabratsss Facebook https://www.facebook.com/labrarotat Twitter https://twitter.com/Labratsss YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/thelaboratoryrats iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/among-the-pigs/id875819270 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 The 1st James Bond By The Olympic Band From Pretoria South Africa Genre  Heavy Pop Punk Find Them On SoundCloud Facebook Twitter YouTube Song Link https://soundcloud.com/the-olympicband/the-1st-james-bond The Olympic Band Info Band Members Charl Greyling - Vocals Freddie Botes - Guitar  Tjaardt Swanepoel - Guitar Niekie van Niekerk - Bass Reinhardt Von Solms- Drums Pretoria based heavy/pop/punk (easycore) rockers; The Olympic quickly started making name in the music industry soon after they sprung to life in 2011.  The band recorded their 1st single 'The Wait' at Snor City's Red Room Studios, late 2011.  Recorded and mixed by Jared Gunston [Chromium] and mastered by famed musician Peach van Pletzen [Yesterday's Pupil & Bittereinder] 'The Wait' deals with the familiar topic of abuse in the context of a relationship. Soon 'The Wait' was play listed on campus radio stations across the country.  In addition to recording 'The Wait', The Olympic worked with local production company Dames & Here Productions to shoot an accompanying music video. The music video, directed by Shaun Gouws, along with the single featured on DSTV music channel, MK324.  The 2nd single; 'the City sleeps' was also recently released(december 2012) accompanied with a music video. Recorded and produced by David Grevler(Wrestlerich) from Anti-Motion studios has also seen the song being playlisted on Tuks fm and Puk fm and is quickly becoming a crowd favourite 'sing a long anthem' at their live shows. The Olympic's infectious beats, melodic choruses and intense live performances are destined to transform South Africa's commercial music landscape.  The band has shared stages with some of South Africa's most renowned artists, playing at the best live music venues in South Africa including Opikoppi festival, Tuks Rag festival, Arcade Empire (Pretoria), the Winston(Durban)Tanz Café Fourways (Johannesburg), Town Hall (Johannesburg) and Memphis Rock (Potchefstroom), Arcade Empire (Potchefstroom), Sundowners (Johannesburg), the Bohemian (Johannesburg) Links SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/the-olympicband Twitter https://twitter.com/TheOlympic Facebook https://www.facebook.com/theolympic YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QAnrkJKG8g ------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 Bitter Resurrections By Count Your Dead From South Texas Genre Metal Find Them On SoundCloud Facebook Twitter YouTube iTunes Amazon Countyourdead.com Song Link https://soundcloud.com/countyourdead/bitter-resurrections Count Your Dead Info Band Members Jonathan Haubert - Vocals Julio Salazar - Guitars Malachi Carrera- Drums The origin of Count Your Dead dates back far to around the year of 2003 whenever vocalist Jonathan Haubert and Julio Salazar formed their first band together in the little small town of Port Lavaca, TX. From that point on, being in a band and making music was much more than just a hobby. It was much more than just something to pass the time by. Little did they know, but this would eventually end up being something they would work their whole lives torward. Throughout the span of their Alternative Metal outfit DOWNLIFT, there were times filled with joy and grim alike. But whatever the circumstances given, the band still manage to put the time and effort to write what were the best songs of that time period. Their best songs, being written during the nights filled with unrelenting practice, complete devotion, and endless passion. But as time would pass, Jonathan and Julio would end up parting ways, as well as the other members in DOWNLIFT. Jonathan would go off to start a new project entitled EuQiNu, which consisted of material picking up where their previous project left off, and Julio would take some time off from music to gain new perspectives. After a break of over 3 years from music, he would later jump back in the mix with a new drummer from Palocios, TX known as Paul Riccio. Coming together to form a new fusion of genres, Julio and Paul created what would be the early formation of COUNT YOUR DEAD. After picking up bass players left and right to jam with, and the occasional singer(s) alongside, CYD went on to play shows in and all around the local Crossroad areas as well as the Northern parts of Texas. In Summer 2007, the band hit the road for a month long tour in California, but would see little success from it due to falling outs with the booking company. Needless to say, something as simple as playing in a band with a group of others would become something that would get complicated real quick. It would seem that after dealing with members that would act more as deadweight rather than carrying their own, getting screwed over countless amount of times with studio cuts and gigs from previous shows, the struggle to continue a band would be almost damn near impossible to endure. But just as things would seem at their darkest, there was still always some small light still shining at the end of the pititful tunnel. For about another few years, CYD would keep their stable lineup minus the band name changes and the member splits. However, once brand new material began to arise, other members were feeling displeased with it.... leading to a desire to form something different with a new lineup, new vibe, and a new attitude. So, as fate would have it, Jonathan's project EuQiNu went under hiatus, leading the two former bandmates to once again join forces and start jamming together again. It wouldn't be long after that Jonathan was asked to take over Lead Vocals once again and put his voice to their new songs being written, and the ones that would later make way onto their first album. Together, they have formed the most solid lineup to date and is ready to take on anything that comes their way. Since late 2008, CYD have been making frequent visits to The Nest Sound Studio in Victoria, TX to record a new list of high-quality songs. These sessions would later turn into full on production for what would later became known as their debut album "No Return". While some of the tracks were written as far back as their early formation, others such as "Bitter Resurrections" and "1,000 Miles of Pain" would serve as a new fuel to an ember that was already started. And while some songs possess more of a party anthem vibe to them such as "Flooding Texas" & "Bleed Smoke" do, others contain more crucial meanings. One of the most crucial, being "Release", which deals with the issues of letting go of those that you held dear in your life. And even more stronger points with the constant rants like the ones in "Poetic Lies" which speaks of mindless nonsense that others try to feed others and actually fool them with. But make no mistake about it, as far as the years have progressed, the songs have progressed just as much, if not more, with them. Every band has their whole life to write about when it comes to their debut, and Count Your Dead many stories to tell. So therefore, needless to say... Count Your Dead is not now, nor at any point here in time, ready to give up. After coming so very far, and still having so much more to go... There is no going back. There is no return. Links SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/countyourdead Facebook https://www.facebook.com/countyourdead YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/countyourdeadmusic Twitter https://twitter.com/countyourdead iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/no-return/id491737116 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 Doktor - Life (Aint it sad) By Johan Vidner From Eskilstuna Sweden Genre Melodic Thrash Metal Find Him On SoundCloud Facebook YouTube ReverbNation Song Link https://soundcloud.com/machineryofficial/doktor-vidner-life-aint-it-sad Johan Info Johan is a sexy beast from Sweden. He is a former co-host with us here on The Unsigned Countdown and Underground Recap Sessions. He produces and programs everything on his own, He plays guitar and bass in all of his solo music, and has a passion for thrash, Metal, and the classic styles of those genres. He is a purist, a master collaborator, and a member of the group Machinery Recorded with a glorious ESP Viper (gits) Epiphone Thunderbird (bass).  Played through TSE X50 with simulated Mesa Boogie V30's 4x12.  EZDrummer 2 as my drummer.  EZMix2 used for mastering, busing and on each individual drum kit piece. Links SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/machineryofficial FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/machineryband?ref=hl YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/johanvidner/featured ReverbNation http://www.reverbnation.com/johanvidner -------------------------------------------------------------------- #1 Project Mayhem By The Devil Wants Her Swagger Back From Dublin Ireland Genre The Heavier End of The Spectrum Find Them On SoundCloud Twitter Facebook Song Link https://soundcloud.com/tdwhsb/project-mayhem TDWHSB Info Band Members Stephen Cannon  Vocals Guitar Mick Hynes  Guitar Ryan Cummins  Drums Dylan Scully  Bass Formed in 2013, Dylan Scully (Bass), Mick Hynes (Guitar) and Ryan Cummins (Drums) were tired of the direction of the local metal scene and began writing songs that they themselves wanted to hear. In late May 2014 Stephen Cannon's violent, yet melodic vocal style completed the arsenal of songs the three had written. By July the band exploded on to the metal scene, gigging around Ireland, from Dublin to Cork and Tipperary, with sights set on Belfast and the UK in the future. Known for their frantic and energetic live shows, within three months TDWHSB were asked to play Slipknot's album launch party to a sold out Mezz, where they were introduced as 'the hottest new band in Dublin'. Since then they have played the after party for Slipknot's show in January 2015. With plans for the UK ahead they are also in the primary stages of self recording their first full length album. Ladies & gentlemen, The Devil Wants Her Swagger Back, and who are we to refuse her? Links SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/tdwhsb Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilWantsHerSwaggerBack Twitter https://twitter.com/TDWHSB ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today, I’m very excited to be joined by one of our special Trauma Therapist | 2.0 members, Caroline Cook.Caroline is a mental health advocate who shares her lived experience of TBI, PTSD, anxiety and depression.  In February of 2014 Caroline was injured with a TBI. By July of that year, she experiencing PTSD and by the end of the year she became homeless for a full year.  Caroline shares her journey, and generational trauma, in the hope that someone else may find healing and move forward. Caroline supports Veterans (family), First Responders (former EMT) , and civilians with Peer Support online.  In This EpisodeContact Caroline:phone: 408.438.0798Email: carolinecook2015@gmail.comTrauma Therapist | 2.0: is a membership site dedicated to supporting, educating and inspiring therapists of all kinds starting out on their trauma-informed journey. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-trauma-therapist-podcast-with-guy-macpherson-phd-inspiring-interviews-with-thought-leaders-in-the-field-of-trauma/donationsWant to advertise on this podcast? Go to https://redcircle.com/brands and sign up.