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Cooking In Marfa: Welcome We’ve Been Expecting YouBy Virginia Lebermann and Rocky Barnette Intro : Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors. Hi I'm Virginia Lebermann and I'm Chef Rocky Barnette of The Capri and we've come up with a book called Cooking In Marfa: Welcome We've Been Expecting You.Suzy Chase: Dusty ranch land surrounding a tiny rural town near the Mexican border and an internationally renowned art mecca far off the beaten path is Marfa, Texas, 200 miles South of El Paso "with its ethereal high desert landscape, cavernous blue skies and views for 50 miles" as the artist Donald Judd once put it. Hotelier, philanthropists, and Ballroom Marfa co-founder, arts pioneer, Virginia Lebermann along with your partner, chef Rocky Barnette have written this wonderful tribute to your restaurant, The Capri but before I go on, let's talk about how Marfa put a shelter in place, right when COVID began and how has that affected you, and the restaurant and your life?Virginia & Rocky: We shut the restaurant March 17. Yeah. Officially started the talks on the 13th and we have not reopened. When we initially shut due to mandates, we had a big staff meeting or a series of staff meetings really and just came together and talked to everyone about how they wanted to handle it. Yeah, it was kind of a democratic process because we were concerned first of all, about their health and then second about West Texas in general and then third, we wanted them to be a part of the decision making process. And the general consensus was that we would ride this thing out as long as we needed to and just keep everyone safe. So that's how we handled it. So nine months later, they're on their second shelter in place. The nearest hospital is 26 or seven miles away in Alpine, Texas and that hospital has two ICU beds and two ventilators and the Midland hospital and the El Paso hospital have stopped taking transfers so it's been very, very touchy for that small town.Suzy Chase: The Capri was originally intended to be a cultural arts project housed in one of the three Adobe and steel army airfield hangers, which you bought in 2007, along with The Thunderbird motel across the street. Can you tell us a little bit about that?Virginia & Rocky: My dear friend, Fairfax Dorn and I had started Ballroom Marfa. We opened our doors in 2003 and we were bringing in artists from all over the world and commissioning new work and bringing people in to see that work. It became difficult to house people. And so I became a partner in The Thunderbird Capri Project and then ultimately bought everyone out. And we ran the Thunderbird hotel with the intention, really of focusing on housing artists for the Chinati Foundation, for Judd, for the Lannan Foundation for all the foundation projects that were bringing really serious people into town so that's how the motel happened and The Capri was actually a sister motel and we renovated it in such a way that it became more of an event space and we would have our first program there ever with ballroom was we had Sonic Youth come and play for a Chinati weekend. It was wild.Suzy Chase: Back in the day when things were wild. I love to hear your vision to connect the food to the region, to the culture and the design of the restaurant.Rocky Barnette: I think at the beginning, I guess with the food to the region is Virginia's mother has a ranch, seven miles West of town and going out there, there are still spots along the ranch where you can see where fires were built and there was a series of caves where you can still find arrow points and tools for grinding, cooking and cutting and so some of those have been carbon dated to be 10,000 years old. I'm like, okay, people were here 10,000 years ago. The landscape was a little different weather patterns are a little different, but what were they eating prior to dairy queen or, orSuzy Chase: Shoney's?Rocky Barnette: Um, so that started this line of questioning. And then Virginia inspired me greatly about this because she would say, well I used to live in Terlingua and down there and we would make prickly pear wine and we would make some bread out of mesquite bean flour and I'm like, what is all this stuff you're talking about? And so it just kind of opened up my mind to start trying to rediscover or reinvigorate a sort of way to eat in the desert without flying in seafood.Suzy Chase: Most cookbooks that are affiliated with restaurants don't mention the design aspect at all and that's one of the lovely things about this book is you describe it in great detail. How do you create spatial fluidity in a perfectly rectangular box? That's the question of the day?Virginia & Rocky: You section a little bit of it off because it's a large box. When we called Sean Daley, who is a very dear and very old friend to ask him to participate in the project. I had a little narrative that I had woven in my own head to share with him about where we wanted to go with the space and it was about the old mercantile stores on the border and in Southeast Texas, where I up were really the center of social activity for these ranchers and farmers. I think in the book, I say, you could buy a can of Folgers coffee and maybe a broom if things are flush and some twine to tie some things together, but really it was all about sitting on the front porch and talking about your neighbors and talking about the weather and that's sort of the feeling that we wanted there, a historical reference with some modern edges to the texture, to the materials.Suzy Chase: In the book you wrote. "There's a magic that bar stools can make when they're all lined up perfectly and make a sculptural statement."Virginia & Rocky: That is my Virgo coming out. I love to walk in to the restaurant and these beautiful turquoise leather bar stools in a line, make my heart swoon. If they're not lined up she starts twitching and screaming about centipedes. A part of the design too was that Sean Daly pulled a lot of colors from the landscape, like he pulled colors from not the foliage in the spring when it was bright and vibrant but the foliage in the winter when it was a little dull and so that would be some colors of the curtains and then they were brightened up by the barstools themselves. And so it's a really good contrast.Suzy Chase: Where exactly did you two grow up?Virginia & Rocky: I grew up on my family's ranch in Southeast, Texas on the Gulf coast, went to school in Austin, which is certainly the bastion of progressive thought in the state of Texas. So that's where I am proper Texans. I'm seventh generation. And I, well, I was born in Asheville. I was part of a military family. So I also lived in Fort Huachuca Arizona for four years, and then Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and then back to Hendersonville area and then went to culinary school, Asheville. So Virginia, you went to Nepal when you were 19. Did your family think you were crazy or were they all for it?Virginia Lebermann: They thought I had absolutely lost my mind. That was pre cell phones. So I would send a postcard home that would take three or four weeks to get there. They thought I was absolutely mad, but I went through a program with Brown University and it was a life changing experience on every level for me, as you might expect.Suzy Chase: Then in your twenties, you spent time in Africa and then you traveled around Europe and did all the things, but you say your travels in Mexico have always had the most profound reverberations for you. Can you talk a little bit about that?Virginia Lebermann: You know, I think that the antiquity that exists in Mexico is so much more vibrant to me personally than even the antiquities of Greece or Rome and it is on the same landmass that I grew up on. You know, you can sit on the back porch at the ranch and you're looking down into Mexico and that connection to the land, but then the real mystery for me of the Mayans and the Aztecs and what they were eating before the Spaniards came has just always been really exciting to me and I think it has to do with proximity a lot of it, you know.Suzy Chase: And you wrote in the book "out here you can drive for hours and often never see a vehicle, I find that thrilling" you wrote and I imagine it was the same way in Mexico.Virginia Lebermann: Oh yeah. And Nepal and Africa, there's definitely a thread. There's something that I love about that feeling that you're the first, albeit an illusion let's be clear, but that you're the first to be there sort of.Suzy Chase: Rocky, I want to hear all about Evelyn Juanita Barnette.Rocky Barnette: That was my great-grandmother. So I'm from Appalachia. Everybody starts procreating very young there apparently. So my mother had just turned 16 when she had me and so she was working a lot and still trying to go to school and so I was essentially raised by my great-grandmother for the first three years of my life and then from the time I was seven til she died when I was 20. And so she was an old Southern lady. She had 13 siblings, grew up in the great depression through every single war and she and my great-grandfather, the front of the two-story house was right on the highway and they turned it into a produce stand because it had a giant garden in the back, and that was their business. He was a mechanic across the street at a truck line, and then he, and she would both run the produce stand on a daily basis. So it was like a mini farmers market.Suzy Chase: Was she a good cook?Rocky Barnette: Yeah. Pretty good.Suzy Chase: Do you think that's where you got your culinary skills from your innate culinary skills?Rocky Barnette: Yeah, sort of like inspiration because my mother is going to be ashamed said this, but she's not the best cook in the world but I was inspired by my great-grandmother and what I started doing... She started getting sick when I was a teenager because she was old. So I started trying to recreate things that she would make before I went to culinary school.Suzy Chase: Before culinary school, your mom finagled a job for you at Shoney's when you were 13. Right. And Shoney's is so much better than Denny's.Rocky Barnette: Yeah. It's funny that that Shoney's that I've worked at then got bought out by Denny's and I was like, I don't want to work there anymore.Suzy Chase: So you made money to buy Nintendos and sneakers, and then you moved on to Chico Tacos and Henderson, North Carolina, where you were hired by the German owner, Kurt Markel, who sort of took you under his wing and suggested books for you to read. Then you made your way down to Mexico with a friend of the family's name, Ray who owned a fruit packing business, apple orchards, and a trucking line. Fast forward to your first culinary epiphany in Mexico. Can you tell us about that?Rocky Barnette: I think my only understanding of Mexican food at that time was like TexMex sort of things and even though I worked in what I thought was a Mexican restaurant for three years, but I was high up in the mountains, like the Sierra Occidental Mexico and we were eating beans every day and they were firing fresh tortillas at every meal and you would have a salsa or onions or something with it but when I was at home growing up with my grandmother your traditional Appalachian meal is pinto beans, cornbread, and chopped up vidalia onion and you wound up eating that a lot because it's inexpensive. So I felt right at home. I was like, well, I must be Mexican.Suzy Chase: So, this cracked me up. So you get back to North Carolina three months later and your mom is freaking out.Rocky Barnette: Oh yeah. So this was also the time when there weren't cell phones, no nothing there's no police, running water, postal service, phones, like you'd have to drive an hour down the mountain to use a payphone.Suzy Chase: Did she think you just died or something?Rocky Barnette: Yeah. She she was beside herself. She was like trying to call the national guard and they're like, yeah, we, sorry, can't help you.Suzy Chase: Oh, your poor mom.Rocky Barnette: She thought I was going for a week and I thought I was going for a week or two and then it turned out to be about three months.Suzy Chase: We just talked about how you started your culinary career at Shoney's. So did it blow your mind when you got the internship at the famed Inn at little Washington in Virginia?Rocky Barnette: It was so new and so refreshing and so foreign and so exotic to me that I was just so happy to be there, that I was willing to do anything that they told me to do like go wash the dog, wash somebody's car, go do this, polish this, work 16 hours a day. Yes, yes, yes. And I don't mean any of that as a bad thing. I was so excited to be there and I found it so thrilling, no matter how hard the work was or how long the hours were, because I'd never smelled things like that and never seen things like that. I mean I never tasted French butter before. My grandmother loved produce and she loved food and she was a great cook, but we didn't use fresh herbs in anything. I'd never tasted fresh herbs and I was 20 years old. And so I learned what they call the traditional brigade system it's like the chef is the chef and then everybody trickles down from there. And I was happy to have just been able to start anywhere. And I started as a dishwasher.Suzy Chase: Then you wind up catering shows at The Capri, really thinking about something that you could do for the community you wrote in the book, you had no courage or capital only compunction. How did the idea come about?Rocky Barnette: Well, I'd spoken to Virginia like a few years before, cause I was doing catering events for Ballroom Marfa or I'd like deliver some soup to her house. I had a job at the time, but it was boring to me so she started talking about how she originally intended to have a kitchen at The Capri and we talked about it and I looked at some plans and then we started dating and then she had a captain who could exact your plans. And she intended to do that. That's what I say. Yeah.Suzy Chase: Yeah. In the book Virginia wrote "eventually it all came together we had a classically trained chef on the loose in the culinary challenged town of Marfa we had a town with a lack of great restaurants and incredible adobe structure sitting empty without its next story, we had a match made in heaven" Virginia. Can you tell us about that?Virginia Lebermann: The Capri had been used for some music shows and things like that with Chinati Foundation and Judd and Ballroom, and then people had rented it here and there for events, but it's such a gorgeous building and sits on such a beautiful piece of property in the middle of town. I just felt like ballroom needed its extension and it needed to be a culinary extension, sort of a laboratory to think about where we live. And Rocky seemed like the perfect person, the force to do that with me.Suzy Chase: Like you two have complimentary super powers that when they come together, it makes for something crazy amazing.Virginia Lebermann: And that's very generous of you to say.Virginia Lebermann: Virginia, the subtitle of this book is Welcome We've Been Expecting You. And that phrase is sprinkled all throughout the book. What does that phrase mean?Virginia Lebermann: So that happened when I did call Sean Daley, our friend and designer of The Capri to tell him this crazy story of mercantiles along the border and what we wanted it all to feel like I spoke for, you know, seven or eight minutes. And without missing a beat, Sean Daley had just responded from dead silence to welcome we've been expecting you. And I said, yeah, you get it. And he's like done I'm on board. I want to be a part of it. So it's on the matchbooks that we have at The Capri. We kind of use it. It's the spirit, the essence of what we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to have the space feel like that you walk in and you take that sigh of relief because you know, somebody is there who is interested in taking care of you.Suzy Chase: And I heard your drinks come fast, you don't have to wait long for a drink.Virginia Lebermann: You don't, we impress that on the boys for sure and the ladies.Suzy Chase: Virginia Food & Wine said you're at the heart of the more recent design and hospitality movement in Marfa. Do you think design and hospitality as a concept will change post COVID or do you think it's going to go all back to normal the way it used to be?Virginia & Rocky: I think that is such an incredibly profound and wonderful question and it's so hard to answer. I think it's what everyone in the restaurant business and the design world are. Everyone's talking about that right now. What has become superfluous? What is still sort of mandatory for the essence of our human spirit in terms of design and culinary endeavors. I have a handful of chef friends from restaurants throughout the United States at this point, and there's one thing that there's this epiphany that they've had where it's like, you know what? I kind of liked this model of people pre-ordering and then we go put it out on the sidewalk and they just like drive by and pick it up without stopping like logistically it's easier to control in a certain sort of way doing delivery where it's like the reinvention of the takeout window but at the same time, what you worry about is when you grow up in restaurants and you love going to restaurants, there's the possibility that, well, you're absolutely going to lose a bunch of restaurants that used to love to go to. And there's a possibility that if it changes too much, you won't be able to go to a restaurant in the way that you did before. And it's not a natural chain of evolution. I don't think it's good for restaurants like Daniel Boulud's restaurant at restaurant, Daniel in New York like I think those things have a purpose in life and Jean-Georges and La Bernadin but these places with these tablecloths, these things like 11 Madison Park has its place, but also every single dive bar and every ethnic restaurant in Queens, like everything has its place in the grand scope. But if it all becomes about the bottom line and how to control inventory and staff hours and all of that, then you've lost the community aspect and the human aspect. Can you imagine all of the ideas? The only design will be what kind of box you get your food? Right? I mean, all the ideas that have happened from the community of restaurants, the poetry that's been written, the paintings on the walls, restaurants and design, and all of these things are such a steadfast place. Spilling sauce on a velvet chair.Suzy Chase: I know I miss going to this bar here in the West Village and listening to the jukebox, sitting at the bar, talking to some rando who probably has an amazing story and listening to some Lynrd Skynryd.Rocky Barnette: Where are you going Blue Smoke?Suzy Chase: No it's called WXOU on Hudson.Virginia Lebermann: Fantastic. Well, I miss that too.Suzy Chase: There's that scene in the movie giant where Elizabeth Taylor is welcomed to town with a huge party of barbecued meat. What principles of West Texas hospitality do you to embrace?Virginia Lebermann: The largesse of it all. Though certainly the excess is a trademark style of any Texan who entertains. We talk about that in the book where you walk in and if, if you are a known quantity and loved by Rocky, he comes out of the plating room and has the entire restaurant clap for you.Suzy Chase: I love that.Virginia & Rocky: It's really fabulous and it is embarrassing and very warm and funny at the same time. That's really an appropriately posed question cause you say welcome to town. The last thing you want to do as a guest is to arrive somewhere and feel like, what are you doing here? So you want people to say here put this down your gullet, sit down.Suzy Chase: I saw the Donald Judd exhibit at MoMA last week and I got to thinking, did Donald Judd influence Marfa or did Marfa influence Donald Judd?Virginia Lebermann: I'm not a Judd scholar. So I'm always a little bit anxious about speaking to a few, simply about what I think happened with Judd but you know, he was influenced by the landscape. It was there where he had the space to create these enormous bodies of work and have them installed in a way that had a relationship with a forever landscape. And conversely, he put Marfa on the map very slowly. You know, when I first started going to Marfa as an adult who was sort of aware of the art world, the people who were there to see Chinati and the Judd installations they were from Germany, they were from all over Europe we never saw a Texan, hardly ever, and a flash of New Yorkers. It's been a very slow process. I mean, if you, if you're touched by the art world at all, you know who Donald Judd is. And so that in turn affects the tourist base in Marfa and the tourist economy there,Suzy Chase: The construction and design of this book is a work of art. Speaking of art can you tell us a little bit about the look and feel of the bookVirginia & Rocky: I happen to be holding in my hand right now. We were introduced through a friend, Jess Hundley who was sort of an external advisor and editor on the book. She's from Los Angeles and has worked on many, many, many books. And she introduced us to a designer called Brian Roettinger, who also based in LA and is actually quite famous for his album covers and wins Grammy's for those and we loved Brian's work. Then we asked Phaidon if they would break with protocol a bit and use a designer that we introduced them to and they very patiently and kindly said yes and so Brian came out to Marfa. I understand is quite different from many books where usually the designer is far away and perhaps doesn't ever see the space or the restaurant or the town or the region. And so Brian got to come out and this is where I think he created a journal. It's a travel journal, the quality of the paper Douglas's photography, which we haven't even touched on yet it's just amazing. The incredible food styling by Rocky Barnette but Douglas the photographer who is also a dear friend. It was a wonderful project because we were also close, but Douglas has a house in Marfa and he has become quite a famous photographer in his own right but did this project very much out of love for all of us and for Marfa and we worked on this photography for a year, we would work on it every time he came in to town just to come home from being on the road. So I think it has that feeling of, oh, it's very personal. Yea Doug is one of the most incredibly effective and professional people I've ever worked with.Suzy Chase: So Rocky, I'm dying to hear about your famous guac.Rocky Barnette: What do you want to know about it?Suzy Chase: Well, why is it so famous?Rocky Barnette: I don't know. I guess people really like it. I think, I guess it tastes good. I grew up mostly in Asheville, North Carolina, and there are a lot of vegetarian restaurants and they're really good and there's a lot of good produce around there. When I first started going to school, we were going to vegetarian restaurants or Mexican restaurants and I've learned about what foie gras was seared foie gras I was like why couldn't I do that with an avocado? And so then I was like, well, I'm here in Texas 20 years later might as well grill these avocados. And the strangest thing is that my Italian sous chef at the Inn at Little Washington, his name is Raphael De La Huerta is the one that taught me to make guacamole. I never knew how to make guacamole, but he taught me things like sneak a little cumin in and use some really fine extra virgin olive oil. And we'll maybe I'll add some extra lime juice and finally grill the avocados like my vegan foie gras dream and then it turned into guacamole and everybody wants to eat it all the time. And it's painful to have to produce. And in Texas, if you don't have guacamole and a steak, you're just in big trouble.Suzy Chase: I made your recipe for Watermelon Radishes with Habanero Vinegar, Aged Balsamic and Lime on page 100. Can you describe this recipe?Rocky Barnette: We started the restaurant in November and we started serving food in January. We're in the middle of the desert and the only thing that I could get that was like resembling a vegetable was watermelon radishes and we had habanero's and we had pickled watermelon rind that I've made before and balsamic. So it was like, well, I'm gonna try to recreate a carpaccio. It pretty simple in my mind, but it just turned out to taste pretty good. The locals got sick of it after about six months to a year. By June, still the only vegetable we can get is without mail ordering something was a watermelon radish, but it was just kind of a sort of take on watermelon on watermelon on watermelon in terms of a carpaccio and just trying to bring out as much flavor as possible.Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called last night's dinner, where I, you, what you had last night for dinner.Virginia & Rocky: So glad that I can tell the truth. I made Crab Fried Rice, my new thing that I like to do with Nantucket Bay Scallops. Now that we're not in the desert anymore for this moment. And Nantucket Bay scallops are in season right now. And so I use sushi grade rice, and then I just try and chop up every kind of vegetable that I can find and then folding in the crab meat. And then I like to cook bay scallops with just fresh parsley, butter and fresh squeezed lemon or pink lemons, which we had recently and I don't mean to be a show off, but, um, and I call the crab fried rice, the mashed potatoes and the Nantucket Bay scallops become the gravy and so you put one on top of the other and it's just really light and refreshing cooked in coconut oil and a lot of ginger and garlic and onions and everything kind of comes together if I do it right, and don't drink too much while I'm cooking. Suzy, I eat a lot of Rocky's food and that Crab Fried Rice, I can't believe it. We were at a friend's house last night and he was making it for Gordon and Gordon stood up after his first bite and marched into the kitchen was like, this is legendary. What is this? It's pretty special.Suzy Chase: So where can we find you on the web and social media?Virginia & Rocky: So we're @CapriMarfa on Instagram. And we do not have a website at all. We still use a quill pen. haha We're pretty simple,The Capri remains a secret.Suzy Chase: Well now I'm officially obsessed with Marfa. I cannot thank you enough for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.Virginia & Rocky: We are honored. You are so sweet to have us. Thank you so much. And we are indeed honored.Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.

Never depict an Arab leader literally in drawing or print: That was a long-established rule across many Middle Eastern and North African countries until 2011 — when uprisings swept across the Arab world. Political cartoonists quickly broke that long-standing rule by drawing Arab leaders literally — not just symbolically — and their artwork spurred protesters to continue to take to the streets and demand regime change after decades under authoritarian rule. Related: 7 cartoonists who have faced violence and threats for their workThe World's Carol Hills catches up with two cartoonists who broke those rules during the Arab uprisings: Syria's Ali Ferzat and Egypt's Mohamed Anwar.The cartoons of Mohamed AnwarRelated: Egyptian political cartoonists Anwar and Andeel struggle to portray Sisi Untitled, by Mohamed Anwar, Egypt, 2007 This image, one of Mohamed Anwar's early cartoons, shows a person sitting in a chair but the viewer can’t see their face. Anwar drew this cartoon after he saw a fellow cartoonist he admired daring to cross the red line and depict then-President Hosni Mubarak, but from the back. You don’t see Mubarak’s face but everyone knows it’s him. The man we can see is holding the Quran and says to the man in the chair: "The infidels want to change your words, your majesty, and make amendments to the constitution!"Anwar drew this after Mubarak changed the Egyptian constitution to allow his son to run for president. The opposition was calling on him to remove these amendments. Untitled, by Anwar, Egypt, 2007.  Credit: Courtesy of Anwar ‘Congratulations, you got your country back!’ by Anwar, Egypt, 2011 This is the first cartoon Anwar drew after the Jan. 25, 2011, revolution in Egypt. A doctor emerges from the hospital room holding a new baby and tells the Egyptians gathered that they have a new country, a new Egypt. Anwar now considers this one of the silliest cartoons he ever drew because it shows what a romantic view he and others had of the revolution and the changes it would bring. "Congratulations, you got your country back!" by Anwar, Egypt, 2011.  Credit: Courtesy of Anwar ‘Dear reader, can you help this poor citizen make his way through these monsters?’ by Anwar, Egypt, 2012 This cartoon shows the maze of politics that Egypt experienced in the first year after the Jan. 25, 2011, revolution. You see a member of the military council that ruled after Mubarak stepped down, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a representative of the old regime. The cartoon illustrates the political trap Egyptians were finding themselves in and how the dreams of the revolution had not yet been realized.  "Dear reader, can you help this poor citizen make his way through these monsters?" by Anwar, Egypt, 2012.  Credit: Courtesy of Anwar ‘Advice,’ by Anwar, Egypt, 2015 Devil: “You know what we’ll do? We’ll change the constitution.” This cartoon was drawn in 2015 after the initial calls to change the constitution to allow Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi more presidential terms. The effort failed but three years later the constitution was changed to allow Sisi to stay in power until 2030.  "Advice," by Anwar, Egypt, 2015.  Credit: Courtesy of Anwar The cartoons of Ali FerzatRelated: Slideshow: Syrian cartoonist not silenced by attackThe Dictator,’ by Ali Ferzat, Syria, January 2011For decades, Ali Ferzat had never criticized the Syrian government directly — it was not allowed. Instead, he used a symbol to represent it: an empty chair. In this cartoon, Ferzat is moving toward a direct criticism of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. For the first time, there is someone in the chair but he is so small his legs don’t even touch the floor. But the epaulets on the shoulders show that it’s someone high up. And significantly, a bird is pecking at the chair leg. This government is going to break.  "The Dictator," by Ali Ferzat, Syria, January  2011.  Credit: Courtesy of Ali Ferzat Untitled, by Ali Ferzat, Syria, June 2011This is one of the early cartoons by Ferzat, where he broke the rule about criticizing the government and drew the actual face of Syrian President Assad.  Untitled, by Ali Ferzat, Syria, June 2011.  Credit: Courtesy of Ali Ferzat ‘Reforms,’ by Ali Farzat, Syria, June 2011 By June 2011, thousands of Syrians were out on the streets demanding reforms. This cartoon is a comment on how serious Ferzat believed Syrian President Assad was about real reform.  "Reforms," by Ali Farzat, Syria, June 2011.  Credit: Courtesy of Ali Ferzat.  Untitled, Ali Ferzat, Syria, July 2011By summer 2011, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had been forced out of the capital, Tripoli, and was on the run. Syrian President Assad was facing more and more criticism and protests from his own people. A few weeks later, Ferzat was pulled from a car and beaten and left for dead. Shortly after, he moved to Kuwait and has been in exile ever since. Untitled, Ali Ferzat, Syria, July 2011.  Credit: Courtesy of Ali Ferzat  

The year 2020 has brought a lot of pain and confusion due to the pandemic, but also many opportunities for companies to show compassion and generosity. And that willingness to help others can sometimes reap rewards in the marketplace. That’s exactly the story my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, Adriel Sanchez, CMO at Newsela shares. Newsela provides instructional content to K-12 schools in the United States, serving 35 million children.  What do they do exactly? They take content from reliable sources around the web and incorporate changes to make it ready for the classroom. First, they rewrite every piece of content at 5 different reading levels, so in a single class every student can access the content at their own reading level. Then, they surround content with instructional support for teachers, so it would be easy for them to embed the content into their lessons. And finally, Newsela attaches the content to individual grade standards by state (over 130K in the US), through machine learning, algorithms and human intervention. Newsela is both business-driven (they are a for-profit company) and mission-driven (making education better for as many teachers and students as possible). This podcast is brought to you by Postal.io. A Sales and marketing engagement platform that generates leads increases sales and improves customer retention. Request a demo to learn how to integrate direct mail and gift into your existing strategy by visiting Postal.io. Doing What is Right for Your Customer Newsela went from one to four products in January, 2020, with great plans of expansion. Then the pandemic hit in mid-March and education was one of the hardest-hit sectors. Most schools around the US closed. Many teachers and students were unprepared for the shift to remote learning, with some school districts panicking over what to do, as they lacked the resources to implement remote education. Although Newsela has four stakeholders (Education Administrators, Students and Teachers, Investors, and Newsela employees), they could not serve the immediate interests of all four at the same time during the COVID lockdowns.  Adriel says they decided to do the right thing for the schools above the business needs. So they provided their entire product portfolio for free to students and teachers. No conditions, no questions asked. All schools had to do was ask for it. How did they implement the plan? They came up with three phases to their response to the crisis. Provide the product for free and get the word out. This phase included a message from the CEO and social media outreach. Word got out quickly and in the first 7 days 15,000 schools signed up. At the end of the program, two thirds of US schools (about 90,000) had signed up for some component of Newsela. Make sure the product was adopted. Adriel says that it wasn’t enough to give away the product. They needed to make sure people were using the platform and getting value.  During March and April of 2020, virtual classes were new to teachers. So Newsela deployed training 7 days a week and had 1 to 1 coaching for teachers and administrators. A lot of people were exposed to Newsela’s team and people really appreciated the support they provided. If they provided that kind of support for non paying customers, how would it be if they paid? This focus on customer service paved the way for future sales conversations. Start sales conversations. By June 2020, Newsela was preparing to turn some of those free users into paid subscribers. The fact that they had given the product for free, no matter if the schools were open or closed, gave them trust and credibility with their customer base. People really felt supported. “Timing was very important,” Adriel says. “Start too early and you could be perceived as exploitive. Start too late and you could miss out on budget allocations elsewhere, competitors and other priorities.” Sellers had to be situationally aware when they started those sales conversations. So the marketing team at Newsela identified 10 criteria to start sales conversations, analyzing macro and micro leading indicators, state by state. Here are some examples of the indicators they used. Macro leading indicators Had states released a budget? Were schools closed or still open for in-person sessions? How much did states receive from the Federal education budget? Micro leading indicators Had administrators asked about pricing after June 30th when the free period was over? Was there a renewal scenario? All the information was tracked in the system for sales. Sellers were able to track it state by state and account by account, looking for patterns on a weekly basis. Adriel says the effort was a collaboration between marketing, sales and product. “It was a Marketing-led initiative, who owned market intelligence (stimulus funding, budgets, etc.). But sales ops helped to rollout, track, and adjust as they learned things in the field.” The CRM tracked two basic metrics: Rate of account contact (were schools taking the calls from the sellers?) All Systems Go metric (was the account ready for a sales conversation based on the macro and micro criteria?)   Sellers would look for patterns by state in the CRM to see if they were open and ready, so they could be more upfront with their sales conversations. Reaping the Rewards Although 70% of education companies offered something free during the first few months of the pandemic, only 25% saw an increase in paid subscribers. Newsela was part of that 25% and growth surpassed their expectations, reaching their 2020 revenue goal in August 2020. They started with the idea of what is the right thing to do for their customers and the hypothesis that the marketplace would reward them for that, was validated. They now have sales conversations with entire states and school districts that they never had in the past. Listen to this episode to hear more about Newsela’s story and how showing that you care can result in increased revenue.

Alex Tolan is a Reiki Master from Maryland. Growing up in a service industry located in a resort town, she was used to living a life of continuous cycle where a lot of people find themselves getting trapped. For Alex, money wasn’t an issue – yet she felt there was something more for her.  Alex chose to go down this creative path, earning herself a painting degree and getting into jewelry-making as she loves working with her hands. Beyond her creativity, Alex has always been highly intuitive as a young child. But it wasn't until January 2019 that she felt she was being pulled into something more. She didn't know what it was but she knew she had to find out how to get more inner peace.  By June 2019, she made the decision to begin her Reiki journey. And I am honored to witness and be a part of her growth. Today, we talk about mentorship, connecting with Spirit, and the beautiful spirit circle that we’ve created out of this journey as we continue to lay the foundations of learning and honor each other’s strengths.    In this episode, you will hear: The creative and intuitive sides of Alex The start of her Reiki journey Learning how to practice trust and surrender Becoming a master The power of one-on-one and partnerships Understanding that there is never an end result How a group mentorship works Her current unique offerings   Subscribe and Review Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet.  We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.  If you enjoyed this episode, we've created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from the episode. Just go to the episode page at https://www.hopetaylormedium.com/podcast to download it.   Supporting Resources: How to find Alex: Website: https://everlyhealing.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/everlyhealing/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/everlyenergyhealing Mentorship with Hope: https://hopetaylormedium.mykajabi.com/   Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March, a self-isolating and easily distracted economist resolved to take himself in hand. "I decided I would do what I was good at: I would write a book" about the complex interplay between epidemiology and economics and the policy dilemmas it poses. By June, Joshua Gans had published Economics in the Age of COVID-19 and, within days, he had started work on the expanded version - The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press, 2020) - to come out in the autumn. Its central thesis is that "at their heart, pandemics are an information problem. Solve the information problem and you can defeat the virus”. Joshua Gans is Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March, a self-isolating and easily distracted economist resolved to take himself in hand. "I decided I would do what I was good at: I would write a book" about the complex interplay between epidemiology and economics and the policy dilemmas it poses. By June, Joshua Gans had published Economics in the Age of COVID-19 and, within days, he had started work on the expanded version - The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press, 2020) - to come out in the autumn. Its central thesis is that "at their heart, pandemics are an information problem. Solve the information problem and you can defeat the virus”. Joshua Gans is Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March, a self-isolating and easily distracted economist resolved to take himself in hand. "I decided I would do what I was good at: I would write a book" about the complex interplay between epidemiology and economics and the policy dilemmas it poses. By June, Joshua Gans had published Economics in the Age of COVID-19 and, within days, he had started work on the expanded version - The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press, 2020) - to come out in the autumn. Its central thesis is that "at their heart, pandemics are an information problem. Solve the information problem and you can defeat the virus”. Joshua Gans is Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“In the world there is the spirit of righteousness, taking many forms,  bestowed on the ever-changing things. Below they are the rivers and mountains; above they are the  sun and stars, With people it is called the spirit of honour and fearlessness, so vast it fills the universe. When the empire is tranquil one pours forth harmony in the splendid court. When times are extreme true fidelity is seen, and goes down in history case after case.”       So goes a poem written by one of the last defenders of the Song Dynasty, Wen Tienxiang, as translated by Feng Xin-ming. Held prisoner by Kublai Khan after the fall of the Song Dynasty, Wen Tienxiang wrote this poem as a part of his refusal to accept to Mongol rule before his ultimate execution. Such defiance was a surprising hallmark of the final years of the fugitive Song court, reduced to a collection of hardliners and loyalists unwilling to peacefully surrender the Mandate of Heaven to the house of Chinggis Khan. Today, we look at the flight of the fugitive Song court after the fall of their capital of Hangzhou in 1276. We will follow brave men like Wen Tienxiang, Zhang Shijie and Lu Xiufu in the final days of the Song Dynasty, a hopeless struggle culminating in the bloody waters of Yaishan in 1279. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.       Our previous episode brought us to the early months of 1276 with the surrender of the Song capital city of Linan, modern day Hangzhou. The child emperor, Gong of Song, and the elderly Empress Dowager, were brought into the hands of Mongol general Bayan, who escorted them north to bow before Kublai Khan. Organized Song resistance seemed broken, and while the Mongols would need to ensure the official submission of the southernmost regions of Song China, such actions were a mere formality compared to the effort needed to seize the Yangzi River cities. Most of the Mongolian army returned northwards soon after, intent on sparing Mongols and their horses from the worst of the south’s summer heat and humidity. There was but one issue: two of the Song Emperor’s young half-brothers had been smuggled out of Hangzhou under a small guard of soldiers. Bayan had sent riders to pursue them, but the fugitives escaped them in the mountains south of Hangzhou. Fleeing to southern Zhejiang province, they made it to Wenzhou, a city on the coast. From there, they took ships to Fuzhou, just across the straits from Taiwan, where they were joined by other loyalists who had abandoned Hangzhou in the days leading up to Bayan’s arrival. These included the general Zhang Shijie, who had repeatedly fought with the Mongol fleet on the Yangzi in the last episode; Chen Yizhong, the former Song chancellor who had succeeded Jia Sidao; Wen Tienxiang, Yizhong’s brief successor who was temporarily held captive by the Mongols before escaping; and other courtiers and generals, like Li Xiufu and Xia Gui. News of the gathering at Fuzhou spread across the south and brought other hiding loyalists to come out of the shadows in early summer 1276, encouraged by the Mongol withdrawal back over the Yangzi River.       By June 1276, the older of the two half brothers, the five year old Zhao Shih, was declared the 17th emperor of the Song Dynasty, temple name Duanzong of Song. The enthronement prompted a wave of loyalist uprisings in the south and over the summer, growing into an actual offensive against the Mongols. Citizen armies retook cities in Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces. Most of the south and southwest of the Song realm were still outside of Mongol control, and in Sichuan those still resisting found new heart. At Fuzhou, the court built a new navy from those ships which had escaped destruction on the Yangzi, some provided by patriotic ship owners in the south, and some which were forcibly seized from private hands. For a few weeks, there was actual momentum against Mongol rule.   By the fall of 1276, this momentum had largely burnt itself out. The infighting which had been endemic to the Song court reared its head in this fugitive court. Chen Yizhong, who had only come out of hiding after the royal boys had arrived in Fuzhou, had again been made Chancellor, despite the fact his performance as Chancellor in Hangzhou was generally ineffective. Once more the Song Chancellor, Yizhong immediately fought with the others for influence over the young emperor, a stupendously stupid act when all of their energies should have gone against the Mongols. His conflict with Wen Tienxiang forced the latter to abandon the court to fight on his own in his home region of Jiangxi, raising troops there to resist the Mongols. From his base in Jiangxi, Wen Tienxiang led hit and run attacks against the Mongols as far as Lake Poyang. With Tienxiang out of the way, Yizhong butted heads with the most important and capable military leaders left in the fugitive court, Zhang Shijie and Xia Gui. Xia Gui grew so frustrated that he defected to the Mongols, bringing with him a number of districts in Huainan. The infighting predictably hamstrung the already limited capabilities of the Song court. With a mere boy as emperor, there was no one to mediate over Yizhong’s actions, causing them to hemorrhage much needed men they couldn't afford to lose.    And of course, the Mongols were not keen to allow these fugitives to claim legitimacy or strike at such newly taken territory; though they held by now no hope of truly overthrowing Mongol rule. News came of the fall of the Yangzi cities of Yangzhou and Chenzhou after prolonged resistance to the Mongols, soon followed in the autumn with a Mongol invasion of the south. More accurately, we should describe this as a Yuan invasion. While serving the Mongol Khaghan, often commanded by Mongols and Central Asians and with a core Mongol cavalry, the main body of these troops were Chinese, largely northerners but a great number of former Song soldiers and levied southerners. In large part, this was due to the conditions and environment; the climate of the south was difficult on those used to the drier and cooler north, and much of the geography was simply unsuited to large scale cavalry warfare, though Mongol horsemen were employed when appropriate. Under the command of the Uighur, Ariq Khaya, the armies of Kublai’s Yuan Dynasty came in a great pincer movement towards Fuzhou late in 1276. By the end of the year, the boy emperor and his court took to the sea to escape Fuzhou, which soon fell to the Yuan armies.    The young emperor and court had begun what was to be a dreadful pattern. Their ships would find some coastal city to make their new sanctuary, only to be forced to flee in a matter of days, weeks or months as Yuan armies or ships converged on their position. From the last days of 1276 to until 1278, this was the wretched life the court lived, a constant fear for when the banners of the Yuan would arrive on the horizon. From Fuzhou they stayed in Quanzhou, perhaps the wealthiest port in the world and a gateway to the seatrade of southeast Asia. Here, the court sought to ally with their former subject, Quanzhou’s Superintendent of Maritime Trade, the immensely wealthy Fu Shougeng. A highly talented fellow, Fu Shougeng was a descendant of Arab traders, his wealth, influence and veritable armada of ships making him a powerful ally for anyone seeking to control the southern Chinese coast. Both Kublai and the Song court sought to gain his support, but the Song had little patience for carefully cultivating a relationship. The Song general Zhang Shijie attempted to sidestep Fu Shougeng and just commandeer ships and resources for their purposes. Alienated, Fu Shougeng tried to trick the boy emperor into following him in order to capture him for the Mongols, but the ruse was spotted and the court escaped. With their flight, Fu Shougeng officially declared for Kublai, who rewarded him by making him the military governor of much of Fujian and Guangdong provinces. As revenge, Zhang Shijie blockaded Quanzhou’s port late into 1277 until Yuan ships drove him off. Fu provided his ships and resources to the Yuan, enlarging their growing presence on the South China sea, while Fu encouraged other holdouts in the region to submit to the Khan.    As the Song court moved from port to port along the southern coast over 1277, the Yuan continued to strengthen their hold on the mainland. Ariq Khaya focused on holdouts in the south in a methodical campaign; not a great tidal wave of destruction like Chinggis Khan had unleashed upon Khwarezm nearly 60 years prior, but a thorough effort which instituted civilian administration as he went. The area Ariq Khaya took was immediately brought into the Yuan Empire, rather than left a ruinous buffer. Another general, Sogetu, meanwhile pursued the Song along the coast, mirroring their movements from the land and falling upon any city which gave shelter to the emperor. The Mongol advance even encouraged local uprisings against the Song; one fellow leading such an uprising in the interior of Fujian was caught and executed by the loyalist Wen Tienxiang, but it was a minor success as the Yuan hold on the south grew. Wen Tienxiang and his army was forced to the coast, and over 1277 and 1278 Song territory along the southeast was reduced to a few well fortified but isolated coastal holdouts. In the first month of 1278, while in the midst of once again sailing to a new port, the Song fleet was caught in a storm, sinking several ships. The young emperor was among those who fell into the cold waters. Though he was rescued, the poor lad fell ill.  The stress of the flight coupled with illness rapidly eroded his strength. In May of 1278, Zhao Shih, temple name Duanzong of Song, succumbed, not even 9 years old by the European reckoning. The fact the disillusioned Song court did not immediately dissipate is due to Zhang Shijie and Lu Xiufu, who rallied them around the late-emperor’s even younger half brother, the 6 year old Zhao Bing, who they quickly enthroned. It was not enough for some, and no one was happy to fight for the third child-emperor in a row, when most of China was now in Mongol hands. Chancellor Yizhong suggested the court could find refuge in Dai Viet in northern Vietnam, the kingdom known to the Chinese as Annam. Yizhong offered to go himself as an envoy, but the reception among the court was cool. He left for Vietnam anyways; judging by summons by the Song for him to return, this may have just been him abandoning the cause. Yizhong never returned to the fugitive Song court, spending a few years in Dai Viet before fleeing to the Kingdom of Sukhothai in Thailand for the last years of his life.   In June 1278, the Song imperial fleet, now largely under the thumb of Zhang Shijie, settled on Yaishan, some 120 kilometres west of modern Hong Kong. Yaishan was a difficult to reach island nestled in the Chinese coast; surrounded by rivers, mud flats sides and mountains. The island has access to the sea via a narrow waterway, a lagoon on its south side which cuts between two steep cliffs, from which the area’s name is derived. It was a defensible base and large enough to hold the considerable population they brought with them. The sources speak of 200,000 aboard over 1,000 ships: soldiers, ships crews, families, court officials.  Zhang Shijie ordered them onto the island, where they immediately built a small city, cutting down trees for palaces and barracks. The river systems around Yaishan led deeper into Guangdong province and to the city of Guangzhou, from which the Song court was supplied. Zhang Shijie had had enough of running, and was intent on making Yaishan the location from which they would retake the Song realm, or make their final stand.    As the Song settled on Yaishan, the remnants of their empire fell to the Mongols. The western end of the Yangzi River in Sichuan was, after decades of effort, finally subdued over 1278. New offensives into Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong strengthened the Yuan hold over China’s southwest, bringing them dangerously close to Yaishan.   Just as Bayan had been placed in supreme command in 1274, Kublai wanted a supreme commander to control the Yuan forces operating in the south and bring them all to bear on wherever the Song court was hiding. In June of 1278, the same month that the fugitive court took shelter on Yaishan, Kublai appointed Zhang Hongfan to be this commander. Zhang Hongfan was a man of northern China who had never served the Song; yet, in one of those twists of fate, he was related to the Song’s great general, Zhang Shijie. Zhang Hongfan had led in the river warfare along the Yangzi, and now Kublai wanted him to personally supervise the Yuan’s new ocean fleet as well. This also highlights the nature of the Mongol Empire of Kublai Khan: an ethnic northern Chinese was, for the first time, being placed in supreme authority over Mongol, Central Asian and Chinese forces in order to destroy the remnants of a Chinese dynasty. A diligent and loyal subject of the Great Khan, Zhang Hongfan worked with great speed. The offensive he led at the end of 1278 swallowed up what was left of the Song Dynasty. In an arc from east to west, Zhang Hongfan led his ships along the southern coast, collecting men and ships as he went and turning over every stone for the Song emperor. Assisting them were many former Song commanders and their ships who had thrown their lot in with the Mongols, eager to demonstrate their loyalty to their new masters. Zhang Hongfan’s second-in-command, a Tangut named Li Heng, led the second prong of the assault on land, linking up with Zhang Hongfan’s fleet for those coastal sites still holding out. In the first weeks of 1279, Li Heng surprised and captured the brave Song captain, Wen Tienxiang, handing him over to Zhang Hongfan as prisoner at the start of February.    From there they advanced west, making their way to perhaps the most significant city still resisting Mongol rule, Guangzhou. The Yuan commanders did not know it yet, but Guangzhou was only a few kilometres north of where the Song court was hiding at Yaishan. Guangzhou had thrown off a few Yuan assaults before finally falling to a combined effort by Li Heng and Zhang Hongfan. Twice, ships came up the Xi River in an attempt to relieve Guangzhou. On the second attempt, ships under the command of Omar, grandson of the Yuan governor of Yunnan Sayyid Ajall, followed them, tracking the Song ships right back to Yaishan.  Quickly, Omar confirmed it was the Song hideout and sent messengers back to Zhang Hongfan. It was time to prepare the final battle against the Song.   At the end of February 1279, Yuan ships began to join Omar outside the sea entrance to Yaishan, a 1.5 kilometre wide lagoon protected by steep cliffs on either side. Over the following days, the rest of the Yuan fleet joined them. The news prompted panic on Yaishan, and many demanded Zhang Shijie organize another escape. But Shijie was done running. “Lo these many years we have voyaged on the seas. Now we must decide between us and them the victor and the vanquished.” Setting fire to the palaces and buildings of Yaishan, he ordered everyone aboard the ships. The plan was simple. From reports his scouts had gathered, his fleet outnumbered the Yuan greatly, perhaps 1100 Song vessels to 300 for the Yuan. Shijie also considered his men the superior fighters at sea. But morale was low, and in open water the men could find it more persuasive to flee rather than fight. Figuring the Mongols would gamble on an immediate assault to put an end to the campaign, Zhang Shijie needed to make best use of both his greater numbers but worse morale. He settled on chaining his ships together in a great, fortified line. Not at the entrance of the lagoon, where some ships might be able to slip away, but situated deeper down the waterway, where their flanks were securely protected by the steep cliffs. Anchors were dropped, and ramparts and towers were built on the ships, a massive, immobile floating wall. The young emperor, Zhao Bing, was placed in the largest ship at the centre under a secure guard. To protect against incendiaries, the ships were coated with mud and provided long poles to push away fire ships. Finally, catapults were set up to send projectiles at any approaching vessel. Set up, Zhang Shijie prepared for the expected attack.   Shijie’s Yuan counterpart, Zhang Hongfan was no fool and recognized a frontal attack against this entrenched position was very risky. He sent first a small ship with negotiators, among them the captive Wen Tienxiang, who Hongfan hoped would convince Shijie to step down. Tienxiang refused however, and negotiations went nowhere. An effort to send fire ships into the Song line was likewise repulsed, the poles of the defenders keeping the fireships at bay until they burned themselves out. Zhang Hongfan then did the unexpected. He waited.   In doing so, he had the one tool which Shijie had no defence against. Locking the Song ships into place as he had done gave all the mobility, and the initiative, to the Yuan fleet. With so many men and families aboard the Song ships, they quickly used up the food and freshwater that they had brought aboard. Destroying their island buildings and pulling all troops onto the ships meant they had no land forces to scavenge for them or fall back to. Quickly, Yuan scouts found a small creek the Song had considered impassable for ocean vessels. The Yuan instead sent smaller craft up this creek, coming out behind the Song line and surrounding them. Zhang Shijie sent out small sorties to attempt to get through the Yuan lines and acquire supplies, but each time these were pushed back. Unintentionally, Zhang Shijie had settled on the plan that left the remnants of the Song trapped in place.   The two fleets sat in place for two weeks. Running out of freshwater and firewood, the Song soldiers resorted to drinking seawater and eating uncooked meals. Dysentery, sickness and starvation ravaged them. Zhang Hongfan sent one final letter to Zhang Shijie, imploring his kinsman to surrender. Three times letters were sent to Shijie, carried by Shijie’s nephew Han, who alongside Hongfan served the Mongols. The letters carried by Han told Shijie of the rewards that awaited him if he surrendered, but warned of the destruction that awaited him if he refused.   Zhang Shijie’s reply, as recorded by Yuan Dynasty sources, ran thus: “I know that if I surrender I would have life, and also noble titles and riches, but my ruler lives and I cannot desert him. If you wish me to surrender, lift your blockade and permit me to sail out.” But Zhang Hongfan knew he could not trust this. For the next five days, Hongfan and his officers made the final plans and moved ships into place. At dawn on the 19th of March, 1279, anchors were weighed and the Yuan fleet advanced onto the Song from both north and south. Zhang Hongfan led his flagship against the most dangerous section of the Song line. The Yuan ships crashed into the larger Song vessels, the Yuan soldiers climbing aboard to fight on the Song decks, Mongol archers picking off Song defenders. The decks ran red with blood, men locked in combat fell into the churning waters and were crushed between ships. Spears pushed climbing Yuan soldiers back into their ships; grasping hands pulled Song defenders off the decks. Zhang Shijie’s catapult crews fired until they ran out of projectiles. The Song fought with courage, battling for every metre. It was a full day of fighting, but the sickness and hunger of the Song troops was a knife in their backs. Dropping from exhaustion, the Yuan soldiers stepped over their bodies as they steadily advanced along Zhang Shijie’s makeshift wall. Unexpectedly, one Song ship dropped its colours, the signal to surrender. Then another, and another. Such an order had not been given, but in the confusion of battle it could not be undone. The Song began to surrender en masse. Zhang Shijie desperately ordered troops to withdraw to the centre ship housing the emperor, but it was clear the day was lost. As fog rolled in that evening, Zhang Shijie ordered some ships to be cut loose to break out. 16 out of the 1100 Song ships escaped Yaishan with Zhang Shijie, evading the Yuan pursuers in the fog and the confusion. The Emperor, Zhao Bing, was not among them, the imperial barge too large and too slow to break free.    The courtier Lu Xiufu stayed close to the boy emperor, but there was now no escape left on those bloody decks. The last emperor of the house of Zhao would not fall into these barbarian hands, Xiufu decided. Tearfully, Xiufu forced his own wife and children to jump into the sea. With Zhao Bing still in his royal robes and clutching the imperial seals, Lu Xiufu took the 7 year old Son of Heaven into his arms, and carried him beneath the waves. Yuan sources assert 100,000 distraught Song loyalists followed in a mass suicide, the lagoon red and filled with bodies. Whoever still lived surrendered along with some 800 ships. The Song Dynasty’s 300 year rule was over.    Zhang Shijie did not flee far: not long after the battle, while sailing to seek shelter in Vietnam his small fleet was caught in a storm and sunk, and he joined his emperor beneath the waves. Zhang Hongfan commemorated the battle with a simple stone inscription at Yaishan, stating “here the great Yuan general Zhang Hongfan destroyed the Song,” and was richly rewarded by Kublai Khan for his victory. He could not long enjoy his spoils. He died the next year, an ailment brought on by the heat and humidity of the south. Later nativist Chinese historians ravaged Hongfan’s reputation as a Chinese “betraying” the Song to serve northern barbarians. But Zhang Hongfan and his family had never been Song subjects. Their native area had been controlled by the Khitan Liao Dynasty since 939, before the Song Dynasty had even been founded. In fact, Zhang Shijie had briefly served the Mongols, making him the traitor to his emperor.        Wen Tienxiang outlived both Zhang Shijie and Zhang Hongfan, offered a respectable position in Kublai’s empire. But Tienxiang refused again and again, unwilling to betray the memory of the Song. Spending his last years imprisoned, he wrote poetry and proudly denied Mongol offers, until finally executed in the early 1280s, the last patriot of Song.    Yaishan was perhaps the largest naval battle in Chinese history after Lake Poyang in 1368, if the sources are accurate with their numbers. It was a major and decisive victory. While some regions in the south still needed to be fully incorporated into the Yuan Empire, and there would be local uprisings, organized resistance against Mongol rule was broken. The Song Emperors were dead, the loyalist infrastructure crushed. Kublai Khan had unified China for the first time since the fall of the Tang Dynasty almost 400 years prior, and was the first non-Chinese to do so. Kublai was now the ruler of All Under Heaven, master of China and the single most powerful man on earth. Those Song loyalists who had escaped to the Vietnamese kingdoms of Dai Viet and Champa would need to be pursued, and Kublai was not a man to believe China was the limits of his empire.  Even as the last Song Emperor disappeared beneath the waves at Yaishan, Kublai’s eyes darted to those kingdoms on his horizon, revenge against Japan plotted and his relatives in Central Asia punished. More battles were planned beyond the waters of Yaishan; but not many of them would be victories.    Before we discuss Kublai’s further military ventures though, we must discuss Kublai the man, and the actual empire he built in China, so be sure to subscribe to our podcast. If you’d like to help us continue to produce great content, please consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one!

Charles MansonManson was born to a 15 or 16 year old (depending on the source) girl in Cincinnati Oh. on Nov 12,1934. His Mother, Kathleen Maddox, did not even bother to give him a real name on his birth certificate. On it he is listed as No Name Maddox. There is not 100% surety who his father is, but most likely it is a man named Colonel Scott Sr. When Kathleen told him she was pregnant he told her he'd been called away on army business, which he lied to her about being in, and after several months she realized he was not returning.  It is assumed this is the father as Kathleen brought a paternity suit against Scott and this lead to an agreed judgement in 1937, which is basically a settlement between the two without Scott having to admit to being the father. Within the first few weeks Kathleen decided on the name Charles Milles after her father. Kathleen, then had a short lived marriage to a man named William Eugene Manson. The marriage lasted around three years, during which time Kathleen often went on drinking benders with her brother Luther. She would leave Charles with different babysitters all the time. This obviously caused issues with William and he filed for divorce citing “gross neglect of duty” on the part of Kathleen. Charles would retain the last name of Manson after the divorce as he was born after the two married. During one of her drinking sprees she had taken Charles with her to a cafe. The waitress commented about how cute Charles was and that she wanted kids of her own. Kathleen said to the waitress “ pitcher of beer and he’s yours.” The waitress obviously presumed she was kidding but brought her an extra pitcher of beer anyway to be nice. Well, true to her word, Kathleen finished her pitcher and left, leaving the boy there. Days later Manson's uncle would track him down and bring him home. What. The. Fuck!         When he was 5 years old, his mother and her brother Luther were arrested for robbing a man. Mother of the year, folks! Reportedly, Luther pressed a ketchup bottle filled with salt into The man's back, pretending it was a gun. He then smashed the bottle over The man’s head, and the siblings stole $27 before fleeing. Police caught up to the pair shortly after and arrested the two. Kathkleen received 5 years in prison and Luther 10. Charles was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in west virginia. Biographer Jeff Guinn related a story about Manson's childhood. When Manson was 5 years old and living with his family in West Virginia, his uncle reportedly forced him to wear his cousin Jo Ann's dress to school as punishment for crying in front of his first-grade class. In the biography, Guinn shares his perspective:  “It didn't matter what some teacher had done to make him cry; what was important was to do something drastic that would convince Charlie never to act like a sissy again.”   In first grade, Manson persuaded girls to beat up the boys he didn't like. When the principal questioned him, Manson offered the same defense he would later use after influencing his Family to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders:  “It wasn't me; they were doing what they wanted.” In 1942, the prison released Manson’s mother, Kathleen, on parole after she served three years. When she returned home, she gave Manson a hug. He later described this as his only happy memory from childhood. A few weeks after this homecoming, the family would move to Charleston WV. Here Manson would constantly be truant from school and his mother continued her hard drinking ways. His mother was again arrested for theft but was not convicted. After this the family would move again, this time to Indianapolis. While in Indianapolis his mother met an alcoholic with the last name Lewis while attending AA meetings. The two would marry in 1943. That same year Manson claims to have set his school on fire at the age of 9.  *christmas present story*       At the age of 13 Manson was placed into the Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute Indiana. The school was for delinquent boys and run by strict catholic priests. There were severe punishments for even minor infractions, obviously. These included beating with a wooden paddle or lashes from a leather strap. Manson escaped the school and slept in the woods, under bridges and pretty much anywhere he could find shelter. He made his way back home and spent Christmas of 1947 with his aunt and uncle back in WV. After this his mother sent him back to the school where he would escape, yet again ten  months later and headed back to Indy. There, in 1948 he would commit his first known crime. He would rob a grocery store looking for something to eat, but came across a box containing around 100 dollars. He would take this and get a hotel room in a shitty part of town and buy food as well.        After this robbery he tried to get on the straight and narrow by getting a job delivering messages for Western Union. The straight path he was on would not last long though, as he started to supplement his income with petty theft. He was caught and in 1949 a judge sent him to Boys Town, a juvenile facility in Omaha, Nebraska. After spending a whopping 4 days at Boys Town, Manson and a fellow student named Blackie Nielson obtained a gun and stole a car. The boys decided to head to Nielson’s uncle's house in Peoria IL. Along the way they would commit two armed robberies. When they got to the uncle’s, who was a professional thief, they were recruited as apprentices in thievery. Manson was arrested a couple weeks  later as part of a raid and during the subsequent investigation was linked to the two earlier armed robberies. He was then sent to the Indiana School For Boys, another very strict reform school.       At the reform school Manson alleged to have been raped by other students at the urging of a staff member. He was also beaten very often and ran away from the school 18..count em...18 times! Manson developed what he called “the insane game” as a form of self defense while at the school.  When he was physically unable to defend himself, he would start screaming and screeching, making faces and grimacing, and waving his arms all over the place in an attempt to make his attackers think he was insane! After all of his failed attempts at running away and escaping, he finally succeeded in escaping with two other boys in february of 1951. The three boys decided to head to california, stealing cars and robbing gas stations along the way. They ended up getting arrested in Utah and Manson was sent to the National Training Center for Boys in  washington dc for the federal crime of driving a stolen car across state lines. When he got to the center he was given a test that determined he was illiterate even though he showed a slightly above average IQ of 109. Average in the US is around 98-100. Hise caseworker also deemed him “aggressively antisocial” When Charlie was being considered for a transfer to Natural Bridge Honor Camp, a minimum security institution, a psychiatric evaluation was required.On October 24 1951, Charlie was transferred to the Natural Bridge Honor Camp in Petersburg, Virginia. His parole hearing was scheduled for February 1952. On October 24, 1951, when his Aunt Joanne visited, she promised Charlie and the authorities that when he was released, she and his Uncle Bill would look after him, provide him with a place to live, and a job.Psychiatrist Dr. Block, explained in a prison and probation report that his life of abuse, rejection, instability, and emotional pain had turned him into a slick but extremely sensitive boy:        "[Manson] Tries to give the impression of trying hard although actually not putting forth any effort ... marked degree of rejection, instability and psychic trauma ... constantly striving for status ... a fairly slick institutionalized youth who has not given up in terms of securing some kind of love and affection from the world ... dangerous ... should not be trusted across the street ... homosexual and assaultative [sic] tendencies ... safe only under supervision ... unpredictable ... in spite of his age he is criminally sophisticated and grossly unsuited for retention in an open reformatory type institution.”In January 1952, less than a month before his parole date, Charlie sodomized a boy with a razor to his throat. He was reclassified him as dangerous and transferred to a tougher, higher security, lock up facility; the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia,.By August 1952, he had eight major violations including three sexual assaults. He was classified as a dangerous offender and characterized as "defiantly homosexual, dangerous, and safe only under supervision" and as having "assaultive tendencies."September 22 1952, Charlie was transferred to the Federal Reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio, a higher security institution. He was a "model prisoner." There was a major improvement in his attitude. He learned to read and understand math. On January 1, 1954, he was honored with a Meritorious Service Award for his scholastic accomplishments and his work in the Transportation Unit for maintenance and repair of institution vehicles.While incarcerated at Chillicothe, Charlie met the notorious American Syndicate gangster, Frank Costello, aka "Prime Minister of the Underworld," a close associate of the powerful underworld boss, Lucky Luciano.In the book, Manson: In His Own Words (1986), by Nuel Emmons, Manson, obviously impressed by with Costello's professional crime background states:"When I walked down the halls with him [Costello] or sat at the same table for meals, I probably experienced the same sensation an honest kid would get out of being with Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantel: admiration bordering on worship. To me, if Costello did something, right or wrong, that was the way it was supposed to be... Yeah, I admired Frank Costello, and I listened to and believed everything he said."Charlie's parole on May 8, 1954, stipulated that he live with Aunt Joanne and Uncle Bill in McMechen, West Virginia. Now at nineteen years-old, for the first time since his mother gave him up when he was 12, Charlie was legally free .Soon after Manson gained his freedom, his mother was released from prison. She moved to nearby Wheeling, West Virginia and soon Charlie moved in with her.In January 1955, Manson married a hospital waitress named Rosalie Jean Willis. Around October, about three months after he and his pregnant wife arrived in Los Angeles in a car he had stolen in Ohio, Manson was again charged with a federal crime for taking the vehicle across state lines. After a psychiatric evaluation, he was given five years' probation. Manson's failure to appear at a Los Angeles hearing on an identical charge filed in Florida resulted in his March 1956 arrest in Indianapolis. His probation was revoked; he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment at Terminal Island, San Pedro, California.While Manson was in prison, Rosalie gave birth to their son Charles Manson Jr. During his first year at Terminal Island, Manson received visits from Rosalie and his mother, who were now living together in Los Angeles. In March 1957, when the visits from his wife ceased, his mother informed him Rosalie was living with another man. Less than two weeks before a scheduled parole hearing, Manson tried to escape by stealing a car. He was given five years' probation and his parole was denied.Manson received five years' parole in September 1958, the same year in which Rosalie received a decree of divorce. By November, he was pimping a 16-year-old girl and was receiving additional support from a girl with wealthy parents. In September 1959, he pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check, which he claimed to have stolen from a mailbox; the latter charge was later dropped. He received a 10-year suspended sentence and probation after a young woman named Leona, who had an arrest record for prostitution, made a "tearful plea" before the court that she and Manson were "deeply in love ... and would marry if Charlie were freed".  Before the year's end, the woman did marry Manson, possibly so she would not be required to testify against him.Manson took Leona and another woman to New Mexico for purposes of prostitution, resulting in him being held and questioned for violating the Mann Act. Though he was released, Manson correctly suspected that the investigation had not ended. When he disappeared in violation of his probation, a bench warrant was issued. An indictment for violation of the Mann Act followed in April 1960. Following the arrest of one of the women for prostitution, Manson was arrested in June in Laredo, Texas, and was returned to Los Angeles. For violating his probation on the check-cashing charge, he was ordered to serve his ten-year sentence.Manson spent a year trying unsuccessfully to appeal the revocation of his probation. In July 1961, he was transferred from the Los Angeles County Jail to the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington. There, he took guitar lessons from Barker–Karpis gang leader Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, and obtained from another inmate a contact name of someone at Universal Studios in Hollywood, Phil Kaufman.  According to Jeff Guinn's 2013 biography of Manson, his mother moved to Washington State to be closer to him during his McNeil Island incarceration, working nearby as a waitress.Although the Mann Act charge had been dropped, the attempt to cash the Treasury check was still a federal offense. Manson's September 1961 annual review noted he had a "tremendous drive to call attention to himself", an observation echoed in September 1964.  In 1963, Leona was granted a divorce. During the process she alleged that she and Manson had a son, Charles Luther. According to a popular urban legend, Manson auditioned unsuccessfully for the Monkees in late 1965; this is refuted by the fact that Manson was still incarcerated at McNeil Island at that time.In June 1966, Manson was sent for the second time to Terminal Island in preparation for early release. By the time of his release day on March 21, 1967, he had spent more than half of his 32 years in prisons and other institutions. This was mainly because he had broken federal laws. Federal sentences were, and remain, much more severe than state sentences for many of the same offenses. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. In 1967, 32-year-old Charles Manson was released from prison once again (this time, from a correctional facility in the state of Washington). He then made his way to San Francisco and quickly found a home in the counter-culture movement there.Manson created a cult around himself called the "Family" that he hoped to use to bring about Armageddon through a race war. He named this scenario "Helter Skelter," after the 1968 Beatles song of the same name.Living mostly by begging, Manson soon became acquainted with Mary Brunner, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Brunner was working as a library assistant at the University of California, Berkeley, and Manson moved in with her. According to a second-hand account, he overcame her resistance to his bringing other women in to live with them. Before long, they were sharing Brunner's residence with eighteen other women.Manson established himself as a guru in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, which during 1967's "Summer of Love" was emerging as the signature hippie locale. Manson appeared to have borrowed his philosophy from the Process Church of the Final Judgment, whose members believed Satan would become reconciled to Christ and they would come together at the end of the world to judge humanity. Manson soon had the first of his groups of followers, which have been called the "Manson Family", most of them female. Manson taught his followers that they were the reincarnation of the original Christians, and that the Romans were the establishment. He strongly implied that he was Christ; he often told a story envisioning himself on the cross with the nails in his feet and hands. Sometime around 1967, he began using the alias "Charles Willis Manson." He often said it very slowly ("Charles's Will Is Man's Son")—implying that his will was the same as that of the Son of Man.Before the end of the summer, Manson and eight or nine of his enthusiasts piled into an old school bus they had re-wrought in hippie style, with colored rugs and pillows in place of the many seats they had removed. They roamed as far north as Washington state, then southward through Los Angeles, Mexico, and the American Southwest. Returning to the Los Angeles area, they lived in Topanga Canyon, Malibu, and Venice—western parts of the city and county.Having learned how to play guitar in prison he did his best to wow artists like Neil Young and The Mamas and Papas, his idiosyncratic folk music failed to generate enthusiasm until he was introduced to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who saw talent in Manson's playing.  Wilson allowed Manson and several of "his girls" — who had by now begun coalescing around him because they believed he was a  guru with prophetic powers — to stay with him at his mansion in June 1968. Wilson eventually kicked them out after they began causing trouble, but Manson later accused the Beach Boys of reworking one of his songs and including it on their 1969 album "20/20" without crediting him. In 1967, Brunner became pregnant by Manson and, on April 15, 1968, gave birth to a son she named Valentine Michael (nicknamed "Pooh Bear") in a condemned house in Topanga Canyon, assisted during the birth by several of the young women from the Family. Brunner (like most members of the group) acquired a number of aliases and nicknames, including: "Marioche", "Och", "Mother Mary", "Mary Manson", "Linda Dee Manson" and "Christine Marie Euchts". Manson established a base for the Family at the Spahn Ranch in August 1968 after Wilson's landlord evicted them. It had been a television and movie set for Westerns, but the buildings had deteriorated by the late 1960s and the ranch's revenue was primarily derived from selling horseback rides. Female Family members did chores around the ranch and, occasionally, had sex on Manson's orders with the nearly blind 80 year-old owner George Spahn. The women also acted as seeing-eye guides for him. In exchange, Spahn allowed Manson and his group to live at the ranch for free.  Lynette Fromme acquired the nickname "Squeaky" because she often squeaked when Spahn pinched her thigh.Charles Watson, a small-town Texan who had quit college and moved to California, soon joined the group at the ranch. He met Manson at Wilson's house; Watson had given Wilson a ride while Wilson was hitchhiking after his car was wrecked. Spahn nicknamed him "Tex" because of his pronounced Texas drawl. Manson follower Dianne Lake (just 14 when she met Manson) detailed long nights of lectures, in which Manson instructed others at the ranch to take LSD and listen to him preach about the past, present and future of humanity.  With his “family” coming together, manson began his work with Helter Skelter. The following excerpt about Helter Skelter is taken from wikipedia, Sources were double check for accuracy and we just figured this would be a quick review. We have added a few things to fill it out...so don't @ us bros ;) In the first days of November 1968, Manson established the Family at alternative headquarters in Death Valley's environs, where they occupied two unused or little-used ranches, Myers and Barker.[20][25] The former, to which the group had initially headed, was owned by the grandmother of a new woman (Catherine Gillies) in the Family. The latter was owned by an elderly local woman (Arlene Barker) to whom Manson presented himself and a male Family member as musicians in need of a place congenial to their work. When the woman agreed to let them stay if they'd fix things up, Manson honored her with one of the Beach Boys' gold records,[25] several of which he had been given by Wilson.[26]While back at Spahn Ranch, no later than December, Manson and Watson visited a Topanga Canyon acquaintance who played them the Beatles' recently released double album, The Beatles (also known as the "White Album").[20][27][28] Manson became obsessed with the group.[29] At McNeil Island prison, Manson had told fellow inmates, including Karpis, that he could surpass the group in fame;[7]:200–202, 265[30] to the Family, he spoke of the group as "the soul" and "part of the hole in the infinite".[28]For some time, Manson had been saying that racial tensions between blacks and whites were about to erupt, predicting that blacks would rise up in rebellion in America's cities.[31][32] On a bitterly cold New Year's Eve at Myers Ranch, as the Family gathered outside around a large fire, Manson explained that the social turmoil he had been predicting had also been predicted by the Beatles.[28] The White Album songs, he declared, foretold it all in code. In fact, he maintained (or would soon maintain), the album was directed at the Family, an elect group that was being instructed to preserve the worthy from the impending disaster.[31][32]In early January 1969, the Family left the desert's cold and moved to a canary-yellow home in Canoga Park, not far from the Spahn Ranch.[7]:244–247[28][33] Because this locale would allow the group to remain "submerged beneath the awareness of the outside world",[7]:244–247[34] Manson called it the Yellow Submarine, another Beatles reference. There, Family members prepared for the impending apocalypse, which around the campfire Manson had termed "Helter Skelter", after the song of that name.By February, Manson's vision was complete. The Family would create an album whose songs, as subtle as those of the Beatles, would trigger the predicted chaos. Ghastly murders of whites by blacks would be met with retaliation, and a split between racist and non-racist whites would yield whites' self-annihilation. The blacks' triumph, as it were, would merely precede their being ruled by the Family, which would ride out the conflict in "the bottomless pit", a secret city beneath Death Valley. At the Canoga Park house, while Family members worked on vehicles and pored over maps to prepare for their desert escape, they also worked on songs for their world-changing album. When they were told Melcher was to come to the house to hear the material, the women prepared a meal and cleaned the place. However, Melcher never arrived.  Crimes of the Family On May 18, 1969, Terry Melcher visited Spahn Ranch to hear Manson and the women sing. Melcher arranged a subsequent visit, not long thereafter, during which he brought a friend who possessed a mobile recording unit, but Melcher did not record the group.By June, Manson was telling the Family they might have to show blacks how to start "Helter Skelter". When Manson tasked Watson with obtaining money, supposedly intended to help the Family prepare for the conflict, Watson defrauded a black drug dealer named Bernard "Lotsapoppa" Crowe. Crowe responded with a threat to wipe out everyone at Spahn Ranch. The family countered on July 1, 1969, by shooting Crowe at Manson's Hollywood apartment.Manson's belief that he had killed Crowe was seemingly confirmed by a news report of the discovery of the dumped body of a Black Panther in Los Angeles. Although Crowe was not a member of the Black Panthers, Manson concluded he had been and expected retaliation from the Panthers. He turned Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, with night patrols of armed guards.] "If we'd needed any more proof that Helter Skelter was coming down very soon, this was it," Tex Watson would later write. "Blackie was trying to get at the chosen ones." Gary Allen Hinman The murder of Gary Hinman committed by Bobby Beausoleil forever changed the course of the now-infamous cult; at one time sold to followers as the embodiment of free love, the incident set Manson’s cult on a path for the unparalleled brutality and violence that continues to captivate the world nearly 50 years after the fact.New murder minutiaeBeausoleil provided new details about the murder that started it all as part of a two-hour Fox special “Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes" that aired in 2018. As part of the jailhouse interview, Beausoleil detailed Hinman's relationship to the Family, the circumstances around the 34-year-old musician's death, and why Beausoleil felt he "had no way out" other than going forward with his brutal act."Fear is not a rational emotion and when it sets in. Things get out of control—as they certainly did with Charlie and me," he said during the special.Hinman, a talented piano player who once played at Carnegie Hall, was described by his cousin as a "lost artistic soul,” according to People magazine—one who would wind up falling in with the wrong crowd and befriending the Manson Family. "Gary was a friend. He didn't do anything to deserve what happened to him and I am responsible for that," Beausoleil said from the California Medical Facility, a male prison, where he's serving a life sentence.According to Dianne Lake, who also participated in the TV special to discuss her time as a Manson devotee, Family members had been to Hinman's house several times before his murder. Beausoleil had purchased drugs from Hinman during the summer of 1969. He sold them to another person, who then complained about their quality, causing Beausoleil to need his money back. "Bobby was driven over there to make it right with two girls that knew Gary very well. In fact, I think he had slept with both of them: Susan Atkins and Mary Brunner," former follower Catherine "Gypsy" Share said during the special. But Hinman didn't have the money. After Beausoleil, an aspiring actor and musician, roughed Gary up a bit, they called Manson, who decided to come to the house with a samurai sword. When he arrived, Manson took the sword and made a swipe across Hinman's face from his ear down his cheek. "It was bleeding a lot," John Douglas, a retired FBI agent who later interviewed Manson, said in the special. Beausoleil asked Manson why he had cut the man's face. "He said, 'To show you how to be a man.' His exact words," Beausoleil said. "I will never forget that."According to Beausoleil, who at one time was given the nickname "Cupid" for his good looks, he tried to patch the wound up and "make things right." Hinman, however, insisted on receiving medical attention—which is when things took a fatal turn."I knew if I took him, I'd end up going to prison. Gary would tell on me, for sure, and he would tell on Charlie and everyone else," Beausoleil said in the interview "It was at that point I realized I had no way out."According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Hinman was tortured over three days before he was killed. Beausoleil, for  his part, admitted to stabbing Hinman twice in the chest. The family reportedly used Hinman’s blood to scribble the words “Political Piggy” on the wall after the murder, according to CBS News, and also included a panther paw to try and pin the slaying on the Black Panthers (Manson was known for his desire to incite a race war).Beausoleil, along with Bruce Davis, was later arrested for  the murder.The murder catapulted the Manson family into a new level of violence. Although they had been training and preparing for a supposed race war for some time at Spahn Ranch, they had now become the aggressors and instigators of violence."This is when things start getting really dire, I mean really murderous," Lake said during the Fox program. Several weeks later, Manson Family followers would go on to murder Tate, writer Wojciech Frykowski, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent, who had come to  visit the gardener on Polanski’s property. The next night, the group would break into the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and kill the couple. Beausoleil was sentenced to death for his role in Hinman’s murder, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison. In January of 2019, he was recommended for parole during his 19th appearance before a parole board, according to CNN. His attorney Jason Campbell argued that he should be released from prison because he hasn't been a danger to society in decades. "He has spent the last 50 years gradually growing and improving himself and in particular, over the last few decades, he's been pretty much a model inmate," he said.However, California Gov. Gavin Newsom later overruled the recommendation, keeping Beusoleil behind bars, the Associated Press reports.As he sat in his cell and reflected on his past crime, Beausoleil told the team behind the Fox special that he is filled with regret over the death of his one-time friend."What I've wished a thousand times is that I had faced the music,” he said. “Instead, I killed him.”Tate- Labianca murdersOn the night of August 8, 1969, Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian were sent by Charlie to the old home of Terry Melcher at 10050 Cielo Drive. Their instructions were to kill everyone at the house and make it appear like Hinman's murder, with words and symbols written in blood on the walls. As Charlie Manson had said earlier in the day after choosing the group, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter."What the group did not know was that Terry Melcher was no longer residing in the home and that it was being rented by film director Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate. Tate was two weeks away from giving birth and Polanski was delayed in London while working on his film, The Day of the Dolphin. Because Sharon was so close to giving birth, the couple arranged for friends to stay with her until Polanski could get home.After dining together at the El Coyote restaurant, Sharon Tate, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, Folger coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her lover Wojciech Frykowski, returned to the Polanski's home on Cleo Drive at around 10:30 p.m. Wojciech fell asleep on the living room couch, Abigail Folger went to her bedroom to read, and Sharon Tate and Sebring were in Sharon's bedroom talking.Steve ParentJust after midnight, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Kasabian arrived at the house. Watson climbed a telephone pole and cut the phone line going to the Polanski's house. Just as the group entered the estate grounds, they saw a car approaching. Inside the car was 18-year-old Steve Parent who had been visiting the property's caretaker, William Garreston.As Parent approached the driveway's electronic gate, he rolled down the window to reach out and push the gate's button, and Watson descended on him, yelling at him to halt. Seeing that Watson was armed with a revolver and knife, Parent began to plead for his life. Unfazed, Watson slashed at Parent, then shot him four times, killing him instantly.The Rampage InsideAfter murdering Parent, the group headed for the house. Watson told Kasabian to be on the lookout by the front gate. The other three family members entered the Polanski home. Charles "Tex" Watson went to the living room and confronted Frykowski who was asleep. Not fully awake, Frykowski asked what time it was and Watson kicked him in the head. When Frykowski asked who he was, Watson answered, "I'm the devil and I'm here to do the devil's business."Susan Atkins went to Sharon Tate's bedroom with a buck knife and ordered Tate and Sebring to go into the living room. She then went and got Abigail Folger. The four victims were told to sit on the floor. Watson tied a rope around Sebring's neck, flung it over a ceiling beam, then tied the other side around Sharon's neck. Watson then ordered them to lie on their stomachs. When Sebring voiced his concerns that Sharon was too pregnant to lay on her stomach, Watson shot him and then kicked him while he died.Knowing now that the intent of the intruders was murder, the three remaining victims began to struggle for survival. Patricia Krenwinkel attacked Abigail Folger and after being stabbed multiple times, Folger broke free and attempted to run from the house. Krenwinkel followed close behind and managed to tackle Folger out on the lawn and stabbed her repeatedly.Inside, Frykowski struggled with Susan Atkins when she attempted to tie his hands. Atkins stabbed him four times in the leg, then Watson came over and beat Frykowski over the head with his revolver. Frykowski somehow managed to escape out onto the lawn and began screaming for help.While the microbe scene was going on inside the house, all Kasabian could hear was screaming. She ran to the house just as Frykowski was escaping out the front door. According to Kasabian, she looked into the eyes of the mutilated man and horrified at what she saw, she told him that she was sorry. Minutes later, Frykowski was dead on the front lawn.Watson shot him twice, then stabbed him to death.Seeing that Krenwinkel was struggling with Folger, Watson went over and the two continued to stab Abigail mercilessly. According to killer's statements later given to the authorities, Abigail begged them to stop stabbing her saying, "I give up, you've got me", and "I'm already dead". The final victim at 10050 Cielo Drive was Sharon Tate. Knowing that her friends were likely dead, Sharon begged for the life of her baby. Unmoved, Atkins held Sharon Tate down while Watson stabbed her multiple times, killing her. Atkins then used Sharon's blood to write "Pig" on a wall. Atkins later said that Sharon Tate called out for her mother as she was being murdered and that she tasted her blood and found it "warm and sticky."According to the autopsy reports, 102 stab wounds were found on the four victims.The Labianca MurdersThe next day Manson, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Steve Grogan, Leslie Van Houten, and Linda Kasabian went to the home of Leno and Rosemary Labianca. Manson and Watson tied up the couple and Manson left. He told Van Houten and Krenwinkel to go in and kill the LaBiancas. The three separated the couple and murdered them, then had dinner and a shower and hitchhiked back to Spahn Ranch. Manson, Atkins, Grogan, and Kasabian drove around looking for other people to kill but failed.Manson and The Family ArrestedAt Spahn Ranch rumors of the group's involvement began to circulate. So did the police helicopters above the ranch, but because of an unrelated investigation. Parts of stolen cars were spotted in and around the ranch by police in the helicopters. On August 16, 1969, Manson and The Family were rounded up by police and taken in on suspicion of auto theft (not an unfamiliar charge for Manson). The search warrant ended up being invalid because of a date error and the group was released.Charlie blamed the arrests on Spahn's ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea for snitching on the family. It was no secret that Shorty wanted the family off the ranch. Manson decided it was time for the family to move to Barker Ranch near Death Valley, but before leaving, Manson, Bruce Davis, Tex Watson and Steve Grogan killed Shorty and buried his body behind the ranch.The Barker Ranch RaidThe Family moved onto the Barker Ranch and spent time turning stolen cars into dune buggies. On October 10, 1969, Barker Ranch was raided after investigators spotted stolen cars on the property and traced evidence of an arson back to Manson. Manson was not around during the first Family roundup, but returned on October 12 and was arrested with seven other family members. When police arrived Manson hid under a small bathroom cabinet but was quickly discovered.The Confession of Susan AtkinsOne of the biggest breaks in the case came when Susan Atkins boasted in detail about the murders to her prison cellmates. She gave specific details about Manson and the killings. She also told of other famous people the Family planned on killing. Her cellmate reported the information to the authorities and Atkins was offered a life sentence in return for her testimony. She refused the offer but repeated the prison cell story to the grand jury. Later Atkins recanted her grand jury testimony.Investigation and TrialOn September 1, 1969, a ten-year-old boy in Sherman Oaks discovered a .22 caliber Longhorn revolver under a bush near his home. His parents notified the LAPD, who picked up the gun, but failed to make any connection between it and the Tate murders.In October, Inyo County officers raided Barker Ranch, in a remote area south of Death Valley National Monument. Twenty-four members of the Manson Family were arrested, on charges of arson and grand theft. Cult leader Charles Manson (dressed entirely in buckskins) and Susan Atkins were among those arrested.After her arrest, Atkins was housed at Dormitory 8000 in Los Angeles. On November 6, she told another inmate, Virginia Graham, an almost unbelievable tale. She told of "a beautiful cat" named Charles Manson. She told of murder: of finding Sharon Tate, in bed with her bikini bra and underpants, of her victim's futile cries for help, of tasting Tate's blood. Atkins expressed no remorse at all over the killings. She even told Graham a list of celebrities that she and other Family members planned to kill in the future, including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Tom Jones, Steve McQueen, and Frank Sinatra. Through an inmate friend of Graham's, Ronnie Howard, word of Atkins's amazing story soon reached the LAPD.About the same time, detectives on the LaBianca case interviewed Al Springer, a member of the Straight Satan biker's group that Manson had tried to recruit into the Family. Word had leaked to police that the Straight Satans might have some knowledge about who was responsible for another recent murder with several similarities to the LaBianca killings. Springer told detectives that Manson had bragged to him in August at Spahn Ranch--after offering him his pick from among the eighteen or so "naked girls" scattered around the ranch--about "knocking off" five people. When Springer told detectives that Manson had said the Tate killers "wrote something on the...refrigerator in blood"--"something about pigs"--, the detectives knew they might be onto something. Still, it struck them as odd that anyone would confess to several murders to someone that they barely knew. It took another member of the Straight Satans, Danny DeCarlo, to move the focus of the investigation decisively to Charles Manson. DeCarlo told police he heard a Manson Family member brag, "We got five piggies," and that Manson had asked him what to use "to decompose a body."On November 18, 1969, the District Attorney and his staff selected Vincent Bugliosi to be the chief prosecutor in the Tate-LaBianca case. The choice was no doubt influenced by Bugliosi's impressive record of winning 103 convictions in 104 felony trials. The day after getting the Tate-LaBianca assignment, Bugliosi joined in a search of the Spahn Movie Ranch, where police gathered .22 caliber bullets and shell casings from a canyon used by Family members for target practice. The next day, the search party moved on to isolated Barker Ranch, the most recent home of the Family, on the edge of Death Valley. In the small house at Barker Ranch, Bugliosi saw the small cabinet under the sink where Manson was found hiding during the October raid. On an abandoned bus in a gully, investigators discovered magazines from World War II, all containing articles about Hitler.Based on Ronnie Howard's account of Susan Atkin's jailhouse confession and interviews conducted with various Manson Family members, the LAPD eventually identified the five persons who participated in the actual Tate and LaBianca murders. The suspects consisted of four women, all in their early twenties, and one man in his mid-twenties: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Linda Kasabian, and Charles "Tex" Watson. Atkins remained in custody at Dormitory 8000. Van Houten was picked up for questioning in California. Watson was arrested by a local sheriff in Texas. Patricia Krenwinkel was apprehended in Mobile, Alabama. Kasabian voluntarily surrendered to local police in Concord, New Hampshire.Knowing that convictions of at least some defendant would require testimony from one of those persons present at the murders, the D. A.'s office first reached a deal with the attorney for Susan Atkins: a promise not to seek the death penalty in return for testimony before the Grand Jury, plus consideration of a further reduction in charges for her continued cooperation during the trial. Atkins appeared before the Grand Jury on December 5. She told the grand jury she was "in love with the reflection" of Charles Manson and that there was "no limit" to what she would do for him. In an emotionless voice, she described the horrific events in the early morning hours of August 9 at the Tate residence. She told of Tate pleading for her life: "Please let me go. All I want to do is have my baby." She described the actual murders, told of returning to the car and stopping along a side street to wash off bloody clothes with a garden house, and of Manson's reaction on their return to Spahn Ranch. Atkins said that on returning to Spahn Ranch she "felt dead." She added, "I feel dead now." After twenty minutes of deliberations, the grand jury returned murder indictments against Manson, Watson, Krenwinkel, Atkins, Kasabian, and Van Houten.THE TRIALProsecutor Vincent Bugliosi talks to the press during trialWhen efforts to extradite Tex Watson from became bogged down in local Texas politics, the District Attorney's Office decided to proceed against the four persons indicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders who were in custody in California. Jury selection began on June 15, 1970 in the eighth floor courtroom of Judge Charles Older in the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles. Manson's request to ask potential jurors "a few simple, childlike questions that are real to me in my reality" was denied. During the voir dire, Manson fixed his penetrating stare for hours, first on Judge Older and then one day on Prosecutor Bugliosi. After getting Manson's stare treatment, Bugliosi took advantage of a recess to slide his chair next to Manson and ask, "What are you trembling about Charlie? Are you afraid of me?" Manson responded, "Bugliosi, you think I'm bad and I'm not." He went on to tell Manson that Atkins was "just a stupid little bitch" who told a story "to get attention." After a month of voir dire, a jury of seven men and five women was selected. The jury knew it would be sequestered for a long time, but it didn't know how long. As it turned out, their sequestration would last 225 days, longer than any previous jury in history.Opening statements began on July 24. Manson entered the courtroom sporting a freshly cut, bloody "X" on his forehead--signifying, he said in a statement, that "I have X'd myself from your world."Bugliosi, in his opening statement for the prosecution, indicated that his "principal witness" would be Linda Kasabian, a Manson Family member who accompanied the killers to both the Tate and LaBianca residences. The prosecution turned to Kasabian, with a promise of prosecutorial immunity for her testimony, when Susan Atkins--probably in response to threats from Manson--announced that she would not testify at the trial. Bugliosi promised the jury that the evidence would show Manson had a motive for the murders that was "perhaps even more bizarre than the murders themselves."On July 27, Bugliosi announced, "The People call Linda Kasabian." Manson's attorney, fabled obstructionist Irving Kanarek, immediately sprung up with an objection, "Object, Your Honor, on the grounds this witness is not competent and is insane!" Calling Kanarek to the bench and telling him his conduct was "outrageous," Judge Older denied the objection and Kasabian was sworn as a witness. She would remain on the stand for an astounding eighteen days, including seven days of cross-examination by Kanarek.Linda KasabianKasabian told the jury that no Family member ever refused an order from Charles Manson: "We always wanted to do anything and everything for him." After describing what she saw of the Tate murders, Kasabian was asked by Bugliosi about the return to Spahn Ranch:"Was there anyone in the parking area at Spahn Ranch as you drove in the Spahn Ranch area?""Yes.""Who was there?""Charlie.""Was there anyone there other than Charlie?""Not that I know of""Where was Charlie when you arrived at the premises?""About the same spot he was in when he first drove away.""What happened after you pulled the car onto the parking area and parked the car?""Sadie said she saw a spot of blood on the outside of the car when we were at the gas station.""Who was present at that time when she said that?""The four of us and Charlie.""What is the next thing that happened?""Well, Charlie told us to go into the kitchen, get a sponge, wipe the blood off, and he also instructed Katie and I to go all through the car and wipe off the blood spots.""What is the next thing that happened after Mr. Manson told you and Katie to check out the car and remove the blood?""He told us to go into the bunk room and wait, which we did."Kasabian also offered her account of the night of the LaBianca murders. She testified that she didn't want to go, but went anyway "because Charlie asked me and I was afraid to say no."Kasabian proved a very credible witness, despite the best efforts during cross-examination of defense attorneys to make her appear a spaced-out hippie. After admitting that she took LSD about fifty times, Kasabian was asked by Kanarek, "Describe what happened on trip number 23." Other defense questions explored her beliefs in ESP and witchcraft or focused on the "vibrations" she claimed to receive from Manson.A major distraction from Kasabian's testimony came on August 3, when Manson stood before the jury and held up a copy of the Los Angeles Times with the headline, "MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES." The defense moved for a mistrial on the grounds that the headline prejudiced the jury against the defense, but Judge Older denied the motion after each juror stated under oath that he or she would not be influenced by the President's reported declaration of guilt.Testimony corroborating that of Kasabian came from several other prosecution witnesses, most notably the woman Atkins confided in at Dormitory 8000, Virginia Graham. Other witnesses described receiving threats from Manson, evidence of Manson's total control over the lives of Family members, or conversations in which Manson had told of the coming Helter Skelter.Nineteen-year-old Paul Watkins, Manson's foremost recruiter of young women, provided key testimony about the strange motive for the Tate-LaBianca murders--including its link to the Bible's Book of Revelation. Watkins testified that Manson discussed Helter Skelter "constantly." Bugliosi asked Watkins how Helter Skelter would start:"There would be some atrocious murders; that some of the spades from Watts would come up into the Bel-Air and Beverly Hills district and just really wipe some people out, just cut bodies up and smear blood and write things on the wall in blood, and cut little boys up and make parents watch. So, in retaliation-this would scare; in other words, all the other white people would be afraid that this would happen to them, so out of their fear they would go into the ghetto and just start shooting black people like crazy. But all they would shoot would be the garbage man and Uncle Toms, and all the ones that were with Whitey in the first place. And underneath it all, the Black Muslims would-he would know that it was coming down.""Helter Skelter was coming down?""Yes. So, after Whitey goes in the ghettoes and shoots all the Uncle Toms, then the Black Muslims come out and appeal to the people by saying, 'Look what you have done to my people.' And this would split Whitey down the middle, between all the hippies and the liberals and all the up-tight piggies. This would split them in the middle and a big civil war would start and really split them up in all these different factions, and they would just kill each other off in the meantime through their war. And after they killed each other off, then there would be a few of them left who supposedly won.""A few of who left?""A few white people left who supposedly won. Then the Black Muslims would come out of hiding and wipe them all out.""Wipe the white people out?""Yes. By sneaking around and slitting their throats.""Did Charlie say anything about where he and the Family would be during this Helter Skelter?""Yes. When we was [sic] in the desert the first time, Charlie used to walk around in the desert and say-you see, there are places where water would come up to the top of the ground and then it would go down and there wouldn't be no more water, and then it would come up again and go down again. He would look at that and say, 'There has got to be a hole somewhere, somewhere here, a big old lake.' And it just really got far out, that there was a hole underneath there somewhere where you could drive a speedboat across it, a big underground city. Then we started from the 'Revolution 9' song on the Beatles album which was interpreted by Charlie to mean the Revelation 9. So-""The last book of the New Testament?""Just the book of Revelation and the song would be 'Revelations 9: So, in this book it says, there is a part about, in Revelations 9, it talks of the bottomless pit. Then later on, I believe it is in 10.""Revelation 10?""Yes. It talks about there will be a city where there will be no sun and there will be no moon.""Manson spoke about this?""Yes, many times. That there would be a city of gold, but there would be no life, and there would be a tree there that bears twelve different kinds of fruit that changed every month. And this was interpreted to mean-this was the hole down under Death Valley.""Did he talk about the twelve tribes of Israel?""Yes. That was in there, too. It was supposed to get back to the 144,000 people. The Family was to grow to this number.""The twelve tribes of Israel being 144,000 people?""Yes.""And Manson said that the Family would eventually increase to 144,000 people?""Yes.""Did he say when this would take place?""Oh, yes. See, it was all happening simultaneously. In other words, as we are making the music and it is drawing all the young love to the desert, the Family increases in ranks, and at the same time this sets off Helter Skelter. So then the Family finds the hole in the meantime and gets down in the hole and lives there until the whole thing comes down.""Until Helter Skelter comes down?""Yes.""Did he say who would win this Helter Skelter?""The karma would have completely reversed, meaning that the black men would be on top and the white race would be wiped out; there would be none except for the Family.""Except for Manson and the Family?""Yes.""Did he say what the black man would do once he was all by himself?""Well, according to Charlie, he would clean up the mess, just like he always has done. He is supposed to be the servant, see. He will clean up the mess that he made, that the white man made, and build the world back up a little bit, build the cities back up, but then he wouldn't know what to do with it, he couldn't handle it.""Blackie couldn't handle it?""Yes, and this is when the Family would come out of the hole, and being that he would have completed the white man's karma, then he would no longer have this vicious want to kill.""When you say 'he,' you mean Blackie?""Blackie then would come to Charlie and say, you know, 'I did my thing, I killed them all and, you know, I am tired of killing now. It is all over.' And Charlie would scratch his fuzzy head and kick him in the butt and tell him to go pick the cotton and go be a good nigger, and he would live happily ever after."On November 16, 1970, after twenty-two weeks of testimony, the prosecution rested its case.Irving Kanarek, Manson's defense attorneyWhen the trial resumed three days later, the defense startled courtroom spectators and the prosecution by announcing, without calling a single witness, "The defense rests." Suddenly, the three female defendants began shouting that they wanted to testify. In chambers, attorneys for the women explained that although their clients wanted to testify, they were strongly opposed, believing that they would--still under the powerful influence of Manson--testify that they planned and committed the murders without Manson's help. Returning to the courtroom, Judge Older declared that the right to testify took precedence and said that the defendants could testify over the objections of their counsel. Atkins was then sworn as a witness, but her attorney, Daye Shinn, refused to question her. Returning to chambers, one defense attorney complained that questioning their clients on the stand would be like "aiding and abetting a suicide."The next day came another surprise. Charles Manson announced that he, too, wished to testify--before his co-defendants did. He testified first without the jury being present, so that potentially excludable testimony relating to evidence incriminating co-defendants might be identified before it prejudiced the jury. His over one-hour of testimony, full of digressions, fascinated observers:"I never went to school, so I never growed up to read and write too good, so I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, and I have stayed a child while I have watched your world grow up, and then I look at the things that you do and I don't understand. . . ."You eat meat and you kill things that are better than you are, and then you say how bad, and even killers, your children are. You made your children what they are. . . ."These children that come at you with knives. they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up. . ."Most of the people at the ranch that you call the Family were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road, that their parents had kicked out, that did not want to go to Juvenile Hall. So I did the best I could and I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this: that in love there is no wrong. . . ."I told them that anything they do for their brothers and sisters is good if they do it with a good thought. . . ."I don't understand you, but I don't try. I don't try to judge nobody. I know that the only person I can judge is me . . . But I know this: that in your hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam war as I am for killing these people. . . ."I can't judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in."I can't dislike you, but I will say this to you: you haven't got long before you are all going to kill yourselves, because you are all crazy. And you can project it back at me . . . but I am only what lives inside each and everyone of you."My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system. . . I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you."I have ate out of your garbage cans to stay out of jail. I have wore your second-hand clothes. . . I have done my best to get along in your world and now you want to kill me, and I look at you, and then I say to myself, You want to kill me? Ha! I'm already dead, have been all my life. I've spent twenty-three years in tombs that you built."Sometimes I think about giving it back to you; sometimes I think about just jumping on you and letting you shoot me . . . If I could, I would jerk this microphone off and beat your brains out with it, because that is what you deserve, that is what you deserve. . . ."These children [indicating the female defendants] were finding themselves. What they did, if they did whatever they did, is up to them. They will have to explain that to you. . . ."You expect to break me? Impossible! You broke me years ago. You killed me years ago. . . ."Mr. Bugliosi is a hard-driving prosecutor, polished education, a master of words, semantics. He is a genius. He has got everything that every lawyer would want to have except one thing: a case. He doesn't have a case. Were I allowed to defend myself, I could have proven this to you. . .The evidence in this case is a gun. There was a gun that laid around the ranch. It belonged to everybody. Anybody could have picked that gun up and done anything they wanted to do with it. I don't deny having that gun. That gun has been in my possession many times. Like the rope was there because you need rope on a ranch. . . .It is really convenient that Mr. Baggot found those clothes. I imagine he got a little taste of money for that. . . .They put the hideous bodies on [photographic] display and they imply: If he gets out, see what will happen to you. . . .[Helter Skelter] means confusion, literally. It doesn't mean any war with anyone. It doesn't mean that some people are going to kill other people. . . Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down around you fast. If you can't see the confusion coming down around you fast, you can call it what you wish. . Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment because the establishment is rapidly destroying things? Is that a conspiracy? The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music. . . It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says "Rise," it says "Kill." Why blame it on me? I didn't write the music. . . ."I haven't got any guilt about anything because I have never been able to see any wrong. . . I have always said: Do what your love tells you, and I do what my love tells me . . . Is it my fault that your children do what you do? What about your children? You say there are just a few? There are many, many more, coming in the same direction. They are running in the streets-and they are coming right at you!"At the conclusion of Bugliosi's brief cross-examination of Manson, Older asked Manson if he now wished to testify before the jury. He replied, "I have already relieved all the pressure I had." Manson left the stand. As he walked by the counsel table, he told his three co-defendants, "You don't have to testify now."There remained one last frightening surprise of the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. When the trial resumed on November 30 following Manson's testimony, Ronald Hughes, defense attorney for Leslie Van Houten failed to show. A subsequent investigation revealed he had disappeared over the weekend while camping in the remote Sespe Hot Springs area northwest of Los Angeles. It is widely believed that Hughes was ordered murdered by Manson for his determination to pursue a defense strategy at odds with that favored by Manson. Hughes had made clear his hope to show that Van Houten was not acting independently--as Manson suggested--but was completely controlled in her actions by Manson.Manson's defense attorney, Irving Kanarek, argued to the jury that the female defendants committed the Tate and LaBianca murders out of a love of the crimes' true mastermind, the absent Tex Watson. Kanarek suggested that Manson was being persecuted because of his "life style." He argued that the prosecution's theory of a motive was fanciful. His argument lasted seven days, prompting Judge Older to call it "no longer an argument but a filibuster."Bugliosi's powerful summation described Charles Manson as "the Mephistophelean guru" who "sent out from the fires of hell at Spahn Ranch three heartless, bloodthirsty robots and--unfortunately for him--one human being, the little hippie girl Linda Kasabian." Bugliosi ended his summation with "a roll call of the dead": "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Sharon Tate...Abigail Folger...Voytek Frykowski...Jay Sebring...Steven Parent...Leno LaBianca...Rosemary LaBianca...are not here with us in this courtroom, but from their graves they cry out for justice."The jury deliberated a week before returning its verdict on January 25, 1971. The jury found all defendants guilty on each count of first-degree murder. After hearing additional evidence in the penalty phase of the trial, the jury completed its work by sentencing each of the four defendants to death on March 29. As the clerk read the verdict, Manson shouted, "You people have no authority over me." Patricia Krenwinkel declared, "You have judged yourselves." Susan Atkins said, "Better lock your doors and watch your own kids." Leslie Van Houten complained, "The whole system is a game." The trial was over. At over nine-months, it had been the longest and and most expensive in American history.TRIAL AFTERMATHManson at his 1992 parole hearingThe death sentences imposed by the Tate-LaBianca jury would never be imposed, thanks to a California Supreme Court ruling in 1972 declaring the state's death penalty law unconstitutional. The death sentences for the four convicted defendants, as well as for Tex Watson who had been convicted and sentenced to death in a separate trial in 1971, were commuted to life in prison. Patricia Krenwinkel, now 72, became California’s longest-serving female inmate. According to state prison officials, Krenwinkel is a model inmate involved in rehabilitative programs at the prison. She will be eligible to apply for parole again in 2022. Patricia Krenwinkel, now 70, is serving her life sentence at the California Institution for Women in Corona, prison officials say, and has been disciplinary-free her entire sentence. She is still considered to present an unreasonable threat to society. Charles “Tex” Watson, now 74, is housed at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County near the Mexican border, where he walks the track “sharing my faith, relating to many men”, according to the ministry’s website. He has been denied parole 17 times. A state panel in 2016 once again found him unsuitable for release from prison for at least five more years. In prison, Watson married, divorced, fathered four children and became an ordained minister. Susan Atkins, dubbed “the scariest of all the girls” by a former prosecutor, died in prison in 2009 at age 61Charles Manson was incarcerated in a maximum security section of a state penitentiary in Concoran, California. He has been denied parole twelve times, most recently in 2012. His next parole hearing was scheduled for 2027. In prison, he had assaulted prison staff a half dozen times. A search of the prison chapel where Manson took a job in 1980 revealed his hidden cache including marijuana, one hundred feet of nylon rope, and a mail-order catalog for hot air balloons. In 1986, he published his story, Manson in His Own Words. In his book, Manson claims: "My eyes are cameras. My mind is tuned to more television channels than exist in your world. And it suffers no censorship. Through it, I have a world and the universe as my own."All three female defendants have expressed remorse for their crimes, been exemplary inmates, and offered their time for charity work. Yet none has been released by the California Parole Board, even though each of them was young and clearly under Manson's powerful influence at the time of their crimes. There is no question that but for their unfortunate connection with Charles Manson, none would have committed murder. It is sad, but undoubtedly true, that parole boards are political bodies that base decisions as much upon anticipated public reaction to their decisions as on a careful review of a parole applicant's prison record and statements.In November 2014, the California Department of Corrections announced that it had received a request for a marriage license from their famous eighty-year-old prisoner. Manson's bride-to-be was Afton Elaine Burton, nicknamed “Star” a twenty-six-year old woman who had worked for Manson's release. Turns out that the few short years before Manson’s death, “Star” Burton was actually planning to secure the legal rights to his corpse — in order to display it for curious observers in a glass crypt for profit. He never did marry her OR give his consent to display his remains.Instead of tying the knot and while stringing Star along, He was busy “making little dolls, but they were like voodoo dolls of people and he would stick needles in them, hoping to injure the live person the doll was fashioned after,” said former L.A. County prosecutor Stephen Kay who helped convict Manson in 1970. “He said his main activity was making those dolls.” The end came for Charles Manson on Sunday, November 19th, 2017 at 8:13pm, at the age of 83.  The official cause of death was “acute cardiac arrest,” “respiratory failure” and “metastatic colon cancer.” Upon his death newspapers across the country seemed to have cheered over Manson’s passing. For instance, the New York Daily News published a front cover spread that read, “BURN IN HELL, Bloodthirsty cult leader Manson dies at 83.” Others followed suit with brazen titles such as “EVIL DEAD. Make room, Satan, Charles Manson is finally going to hell” – New York Post.Four months after

Scott interviews Tana Ganeva about her recent article detailing the death of a woman due to medical neglect in one of America’s worst private jails. Holly Barlow-Austin, an HIV patient, was detained for violating probation starting in April, and within a few short months of brutal neglect, had died. Ganeva hopes to bring attention to this story and others like it through her reporting on private prisons and corrupt police departments. Discussed on the show: “In April, She Was Jailed on a Probation Violation. By June, She Was Dead.” (Reason) Tana Ganeva is a reporter covering criminal justice, drug policy, immigration, and politics. Follow her on Twitter @TanaGaneva. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com. Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

Scott interviews Tana Ganeva about her recent article detailing the death of a woman due to medical neglect in one of America’s worst private jails. Holly Barlow-Austin, an HIV patient, was detained for violating probation starting in April, and within a few short months of brutal neglect, had died. Ganeva hopes to bring attention to this story and others like it through her reporting on private prisons and corrupt police departments. Discussed on the show: “In April, She Was Jailed on a Probation Violation. By June, She Was Dead.” (Reason) Tana Ganeva is a reporter covering criminal justice, drug policy, immigration, and politics. Follow her on Twitter @TanaGaneva. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com. Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3o5ggyltFg

Now that we’ve taken you through Hulegu’s campaigns during Mongke’s reign, it’s time we cut back east to Mongke himself, and the Mongol invasion of the Song Dynasty, the great and immensely wealthy masters of southern China. Among the largest and most thoroughly planned of Mongol campaigns, it was one cut suddenly short with drastic consequences for the Mongol Empire. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Planning a war against the Song Dynasty was no easy task. All of Mongke’s actions of his reign from 1251-1258 can be understood as him making preparations for it: cataloguing the resources and manpower of the empire, strengthening the central government and securing his various flanks. Mongke had valuable experience to use to determine his strategy; since 1234, the Mongols had fought rounds of inconclusive warfare with the Song; penetrating deep into the Dynasty’s territory, routinely defeating armies and taking cities, yet never able to make substantial gains and frustrated by Song tenacity, all in an environment almost tailor made to hampher cavalry armies.   To understand the war with the Song, it’s  necessary to introduce the Dynasty and its ruling house of Zhao- but what a task that is! In its 300 year history the Song were among the most complex and fascinating of all of China’s imperial dynasties, a period when Chinese culture reached staggering new heights. To summarize it with any accuracy requires an entire podcast series to do so-  the Cambridge History of China managed to get it down to two volumes totalling over 2,000 pages. The Song emperors oversaw a period of amazing economic, technological, agricultural and cultural achievements. Urbanization increased; the southern Song capital of Linan, modern Hangzhou, had a population in the 13th century conservatively estimated at 1.5 million. Paper money, a massive expansion and improvement of farming and rice cultivation, foreign and overseas trade, gunpowder, porcelain… the list goes on and on for either innovations or improvements the Song undertook. The wealth of the Song was immense, and it is rightly considered a Golden Age.    The Song were a dominant force in China since the 960s, emerging in the decades after the fall of the powerful Tang Dynasty, a period of disunity called the 10 Kingdoms and 5 Dynasties.  Through great effort the Song swallowed up the other kingdoms of southern China and marched up into the north China plain, where they butted heads with the Khitan ruled Liao Dynasty. Rounds of warfare followed for the remainder of the 10th century, but a pattern which became all too routine emerged. The northern, largely cavalry based armies could outmaneuver and often annihilate the Song armies, whose offensive performance was poor even at their height. Yet the Khitans were frustrated by the defensive ability of the Song, and were unable to hold gains made against them- particularly when a giant Song crossbow speared the Khitan leader in 1005. Weeks later, the Song and Liao came to terms for the infamous Chanyuan Treaty, marking their borders and requiring the Song deliver a massive annual tribute of silk and silver to the Liao.   Part of the reason for the often criticized poor offensive military performance of the Song goes back to its founder, Zhao Kuangyin (kuang-yin), Taizu of Song. Zhao was a military man, as was his father and grandfather. Zhao owed much of his rise to the military- and also blamed it for the dissolution of the Tang Dynasty. Often, new Chinese dynasties structure themselves on what they perceived to be a key weakness of the preceding dynasty. To Zhao Kuangyin, the breakup of the Tang Dynasty came from military leaders and generals who grew too powerful, ignoring the imperial court to seek their own power, such as An Lushan in the 8th century. To Zhao, internal stability of the dynasty could only be secured with the military on a tight leash. Soon after consolidating power, the military leaders who had helped Zhao rise were eased into retirement and the army placed under permanent civilian command, the Bureau of Military Affairs. While often lambasted by later commentators, especially in the Youtube comments section, it wasn’t a horrible idea. The Song Dynasty was never beset by warlords seeking independence and still succeeded in seizing most of China. The fact the dynasty went up against some of the fiercest military powers of the medieval world could not have been predicted.   While an uneasy status quo was reached with the Khitans, in the early 12th century a major upheaval arose in the form of the Jurchen and the Jin Dynasty. In a few short years the Jin crushed the Liao; the Song allied with the Jin in an effort to seize Chinese territory and failed miserably. The alliance between Jin and Song hardly outlived the Liao Dynasty. In 1125 the Jurchens’ fearsome heavy cavalry tore through the Song; by the end of the 1120s the Song capital of Kaifeng was taken, the Song Emperor Qinzong,  whose father who had recently abdicated,  and most of the imperial family and court, were all captured. Northern China was taken,  the Song Dynasty was in turmoil and nearly collapsed. The ninth son of the abdicated emperor managed to flee south, and recentre the Dynasty around Linan, modern Hangzhou, a coastal city at the mouth of the Yangzi River. This much reduced dynasty is usually termed ‘the Southern Song,’ to distinguish from the ‘Northern,’ when it ruled most of China. Over the 1130s leadership issues among the Jurchen, difficulties campaigning in south China and renewed defensive vigour by the Song halted Jin expansion, and a treaty in 1141 marked the Huai River as the boundary between Jin and Song. The Treaty of Shaoxing reimposed similar annual tribute demands as that of the Chanyuan treaty, thousands upon thousands of taels of silver and bushels of silk to be delivered to the Jin, and the Song had to recognize the Jin Emperor as the Son of Heaven- traditionally reserved for only a single ruler of China. The treaty was a humiliation and economic burden, on top of having to lose northern China. The peace was tense, and every few decades war resumed between Jin and Song, with neither able to make gains beyond the Huai.    Relations were somewhat cordial from the 1160s to the end of the 1180s, during the long and stable reigns of Shizong of Jin and Xiaozong of Song, something of a golden age for both states, though neither abandoned their territorial claims. Their successors were not nearly as capable and lacked the will, ability or the interest to direct forces within their courts. In the early 1200s, as the Jin were distracted by the northern steppes and ecological disasters, Song revanchism reached a new height. Seeking to take advantage of perceived Jin weakness, the Song launched a surprise invasion in 1206:  before the end of the year, the Song were sending peace overtures to the Jin. Song forces were largely repulsed, the top military commander in Sichuan defected to the Jin, and the Jin counter attacked with a massive, nine pronged assault along the entirety of their 2000 kilometre long border. Despite this massive expenditure of manpower, the Jin made no gains, Peace was reached by 1208, the Song providing an increased annual tribute of 300,000 ounces of silver and bolts of silk, and heads of the ministers seen as responsible for promoting the war. Humiliating as it was, the Song at least did not have to make territorial concessions.    Perhaps the greatest consequence of that brief round of warfare was that it distracted the Jin and occupied its considerable resources from the trouble brewing on their northern frontier; the unification of the Mongol tribes under Chinggis Khan. In 1211, Chinggis Khan invaded the Jin Empire, as covered far back in episode seven. The initial Song reaction was somewhat mixed; no tears were shed in Linan for the suffering of the Jin, but whether this was something the Song should take advantage of was another matter. Either way, in the aftermath of the peace in 1208, for the next 25 years the Song court was largely dominated by the Chancellor Shih Mi-yuan, a man who urged stability and moderation rather than progress or reform. No risky military escapades would be undertaken on his watch.    The Song were unable to provide their annual tribute due to the fighting from 1211-1214. Many voices in the court loudly argued against continuing it all, for what was the use in sending it to a dying dynasty? Demonstrating his often indecisive policy making, Chancellor Shih Mi-Yuan did not actually stop the tribute, but held the allotted tribute in storage. He may have secretly resumed it in 1214, hoping to keep the peace with the Jin while avoiding angering more voices in the capital. The fact that even the Tangut and Korea had halted their payments to the Jin was not lost on Shih Mi-Yuan’s detractors. Neither was this appeasement even successful, for in spring 1217 the beleaguered Jurchen, having lost most of the northern half of their empire to the Mongols, attacked the Song. The intention was to restore both some dignity to the dynasty, and further space for the Jin court to flee from the Mongols if necessary. The result was not what they anticipated. Shih Mi-Yuan, while openly favouring the status quo and not mobilizing armies, had also ordered border defences improved and gave regional commanders greater autonomy with little interference from the central government. Song defensive forces responded quickly, and Jin offensives were not just actively repulsed, but in some cases led to successful Song campaigns into Jurchen territory. For the Jin it was a great shock, a blow to morale and resources at a time where they had little enough of either to spare. The Song and Shih Mi-yuan in particular had a new confidence against the Jin, spurning their envoys and in 1219, cutting off all diplomatic contacts with them.   About this time, in 1221, the Song sent their first diplomatic mission to the Mongols, notable in that it was recorded in a written account still accessible today, the Mengda beilu. The initial Song perceptions of the Mongols, as described in an excellent article by historian Chad Garcia, presents the Mongols as a ‘different kind of northerner.’ Contrasting them to the deceitful and malicious Jurchen of the Jin Dynasty, the Mongols are something of “noble savages;” honest, straightforward, physically strong if not attractive. Chinggis Khan is described in heroic characteristics fitting the archetypal Chinese emperor, with a large, broad forehead and long beard. No mention is made of them as especially terrifying or cruel.   As we’ve mentioned no shortage of times in the past, the absence of Chinggis Khan in the west against the Khwarezmian Empire and death of Mukhali, the commander in the Chinese theater in 1223, resulted in a great reduction of Mongol pressure on the region. The deaths of the Tangut, Jin and Song rulers over the following years allowed new voices to come to the fore. This is dealt with more fully in episode 14 of this series, but the result was a general ceasefire between them. While a brief respite, it was no more than a breath before the plunge; episode 14 also details the destruction of the Jin Empire in the early 1230s during the reign of Chinggis’ son and successor, Ogedai. Song Chancellor Shih Mi-yuan sought to stay out of the conflict and maintain Song neutrality- though the Mongols penetrated the Song border and raided in order to outmaneuver Jin forces, while also demanding an alliance against them. There was a minority of voices within the dynasty warning of the danger of the Mongols. Once the Jin no longer stood as a buffer between them, what then? Shih Mi-yuan may have been mindful of this, but was dead by autumn 1233. In the weeks before his death, as age reduced his presence in the court, the Song had agreed to assist the Mongols in the final attack on the Jin, reduced to a strip of  land along the Song northern border. The Mongols needed to ensure the Jin emperor, Aizong of Jin, could not flee into Song territory. In return for this aid, the Song were given vague promises of land to be restored.   In the first months of 1234 the Jurchen Jin Dynasty was destroyed, its last emperor killed fighting in the streets. Yet, the promises of land did not materialize; Kaifeng, once the capital of the Song Dynasty, still remained in Mongol hands. Angry and belligerent voices, particularly among those who had only fought rebels with no experience of the Mongol way of war, were particularly loud in their complaints on the matter. Seeking to restore what was ‘rightfully theirs,’ and anticipating the local Han Chinese population would gladly rise up to join them, several Song armies marched over the Huai river in the middle of 1234… and promptly found a desolated, war torn landscape, a population unable to feed these armies let alone take up arms. The Song armies began a disorganized retreat, which turned into a rout when Mongol forces returned. Foolishly, the Song had just begun a 45 year long war.   Ogedai Khaan sent armies under his sons Kochu and Koten to lead raid the Song. Generally, these were in two regions: along the central frontier on the Huai River, and more westerly in Sichuan. Sichuan, where we’ll spend much of the rest of the episode, was, before the permanent incorporation of Tibet, Xinjiang and Gansu, the westernmost part of China. Roughly a bowl surrounded by mountains cutting it off from the rest of China, the Sichuan basin juts up against the eastern reaches of Tibet. Fertile, is one of the most densely populated regions of China, the Yangzi river which flows through it providing ample moisture for rich cultivation of rice, and a route to connect with the rest of southern China. Hot, humid and famous for its thickly forested mountain slopes, Sichuan saw more than its share of it fighting in the coming decades.   In both 1235 and 1236, attacks were led upon the central border and Sichuan; Koten led a particularly large, multi-ethnic force into Sichuan in 1236. The damage was immense. By the end of the year, only 4 of Sichuan’s 58 prefectural capitals still stood and Chengdu, the regional capital, was taken. The sudden successes were soured with the death of Kochu in November 1236 and retreat of most of the forces. Attacks in the rest of the 1230s were repulsed, often by the star Song general of the period, Meng Gong.  Whether the Mongols actually wanted to fight the Song at the time is unclear- certainly in 1234, they were not planning on it. In 1238, they sent envoys to the Song for a ceasefire, which the Song rashly brushed off. Deliberately they were choosing not to hold cities. In 1241 Hanchou fell to a general massacre, followed by a sudden Mongol withdrawal. Such actions may have been a reaction to a necessity of fighting against the Southern Song. The Song had no lack of manpower to fall upon, and the trouble with any rapid assault was that it would need to be able to reliably hold onto any territory taken. Mongols could rapidly penetrate the border defenses, but the threat of being surrounded was quite real. At the very least, without sizable garrisons any city could be quickly retaken by Song forces when the Mongols moved on. The generally hot, humid weather of southern China strained the Mongols and their horses, disease spreading quickly among troops unused to the climate. The general preponderance of rivers, mountains and forest made large cavalry operations difficult to effectively operate. On top of all of this, while the Song are often derided for some sort of innate military ineffectiveness, the most pressing issue was the fierceness of the Song defenders. Resistance was strong, and it was not unusual for the Mongols to find a campaign suddenly held up by valiant defenders in one city, locking at least a portion of the Mongol army in place for months and, in some cases, years.   By the time of Ogedai’s death at the end of 1241, no major gains had been made, though the Song had suffered a good mauling. Little effort was made over the remainders of the 1240s, the Mongols dealing with the political issues relating to the regencies and short reign of Guyuk Khan. Diplomatic discussions took place in 1247, which went nowhere. The Song could in the meantime prepare border defences, repair walls and mobilize men, though at great cost. Printing yet more paper money to solve inflation did not, it turns out, do so. Taxes made it back to the capital in smaller and smaller amounts as regional governors and commanders seized them to pay for the war effort. Sichuan suffered so terribly that it apparently provided no revenue to the capital after 1234. For the Song, the yearly cost to simply keep their armies mobilized was immense. Drought, flooding, epidemics, fires and locusts struck often over the 1240s-50s, another layer of cost which, through augmenting the destruction of farmland from Mongol attacks, further strained government resources. An ever growing bureaucracy brought more corruption, more cost and more issues. The emperors of the thirteenth century showed less and less interest in governing, leaving an ever-more divided imperial court to run things. After the death of Shih Mi-yuan and the last of his followers in 1251, the Song court was hamstrung by fighting between eunuchs and bureaucrats vying for power. Despite their vast wealth, they were under immense pressure threatening to collapse the dynasty, just as Mongke Khaan prepared to hurl the weight of the Mongol Empire upon it.   Mongke knew the assault on the Song was an immense task. In 1252, sending his brother Hulegu to the far west to subdue the rest of the Islamic world, Mongke ordered his other brother Kublai to take another army against the Song. Rather than throw men at the well defended Song northern borders- a strategy so far ineffective- Mongke sent Kublai to subdue the independent kingdoms along the Song’s southwestern border in what is now China’s Yunnan province, where Song defences were much weaker.   Kublai had not yet commanded armies in person before this campaign, so Mongke provided him a guiding figure: Uriyangqadai, the son of the mighty Subutai. Setting out in late 1253 from forward bases in Gansu, the former territory of the Tangut, Kublai’s army marched in three columns; an eastern column under the Chinese defector Weng Dezhen, which marched through Sichuan, the main army under Kublai and the western column under Uriyangqadai, both marching hrough the eastern edges of Tibet. Tibet’s conquest by the Mongols is a bit of a shadowy thing, difficult to reconstruct due to only brief mentions in the sources. By the early 1250s, most of the Tibetan tribes were subdued or paying tribute to the Mongols, who had sent repeated armies into the region over the previous two decades. By the mid-1250s, Tibet was largely under Mongol authority, though it would need to be reimposed and strengthened later in the century.    Cutting through the mountains of Tibet, Kublai’s army fell upon the hills of Yunnan and the Kingdom of Dali. Founded in the 10th century, Dali controlled the valuable trade between the Song Dynasty and the kingdoms of  Guizhou, Tibet, Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Relations with the Song were amicable, and Dali became the Song’s major supplier of horses with the loss of Northern China; but Dali was independent and somewhat isolated from the affairs of the Chinese. Central authority of the Dali kings had declined by the thirteenth century, their actual rule hardly extending beyond their capital, also called Dali. By the time of Kublai’s invasion in 1253, the Dali King was puppet for his chief minister, who had ordered the deaths of Mongol envoys. Dali’s army would be no match for the Mongol forces, even under an inexperienced commander like Kublai. Crossing a river on sheepskin rafts, Kublai’s army surprised and destroyed the main Dali army under the Chief Minister, who fled back to the capital. In the last days of 1253, Kublai’s three armies converged on Dali City. In Chinese sources, Kublai’s confucian teacher Yao Shu convinced Kublai to spare the city’s inhabitants, and in January 1254 Dali submitted to the Mongols. The victorious Kublai returned back to north China, where he was appointed administrator and got up to other problems, as detailed in episode 23.  Uriyangqadai was left to subdue the remaining local powers and prepare for the great assault on the Song, as well as recruit locals to serve in the army. He moved against the independent kingdoms of China’s modern Guizhou province, the intermediate area between Song and Dali. He returned briefly to Gansu in early 1257, but in his absence revolt broke out in Dali, bringing Uriyangqadai back into the region. His efforts eventually led him to ride into northern Vietnam, Dai Viet, called Annam in Chinese sources. His envoys were killed, and Uriyangqadai attacked the capital, Thang-long, modern day Hanoi. Thang-long was greatly damaged, the king forced to flee to an offshore island, and send a son as royal hostage to the Mongols as well as tribute. Dai Viet was now vassal of the Mongol Emperor.   Though the Yunnan-Guizhou region would not be fully pacified until the 1280s, it was secure enough to act as a staging ground for the assault on Song. With affairs in order and resources from across the empire pooled, Mongke felt confident to launch the final war on the Song. The total force was immense: as many as 600,000 in some sources to attack Song from several directions. Mongke gathered his forces in the Liupan mountains in 1258, not far from where his grandfather, Chinggis Khan, had died some thirty years prior. Mongke was to take his force against Sichuan; a second army under his cousin Taghachar, was to strike east from the Liupanshan to the Song metropolis of Xiangyang, which controlled access to the vital Song river routes; Kublai was to take a third force from north China to the central regions of the Yangzi river, focusing on the city of O-zhou, today’s Wuhan. The fourth army was under Uriyangqadai, who from Yunnan would hammer the Song from the west and link up with Kublai and Taghachar along the Yangzi.   The idea was twofold. By striking the Song along so many frontiers, they would be unable to converge against a single army, while the Song empire could be split in half. With the capital and administration based on the far eastern edge of the Song realm, the Mongols could isolate it and perhaps drive a mammoth wave of refugees to it.    In the Autumn of 1258, Mongke’s host descended upon Sichuan. 100,000 troops had recently been sent by the Song to reinforce it, but frustratingly little else had been done by the central government to help repair fortifications of that western region. During the march on Dali some five years prior, much of Sichuan was occupied, but the major population centres stood defiant. The Grand Khan himself was now taking the field against them. Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, a population of almost one million, quickly fell and it’s plain was soon in Mongol hands.  Initial successes were significant, but as 1258 turned to 1259, Mongke found himself bogged down in sieges in eastern Sichuan. Outside of the plain of Sichuan, the province turns to rugged mountains and valleys. Recently constructed mountain tops fortresses proved difficult to take; Chongqing, one of the major cities along the Yangzi in the region, was turned into a network of fortresses. Defenders fought tooth and nail, knowing defeat meant slaughter for them and their families. Mongke’s problems grew as he sought to take Ho-chou. For five months, the city resisted his efforts,  heavy losses frustrating him. By June, rain became incessant. Humidity and the climate proved an effective weapon. Disease spread rapidly among the Mongols and their horses. Even troops levied from northern China were unused to it, and progress halted. Mongke fought the rest of the summer in the hills around Ho-chou, trying to keep up the army’s momentum. Precisely how things went in August is not agreed upon in the sources. Mongke seems to have been drinking heavily, perhaps recognizing the water spread foul diseases to his men. His judgement and reflex may have been impaired, perhaps his own fortitude suffering. The sources speak of an arrow from the defenders of a local fort, or a projectile launched from a catapult. Others, of cholera or dysentery brought on by the conditions. No matter what it was, on the 11th of August, 1259, Mongke Khaan was dead.   His army ground to a halt. Messages were sent to the other armies, and Mongke’s son Asutai quickly took his father’s body back to Mongolia for burial. According to Marco Polo, the army killed everyone they came across as they hauled his corpse. News spread quickly, the Song found new heart: the great Khaghan was dead! Taghachar Noyan’s army had already floundered outside the walls of Xiangyang. Kublai, delayed by his severe gout, had not yet even crossed the Yangzi River when he learned the news of his brother’s demise. Only Uriyangqadai had made progress, perhaps due to a greater number of locally raised troops from Dali suited to the climate. From Dali or Dai Viet, he had marched through the modern provinces of Guangxi and Hunan to reach Kublai on the Yangzi, allegedly fighting 13 battles, killing 400,000 Song soldiers and capturing several major generals.    On learning of Mongke’s death, Kublai continued to campaign for another two months, initially dismissing it simply as a rumour, then stating he had been ordered south by the Khaan, and it was his duty to carry out his will. Crossing the Yangzi, he succeeded in taking O-chou, modern Wuhan. Perhaps the desire to get something done on the campaign drove him, or perhaps a thought crossed his mind: he didn’t have much for a military reputation. Taking a major city like O-chou would alleviate that, and make him a better candidate for the leadership to succeed Mongke. Doubtless, he imagined it would be months before an election would be held, giving him ample time to score some victories for his resume.   Therefore, he was quite surprised when messages came from his wife, Chabi, in late November 1259, warning that Kublai’s youngest brother, Ariq Boke, was making moves to become Khaan. Ariq had been left as regent in Karakorum while his brothers were on campaign, and now looked to declare himself Khaan before the families had all assembled. For Kublai, this was an opportunity he could not afford to lose. Thus he departed Wuhuan in winter 1259, the Song, under their new chancellor Jia Sidao, warily watching the frontier and seeking to reclaim the lost territory. Little could they have predicted, but the age of the unified Mongol Empire had just ended. Providing no designated successor, Mongke’s death opened a vacuum, one which would tear every fracture within the empire to the surface.  Civil war across Eurasia was about to follow, and the Song were offered a brief respite from the Mongols.  Our next episodes look at the great civil wars of the Mongol Empire, so be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more. If you’d like to help us keep bringing you outstanding content, please consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one.

By June of 1978, the once massively popular television star Bob Crane (of Hogan's Heroes fame) was relegated to doing dinner theater in Scottsdale, Arizona. In between shows, he and hanger-on John Carpenter spent much of their time trying to pick up women, and Bob would use the latest video technology to film his sexual exploits. When Bob was discovered bludgeoned to death in his apartment on the morning of June 29th, Carpenter almost immediately became the police's primary murder suspect. My guest, John Hook, is an investigative reporter and award-winning Phoenix news anchor who in 2016 began a quest to have the cold case's remaining blood evidence tested for DNA. He writes about his investigation in his book "Who Killed Bob Crane? The Final Close-Up", and shares some of the details with me on this episode of Most Notorious. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the RANE Insight podcast series, RANE’s founder and Chief Collaborative Officer David Lawrence speaks with Jim SiscoFounder and CEO of Enodo Global, a Social Risk Advisory Firm and Dr. Frederick S. Southwick, an infectious disease expert with the University of Florida.As the United States began reopening - state - by - state - from the pandemic lockdown, the number and rate of infections increased. By June, several states had surpassed previous peak infections and they nation was experiencing 40 thousand new cases a day . By the end of the month, experts including Anthony Fauci, head of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned the number of infections could rise to 100 thousand new cases a day.How did we get here?

June 26. 2007: In June 2007 the Great European heat wave impacted most of Southern Europe. The extreme heat began affecting Italy and Turkey on June 17 and expanded into Greece and the Balkans along with Hungary and Ukraine on June 18. Up until June 21, temperatures generally topped out between 97–102 in most of the region; however, starting on June 22, temperatures wratched up even higher in the entire region. During the 3-day period from June 23 to June 25, temperatures soared to 109–111 . By June 26, 2007, Greece seemed to bear the brunt of the heatwave with temperatures in Athens reaching 115. The same day, Greece's national power consumption set a new record. Parts of Greece, including neighborhoods in Athens, suffered from power outages due to high electricity demand and heat damage to the grid. Explosions from overheating transmission towers were implicated in forest fires that started to rage across the country. There was no relief either in the night of June 26 when the mercury failed to drop below 90. More than 200 people were hospitalized for heat-related treatment and 18 people died from heat exhaustion. By June 28 northerly winds started blowing and temperatures finally began falling, but still managed to reach 102. The damage was done by the Heat Wave that climaxed on June 26 and by the time the temperatures finally started to lower more than100 fires were burning across the country.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 24, 1991: Violent thunderstorms racked across the northern plains state on the evening of June 24 1991. Hot humid conditions had held sway across a vast part of the nation’s midsection during the middle of June, while chilly air built up over Alaska and the Yukon. On June 23 that cold air was unleashed southward by a strong current in the Jetstream. As it pushed into the early summertime heat thunderstorms began to grow. By June 24, 1991 aided by moisture streaming northward from the Gulf of Mexico heavy thunderstorms erupted across the Dakotas as the cold air mass cut into the region. The warm steamy air holding near the grounds surface was enough to supply plenty of moisture – but the cold air moving in high in the atmosphere was enough to cause large hail to form and in the town of Scranton, North Dakota 3.5” of rain in 28 minutes along with 1.5-foot drifts of marble sized hail. Front-end loaders were needed to clear the streets.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we highlight presidential leadership and one of the most important civil rights speeches ever delivered by a sitting American president.By June of 1963, John F. Kennedy has been president for nearly two and a half years.While Kennedy had long privately expressed his deep moral objections to the treatment of black people in American society and indicated support for New federal legislation. His public comments ranged from cautious moderate criticism to a 1950s version of “both sides-ism” but were mostly nonexistent.In June of 1963, however the man and the moment met.Alabama Governor George Wallace’s staged photo op definance of federal law by standing in the school house doorway had lasted less than 90 minutes. On June 11th 1963 two black students were peaceful enrolled at the University of Alabama under the protection of a federalized Alabama National Guard commanded by US Marshals under the direction of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General of the United States.Kennedy’s advisors recommended and Fully expected that the president would NOT address the American people that evening. With a little less than 18 months until to the 1964 elections, the President’s legislative agenda and his political future depended upon the votes Southern Democrats in Congress and those of their politically unforgiving constituents. The President had other ideas. Kennedy saw a way to exercise moral leader on an issue where he had to that point failed. He would request Network Television airtime to address the nation on the issue of civil rights. The facts and statistics on racial inequality in the United States described by President Kennedy to the American people that evening had even never been acknowledged by a President before - much less spoken in such a detailed and direct language. In a telegram to the White House after watching the President’s remarks in Atlanta with other civil rights leaders, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. described the address as ONE OF THE MOST ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, AND UNEQUIVOCAL PLEAS FOR JUSTICE AND FREEDOM OF ALL MEN, EVER MADE BY ANY PRESIDENT.Dr King knew that Kennedy was moved by his now famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” - written just weeks before. To President Kennedy and many Americans Dr. King’s letter was more than than a spirited defense of civil disobedience. It was an indictment of white indifference.As you listen to the speech, you will hear Kennedy echoing King’s “Letter”The President rejects the idea that Black Americans should have to wait for equality. "Who among us," Kennedy asks the American people, "would then be content with counsels of patience and delay?" See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

By June 15th, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue will be ready to begin accepting applications for the $50 million in direct financial assistance for all farms in the state.  WI Ag Secretary, Randy Romanski, shares details. Joe Bragger, president of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation says this aid may be small, but welcome.  Bragger says while many farmers are looking out for their neighbors and trying to do things like donate dairy products - they themselves may be going to local food pantry's for assistance. Dr. Mark Stephenson, Center for Dairy Profitability - breaks down what Wisconsin dairy producers can expect from the Coronavirus Farm Assistance Program, or CFAP, administered through USDA Farm Service Agency offices.

Today, Kaytee and Meredith are discussing: Bookish Moments: breaking the reading “rules” and unloading read books on others Current Reads: characters and plots and murders and poetry! Deep Dive: we need your voices! And your questions! Listen up for “listener contributions” Book Presses: some large books that will keep you in great reading for a long summer week As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don’t scroll down!  *Please note that all book titles linked above are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*   . . . . . Current Reads: 5:44 - Thirteen by Steve Cavanaugh (Meredith) 6:03 - The Holdout by Graham Moore 8:10 - Good Talk by Mira Jacob (Kaytee) 8:17 - Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe, NM 10:17 - The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (Meredith) 12:02 - FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven 14:54 - From the Front Porch Episode casting this book as a movie 15:48 - The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy (Kaytee) 15:51 - Novel Pairings Episode about poetry 18:25 - The End of October by Lawrence Wright (Meredith) 21:10 - Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton 21:23 - The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (Kaytee) Deep Dive - Upcoming Listener Contributions: 26:15 - Episode 46 of Season 1 - Listener Presses 28:39 - Episode 47 of Season 1 - Ask Us Anything 30:58 - Email us at currentlyreadingpodcast@gmail.com with your presses and questions BY JUNE 15th! Books We Want to Press Into Your Hands: 32:09 - The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Meredith) 34:45 - The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (Kaytee) Connect With Us: Meredith is @meredith.reads on Instagram Kaytee is @notesonbookmarks on Instagram Mindy is @gratefulforgrace on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast.com @currentlyreadingpodcast on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast@gmail.com

June 6, 1944: One of the most important weather forecasts in world history would occur in early June 1944, as Allied meteorologists prepared to deliver the final word for the long-awaited D-Day invasion of Normandy. From the AccuWeather.com archives the reporting goes that thousands of lives and the tide of the war depended entirely on teams of Allied meteorologists who determined what constituted suitable weather conditions for the invasion in a small-time window. The Allies had decided that they wanted to go in at low tide on the landing beaches and that the airborne needed basically a full moon to have the proper dropping conditions,” Historian and Author John McManus said. High winds and rough seas could impede the amphibious assault and low clouds could block vital air support. The weather factors that would play a significant role in the invasion would be wind, visibility and cloud cover. “On the Allied side, six meteorologists working in three different teams were responsible for the D-Day forecasts,” according to a report by James R. Fleming, president of the International Commission on History of Meteorology. By June 3, the forecasting team determined the June 5 would not be an ideal day for the invasion as high pressure over France and low-pressure northwest of Ireland would maintain strong southwesterly winds in the [English] Channel, meaning seas too rough for landings and cloud coverage too thick for bombing operations. Years of preparation were at stake, but on June 4, hours before the launch of D-Day operations amid an approaching storm, British Group Captain James Stagg urged General Eisenhower for a last-minute delay, according to the History Channel. According to History Channel, only a few invasion dates were possible because of the need for a full moon for illumination and for a low tide at dawn to expose underwater German defenses; June 5 was the first date in a narrow three-day window. “The American team used an analogue method that compared the current weather with past conditions. Their forecast was overly optimistic and would have resulted in disaster on June 5, 1944,” Fleming said. At the last minute, following Stagg’s advice and the other British forecasters’, Eisenhower postponed the invasion. “June 5 becomes quickly off the table because of a terrible storm that is coming in and it’s going to make any invasion basically impossible,” McManus said. “So, Ike has to postpone it a day and then he has to sift through dozens of weather reports to ultimately decide on June 6 as a kind of an opening in the system that allows weather that’s at least good enough, while nowhere near ideal.” German forecasters also predicted the hostile weather conditions; however, they did not expect the high winds or rough seas to weaken until mid-June. The German forecasters did not have the same amount of forecast information as the Allied forces. The German Navy had few remaining vessels in the Atlantic and their weather stations in Greenland had been closed down. This would prove folly, as many Nazi commanders left their defenses. “German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel even returned home to personally present a pair of Parisian shoes to his wife as a birthday present,” the History Channel reported. With a more accurate forecast from Allied forces, Eisenhower would commence the D-Day operations, setting a historic shift in the war.  “On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, under barely tolerable conditions, the largest amphibious landing force ever assembled landed on the beaches of Normandy,” Fleming said. More than 150,000 Allied forces would lead the charge to liberate France from the Nazi's control, leading to the death of nearly 2,500 Americans in one of the bloodiest days of the war, according to NPR.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FindJodi.com begins our new podcast series focused on the timeline involved in Iowa news anchorwoman Jodi Huisentruit’s unsolved disappearance.We retraced Jodi’s activities in the 24-48 hours before she was abducted in her apartment parking lot on her way to anchor the morning news at KIMT-TV in Mason City on June 27, 1995.The 27-year-old Long Prairie, Minnesota native joined the small CBS-affiliate in northern Iowa in 1993.By June of 1995, Jodi was actively looking to move on to a much bigger television market.Our FindJodi team compiled the timeline after interviewing people who were close personally and professionally to Jodi, by reviewing extensive news media coverage of the investigation, obtaining some police reports and by doing interviews over the years with Mason City investigators.We have also talked with many residents who lived at Jodi’s apartment complex and with people who were with Jodi at the Chamber of Commerce golf tournament just hours before she was abducted.

Michael is joined by Mat McLachlan, War historian & founder of Australian Battlefield Tours, on the eve of the anniversary of D-Day, which was the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War 11.   Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied France (and later Western Europe) and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.   German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men with Allied casualties documented for at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.   Australia's involvement in Overlord was limited. By June 1944, most Australian service personnel were engaged in the southwest Pacific opposing the Japanese, but estimates suggest some 3,000 Australians played a part in D-Day.

Pride month is for us to celebrate and show our support for our friends and family in the LGBTQ+ community. We want your help to make a very special episode this month.  Record or write a message of your love and support to the community. Doesn't need to be anything personal just a "You are valid" and send that to us at our email cosplaystitchandseam@gmail.com By June 19th and we will make an episode feature what you have to say to show your support and love!   We can't wait to hear all of your messages!

Our host, Abeer Qumsieh from EO Jordan interviews EO Cape Town member Philipp Hartmann. Philipp is the dad of a set of twins and a set of triplets. He provides insights and tips on how to balance being an entrepreneur and his family life, including handling his agencies and clients during the crisis of COVID-19. Timestamped show notes 2:30 Philipp is a dad, a podcaster and serial entrepreneur 3:15 Founder and CEO of GSDH – a full service digital creative agency and The Factory - a digital performance production house 4:13 Philipp started a podcast called, Being Dad that can be found on Dadicated.com 7:40 The opportunity rose and we grabbed it. Some things only happen once 8:15 Two things that I think are valuable to share are: - Insisting on being right could come at a great cost, even when you are right - Trust your first instinct, the gut should be awarded veto rights 11:12 I’m trying to be very thoughtful on where I spend my time. Working with fellow EO member, Warren Rustand on my priorities 12:04 How are you handling the adversity and doubt with the circumstances we’re in? 12:37 Look at hard data, not social media 13:10 Make sure you have the right vision and think about where you want to be after the crisis 13:57 We defined certain must dos and must haves 15:00 This is not a drill, we are actually going into a recession 15:20 We were able to pivot the feeling from adversity and doubt to positive and grateful from the whole team 15:34 The EO community came together very quickly 16:43 Provides insights on what he does with his staff in regards to emotional resources, food parcels and freedom 17:20 How can you be a good leader during these tough times at home, in your community and at work? 18:06 Lead with vulnerability 18:43 Don’t be scared to say no and to say when you don’t know 19:14 What are your plans for the future? 20:00 By June 2022 I want live off my podcast, Dadicated.com, entirely 21:15 If we can empower one father, we can have a direct impact on society 21:59 What EO event experience or speaker was responsible for a change in your personal or business life? 23:08 Productivity Hack, quick-fire Q&A with Philipp Hartmann

This week we highlight presidential leadership and one of the most important civil rights speeches ever delivered by a sitting American president.By June of 1963, John F. Kennedy has been president for nearly two and a half years.While Kennedy had long privately expressed his deep moral objections to the treatment of black people in American society and indicated support for New federal legislation. His public comments ranged from cautious moderate criticism to a 1950s version of “both sides-ism” but were mostly nonexistent.In June of 1963, however the man and the moment met.Alabama Governor George Wallace’s staged photo op definance of federal law by standing in the school house doorway had lasted less than 90 minutes. On June 11th 1963 two black students were peaceful enrolled at the University of Alabama under the protection of a federalized Alabama National Guard commanded by US Marshals under the direction of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General of the United States.Kennedy’s advisors recommended and Fully expected that the president would NOT address the American people that evening. With a little less than 18 months until to the 1964 elections, the President’s legislative agenda and his political future depended upon the votes Southern Democrats in Congress and those of their politically unforgiving constituents. The President had other ideas. Kennedy saw a way to exercise moral leader on an issue where he had to that point failed. He would request Network Television airtime to address the nation on the issue of civil rights. The facts and statistics on racial inequality in the United States described by President Kennedy to the American people that evening had even never been acknowledged by a President before - much less spoken in such a detailed and direct language. In a telegram to the White House after watching the President’s remarks in Atlanta with other civil rights leaders, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. described the address as ONE OF THE MOST ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, AND UNEQUIVOCAL PLEAS FOR JUSTICE AND FREEDOM OF ALL MEN, EVER MADE BY ANY PRESIDENT.Dr King knew that Kennedy was moved by his now famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” - written just weeks before. To President Kennedy and many Americans Dr. King’s letter was more than than a spirited defense of civil disobedience. It was an indictment of white indifference.As you listen to the speech, you will hear Kennedy echoing King’s “Letter”The President rejects the idea that Black Americans should have to wait for equality. "Who among us," Kennedy asks the American people, "would then be content with counsels of patience and delay?" See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marcus began his filmmaking career with no prior experience in January, 2018. He managed to balance his pursuit of filmmaking with a full time job along with being a husband and a father. By June, 2019 he had built a multi-person company and acquired clients from all over the United States. Marcus is also the […]

The second wave of covid-19 in the U.S. is likely right around the corner, newly leaked projections from the Trump administration predict. By June 1, the country could see 3,000 deaths a day—a new high—along with hundreds of thousands of new cases. The estimates come as parts of the country have already begun to reopen businesses and ease restrictions on distancing.

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: As more and more states begin to open for business, scientific models clearly show U.S. deaths from the coronavirus continuing to rise. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government says it has captured two Americans allegedly involved in a strange, clumsy attempt to infiltrate the country and capture its leaders. And lastly, an Amazon Vice President Tim Bray resigned from the company today, in protest of the online shopping empires’ treatment of warehouse workers and white-collar dissenters alike, several of whom have been fired in recent weeks. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The coronavirus is still spreading throughout the country, but you wouldn’t know it by the widespread plans to begin opening states. According to a report by the New York Times, the president’s own administration is predicting a rise in the country’s death rate as a result. By June 1, 3000 people a day will be dying from the disease, according to new government modeling. FEMA also predicts that by the end of May, there will be 200,000 new cases every day. For reference, right now there are about 25,000 new cases per day. That hasn’t stopped many governors from beginning to open up businesses in their states. Missouri Governor Mike Parson has even given the green light for concerts and other large gatherings to resume, with some social distancing rules in place. But really -- social distancing at a concert? Meanwhile, the White House has barred members of its hand-picked coronavirus task force, and their aides, from appearing before Congress, unless they get the express approval of the White House chief of staff. Clearly, Trump doesn’t want anyone talking to the lawmakers tasked with keeping him accountable. Nor does he want to help the world: the U.S. contributed precisely zero dollars to a recent international fundraising event to support research into a vaccine. And beyond the deaths, it’s also clear that the Federal relief meant to bail out small businesses is woefully inadequate. Congress’s last $310 billion expansion of the Paycheck Protection Plan is already half-committed, just one week after it was released. This is an institutional failure on every level, and the people responsible will likely escape the consequences. To be fair, they’re not even trying to hide their evil anymore. Take it from Chris Christie, who said QUOTE “There are going to be deaths no matter what,” ENDQUOTE which is apparently fine by him. Mercs Fail to Invade Venezuela There was once a time when the United States was relatively proficient at overthrowing Latin American leaders, but it appears to have passed. Now, who knows what we’re doing. On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that he had captured two American citizens who were allegedly part of an armed operation to infiltrate the country, incite a rebellion and capture its leaders. The two men appear to be affiliated with a Florida-based mercenary company called Silvercorp, according to the company’s owner, a former Green Beret named Jordan Goudreau. Gourdreau wasn’t exactly subtle, claiming that he was launching quote “Operation Gideon” on Sunday with the stated goal of toppling Maduro. They then allegedly attempted to invade Venezuela in speedboats, but were stopped off the coast in a gunbattle with Venezuelan forces, who knew they were coming. For what it’s worth, both the state department and the Venezuelan opposition under Juan Guidao want nothing to do with these guys. Goudreau says he’s got a lawyer in Venezuela and is currently begging the State department for help getting his men out. Obviously, the facts around this are murky to say the least and it’s already a pretty wild story, but stay tuned for what the Trump Administration’s response will be: at this point, it could be pretty much anything. Amazon VP Quits in Style Cracks are beginning to show at Amazon. On Monday, Tim Bray, a Vice President and distinguished engineer at the company quit, torching the company on his way out for its firings of several white collar and warehouse employees who protested its response to the coronavirus pandemic. Over the past few weeks, the company has fired multiple warehouse workers who spoke up about their working conditions and at least two white-collar tech employees who tried to organize their colleagues to support warehouse workers. Bray did not mince words when placing the blame directly on the company, calling Amazon cowards in polite and impolite terms, and noting that all of the fired employees were either people of color, women, or both. "At the end of the day, it's all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the U.S.) job-linked health insurance. So they're gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength." Sounds like Bray has a pretty good grasp of what’s going on at Amazon and across the country as well. Pity they couldn’t keep him around, but it’s clear he’s going to move on to better things. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The NRA is being forced to lay off dozens of staffers, cut pay, and scale back its fundraising after the coronavirus exacerbated the organizations already-chaotic financial situation. Couldn’t have happened to nicer folks. Shortly after Trump made meat processing plants “critical infrastructure,” 373 workers at a Triumph foods plant in Missouri tested positive for the disease. Almost all of them were asymptomatic, meaning they could have shown up to work just find and continued to spread it. The Senate claimed that it could not legally turn over records requested by the Biden Campaign that could pertain to Tara Reade’s allegations against him. The campaign requested them as an attempt to be transparent, so now they can throw up their hands and shift the blame to the Senate. Clever. And finally, after San Diego County made it mandatory for citizens to have face coverings in public, a man was photographed wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood while shopping in a Vons supermarket. He was asked to remove the hood, but refused to do so until he was in the checkout line. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Catch the full show with Sam later on. HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

    While Ogedai Khaan led his armies in the final war against the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, covered in our previous episode, this was far from the only theatre his forces operated in. As the conquest of northern China was completed, Chormaqun Noyan brought Mongols armies back to the west, returning to Iran to hunt down the energetic Khwarezmian Prince, Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, hoping to restore his father’s empire. In the course of this, the Mongols effectively completed the conquest of Iran, the Caucasus and entered Anatolia- a great southwestern expansion of the empire. At the same time, Mongol armies under Subutai conquered the western steppes and Rus’ principalities, a vast, two pronged pincer assault on western Eurasia, and the subject of our following episodes.       First, we must wind the clock back from the 1230s to the Khwarezmian campaign of Chinggis Khan in the 1220s. As you’ll recall from that episode, the Mongol invasion at the end of 1219 brought about the near total collapse of the Khwarezmian defense and flight of the empire’s ruler, Muhammad II Khwarezm-Shah. Muhammad died at the end of 1220, harried to his end by Jebe and Subutai. On his death in December, Shah Muhammad’s son Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, a far braver and more talented general, took up the mantle of leadership- or rather, what was left of it. Rallying what forces he could, he eventually made his way into what is now Afghanistan, defeating two Mongol armies but finally crushed by Chinggis Khan himself on the Indus river in November 1221. At the battle's climax, Mingburnu spurred his horse off the cliff and into the Indus, swimming across and making into the Punjab. Chinggis Khan, to give the devil his due, is said to have personally ordered archers not to fire on him, admiring Jalal al-Din’s courage. The same mercy was not spread to other Khwarezmian troops trying to make it across the river.       Jalal al-Din spent the next three years in northwestern India. At that time, northern India was ruled by several Muslim warlords, mainly former generals of the Ghurid Empire which had once stretched from Iran across northern India. Among these was the general Iltutmish, based in Delhi- the origins of the Delhi Sultanate. At the end of the thirteenth century, the Delhi Sultanate had the strength to repel Mongolian invasion, but in the 1220s was only one power among several. At the time of Jalal al-Din’s arrival,  Iltutmish of Delhi’s main rival was Qubacha, a fellow Ghurid controlling the Punjab and lower reaches of the Indus River. Despite being fellow Muslims, the post-Ghurid powers had little love for the Khwarezmians. Jalal al-Din’s father Muhammad had been a stalwart foe of the Ghurids, and after the Ghurid collapse in the early 1200s, it was the Khwarezm-shah who had gobbled up their western territories in Iran and Afghanistan, bringing Khwarezmian influence right to the borders of India.  Jalal al-Din’s own appanage given to him by his father was the former Ghurid capital of Ghazna. Further, the Khwarezmians had also become foes of the ‘Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, who provided his holy support to those generals battling the Khwarezm-shah. The Khwarezmian reputation was that of an aggressive, unreliable and expansionist empire, and the chief scion of that house, Jalal al-Din, was not destined to enjoy a warm welcome among his co-religionists in India, nor among those Hindu rulers still extant in the region.        Upon his defeat on the Indus, Jalal al-Din needed to make space for himself from the Mongols, who initially turned back from the river but soon sent parties to hunt for Mingburnu.  Managing to gather survivors from the Indus battle and other refugees from the invasion, his victory over local Hindus in the Salt Range brought defections to Jalal al-Din’s force. Charismatic and with a reputation as a superb warrior, Jalal al-Din rarely had trouble attracting followers- making friends with other states was another matter. With Mongol forces under Dorbei Doqshin approaching, Jalal al-Din fled further into India, coming to within a few days of Delhi. His envoys sent to Sultan Ilutumish were killed, for Iltutmish, a wily politician, had likely weighed the costs of providing aid to Mingburnu with the Mongols now approaching. Delhi was too well protected for Jalal al-Din to assault, so he doubled back to the west, ransacking as he went and successfully avoiding Dorbei Doqshin’s Mongols. Dorbei abandoned the pursuit, returning to Chinggis Khan at Samarkand in late 1222, where he was severely reprimanded and ordered back to India.       Jalal al-Din in the meanwhile attacked the Ghurid successor in northwestern India and Iltutmish’s main rival, Qubacha, forcing him to submit and pay tribute. Most of 1223 he spent ravaging cities along the Indus, making his way to the Gujarat peninsula. Having successfully pissed off everyone between the Indus and the Ganges rivers, Jalal al-Din was greeted with rumours of a grand coalition -Iltutmish, Qubacha, and various Hindu lords- uniting against him, as well as Dorbei Doqshin’s second approach. Learning that a half-brother had set up a state in western Iran, Jalal al-Din decided it was a good time to leave India in 1224, leaving his officers Ozbeg-bei and Hasan Qarluq in control of his Indian territory. They, along with Qubacha, took the full brunt of Dorbei Doqshin’s returning army, who took his frustration out on them when he found himself unable to locate Jalal al-Din. While this proved unfortunate for them,  Iltutmish did rather well out of this episode. With his major rivals weakened by Jalal al-Din and Mongol attacks but his own state relatively untouched, over the late 1220s and 30s Iltutmish was able to overcome these rivals and set the Delhi Sultanate on a path to regional dominance. In due course we will return to Iltutmish’s successors, but now we must follow our friend Jalal al-Din westwards.       Jalal al-Din’s three years in India did little for his dream of restoring the Khwarezmian Empire, but saw better opportunity in the efforts of his half-brother, Ghiyath al-Din. Around Rayy, modern Tehren, Ghiyath al-Din had started to reestablish Khwarezmian control. Jalal al-Din’s  thought seems to have been that, if anyone was to continue the Khwarezmian Empire, it was going to be him, damn it! Mingburnu cut across southern Iran, hoping to restore Khwarezmian rule as he went, first stopping in the province of Kerman. There, Baraq Hajib ruled, a former general of the Qara-Khitai brought into Khwarezmian service who established his independence in the wake of the Mongol invasion.  Jalal al-Din gained his submission and married one of his daughters, though Baraq soon revolted and Mingburnu carried on. At Shiraz in the province of Fars he was welcomed and again married a daughter of the local dynasty, the Salghurids. He then departed for Isfahan, where he rested his main army. With a handful of picked horsemen, said to be carrying banners of white cloth like the Mongols, Jalal al-Din led a daring raid against his half-brother, attacking him in his camp, capturing him and absorbing his followers and territories.        This greatly strengthened his position. Knowing that the former northeastern sections of the Khwarezmian empire, including the former capitals of Gurganj and Samarkand were under firm Mongol control, Mingburnu must’ve thought it more prudent to push west, in theory providing himself more resources and space to resist the Mongols. Gaining the submission of the chiefs of Luristan, marrying princesses of local Turkomans, he now had a not-insubstantial force under his belt.  Most of southern, central and western Iran had now submitted or was under his direct control. Casting his eyes west, he marched towards Baghdad. Supposedly he was expecting assistance from the Caliph, at that time an-Nasir, who had reigned since 1180. Caliph an-Nasir had been paralyzed and blind for a few years at that point, but the memory of Muhammad Khwarezm-shah’s own failed march on Baghdad had not been forgotten. Anticipating that the son shared the same greed as the father, an army was dispatched to repel Jalal al-Din. Drawing them into a feigned retreat, Jalal al-Din put them to flight, pursuing them as far as Baghdad’s suburbs before withdrawing, and then defeating a force sent from Irbil, capturing that city’s ruler.        Lacking the means to siege Baghdad itself, Jalal al-Din sought easier targets. He moved next against the Eldeguzid atabegs of Azerbaijan- former Khwarezmian vassals who had submitted to the Mongols- and destroyed them in 1225, taking their capital of Tabriz. A brief Georgian foray against Tabriz while Jalal al-Din was mopping up remnants of the Eldeguzids brought him, for the first time in his life, into conflict with Christians. Over the next few years, Jalal al-Din unleashed a torrent of destruction against the Kingdom of Georgia. At that time ruling Georgia and Greater Armenia, the kingdom had suffered terribly during Jebe and Subutai’s own expedition through the region only a few years prior. In 1226, Jalal al-Din took the Geergian capital Tbilisi, destroying the churches within the city. According to a contemporay historian, Kirakos Ganjaketsi, rather than spend time to determine who in the city’s diverse population was Christian or Muslim, Jalal al-Din simply ordered all the men to be circumsized.       After this, Mingburnu marched rapidly back to Iran, having heard rumours that Baraq Hajib was attacking Isfahan, the new Khwarezmian capital. Baraq apologized and sent gifts, and while Jalal al-Din rested in Isfahan, he learned that the Georgians revolted. Speeding back to Georgia, Jalal al-Din undertook a slaughter outside the walls of Akhlat, but was unable to enter the city. In similar time, news reached him of another threat to Isfahan. A Mongol army was approaching the city, ordered there by Chin-Temur, the Mongol appointed governor of  Gurganj, a former capital of Khwarezm. Jalal al-Din brought his army back to Isfahan, and in August 1228, bravely led his forces to be defeated by the Mongols. His half-brother Ghiyath al-Din fled, and Jalal al-Din was forced to retreat when the Mongols drove back his remaining forces. However, with losses high or fearing a trap, the Mongols failed to advance, and withdrew back to their own empire. Thus was Isfahan saved, if narrowly.        Really changing things up, Jalal al-Din returned to Georgia again in late 1228, and inflicted one of the most famous defeats in Georgian history at Bolnisi, known also as Mindori. A large army of Georgians, Armenians, various ethnic groups from across the Caucasian mountains as well as a significant Qipchaq component had been assembled against him. Qipchaqs had a long history serving as mercenaries for both the Georgian Kingdom and the Khwarezm-shahs, and we may well assume a number were present among Mingburnu’s forces. Outnumbered and lacking swordsmen and lancers, it was a precarious position for Jalal al-Din. His vizier, Yulduzchi, suggested it would be better to pass behind the enemy, cutting them off from water, thus weakening the larger force in the heat. Jalal al-Din’s reaction as recorded by Juvaini is rather illustrative of his character. Becoming as enraged as was possible for him, he hurled a pencase at the vizier’s head while shouting “they are a flock of sheep! Does the lion complain of the size of the flock?” It is unfortunate for Mingburnu that this was a mantra he applied to everything.       Yulduzchi repented, paying a fine of 50,000 dinars. Opening contact with the Qipchaq, reminding them of his own connections with their people, he successfully convinced them to remove themselves from the battlefield. Then he convinced the Georgians to send champions out to face him- supposedly Jalal al-Din killed them all himself, then ordered a general charge against the demoralized Georgians. The foe was destroyed and we might regard this as the high water mark of his military career. The last half of 1229 Jalal al-Din was held up besieging Akhlat, falling only to great massacre in April 1230 after a 8 month siege. Learning that the Seljuq Sultan Kayqubad I, master of Anatolia, was organizing an alliance against him, Jalal al-Din moved west. Falling ill, he lost his strength and was unable to ride his horse, forced to be carried in a litter. At Yassıçemen near Erzincan in August 1230, Jalal al-Din met an allied force of Seljuqs under Kayqubad I and the Ayyubid Sultan of Syria al-Ashraf, the nephew of the famed Saladin. During the battle Jalal al-Din tried to mount his horse, but lacked the strength to even hold the reins. His courtiers pulled him back. Seeing his banners fall back, the army thought Jalal al-Din was retreating, and thinking the battle thus lost, fled. The Seljuq-Ayyubid forces, believing it a feigned retreat, held their ground. Jalal al-Din escaped another major military defeat, this time while seriously ill. Certain to improve his mood was news of a large Mongol army now approaching.        Far to the east, Ogedai had been elected Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Aware of Jalal al-Din’s resurgence, Ogedai could not allow him to reform the Khwarezmian Empire. Seeking to complete the conquest of the region, perhaps even hoping to take Baghdad itself, Ogedai ordered fresh troops to be sent. Commanded by Chormaqun, a member of the keshig, the imperial bodyguard and a veteran of the Khwarezmian campaign, this is our first mention in the sources of the tamma. The tamma was essentially the closest the Mongols came to garrison duty, sent to the empire’s borders to expand, consolidate and intimidate, rather than a full, tsunami like tidal wave of invasion.  There is some suggestion Chormaqun may have initially been ordered west by Chinggis Khan in his final days, but would have been held up by the Khan’s death in 1227. Ogedai in that case would have been reaffirming his father’s decision.        So, Chormaqun set out with perhaps 30,000 men, ordered to be supported and reinforced by the appointed basqaqs and darughachi governing the western Mongol empire, like Chin-Temur. In early 1230 Chormaqun crossed the Amu Darya  and began the proper subjugation of Khurasan, which had been left a ruinous buffer after the 1220 invasion. Chormaqun bypassed those few strongpoints still holding out, leaving Chin-Temur to reduce them and set up a proper administration in his wake. By autumn 1230, Chormaqun was in Mazandaran, northern Iran, and took Rayy, which he set up as his headquarters. Chormaqun spent the next two years in Rayy, from where he ordered his various forces and took the submission of most of the powers in Iran, the states of the south sending representatives and recognizing Mongol rule. By 1233 essentially all that was left of Jalal al-Din’s reconstituted Khwarezmian Empire in Iran had submitted to the Mongols, leaving his capital of Isfahan isolated until it fell in 1236. In eastern Khurasan, that is, now modern eastern Iran and Afghanistan, Chormaqun’s lieutnentats Dayir and Monggedu operated, driving out Khwarezmian holdouts. By 1235 they had brought the Mongol Empire to the borders of India, forcing an officer Jalal al-Din had left behind, Hasan Qarluq, to submit. It seems even the Isma’ilis, the famed ‘Order of Assassins,’ allied themselves with the Mongols, providing intelligence on Jalal al-Din’s movements and strength.    By spring 1231, Mongol forces had entered Azerbaijan’s Mughan plain, zeroing in on Mingburnu. He frantically sent word to the Seljuq Sultan and Ayyubid Sultan of Syria, urging cooperation against the Mongols. But it was too little too late. Jalal al-Din had long ago soured the relationship through his aggression. Too busy raiding and campaigning, he had not created anything in the last decade to actually prepare for the return of the Mongols, and now he paid for it. He spent 1231 hopping across the Caucasus, narrowly avoiding Mongol forces. At one point, he only just escaped his camp as the Mongols came across it, only the action of a general waving Mingburnu’s banners and therefore distracting them, giving Jalal al-Din enough time to escape.   Near Diyar Bakir, known also as Amida, in what is now southeastern Turkey, his luck finally ran out.  Hounded down to just a few followers, in mid-1231 he was killed by Kurdish bandits robbing him for his robes. The clothes were recognized, the Kurds killed and the body thought to be that of Jalal al-Din buried. So ended the reign of Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, final ruler of the Khwarezmian Empire. A fine soldier and warrior but a poor king, he could not improve upon the Khwarezmian tradition of treachery and aggression to his neighbours. With the time, energy, troops, experience and personal charisma, Jalal al-Din had the potential to build a proper resistance to the Mongols, yet he instead squandered this opportunity, in many ways showing himself little better than them. Still he remained a powerful symbol; for years, rumours persisted of his survival, and every once and a while someone would claim his identity, only to be swiftly killed by the Mongols. Many a medieval Muslim author glorified him, such as his own secretary Nasawi, the Khwarezmian refugee to Delhi Juzjani, and even Juvaini, a beaureaucrat who worked for the Mongols. We might consider him the Bonnie Prince Charlie of the 13th century Muslim world. A figure whose actual person could not stand up to the legend and potential of his idea.   Jalal al-Din’s demise had other consequences. For one, there was still a large body of Khwarezmian troops in the region, fleeing the Mongols and now acting as mercenaries. In time, they were displaced from their refuge in Syria, making their way south and in 1244, took Jerusalem. Jerusalem had only been in Christian control again since Emperor Frederick II’s crusade in 1228. Not until 1917 would Jerusalem again be controlled by non-Muslims.    In Azerbaijan, Tabriz came under Mongol rule quickly after Mingburnu’s death. With Iran secured, Chormaqun marched into newly subjugated Azerbaijan, and there planned the conquest of the Caucasus. Georgia was severely weakened; first Jebe and Subutai’s attacks, then Jalal al-Din’s repeated depredations, it would be just a matter of reducing fortresses.  In 1236 Chormaqun ordered a three pronged assault against the territories of the Georgian Kingdom: Chormaqun himself drove into Greater Armenia, Mular up the Kura Valley and Chagatai Noyan, known as ‘the lesser’ to distinguish himself from Chinggis’ son, attacked Georgia proper. So weakened, the Georgians could offer no unified defence, with each lord retreating to his own castle in the mountains. The Mongols moved at a leisurely, careful pace, forcing some castles but needing to starve out others. Some Armenian and Georgian lords, like the influential Awag Zak’arian, willingly submitted, receiving special treatment and encouraging others to follow his example. With the flight of the Georgian Queen Rusudan from Tbilisi, Awag was the most powerful lord in the kingdom, and assisted in the Mongol expansion. In 1238 Tbilisi fell to Chagatai Noyan, Queen Rusudan fleeing into the far western mountains of Georgian territory, near the Black Sea. So remote was it that the Mongols did not even pursue her. By that point, Subutai and Batu’s armies were overrunning the steppes north of the Caucasus, so perhaps they felt her trapped between them.   The conquest of the Caucasus was essentially complete by 1240. Though it saw its shares of massacres, it was considerably less disastrous for the locals than, say, the war against the Jurchen Jin had been in north China. Most local forms of government were allowed to continue operating, though now with Mongol overlordship at the top. The Mughan plain in Azerbaijan became a favoured centre for Mongol power, and in time, a political centre under the Ilkhanate. For more details on Mongol rule in the region, one can easily find a copy of Bayarsaikhan Dashdondag’s The Mongols and the Armenians online, kindly uploaded to the internet and academia.edu by Dashdondag herself.   The early 1240s saw notable political upheaval in the Mongol Empire- of course at the end of 1241, we have Ogedai Khaan’s own death, though we’ll deal with that in a later episode. Chormaqun was struck down by a paralytic disease, leaving him unable to command, his wife acting as regent until officially replaced by his lieutenant, Baiju Noyan.  Baiju had a habit, even for Mongol standards, of ordering senseless executions. It is Baiju who brings us to the final section of today’s episode, the battle of Kose Dagh.    The Seljuqs of Rum, as the Anatolian branch of the once mighty dynasty was known, had experienced a heyday and expansion under Kayqubad I. After his death in 1236, he was succeeded by Kaykhusraw II, not his equal and certainly not up to repelling the predatory Baiju. From 1240 to 1241 a Turkoman revolt led by Baba Ishak hamstrung the Seljuq state, and Baiju took note of this Seljuq weakness.  In 1242, hungry to continue expanding, Baiju led his armies into Anatolia.  The Seljuq controlled Armenian city of Erzurum was a first target. After a two month siege, catapults brought down the city walls, the Christians and Muslims within the city brought to an indiscriminate slaughter. Valuable gospels found in Erzurum were gifted by Baiju to his Chirstian followers, while Armenian princes in his army sought to rescue those taken as slaves. Following further campaigning, Baiju returned to the Mughan plain for winter 1242, before returning in Spring 1243. The Seljuq Sultan Kaykhusraw II had boasted he would march and defeat the Mongols in the Mughan; Baiju marched back into Anatolia before Kaykhsuraw’s men were even mobilized. Kaykhusraw tried to get reinforcements from his vassals and allies, at Trebizond, Aleppo, Nicaea, and Cilician Armenia. The Armenian King, Het’um I, was a stout observer, and knew that the drunkard Sultan Kaykhusraw fared little chance, and held his forces back.   Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri, all fell to Baiju as he pushed into Anatolia. He brought with him a large, multi-ethnic force, with notable Armenian and Georgian contingents. Baiju encouraged the intermingling of his forces, so as to prevent ethnic rivalries flaring up and increasing unit cohesion. By June 26th, 1243, Baiju caught the Sultan’s army in the defile of Kose Dagh, in what is now northeastern Turkey. The Seljuqs likewise brought a diverse contingent, including important Frankish mercenaries commanded by a Cypriot and a Venetian. Kaykhusraw drank himself into a stupor the night before, and was so hungover that army organization was non-existent, his force failing to assemble until late in the day. Stationed well beyond the lines, the Sultan had little awareness of what was happening at the front. Moral was poor, the Mongols’ reputation was one of invincibility and absolute terror. There could be only one end.    Mongol horse archers supported by Georgian and Armenian heavy cavalry clashed with the Turkish and Frankish troops of the Seljuq Sultan. Within an hour, they had broken and fled. So sudden was the Seljuq flight that Baiju suspected it had to be a feigned retreat, and held his army back. Only cautiously did he send scouts forward to check out the abandoned Sultan’s camp, and when they found it truly abandoned, the celebration was great. Kaykhsuraw left all his treasure behind in his flight, and what a great deal of treasure it was. Though he survived, his reputation and military were broken. The Seljuqs had little option but to submit to the Mongols- as did the King of Armenian Cilicia, Het’um I, leaving the Mongols as masters of Anatolia.    The Kose Dagh campaign was a part of a growing shift in Mongol military thought. Under Chinggis Khan, campaigns were normally a reaction to an incident or a need; the Otrar Massacre was of course an important precipitate to the Khwarezmian campaign, but Chinggis Khan had tried to avoid it, even after the massacre sending envoys to seek a peaceable solution. Only when his envoys were killed by Muhammad Khwarezm-shah did Chinggis Khan order an assault. The initial campaigns ordered by Ogedai were sent against targets who had survived Chinggis Khan’s invasions, that is the Jurchen Jin and Jalal al-Din. But by Chormaqun’s final years and the time Baiju took office in 1241, the justifications for invasions grew ever flimsier. The greatly weakened Kingdom of Georgia and the Seljuqs of Rum were not a threat to the already vast Mongol Empire, though the Georgians were considered enemies since Jebe and Subutai’s expedition. No, this was conquest for the sake of conquest. Baiju attacked the Seljuqs in their moment of weakness, for little reason other than the expansion of the Mongol Empire. This was the manifestation of the belief that the Chinggisids were to rule everything under the Eternal Blue Heaven. The very existence of non-subject powers was, in itself, resistance against the will of Heaven. The Khan had no allies, only vassals.    The submission of the Anatolian Seljuqs by the mid 1240s marked the highpoint of Mongol efforts in the region for some years. Baiju probed Syria, bringing the submission of local Ayyubid princes there, and his armies tested the borders of Iraq. However, the Mongols seem to have been under the impression that Baghdad was supported by a massive army, and were hesitant to commit to any serious operation against it. It would not be until the arrival of Hulegu in the 1250s that the Mongol conquest in the region would be finalized. As it was, Mongol rule now stretched from the Mediterranean and Black Seas all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and still continued to expand. Our next episode will begin to cover the conquest of the greatest western steppe, the prelude to the invasion of Europe proper, 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!

In this latest issue of my weekly podcast, I discuss the market "narrative" surrounding COVID19. The market expects immediate and total recovery with no second wave, unlimited stimulus support, and for the market to rise higher than before. But right now, we are in the eye of the storm. By June, we could be seeing the start of a second wave and waking up to the true economic damage. Continued stimulus? Right now, both Democrats and Republicans support big government spending. We expect more spending in the near future, but this support could sour. In 2011-2012, both parties pulled back spending at the peak of the financial crisis. Will Republicans fall back on their small government stances? Democrats challenge China. In the Obama years, Biden was the front-man on easing US-China relations. But when Trump came into office, the president took a different tone on the country, demanding new deals and starting a trade war. Yet in a stunning move, Biden has now started calling Trump weak on China. Much of this comes from China's disrespect of human rights and Trump's silence. Nevertheless, this is an unexpected turn from the former VP, who probably has spent more time with Xi than any other American politician.Economic indicators continued to be bleak. US Markit PMI flashes were released for April. Manufacturing came in at 36.9, while services came in at 27.0, and composite read at 27.4. The Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index came in at -62 for April, its lowest reading since the series began in 2001. The Dallas Manufacturing Index had a similar record low at -73.7.Around the world, leaders see boosts in their approval ratings. Governments that have taken aggressive action against the virus have been rewarded with soaring popularity. Johnson, Macron, Conte, Merkle, and Morrison have all had double-digit increases since February. In South Korea, the leading Democratic Party was losing support in late 2019, but in recent national elections, they won by a landslide. **********The content featured here is a small part of Hedgeye’s Demography Unplugged, a game-changing market intelligence product brought to you by historian, demographer and best-selling author Neil Howe. Visit us to find out more and subscribe.

Introduction “It is a lot harder to create income and wealth than it is to spend it.” -Will Luden. We all know that from our daily lives, e.g., which is harder; earning and saving money for vacation, or spending it while on vacation? And this observation about earning and spending lines up nicely with common sense. The Golden Goose is our American capitalist economy, an economy that is by far the largest and most successful in the history of history. Hundreds of millions of people over 300 years worked long and hard to have created this robust income and growing wealth. COVID-19 is causing two massive spending-related responses, one more worrisome than the other: The approved and planned spending bills have either sanctioned or contemplated everything from free money, including direct cash payments and indirect money through rent and mortgage deferrals, and suspensions of loan repayments, to almost everyone in the US, with a couple trillion or so for businesses. The House is working hard to hold up COVID response money to push its agenda of medicare for all, free tuition at public colleges, and additional financial help for those it deems needy as time goes by. It took hundreds of millions of hard working Americans 300+ years to create this wealth; at the hands of certain politicians and political groups, all of this achievement could start to crumble in a few short years.   Today’s Key Point: We cannot do all of the enacted and contemplated COVID-related spending, or even come close to that amount of spending, without killing the Golden Goose.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Fighting COVID has been likened to fighting a war. Let’s look at life in the US during WWII.  Service members did not sign up for a fixed time commitment; they signed up for the “duration of the war.” Of those service members; 407K died, and 672K were wounded. Civilians: You needed a government-issued ration book for almost everything. And you had to register your tires with the authorities.  To get classification and rationing stamps, you had to appear before a local War Price and Rationing Board which reported to the feds. Each person in a household received a ration book, including babies and small children who qualified for canned milk not available to others. To receive a gasoline ration card, often restricted to 3 gallons a week, a person had to certify a need for gasoline and ownership of no more than five tires. All tires in excess of five per driver were confiscated by the government due to rubber shortages. Sugar was the first consumer commodity rationed, with all sales halted in April of 1942 and resumed in May, with a ration of 1/2 pound per person per week, half of normal consumption. Bakeries, ice cream makers, and other commercial users received rations of about 70% of normal usage. Coffee was rationed nationally in November 1942, cut to 1 pound every five weeks, about half of normal consumption, in part because of German U-boat attacks on shipping from Brazil. As of March 1942, dog food could no longer be sold in tin cans, and manufacturers switched to dehydrated versions. Starting in April of 1942, anyone wishing to purchase a new toothpaste tube, then made from metal, had to turn in an empty one. By June 1942 companies also stopped manufacturing metal office furniture, radios, television sets, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and sewing machines for civilians. Note that people still had to pay for what they wanted; having a valid coupon for, say, gas, in your ration book did not get you the gas. It simply allowed you to buy it. Today, in the COVID days, hoarders are the ones forcing rationing, and the government seems to want to make more and more products and services free. Whether or not these products and services have anything to do with the virus. The current US national debt is $24T--trillion,

By June 1992, nine people face nearly 180 charges related to the sexual abuse of children who have attended a home daycare in Martensville. Journalist Dan Zakreski revisits the sites of the story that dominated everyone's attention, including a ‘Devil Church,’ and reflects on his own role in spreading the story. Then, we meet a young mother searching for answers who shares her own heartrending story of a childhood turned upside down by the Martensville Nightmare.

It was a long campaign with intense competition, but in the end, Milwaukee beat out Miami and Houston to be the host city of the Democratic National Convention (DNC),  July 13 – 16, 2020. Megan Suardini, vice president of Marketing & Communications for Visit Milwaukee talks about how the festival city did it and how we are preparing for a deluge of Democratic delegates and national media coming to Milwaukee.  About Visit Milwaukee Visit Milwaukee is an accredited destination marketing organization (DMO) that has been promoting the city for more than 50 years. Its role is to attract business and leisure visitors to the city and its marketing communications efforts are all done outside the city. Landing the DNC Even though Wisconsin is considered an important battleground state for the 2020 Presidential election, it was still considered an underdog when it received an RFP from the DNC in March 2018. There were eight cities in the running, including New York, Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Miami, and San Francisco.  By June, the DNC had narrowed the competition down to Milwaukee, Miami and Houston. The DNC conducted a site survey that summer as the city rolled out the “blue” carpet for the organizers. There were several additional visits to work on logistics before Milwaukee was chosen as the host city on March 11, 2019. With an economic impact of at least $200 million for the city, the event is expected to put Milwaukee on the world stage with its welcoming, warm, Midwest charm. Megan says we made it clear to the DNC selection committee that they were a big deal and we wanted them. The city sees this not as a red or blue win, but as a green one.  It is estimated about $114 million will come from direct spending, such as restaurants, hotels and rental cars, and another $85 million-plus coming from indirect (wages paid to workers) and induced (money spent in other cities by travelers to Milwaukee) spending.  For Visit Milwaukee’s part in all this, the DMO has been focused on hotel rooms and all the logistics of housing. In July 2020, the city will host 6000 delegates and another 15,000 to 20,000 media personnel. There will also be about 1500 events during those four days. Visit Milwaukee has found lots of support from communities within a 45-minute to one-hour commute from the city, even in northern Illinois. Megan says the exposure for Milwaukee will be tremendous. Her staff is already looking for and pitching stories to the media related to technology, innovation, neighborhoods, education, manufacturing, urban development, green initiatives, unique individuals and community groups and they are open to hearing more ideas from the public.  The Milwaukee Brand In addition to the DNC, the Ryder Cup, the Society of American Travel Writers, the USA Triathlon and U.S. Gymnastics Championships are among the organizations that have chosen to hold their event in Milwaukee in 2020. They are attracted by the Milwaukee brand which is considered to be warm, friendly, inviting and accessible with big city amenities. The city is also quirky, extraverted, unexpected, lively and clean. In Megan’s words, “Milwaukee is hot, and we are ready. We really want to host your event.” Connect with Visit Milwaukee Website:        www.visitmilwaukee.org/DNC Phone:           +1 (800)-231-0903, +1 (414)-273-3950 PR Team:      https://www.visitmilwaukee.org/media/public-relations-staff/ Corporate Venues, Sponsors & Volunteers:  https://www.milwaukee2020.com/  

By June 2018, I was in the peak of what I now call my blah "gray phase". I had lost my verve, my voice, my confidence. I got weird and swirly and I let others have too much a say in what I thought about myself, my calling, and even my place in the Kingdom. I literally started wearing mostly gray and black. I called it “minimalism” and practically baptized it--but really, I was hiding.So, this is the story of how God shook my shoulders with awe and helped me tip my face back to the light. It was the moment when I remembered some very important and core things about God and myself:I love exploration. I am an explorer by nature.I am a pioneer, someone out on the front-end, willing to “go first”. I admire pioneering.I am creative. I work with God to make something wehre there once was nothing.Humans have an astounding capacity. We’re SO INCREDIBLE and so filled with potential for good. I cannot live in a hell-in-a-hand-basket worldview. It just doesn’t work for me anymore. I cannot believe that even with the Lord we just have to sit tight and wait for Him to come back. I believe we have agency and are meant to be agents for His Goodness and His Kindness and His Justice and His Provision and His Creativity here on Earth. I believe we can embody what we’ve received as our birthright through the Spirit. The power of God to be a force in the world. I believe we can light up the dark edges of the world with this glittering beauty that’s only found in Jesus. But, God help me if I keep covering and dimming that light.LINKS FROM THE SHOW:About the Griffith - NYT article after Griffith's restoration in 2006History of Griffith at The Thrillist at Griffith Park's 120 Birthday (article is bonkers)The Wild Ones - the article I suggested about the first two women to boat through the Grand CanyonCharm Necklaces I'm Into - Always an "open oval" chain:Higher End - solid goldLower End - gold plated sterling silverBraceletSome charms I love:Every vintage charm you could hope forMy fave modern charm - Reminds me of Drew Holcomb and Johnny Swim's Ring the BellsPS: if you find a Griffith Observatory charm promise you'll email me? heymightisuggest@gmail.com ;)Follow Hayley:Website // Instagram // BooksContact the show:Email at heymightisuggest@gmail.comLeave a voicemail at: 317-763-0077

Just months after taking office, President Reagan was focused on Middle East turmoil when Israel was being shelled by Lebanon in May 1981. By June 1983, President Reagan commented on Syria when speaking before the Anti-Defamation League Convention of the B’nai B’rith.Let’s listen

This April Cari Britt began experiencing weakening in her arms and hands, the inability to walk, stuttering and fatigue. By June she was diagnosed with MS. But oh, listen in - Story Tribe - there's so much more to her story!

This April Cari Britt began experiencing weakening in her arms and hands, the inability to walk, stuttering and fatigue. By June she was diagnosed with MS. But oh, listen in - Story Tribe - there's so much more to her story!

Teri Ijeoma began her professional career working in education and nonprofits. When she started trading stocks nine years ago, she initially saw it as an opportunity to simply supplement her income. However, she was so successful with this side hustle that in 2017, she decided to quit her job, travel the world, and begin trading full-time. By June 2018, Teri started her own online course business, teaching others how to supplement their income with trading, just as she had. And within 8 months, she had her first six-figure sales month. And then, her second. So how did Teri go from earning 60k in a year to earning 60k in just one month from her online courses? She’s here with us at Teachable HQ to share her story in this very special live recorded episode. To learn more about Teri, Invest with Teri, or Teachable, visit teachable.com/eit4.

Most pastors I know didn’t plan on becoming a pastor. There’s usually a story connected to it of how God unexpectedly led them down that path. A number of years ago, I saw that our church was getting ready to plant a new church in Harlem, New York called Renaissance Church. That’s when I first heard the name Jordan Rice. He was going to be the lead pastor. Like other pastors I know, he didn’t plan on becoming a pastor, but his story is unlike any story I’ve ever heard. He grew up in a home full of lawyers, and he was headed that way, trying to avoid being a pastor of a church. But on April 15, 2010, Jordan heard Tim Keller speak at Calvary Baptist Church in New York. Keller’s sermon, titled God Loves Cities, painted a picture of cities that compelled Jordan to do something. He was practicing family law, but as soon as he heard the sermon, he knew the law was behind him.   By June, his wife, whom he’d recently married, became sick. This began a journey of profound loss and confusion that ultimately became a beautiful story of redemption. At the heart of it, you’ll hear of a God who calls and a God who cares for us in the midst of dark moments. Today, we’ll wrestle with the question of, “How does God lead me through darkness?"

Diane E. McDowell, Ph.D. is currently a retired clinical psychologist that started learning about the Angels and Spiritual/Energy Healing, due to needed healing herself in 2015. By June 2017 she had attended a 3 day course on working with Angels by Charles Virtue and obtained Master Angel Certification. Looking for 1:1 training and teaching, she furthered her training and subsequent certifications. She is currently certified to both read and teach Intuitive Angel Card Reading, as well as being certified to teach Angel Dream Team y Angel Lady Terrie Marie. She also holds an honorary Doctor of Divinity. She is an intuitive, an Empath and a Light Worker, who has been very blessed. Diane is the owner of her own business, The Angel’s Corner in Anaheim CA. She has also been hired recently to read and teach Intuitive Angel Card Reading at The Learning Light Foundation in Anaheim   

The Bladensburg WWI veterans memorial is a symbol of honor and sacrifice of the 49 men from Prince George’s County, Maryland who fought and died in service to their county during WWI. First Liberty is fighting to defend the veterans memorial from destruction. Learn more at FirstLiberty.org/Briefing. They came from many walks of life.  Several were simple laborers.  One was a well-known surgeon.  Another, a legend and past recipient of the Medal of Honor whose heroism in World War I earned him the Distinguished Service Cross. But, they all came from Prince George’s County, Maryland. Educated or not, white or black, rich or poor, their bodies were interred under small grave makers in cemeteries far too distant for their families to ever visit. In 1925, a local post of The American Legion erected the Bladensburg World War I Veterans Memorial to honor 49 men from the county who gave their lives serving in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War I. The Fourth Circuit determined the cross-shaped memorial is unconstitutional. First Liberty Institute, and our network attorneys at the international law firm Jones Day, appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.  By June, we should have a decision. I think the Gold Star mothers who designed the Bladensburg memorial in 1919 would be pleased. They chose the shape of the memorial to recall the crosses marking the countless American graves on the Western Front of that war. Surely the Constitution permits Gold Star Mothers to erect a simple memorial that mirrors those that marked the graves of their sons buried on the battlefields of Europe. To learn how First Liberty is protecting religious liberty for all Americans, visit FirstLiberty.org.

In 2016, Red Wing Downtown Main Street hosted a Retail Challenge to bring one retail store to downtown. The competition was so successful that it filled four storefronts! Learn about how we did it, and how you can replicate it in your town. To download the pdf of all the materials Red Wing used to host the challenge, CLICK HERE. To View this Podcast with the presentation slides, go to our YouTube page HERE: https://youtu.be/d47sEl8cWN8 To learn more about Red Wing Downtown Main Street: http://downtownredwing.org/ Intro and Outro Music by Sam Tsui and Casey Breves GUEST INFORMATION Name: Megan Tsui Organization: Red Wing Downtown Main Street, Red Wing, MN Title: Executive Director Email: director@downtownredwing.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DowntownRedWing/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/downtownredwing Megan Tsui has been the Executive Director of Red Wing Downtown Main Street since 2016. She loves working with the local businesses and being their advocate. She recently completed the “Historic Real Estate Financing’ Course offered through National Main Street and the National Development Center. She hopes to use that training to help bring new development to Red Wing’s second and third stories. She lives in Red Wing in an 1875 Italianate Victorian with her husband Kent and their cats and dogs. TRANSCRIPT Megan: Hey, everybody! It's Megan Tsui. I'm super excited to be here today and I'm going to be the guest. You lucky ducks. I'm going to talk about a contest that Red Wing did in 2016 to fill vacant storefronts. We called it a retail challenge and it was really successful and really fun. And I'm going to go over some of the details. I'm doing this podcast a little differently today. If you're listening right now on a podcast, all you hear is audio, but I also have slides and I'll put that up on YouTube so you can actually go to YouTube and watch the whole presentation. If you'd like to, it's meetmedowntownpodcast.com and then search on YouTube and it should pop right up. I'll also link to it off my website, meetmedowntownpodcast.com website. And you'll be able to find it there as well. So, like I said, I have slides and I'm doing the audio and so sometimes I might forget that you can't see what I'm talking about so I apologize in advance. Otherwise, I also want to encourage you to go to the website because I'm going to have a downloadable packet for you of how you can do this in your town. And it has all of the information that we used to make this happen in Red Wing. And you can download it there. It's a PDF that has everything from our criteria, the plan, what we gave away, the marketing, everything. So, it's pretty much a plug and play kind of a download. So I'd encourage you to go to the meetmedowntownpodcast.com and then click on the latest podcast, which right now would be the, How to Fill Vacant Stores Using a Retail Challenge Contest. And you can click and download that kit there and get started on your own, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel, which is something I do not like to do. So let's get started. And again let me remind you, if I refer to something on the slide, I'm sorry, I forgot that not everybody can see. All right, let me tell you a little bit about my town. We're situated along the Mississippi River and it's this beautiful river town, very historic. We have everything you could think of for outdoor fun. You can go fishing, boating, biking, hiking. We have skiing, both Nordic skiing and downhill skiing. You can climb a bluff if you want. And it's just this very idyllic setting right around the curve of the Mississippi. And like I said, there's bluffs and all sorts of beautiful scenery around our town. We have a legacy manufacturing community in this town, I guess. We have the Red Wing Shoe, which some of you may have heard of. They make boots and shoes and, especially for the working, working folks. The Red Wing Pottery is also located here. And then we have Riedell Skates. They make skates for a lot of the Olympians. And these are manufacturers that have been here a long time and are very rooted in our community. And we're really lucky that, especially the Red Wing Shoe is still owned by the same family, as it was when it was started. And so they are very dedicated to our community and to our downtown. Actually, the Red Wing Shoe Corporation is headquartered right in our downtown. So we have a beautiful place to live. We're very lucky. It's idyllic. It's, it's wonderful. But we had a problem in 2016. I mean the recession hit us in 20--, you know 2008, 2009, 2010, and we weathered that a lot. But for some reason in 2016, we had this rash of vacancies that really left some gaping holes in our town. The reason we had some of those vacancies was that some owners retired without a succession plan. They retired and they closed their business and that was it. Some businesses just became obsolete. You know, when in this challenging retail environment, some businesses just can't make it or they just got tired. That absolutely happens. And then we had, we identified a couple voids, one especially in the outfitter idea. We did not have someone who you could, you know, if you were a tourist and you stepped into Red Wing, stayed overnight, you couldn't ride a, rent a bike or anything like that. So we knew that we wanted some sort of a business to be in that, to help fill that void. The other area we knew that we wanted to do to make sure to have some, somebody fill in some way, was Red Wing-themed products. Nobody was doing, you know, the T-shirts and coasters and bags and buttons. And nobody was doing that in our town, and we felt like there was a really missed opportunity to market our town. So, what did we do? We started the Red Wing Minnesota Retail Challenge. This was the primary marketing slide. Again, sorry for anybody who's listening on the podcast. It's basically a very simple drawing of a building in our downtown. And then it just says, “Red Wing, Minnesota, Retail Challenge” on it. And it says, “Do Downtown.” And it was very simple for a reason, because we wanted to make sure to have, to keep the idea of what we were going to do for the retail challenge and the kinds of businesses that we wanted to attract, to have it be pretty, we wanted to be ready for anyone. We knew there were those voids, but we also wanted to make sure that people felt like they could come to our downtown and open a store. So we didn't want to be super specific, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. There were six goals of the Retail Challenge. One was to recruit businesses that would enhance the business mix in downtown Red Wing. Number two is to provide businesses a head start during the toughest year of operation, which is, of course, the first year. Number three is to strengthen the local economy by attracting unique and specialty businesses. Number four, transform empty business spaces into more attractive and beneficial locations. Number five is to build a buzz and promote Red Wing as a great place to start a business. And number six is to display the community's commitment to downtown Red Wing. That's one thing that we're so proud of, is our community loves our downtown. And it’s apparent in everything we do and how much support we get. So it's wonderful. So those were those six goals of the retail challenge. We had very clearly identified eligible concepts. This was an important piece and I'd highly encourage you to think about these very carefully. And again, if you download, if you go to the meetmedowntownpodcast.com website and download that kit, you'll see all this in there and how we communicated these eligible concepts to potential contest entries. One, they had to be a new retail business. It must add to the downtown business map mix. It has to drive traffic to our downtown. Second or third retail satellite businesses from an existing location in another town were eligible. A significant expansion of a current downtown retail business that includes an added business concept. So, we weren't just looking to fund a retail business to get bigger, they had to add something. And then the last one was, this is a retail-specific competition. Service businesses are not eligible. The main difference between a retail business and a service business is that a retail business stocks and sells tangible goods, things you can touch and feel, whereas the service business sells non-tangible products, things you cannot touch and feel. We really wanted to stress and help to define that for folks because we didn't want to waste anybody's time and we didn't want to set anybody up for failure. So we really identified those clearly, and I think that was very important. The next thing we did is, we built an incentive package for folks, the business that was going to win. And there were different parts to that incentive package. So the assets and rent portion of the package was $20,000 in cash to be used to buy hard assets. That was sponsored by the Red Wing HRA, the Housing and Redevelopment Authority. They had a special grant program where they could grant funds to a Downtown Main Street and then we could distribute those funds in hard assets. So that's a pretty big deal to a business starting out. There was a low-interest loan from the Red Wing Port Authority that they offered up. And rent and utilities were subsidized by landlords. We asked all the different various vacant spaces, the landlords of those spaces, if they would help to offset some rent and utilities for a certain amount of time. And that value ended up to be about $4,000. And as you know, when you're starting a business, that's a big deal. There was also part, an incentive package of marketing. And that included merchandising and retail consulting, which was a $500 value; social media consulting which was a $1,000 value; cash for social media advertising, 500 bucks. We had someone who donated $500 so that we could do that. Graphic design services, $2,500. Local newspaper advertisements, up to $1,300 value. Gift certificates towards signage, $150. A one-page basic web site, $750 value. And the local radio station donated $1000 in ads. So, what a great way to kickstart a business, was really what this ended up being. All right. We also had legal, financial, and technical aspects of the incentive package. Those included $500 in legal counsel, $500 in accounting and tax services, business consulting, 500 bucks, value of that. We partnered with a bank that waived all the fees for this first set of business checks and endorsing stamp, etc., for $125 dollar value. And then we had some technology support for $150. A few other things that were offered up, and this is where you can really see, we have a great community, the first thing is we, the Downtown Main Street, offered up a one-year membership to our organization. We had one sponsor package for Downtown Main Streets Events for 2017. So, we put on a bunch of events especially the holiday stroll at winter time. And so that was a thousand dollars that we gave so that they could advertise or sponsor something that we were doing. There's a one-year membership to the local YMCA, $572 value. We have a local State Technical College and they offered one free online course for $100 in value. And then we had $2,000 cash to go towards facade improvements. And so what an amazing package we had in a total of almost forty thousand dollars by the time we were done. And we really had to partner with all these local organizations, and they were all really excited to do so and to offer, you know, the why, probably normally wouldn't think of being in the retail, you know, recruiting business. But all of a sudden, look at how that could really help make a family think twice about moving a business to Red Wing or opening up a business in Red Wing. So the timeline for the contest, on March 18th in 2016, we had the initial press release and announcement of the competition happened. By April 15th, we have Phase 1, where there was a business concept and officially the entry form was due. We wanted to prevent people from spending a lot of time on a concept that wasn't going to meet our needs. So we wanted, we had that part of the entry really helped us not waste anyone's time, again. By June 3rd we had, business plans were due. June 24th, that's when the final proposal presentations or the pitch happened and personal interviews happened. And then June 29th we announced the winner of the grand prize. And the business had to be opened by October 1st. We really wanted people to take advantage of the amazing tourism that happens in Red Wing during the fall and then also take advantage of those holiday sales that can really get you through some pretty lean months in the bleak winter around here. So we promoted the contest, like I said before, with a press release. There was a package of information that spelled out everything that was available on our web site. We visited shops in nearby towns that we thought would be a really good fit and fit some of the voids that we had and talked to those store owners about moving here and about the contest and what we could offer. And then we had signs in the window of participating locations and participating vacant spaces that alerted you that this contest was going on. So as you know, one of the biggest things a person needs before they start a business is a business plan. So, Phase 1 is really the business concept. Phase 2 is the business plan. And like I said before, in Phase 1 we really wanted to make sure we weren't wasting anyone's time. So we asked them to define what types of merchandise they were going to sell. What the definition description of, is the market for their retail business. How they will enhance downtown Red Wing and the Red Wing community as a whole. What resources, assets the applicant has and what resources would be needed to develop their concept fully. That included personal finances, etc. What their qualifications were to develop or expand their business, and what similar businesses and how they propose their businesses were different than those businesses that were already in town. And any other information that they might really sell the committee on the concept. So that was Phase 1. We asked for that in writing and got, I believe, 10 different concepts. Phase 2, if you were a business that we felt, or had the idea for a business that we felt, would be a good fit, you moved on to Phase 2 and I believe we had eight move on to Phase 2. Phase 2 was a business plan. And that includes things like the company summary, the products, the market analysis, the challenges, opportunities and strengths, a financial plan, a resumé, any management history, references, how many full or part-time employees this project would or business would employ. And then the finances, of course. We also asked for a community impact summary that asked them how this business would impact our community, because ultimately that's what we were after as much as anything. One of the ways that we help support businesses during this contest is we offered a Business Plan-in-a-day Workshop before that Phase 2 was due. The business plan was due in between Phase 1 when people knew that they could move on in the contest. We offered this Business Plan in a day. It was a six-hour-long workshop about what goes into a business plan, and it allowed people to get started writing their business plans, and then ask questions about writing a business plan. I taught that class and it was really a great way to help people get this part done because it's oftentimes the thing that they put off the longest and yet is the most necessary to actually getting started, to getting up and running. We also had some business writing assistance from the local small business development center in our area and some consulting with their consultant. So it really helped people to feel like they were more ready. At this point, it started to feel pretty real to a lot of these business owners who had said, you know, and for 10 years I want to start X business. And all of a sudden, it's looking like it could actually happen for them. And so we wanted to make sure that they were realistic and had the tools and the resources they needed. We also did a pitch clinic, something that I've done, worked with my alma mater college that, I was entrepreneur-in-residence there, and helped get those students ready for a pitch competition, a business plan competition there. And so I brought those skills and did a pitch clinic for anybody who made it into that Phase 2 and was going to pitch their business to the judges. And so that was a great way for those folks to get used to talking about their business, hone their presentation, get to the meat of the presentation and really be ready for that, that Phase 3, which was the final presentation and the pitch and then interview with the judges on the committee. The judges were made up of some retail business owners, community residents, city officials and then the Red Wing Downtown Main Street Board of Directors. So we had six businesses finally submit and go through the pitch. So of those six, let me tell you who the business was that won. The business that won was Red Wing Bicycle and Outfitter. Again, you'll remember I talked about the void that we had in the outfitter area of a business here in town. And so this is Andrew Peterson and he was the lucky winner. He had had a business, a bike shop, repair shop before in Red Wing and closed it to spend more time with his family and, he said, kind of get a normal day job. And he hated every minute of it. And he really missed his bike shop and we missed his bike shop in town. So he was the winner. And in the slide if you're watching on YouTube, that's one of the members of our Red Wing Main Street Board of Directors and Andrew. And so he has kayaks and bikes and equipment and he repairs bikes and sells bikes and all sorts of outdoor stuff. So that was great. But that's not the end of the story. Well, we wanted to have one retail business started and we had the funds for that one business all identified in the kind of winning package. There were three additional stores that opened as a result of our retail challenge. So three additional stores opened as a result of the retail challenge. Isn't that just crazy! That just blew our minds and we were really, really excited to have one store much less three. So let me tell you a little bit about the stores that opened up during this time. Red Wing did not have a comic book store and it didn't have a game store. So that was definitely one of the businesses we were super excited about that was interested in coming to town. Adam Hansen and his wife Sarah had a little baby, they were living in Minneapolis, and they wanted, Adam had always wanted to have a comic book store. And so they actually sold their house in the Twin Cities and moved to Red Wing to open up River Town Comic and Games. And they bought a house in town, and they really became members of our community because of this contest. They happened to be in Red Wing one day during the, when we were marketing the retail challenge and saw a sign in the window of one of the vacant spaces announcing the challenge. And that's how they got involved. So that absolutely works to put things in windows, etc. You know, sometimes we wonder what, what works and what doesn't. But we knew from their story that it did. So Adam opened his comic book store and the local port authority offered some low-interest loans to the other folks who decided to open because of the retail challenge. Backwoods Framing & Engraving is a big story. Luann Brainerd is the owner of the store and she actually purchased the building. She was a part of the competition. She didn't win, but she purchased the building and received some funds from the Port Authority to help her fix up the building and then open up her framing and engravings shop. She had had it out of her house for many, many years and needed to get it into town. She lived out in the country a little bit. And so it was a great opportunity for her to make the move into Red Wing. And, like I said, she bought a building and then converted the second floor into apartments. And she has one and then I believe she rents out another one. And she did a whole bunch of improvements to that building. It had been a long time neglected building that the landlords just hadn't invested in for quite some time. And so it really helped bring up the value of the properties in downtown because of what she did. So, again, I know the Port Authority helped her with some of the costs of the things that she had and some low-interest loans and some other things that helped her. We had a pop-up store, The Red Wing Mercantile, that opened up for that Christmas, as a 2016 Christmas season, and it was wonderful. It had those, that Red Wing merchandise in it. It had all locally made, you know, regionally made products, and it was just a beautiful store. Unfortunately the woman who ran the store had a family and had, you know, a regular job and so it was just too hard to do both the store and her job and have a family, so she did end up closing the store after the holidays, but it still was, we think it was a great success. There are some additional dollars that were brought in to the contest from the City of Red Wing. Those stores that didn't win the contest received five thousand dollars in seed money. And then again, many of them received an additional low-interest loan from the Red Wing Port Authority. So it was a really amazing thing to see everyone step up and collaborate and get excited about this program and this contest. I've been asked before about how much time did this take, and it took a great deal of time. But what took a lot of the time was getting the contest set up. And so again, if you want to go to the meetmedowntownpodcast.com website, we can help you get through a lot of that part of, what are the goals and all the things you need to convince people to help support the effort by putting in things that you can give away. I'll tell you, though that in Red Wing, this contest happened, the executive director was let go. It's a long story. But this program was 100 percent administered by volunteers and board members. So, if you think about the amount of time, you know, you could have to make this happen. It was really, I think a good way for volunteers and board members to understand how to plug themselves into a very specific contest. And I think that was one of the, a big advantage to this and how we got more than just staff to put this together. I was not the executive director at the time. I had helped in a consulting role with the organization before I came on board as the director, so I was pulled into this contest a little bit too. So it was just such a great way to make this happen without a bunch of staff time. I mean, and because the director had been let go and there was some drama around that, this contest really helped the organization be seen as still very viable and important for our community. There were a couple ripple effects that happened that we attribute to this contest. One, a shoe store from a neighboring town opened up a pop-up store that Christmas and decided to stay. So she stayed for about two years in her store, with a shoe store, and it was really great. It was right along Main Street and it was a beautiful store. And then she had some things happen in her business and so ended up closing it. But we know that, you know, she came because we invited her because we stopped by and handed her something and said, "You should come and move to our town, you know, move your business or open another business in our town." And so she did. And we were really glad to have her in our community, and she didn't take part in the contest but she did open a store. We also had Duluth Trading Company, is a really fun company that does work apparel and footwear and accessories. And we had, during the retail challenge when we were out, when the board members were out trying to recruit businesses to come to town, we'd reached out to Duluth Trading Company a couple of times. And we don't have any idea if our reaching out for sure brought them to town but we know that we did. And then pretty soon after they actually opened a retail store right in our downtown. So, who knows? But we're just going to say that all of it adds up in some way. We can't be sure there's a correlation there, but we're going to say there may be. So here we are about three years later. Here's where we stand. So Red Wing Bicycle and Backwoods Framing & Engraving are still open and they're still in the same locations and I think that they're doing very well. The comic book store is closing this spring and Luya opened up a store in a neighboring town and closed ours. So the shoe store did close. The Red Wing Mercantile pop up was open for one holiday season. But what we've seen is a continued pretty low vacancy rate in our downtown for retail because we think that we learned a lot during the retail challenge and it really helped us to support our retailers and we're continually trying to do that the best we can. So, could you make this happen in your town? I hope so. The biggest takeaways that I want to give you are, the keys to the success in Red Wing were the partnerships. When I've given this talk before, that's kind of when people go, "You know it's hard. Our local EDA or local port authority doesn't understand that, you know, fill in the blank, or we don't have, you know, a group that's willing to give that kind of money, or we just don't have..." And that could be a problem. But I think you just go where you can find the partners that are willing, and a lot of times what happens is the, you know, one partnership leads to another which leads to another. So, give yourself time to build up those partnerships and figure out what are the ways that those different businesses and different organizations in your community can help contribute to this effort. I mean, at the end of the day there were probably 20 different businesses or organizations that supported this new retail business. If he were to come in, you know, let's say he'd moved to town and had, you know, started this business, didn't know anybody. Think how much harder it is to start a business than with when you have 20 different partners behind you either in marketing or the newspaper or radio station. All that stuff adds up to really help support and create an environment in which the business can be successful. I think the other keys to our success was creativity. We were trying to think outside the box, and then we had very clear expectations and guidelines. Because we had clear expectations and guidelines in the very beginning, we didn't have a lot of hurt feelings towards the end. I mean, we, yes the people who didn't win were disappointed and, but a lot of them opened their business anyway. So, we had clear expectations and guidelines. But then I also think, I want to add, that we also created that level of support with the business plan and the pitch clinic and having the consultant from the Small Business Development Center, because those resources then became somebody, you know, people that that business could count on into the future. So, they were not just on their own. So that is how Red Wing did their retail challenge in 2016. And I really, really hope that you will consider doing one in your downtown. I think that they're really fun. It's actually, it's time-consuming, but I wouldn't say it's difficult. And I think it's something that can help change a conversation and a lot of downtowns. And it really puts you on the, the frontlines of filling those vacant spaces. So, it really, the landlords and the building owners, you start to become pretty important to them, which, sometimes it's hard. You know, we can sometimes reach those, those business owners but they may be just leasing this space or something else. But when you do a retail challenge like this and you start to connect to those landlords, all of sudden you become a pretty important resource. So, I think that was another thing that we learned from the challenge. So, I welcome your questions You can ask me questions either in the comment section on the web site, again meetmedowntownpodcast.com, go online and download the packet. It's a PDF that has everything that we used to make this happen and you can steal away, duplicate away anything you want out of there or you can go on social media. I'm on Instagram and on Facebook and you can ask questions there as well at the www.Meetmedowntownpodcast. All right. That's what I have for you today. Have a great day and I'll see you downtown.

Formed in 1990 the band supported indie pop legends such as The Brilliant Corners, St Christopher, The Orchids and The Television Personalities plus gigs with emerging Shoegaze bands such as Cranes, Catherine Wheel and Curve which brought the attention of Wilde Club records.By June 1991 the first EP ''Sparkle'' was released.In November 1991 the second EP "Tranquil Day" was released which then led to a Peel session in April 1992.Slumberland Records first approached the band about the possibility of releasing something way back in 1992 but sadly a release never materialised.In April 1993 The Suncharms played the last gig of their initial phase.In 2014 Cloudberry Records contacted and made plans to release a retrospective compilation CD of the two EPs plus assorted demos and previously unreleased songs.In 2015 the band reunited to start collecting old recordings and assorted memorabilia to make the CD and booklet.

When this year began, there was talk of war between North Korea and the United States. By June, we watched video of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un smiling and shaking hands. Big changes! What does it mean? How are those changes affecting our Christian brothers and sisters in the DPRK? Dr. Eric Foley, the President of VOM-Korea, joins us to offer answers to those questions, and helps us look at news coverage of North Korea not as Americans or Koreans, but as members of the Body of Christ. Dr. Foley will talk about changes on the Korean peninsula, and how those changes are affecting Christian work there—both north and south of the DMZ. He’ll share why this has been the most difficult year ever for VOM balloon launches into North Korea, and explain why North Korean defectors are such a significant part of reaching North Korea with the gospel message. Finally, Dr. Foley will give very specific advice on how we can be in prayer for North Korean Christians. Will you commit to pray for North Korea this week? Join us on VOM Radio and equip yourself to pray more knowledgeably for the “hermit kingdom.”

As VP of Candidate Acquisition, Chris’s primary role at RecruitMilitary is to aggregate and support America’s military men, women, and their families with career access, and professional development resources. Following the attacks on America, on September 11th, 2001, Chris joined the US Army’s illustrious 82nd Airborne Division. By June of 2002, Chris was shipped to Fort. Benning GA., to completed Basic Training, Advanced Individual Training, and Army Airborne School. Within one month of arriving at Fort Bragg, NC (assigned to the 3/504 Parachute Infantry Regiment), Chris was sent on his first deployment, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan). Over his 4-year span of military service, Chris would complete 3 combat tours, adding two tours to Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Throughout his time with the 82nd Airborne Division, Chris was placed in numerous leadership roles, working his way to the rank of Sergeant, and leading fellow paratroopers through the war-torn streets of the Middle-East.   Watch my Celebrity interviews on my YouTube Channel! Go here> https://goo.gl/EA9x6D Connect with Bert Martinez on Facebook. Connect with Bert Martinez on Twitter.

Armond Kinard, born in Los Angeles, is an actor, writer and poet. He has been steadily working his way to artistic success since 2007, although his passion for creativity goes back to childhood. His first passion was acting, but that was immediately followed by writing during the first 12 years of his life. By 1996, at age 20, another interest spawned - his love of poetry. Hip hop and/or Rap music heavily influenced this new passion. While attending Los Angeles Trade Technical Community College, he began writing poetry. It was during this time that he wrote notes for many of his present film ideas. He'll always claim 1996 as the best year of his adult life due to all of this creativity firing up. In 1999, Armond's stride experienced a detour, after being hired at Power 106.FM, a popular hip hop radio station in Los Angeles. It was this radio station that triggered his love of the music, especially in the 90's. He worked in the promotions department until January of 2007. After leaving Power 106, he did some stand up comedy at the World Famous Comedy Store in Hollywood (his poem "Homeless Intellectuals" was created from those routines). He also co-starred in a film titled "Color of the Cross part 2 : The Resurrection", where he played "Simon" (his first speaking role). By June of 2009, Armond created a YouTube account and started using it to generate attention to his poetry and voiceover talents, with very little success. Then, thanks to motivation from his cousin Jonathan Picos and a colleague, Mike Sonksen, Armond began performing his poetry on stage for the first time (November 2010). In 2011, his poetry started to catch on in Los Angeles with performances in Hollywood, Watts, Santa Monica, Downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights. People were taking notice and enjoying his performances. In January of 2012, he performed in a major Los Angeles poetry event, "Occupy This", which led to him being cast in a theatre production, "Occupy the Heart", produced by Miguel Garcia and Josefina Lopez. He also co-wrote a short film, "And Let God Do the Rest", which finished production in March of that year. Armond was also featured in a web series titled, "Failing Upwards", produced by Matt Crabtree and Michelle Bonilla. He later created a sensual poetry series titled, "The Book of Sultry". In 2014, he would join a writers group, which would connect him to new film director, Armin Siljkovic. Together they would work on three projects from 2015 to 2017, with one of them earning Armond his first best actor nomination for a short film titled, "Hard Money". Today, he continues to work with Armin on short films and features. He plans to focus more on film writing and acting, while still maintaining his love of writing or performing poetry. His sensual poetry series "The Book of Sultry" is developing a growing international fan base on Vimeo. Links: imdb.com/name/nm2918887/ youtube.com/channel/UCIGPdDLkIDYeXujrTCtRvEw

By June 20, the moon will appear in the south soon after sunset and look half illuminated. Many call this a half moon, but it's really a first quarter moon.

* By June 18 events had progressed to the point where Admiral Leahy was able to note privately in his personal diary:* It is my opinion that at the present time a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s […]

On the show today I sit down with Life Coach and Cyclist, Robert Weaver of Robert Weaver Research LLC. At the time of this interview Robert was 300 miles away from conquering the 4,228 mile trail! The good news is Robert completed his goal with flying colors. As a bonus for our listeners Robert is providing a free coaching session valued at $500. Make sure to take advantage of this offer and let him know you heard him on Entreneato! You'll learn a ton about correct mental mindsets and will power to help you achieve SO MUCH in life and business if you apply it!  You can contact Robert by phone at 1-402-202-0989 or by email at Robertweaver@outlook.com. Here's a little more on the TransAmerica Trail: The TransAmerica Bicycle Trail began in 1973, during our co-founder’s ride from Alaska to Argentina, as nothing more than an ambitious idea for a way to celebrate the nation’s upcoming 200th birthday. By June of 1976, the Trail was ready; the maps and guidebooks were published thanks to an enormous effort. Now cyclists were needed to ride it across the country. Given the name “Bikecentennial,” organizers publicized the event and thanks to strong word-of-mouth and its fortunate, prodigious publicity, 4,000 cyclists showed up for the ride.  We’d love to find ways we can serve you better! Go to entreneato.com to sign up for one of our Mastermind Groups, hear archived episodes, or connect with us on social media you can also fill out our contact form to submit comments and questions. Thank you!If you would like to support the show you can send a one time gift or become a monthly supporter by visiting our Patreon Page! 

On the show today I sit down with Life Coach and Cyclist, Robert Weaver of Robert Weaver Research LLC. At the time of this interview Robert was 300 miles away from conquering the 4,228 mile trail! The good news is Robert completed his goal with flying colors. As a bonus for our listeners Robert is providing a free coaching session valued at $500. Make sure to take advantage of this offer and let him know you heard him on Entreneato! You'll learn a ton about correct mental mindsets and will power to help you achieve SO MUCH in life and business if you apply it!  You can contact Robert by phone at 1-402-202-0989 or by email at Robertweaver@outlook.com. Here's a little more on the TransAmerica Trail: The TransAmerica Bicycle Trail began in 1973, during our co-founder’s ride from Alaska to Argentina, as nothing more than an ambitious idea for a way to celebrate the nation’s upcoming 200th birthday. By June of 1976, the Trail was ready; the maps and guidebooks were published thanks to an enormous effort. Now cyclists were needed to ride it across the country. Given the name “Bikecentennial,” organizers publicized the event and thanks to strong word-of-mouth and its fortunate, prodigious publicity, 4,000 cyclists showed up for the ride.  We’d love to find ways we can serve you better! Go to entreneato.com to sign up for one of our Mastermind Groups, hear archived episodes, or connect with us on social media you can also fill out our contact form to submit comments and questions. Thank you!If you would like to support the show you can send a one time gift or become a monthly supporter by visiting our Patreon Page! 

Look Out Bears, There's a Train Coming In episode 34 I talked about the incredible success that Banff National Park has had in terms of reducing the number of animals, such as grizzly bears, that are being killed along our highways. The system of over and underpasses that have been pioneered here are now serving as a template for many new areas that are trying to emulate Banff's successes. You can listen to the full episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep034. While the highways have been getting safer and safer as the system of fencing and crossing structures are expanded, the one area that still shows little improvement is the Canadian Pacific Railway line through the mountain parks. Canadian Pacific has worked closely with Parks Canada over the years to look at a variety of ways to try to reduce the numbers of animals that perish along tracks. Back in episode 19, I described some of the principle research being done on bear impacts along the tracks. You can listen to it at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep019. In this episode, researchers looked into the timing and location of fatalities. They found that, while more bears use the tracks in the western end of Banff, more bears were being killed in the eastern portions of the park. One of the conclusions was that the eastern portions are often closer to the busy highways which may have made it difficult for bears to hear the approach of trains. The bears also may need to have better sightlines so that they can see approaching trains from a greater distance. Another study proposed another theory as to why bears in the west edge of the park fare better than those farther east - The Boss - Bear 122. The Boss is a regular visitor to the tracks in the western portions of Banff and into Yoho National Park and he's even been bounced off a freight train and walked away unharmed. One theory is that the Boss is so protective of the tracks that other bears simply don't feel safe approaching his turf. Since he has been patrolling the tracks, no confirmed bear death has occurred since 2012. However, between 2000 and 2012, 14 grizzlies were killed along the tracks within Banff's east border and the west end of Yoho. Perhaps the Boss is helping to keep the tracks safer. Another study that I discuss in Episode 19 showed that an estimated 110 metric tonnes of grains are spilled along the tracks within Banff and Yoho every year - enough to support the annual food needs of some 50 grizzlies! This week, I want to look at a new study that has been looking into just how much bears use the tracks as well as what foods were making the tracks so attractive. While there are obvious attractants, like grain spills and carrion, researchers did not know what the relative importance of each of these were to the bears. Between 2011 and 12, they placed satellite collars on 21 different bears. The collars provided information on their position every 2 hours. In addition, they analyzed 230 grizzly scats collected between May and October over the years 2012 to 2014. Surprisingly, of the 21 grizzlies, only 4 were regular visitors to the CPR main line. These bears visited the tracks in excess of 20% of the days on which their movements were monitored. Scat samples from these four bears all occasionally contained grain. In fact, 43% of all grizzly scat samples found within 150 m of the tracks contained some grain. Beyond 150 m, the incidence of grain dropped to a mere 7%. It appears grain is a more important food in the fall, as 85% of the scat samples found near the tracks contained grain at this time as compared to only 14% in the summer and 17% in the spring. This makes sense when we look at the seasonally available food sources and behaviour of bears during the summer. Earlier in the season, there is a wider variety of available foods. In late summer, the buffaloberry crop disappears with the first frosts and then food becomes more scarce for the remainder of the season. An easy feed of grain would be a strong attractor for bears, just like unharvested crabapple and cherry trees in communities can serve to attract bears. Grain wasn't the only thing bringing these 4 bears to the rail lines, scat found close to the tracks was also more likely to contain the hair of elk, deer and moose. According to the study's results, three of the four bears visiting the tracks were quite young. researcher Cassady St. Clair was quoted in a CBC news story: "We learned that eating grain is something only a few bears specialized in doing." Cassady St. Clair says, "Three could be put into one category, they were teenagers and skinny and probably having a tough time making a living." The fourth bear, the Boss was being attracted, not by grain, but by the carcasses of elk, deer and moose that had been killed by the trains. This report shows that it's especially important to reduce or remove grain spills later in the season, as well as removing the carcasses of other rail killed animals. Since 1982, 1,256 large animals have been killed by trains in Banff and Yoho National Parks including five different types of hoofed animals and four different carnivore species. Since 1998, train collisions have become the number one cause of death for grizzlies within these parks. This most recent study has provided some great additional information as to what is attracting the bears, and just how important those foods are on a season by season basis. Researchers are now getting a much better understanding about the role train tracks play in attracting animals and at the same time, some of the challenges that animals face when suddenly encountering a rapidly moving train. Some animals freeze when they see the train, others futilely try to outrun the train. Better sightlines can help, but what if there was another way - a wildlife alarm that sounded early enough to startle the animals off of the tracks, before the train becomes a danger? Johnathan Backs is a PhD student and he is working on just such a system. He has developed an innovative way to create an loud shrill beeping sound for a full 30 seconds before a train approaches. The battery operated device senses the vibrations of an oncoming train and then emits its warning sound. While this may not frighten a bear, the hope is that the bears will learn from experience that the sound indicates that a train is approaching and that they should move away from the tracks. The fact that small numbers of bears are regular visitors may also help to increase the devices effectiveness. Since bears learn through experience, a repetitive warning may help to give them plenty of time to move to safety. It's so important that research like these studies continue to be supported within the mountain west. The more we understand the behaviour of our local animals, the better we will be able to coexist with them. Perhaps one of the most useful things that would help reduce animal mortality would be to slow trains down as they move throughout the parks, just like we do with cars. However, that's a decision that would come with a great deal of resistance by CP who's tracks are ever-busier. Next up…The Cariboo Gold Rush becomes a Bonanza The Cariboo Part 2 Last week I introduced you to the first discoveries of gold in British Columbia, and described how it led to the creation of the Crown Colony of British Columbia, while also necessitating the development of the first wagon roads into the interior of the future province. By the summer of 1860, there were more and more seasoned miners arriving on the scene. These were miners that had been part of earlier rushes and learned the tricks of the trade, including how to read the signs and had a great sense for where to look for gold. George W. Weaver, William Ross Keithley and John A Rose arrived on the Fraser this same year and convinced Ranald MacDonald to guide them into the area where gold had been discovered. As they explored the area north of Cariboo Lake, they found gold along a small creek that they dubbed Keithley. While Rose and MacDonald decided to move on, Keithley and Weaver remained to work the creek. In the end, they decided that the creek just wasn't yielding enough and left the area to follow their comrades. While they were on the creek though, less experienced miners began to crowd the creek with claims and before long, a small hamlet called Keithley sprang up. Today, it's yet another ghost town left behind when the last miners moved on to other sites. For Keithley and Weaver, they followed the creek for a while and then crossed a small divide to another creek where they caught up with MacDonald and Rose. The creek became known as Antler Creek. They were beaming from ear to ear about the potential of the creek and showed them some rusty-coloured gold nuggets. For the moment, they had this spot to themselves. It was only a matter of time before others arrived at the site because secrets never stayed secret in the Cariboo. They were each entitled to one claim, as well as a second 30 x 30 metre claim as the discoverers of the site. They decided to survey the area for the best sites, stake their eight claims, and then work the other areas until they began to run short of supplies. Keithley and Weaver were selected to head back to Keithley Town to gather winter supplies. They had to be very careful though. If word slipped out about the new discovery, they would be inundated with gold-hungry greenhorns all looking to strike it rich. The gold from this new creek had a definitely reddish colour, so they would use gold leftover from Keithley Creek to buy the supplies. They didn't want the gold's colour to betray their plans. They put on their best poker faces and headed to Keithley Town. Unfortunately, they were too well known. Heading back to a town named after you it turned out was a poor way to remain unnoticed. A large group of men already kitted out and wearing snowshoes was waiting for them as they tried to sneak out of town. At the same time, fresh snow had made sure that it would be easy for scads of miners to follow their fresh tracks in the snow and so it was that the Antler Creek discovery became known far and wide. Antler Creek produced fabulous amounts of gold with some claims being as high as $450/day and another bearing $300/day per miner. By June of 1861, Antlertown had 60 buildings including a sawmill, saloons, stores, homes and many tents. With gold comes robberies. On August 17, 1861, a story in the British Colonist reported: “Robberies are not infrequent in Antler. Recently, $130 in gold dust and two pistols were taken from Cameron’s Golden Age Saloon. A slight stabbing affair is also noted. Watson and Taylor’s Minstrels are still performing at Antler.” Hopeful miners continued to arrive, and as Antler Creek became claimed out, many fanned out to other creeks. New discoveries occurred along Williams, Lightning, Lowhee, and Grouse Creeks. Antlertown became the service centre for these new sites. During the winter of 1860-61, there was a party of six miners sharing a single camp. They included Murtz j. Collins, Michael Costin Brown, John "Kansas" Metz, Wilhelm Dietz (a Prussian ex-sailor), James Costello, and Michael Burns. Costello, Burns and Dietz had wandered off to prospect and suddenly returned wide-eyed to report a new discovery in a creek not too far distant. Brown, Dietz and Costello headed back to the creek. Here is Brown's accounting of the discovery: "We crossed the divide, eventually making the headwaters of the creek and after some time we travelled to a place near a little gulch or canyon, where we camped for the night, building a little shelter. On the following morning we separated to prospect the stream, agreeing to meet again at night to report progress. The story of that day's prospecting, which we recalled over the campfire, has become a  matter of mining history in British Columbia. "Dutch Bill" made the best prospect, striking pay dirt at $125 a pan. Costello and I had done pretty well, finding dirt worth a dollar or so a pan. You can well imagine we were well pleased with the day's exertions and each man in his heart felt that we had discovered very rich ground. I shall not forget the discussion that took place as to the name to be given to the creek. Dutch Bill was for having it called "Billy Creek" because he had found the best prospects of the three. I was quite agreeable, but I stipulated that Mr. William [sic] Dietz should buy the first basket of champagne that reached the creek. This appealed to Costello and so the creek was then and there named - not Billy Creek, but William's Creek. " In a story reminiscent of so many before them, as they tried to secretly record their claims, and purchase supplies, the news leaked out and the tracks in the snow once again led a pilgrimage of panners to their diggings. As the fickle finger of fate would have it, the original six discoverers didn't pick the best claims and one by one, they sold out and moved on, six more disappointed souls amidst a bonanza lottery. Thousands came to the Cariboo with the hope of easy wealth, most left broken and broke…and some never left at all, but were buried in lonely graves in places long forgotten. Around this time, another American party led by Richard Willoughby accompanied by Asa and Thomas Patterson and Hanson Tilton arrived. As they explored upstream of Williams Creek and descended into a valley where they came across a lake that they named Jack of Clubs Lake. From Jack of Clubs Lake, they found a stream that flowed through a narrow canyon and almost immediately they came across promising gravels. They had it all to themselves - for the moment, and so they didn't rush the process of staking out their claims. They decided to take as much time as it required to find the very best gravels. This was a canny plan for, as had happened so often in the past, when they did finally head back to civilization for supplies, the multitudes followed them back to the Lowhee. Lowhee was not only incredibly gold rich, but it was an easy creek to work. It represented the start of hard rock mining as the gravels, rather than being panned, were removed to expose the bedrock little more than a metre below. In the bedrock were embedded huge nuggets of gold. Willoughby's group mined for just five weeks and left the area with four thousand ounces worth of nuggets. George Weaver and William Keithley also joined the miners at this site and had to build a 6 km long flume in order to carry water to their site, but the gold was far richer than any expense. Ranald MacDonald also walked away with a fortune before selling his claim to John Rose for a 320-ounce poke of gold. As the stories began to spread, miners that had been working played out creeks further downstream on the Fraser and Thompson Rivers abandoned them and headed to the Cariboo. Of all the creeks thought, Williams Creek was the richest. Towns began to spring up along its length with names like Richfield, Barkerville and, dear to my heart, Camerontown.  As the miners began to look deeper into the gravels of Williams Creek, they began to find the real paydirt. Above the Williams Creek Canyon, the gravels were shallow, usually less than 2-3 metres before the miners would reach a layer of hard blue clay. This was where the gold nuggets lay. On one claim, owned by two men named Abbot and Jourdan, Abbot managed to find 48 ounces in just 36 hours. Further downstream, deep shafts of up to 24 metres along with dense cribwork were required. Isaiah Diller, an American found vast wealth in his claim after reaching bedrock. His crew sook somewhere in the neighbourhood of 11.3 and 45.3 kg of gold in the first few days. Diller claimed that he wouldn't leave the mine until he had mined his weight of 109 kg as well as the weight of his rather weighty dog at 45.3 kg. Unlike most of the miners, Diller didn't squander his riches and some of his original gold is still in the Diller family. Perhaps the most well-known name in the Cariboo is that of William or Billy Barker. Hailing from Norfolk, England, Barker had abandoned his wife and daughter in order to follow the siren song of easy riches in the California gold fields. While he was in the States, his wife passed away and so he followed the news of new discoveries in the Cariboo. His first claim provided enough gold to allow him to buy several others by selling shares in his mine. As winter arrived, he left the frigid shores of Williams Creek for the more gentle climates of Victoria B.C. In the spring of 1862, the Puget Sound Herald reported: The excitement respecting the Cariboo mines is fast reaching fever heat in this vicinity. People will not think of or talk about anything else, even the battles of the Rebellion are forgotten or cease to interest them, so engrossing is the subject of the new mines. Everybody talks of going to the Cariboo diggings in the spring. We may, therefore, confidently look for a rush to these mines next season, equaled only by the Fraser River excitement of '58. So far as we can learn every miner from this new gold field has brought with him from $5,000 to $20,000, all of which has been obtained in the short space of two or three months." By the end of May, some 6,000 miners had arrived at the Cariboo, many hoping to be able to claim workings abandoned by miners that had hadn't returned to their claims. Barker partnered with 6 other miners and headed back to the Cariboo to found the Barker Company. They staked 7 claims further downriver, despite ridicule from other miners who thought their decision folly, thinking he would have to go impossibly deep before finding paydirt. Barker did have to go deep - almost 16 metres before hitting bedrock. He was getting $5 for each pan of dirt. Working close to Barker was John "Cariboo" Cameron, but he moved even further down the creek where he found rich diggings. By the end of the season, Barker had found clays that gave them an ounce for every three pans. As they went even deeper, they found a small crevice that gave them 60 oz of gold. By the end of the season, his 7-claims had produced $600,000 of gold. He headed back to Victoria and married Elizabeth Collyer. She would be his undoing. Over the course of 1862, the colonies produced $2,656,903 worth of gold, but that was just a prelude to 1863 which really showed the riches of the Cariboo. The wealth of the area led to a townsite rising from the muds that was known as Barkerville. Before long, it claimed to be the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco. Elizabeth was in her element and enjoyed the attentions of all the men much younger than Billy. Elizabeth was allowed to spend freely and became a regular at the saloons. His gold production couldn't keep pace with her spending habits and bit by bit, he sold off shares of his company. It wasn't long before the mine was played out and the party was over for Billy and Elizabeth. He left the Cariboo as he had arrived - pennyless. Cariboo Cameron was staked by Bob Stevenson, after meeting him in the Royal Hotel in Victoria. Stevenson was taken by Cameron and they headed to the gold fields along Williams Creek. Along the way, Stevenson bought supplies and hired packers to ferry them to the gold fields where they could be sold for a tidy profit.  Stevenson, along with Cameron and 6 other partners claimed an area below Billy Barkers claim. Next to this claim, Henry Beatty and John Wilson staked a claim that brought them a fortune. Beatty invested in shipbuilding. Wilson became known as the 'Cattle King' of Kamloops. Cameron's party had a difficult time at the beginning, but after sinking a new shaft. Stevenson later related: "On 22 December we struck it very rich at 22 feet. It was 30 feet below and Dick Rivers called up from the shaft: 'the place is yellow with gold. Look here boys,' at the same time holding up a flat rock the size of a dinner plate. I laid down on the platform and peered into the shaft. I could see the gold standing out on the rock as he held it. He sent a piece up and I got one ounce of gold. Then Cameron started down the shaft, and while he was down, I took my pick and went through some of the frozen stuff that had been sent up that morning and got another ounce before he came up again. Out of three 12-gallon kegs of gravel I got $155 worth of gold. Sinking, we found bedrock at 38 feet. It was good all the way down to here, but the richest was at 22 feet strange to say". By this time, winter was upon them and further mining was going to have to wait for warmer temperatures. They returned in April of 1863 and between July and August, they employed 75 miners as yet another townsite arose from the mud to be christened Camerontown. On October 22, 1863, Doc. Walter Cheadle and Viscount William Milton passed through the area. Dr. Cheadle wrote: "We met a small bullwork wagon escorted by about 20 men on foot. This proved to contain 630 pounds of gold, the profits of Mr. Cameron, and the principal shareholder of the noted Cameron claim. The gold, worth about 30,000 pounds, had been amassed in the short space of three months and represents less than one-half of the actual production of the mine during that time. " The mine made a fortune and Cameron left at the end of the season. During the summer of 1863, the mine produced between 40 to 112 ounces each of three daily shifts. Cameron personally left with $150,000 for his three months at the mine. Unfortunately, his later investments outside of the gold fields never panned out and by 1886 he was broke. He was buried in Barkerville in 1888. 1863 was the biggest year for gold production in the Cariboo. This summer the mines produced far more gold than California's gold fields at their peak. In total, 1863 officially yielded up $3,913,563 worth of gold although some estimates were  as high as 6 million dollars. 1863 also brought continuing improvements to the road access into the interior. As the government began to widen the main Cariboo Wagon Road. The government planned a much wider, 5.5 m wide road that would allow wagons to easily pass. The project ended up being much more difficult than originally planned and the contractors, men like Walter Moberly, Thomas Spence and Gustafus Wright took the narrow mule trails and created a permanent link into the wild interior of the future province of British Columbia. The gold rush, along with Governor James Douglas really helped to create the conditions that would bring a new province into the fledgling country of Canada. In less than a decade, on July 20, 1871 it joined Canada as a full province. The promise of a railroad would link this new nation from coast to coast and become the tie that binds Canada together. James Douglas really does deserve the moniker of the "Father of British Columbia" due to his tireless efforts to manage the gold fields, the filing of claims and the reporting of each mines takings. The roads he spearheaded changed the nature of the province forever. Today, you can still visit many the old sites that were important during the heyday of the Cariboo including Barkerville, Williams Lake, Horsefly, and Quesnel. I'll leave a link in the show notes to a good driving tour brochure to help guide your explorations (http://cariboord.ca/uploads/heritage/drivingFINALweb.pdf). For more detailed travel and exploration information, visit www.goldrustrail.ca   And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. If you're looking for a guide to help you experience the stories behind the mountain scenery, our expert guides are ready to help you explore. To book your tour, guided hike, wildlife biology safari or speaker, drop me a line at info@wardcameron.com. You can visit us at www.WardCameron.com or hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron. And with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go hiking. I'll talk to you next week.

By June 1829 Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer had verbalized a desire to be the special three witnesses alluded to in the Book of Mormon. D&C 17 records a revelation affirming their roles as witnesses and was given to Joseph Smith through a seer stone he apparently found while digging a well in 1822. As witnesses, the three were very different. Martin Harris was zealous, impetuous, and even a bit eccentric. Oliver Cowdery was an intellectual. And David Whitmer was regarded as clear-thinking, down-to-earth, and honest. David Whitmer was, perhaps, the strongest witness because he lived so long, never wavered in his testimony of the vision, and gave several newspaper interviews that give us additional details regarding the experience. David reported seeing several plates, the sword of Laban, the Liahona, and the Urim and Thummim. Joseph Smith was understandably relieved to have others to testify of the existence of the plates. Larry Morris concludes that the experience of the Three Witnesses was both an empirical and spiritual experience. Join Nick Galieti of LDS Perspectives Podcast as he interviews Larry Morris as part of the Revelations in Context podcast series.  

It’s simple really. Inside the hallowed halls of the Federal Reserve, unelected, largely unaccountable bureaucrats decide whether the economy is running too hot or too cold, then tinker with monetary policy accordingly. It’s a tremendous amount of power. A generous reading of history suggests the Fed has a dubious track record of forecasting where the U.S. economy is headed. In fact, many are searching for a better way – an alternative to a broken system. None is in more earnest pursuit than Danielle DiMartino Booth, whose brand new book “Fed Up” explains why the current Federal Reserve system is due for a serious revamp. Few are as critical or as qualified to suggest fixes. DiMartino Booth joined Richard Fisher’s Dallas Federal Reserve shortly after the cracks in the financial system were beginning to show. The Fed spent much of 2007 vehemently denying these cracks even existed. Recall in July 2005, that when asked about an impending housing bubble bursting, one that might trigger recession, then Fed chair Ben Bernanke famously said, “I guess I don't buy your premise. It's a pretty unlikely possibility.” During her decade or so at the Dallas Fed, DiMartino Booth recalls feeling initially “daunted” by all these “brilliant people” who could “do calculus in their sleep.” She quickly became disillusioned by how insular the organization was. Sure, the halls were packed with Ph.D’s but many of these academics really didn’t understand the ins and outs of markets. “Generally, if you say stock market to a Ph.D. economist it’s like saying ‘Boo!’ on Halloween. They get all freaked out,” DiMartino Booth says. As the housing market was rolling over and Bear Stearns blew up, “it felt like a hospital,” she says. “Nobody was really worried.” Unsurprisingly, the Fed’s cloistered monasticism has come under tremendous scrutiny and criticism. Many things need to change. “I think the first step should be an acknowledgement of their own fallibility,” she says. “They really are espousing one view of economic thought that would make even Keynes rotate in his grave.” What else? DiMartino Booth suggests a number practical reforms. “We’re no longer the same nation that we were in 1913 when the Federal Reserve act was initially conceived,” she says. In other words, let’s bring the Fed into the realities of the 21st Century. • Reduce the Fed’s mandate to just minimizing inflation. • Take the labor mandate out of the equation and put it back in the hands of the private sector. • Reduce regional Fed offices to ten districts (from twelve currently) by adding a regional Federal Reserve office (or two) on the West Coast and absorbing Minneapolis, St. Louis and Cleveland into Chicago. • Give every district a permanent vote to minimize the power of votes in New York and Washington D.C. • The Fed should hire a more diverse staff with more financial market familiarity and experience • The Fed needs a better appreciation of monetary policy rules, like the Taylor Rule, which would help serve as a system of checks and balances There’s hope. By June of 2018, vocal Fed critic President Donald Trump will be able to nominate as many as five Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members, DiMartino Booth notes. Meanwhile, accomplished former Goldman Sachs execs like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn have Trump’s ear on fixing the Fed. “They are clearly the two most powerful people when it comes to the economy and finance,” DiMartino Booth says. The crusade to fix the Fed continues. Change is coming.

Always we begin by invoking the Holy Spirit, so that He Himself might speak to us. So that He brings to our minds the light of understanding. Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of the faithful… Our Lady seat of Wisdom… Well welcome to this second talk on Fatima and our times, in which I first of all intended to do give a description and a meaning to many of the individual details that occurred when Our Lady came to Fatima. But there are so many and some of them are so interesting, that I decided to focus on two or three aspects of this. As I mentioned the last time, Our Lady came to Fatima in 1917 on six successive months. There was a seventh month when she came, that was twice in August. The reason, the children had been kidnapped. Then she promised she would come a seventh time, which she did, but much later. In the apparitions, the children, in May, were looking after their sheep when Our Lady came. They had resolved to say nothing about it, but Jacinta couldn’t keep quite and told her parents and news began to spread. By June, there were fifty people at the Cova with the children. Then the following month, July, there were two to three thousand. In August five, six or even seven thousand. In September, more than nine thousand. On the 13th October, the crowd was estimated at more than seventy thousand people. We are talking about a public event a public miracle and because it is public, because there are so many witnesses, it’s the main reason why we take it so seriously. It is not a case of some holy or some not so holy person having a vision and saying they had a vision even though it’s true, but rather a public miracle and a public event where there were tens of thousands of witnesses, so this gives Fatima a place of credence of its own. There were many signs associated with the arrival and departure of Our Lady. Among the signs, the first was a flash of light, the children initially thought it was lightening. Then when the crowds started to gather there was a clap of thunder. Many people saw a globe light descend from the East. This is one of the details I would like to spend some time on later. Our Lady always came from the East and returned to the East. This was seen by many people, everybody agreed that just before the apparitions the atmosphere, the air cooled. This happened in summer when it was exceedingly hot just before noon… For Fr. Linus’ complete homily please listen to the Audio.

After years of being selfless and taking care of everyone else’s needs, (ok, that is her humble opinion, but work with her here) Roberta’s skin was dry, itchy and irritated. In 2005, at 43, she finally realized that taking care of herself and her skin was important. She discovered exfoliating products, but like the proverbial Goldilocks, none were completely satisfying her needs & wants: Some were too greasy, some didn’t smell right, and some had too large crystals of sugar. Heading to the kitchen, Roberta played like a “mad chemist” to create her own scrub. By June of 2006, her blend was perfected: Roberta brought on her sister Michelle and ScrubzBody Natural Skin Care was officially started. Five years after launching in a renovated garage, the sisters opened a small manufacturing/storefront, in Bethpage, NY. In 2014, the growing business moved to a much larger storefront. ScrubzBody maintains a retail business and does both private label and wholesale, with clients such as Wild by Nature and Whole Foods Markets. The business needed exposure, and the budget was tight, so Roberta set out to get noticed in various publications, using HARO extensively. She and/or the business has been published and quoted in over 80 skin care and business articles, blogs and beauty magazines. Roberta was a panelist for the Long Island Newsday Connect Small Business Seminar, she was a guest for a natural remedy segment of the Dr. Oz show which aired on 10/24/14, as well as a food related segment which aired on 2/29/16. Roberta did a workshop on Indie Business Cruise 2016 about getting Free Publicity for your small business and she recently published “The Power of Free Publicity, Using HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to Build Relationships & Get Press Without a PR Firm.” She received the Nassau County Legislature Trailblazer award for her charity work on 3/21/16. Roberta is a proud member of Indie Business Network, American Made Matters, Bethpage Chamber of Commerce & Bethpage Kiwanis Club. Books Free Publicity (http://http://amzn.to/29d5fur) -Jeff Crilley Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (http://amzn.to/290PjFL) -Ryan Holiday Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans (http://amzn.to/29q91ga) -Peter Shankman Websites HelpAReporterOut.com (https://www.helpareporter.com/) SourceBottle.com (http://sourcebottle.com/) ThePublicityHound.com (https://publicityhound.com/) CreateSpace.com (https://www.createspace.com/) SailorPress.com (http://sailorpress.com/About-1) The Breast of Everything Fundraiser (http://www.breastofeverything.com/) ShankMinds - Mastermind Group (http://shankminds.com/) http://theprojectheal.org/ (http://theprojectheal.org/) (http://theprojectheal.org/) QuickBooks (https://quickbooks.intuit.com/) (https://quickbooks.intuit.com/) Animoto (https://animoto.com/) (https://animoto.com/) Google Analytics (https://analytics.google.com/) Dropbox (https://db.tt/0zLY0ZJz) People Peter Shankman (http://shankman.com/) Jeff Crilley (http://www.jeffcrilley.com/?S=WebSiteMarketingPlan.com) (http://www.jeffcrilley.com/?S=WebSiteMarketingPlan.com) Marie Forleo (http://www.marieforleo.com/) Paul Jarvis (https://pjrvs.com/) Mike Wolpert (http://socialjumpstart.com/) Contact https://scrubzbody.com/ (https://scrubzbody.com/) (https://scrubzbody.com/) scrubzbody@verizon.net 516-827-0800

New Story is disrupting community development. They are doing that through a story-driven crowdfunding process for building homes. But, they’re not just building houses, they’re creating communities. And, in the process, they are changing the donor experience. To explain all of this, we’re joined today by Alexandria Lafci, a cofounder and the head of operations for New Story. There’s so much to love about Alexandria and New Story. First, they are targeting communities one at a time. For example, they started in Leveque, Haiti where they moved 152 families from living under blue tarps, to living in lovely homes. And, by building that many homes, they were able to create a community. I also love that Alexandria is the head of operations. If you think about it, after a social enterprise defines a problem, comes up with a solution, and funds the idea, the most important priority is execution. Alexandria plays a unique role in seeing to it that New Story disrupts community development. Alexandria is familiar with the need for housing security. Her mother grew up in the foster home system. As a Teach for America volunteer in a southeast Washington DC neighborhood, Alexandria could observe first-hand the impact that housing instability had on her students. After Teach for America, Alexandria took a role in supply chain logistics for a company in Atlanta. This role taught her many of the skills that she uses today at New Story. Alexandria met her cofounders while at a gathering of social entrepreneurs in October 2014. By November of 2014, they put together a minimally viable product (MVP) version of New Story, and by December they were bringing in thousands of donor dollars. By June of 2015, they were in a batch of startups at Y Combinator. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Alexandria Lafci “Just this one thing, housing stability, having it had such far-reaching implications that many of us take for granted, and then not having it had all of these detrimental side effects.” “All we did was we put the image of one family, we put up their story and we had the ability to take payments.” “We started with wanting to help individual families, but when you build homes at a critical mass, you actually create entire communities.”   “We use local material and we use local labor.” “Operations is an umbrella term for all of the components necessary to execute our vision in the physical realm.” “What we are doing is creating sustainable communities, places where people want to live.” “The biggest benefit of Y Combinator for us was, just having audacious goals.” “In setting that huge goal, our entire mindset shifted.” “We called it a 100 homes in 100 days campaign.” “When you’re focused on growth almost exclusively, it really jam-packs a lot of lessons that would have taken us years to learn.” “Sometimes the scariest part is starting.” “Another thing that helped was speaking.” “Find someone who shares that passion and who can do that with you.” “Make sure the problem is not already being solved.” Social Entrepreneurship Resources: New Story: https://www.newstorycharity.org Culture Shift Learning Academy waiting list: http://tonyloyd.com/assessment Culture Shift Learning Academy We’re moving closer to the launch of Culture Shift Learning Academy, a comprehensive system to help you flesh out your social impact idea and start achieving it. Enrollment isn’t open yet, but you can join the waiting list with other changemakers. Just go to http://tonyloyd.com/assessment and enter your email address. As a thank you, I’ll send you the Social Entrepreneur Startup Readiness Assessment. This useful tool is designed to help you to determine where you are on your startup journey and to successfully focus your development efforts.

Stand near the red Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker exhibit case. Columbus, Ohio native Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker was a race car driver who entered World War I as a staff driver and emerged as the leading U.S. ace with 26 confirmed victories over the enemy. At his insistence, he was permitted to join a flight unit, first being assigned as a student at the Aviation Training School at Tours, France. In March 1918, he was assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, the famed “Hat in the Ring” Squadron, and he was in action the next month, flying his Nieuport fighter over the lines against the enemy. By June 1, 1918, Rickenbacker had become an ace, with five victories to his credit. He was put in command of the 94th Aero Squadron and continued as its leader until his return to the United States on January 27, 1919, where he was hailed as America’s “Ace of Aces.” He was awarded the nation’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor, which is on display in this exhibit case. After World War I, Rickenbacker returned to auto racing and became president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He later became an aviation executive and an adviser for the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. He died in 1973 and is buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Columbus.

On May 7 at noon, S. C. Gwynne delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson." Stonewall Jackson has long been a figure of legend and romance. He is considered, without argument, one of America’s greatest military figures. Jackson’s brilliance at the art of war tied Abraham Lincoln and the Union high command in knots and threatened the ultimate success of the Union armies. In April 1862, Jackson was merely another Confederate general in an army fighting what seemed to be a losing cause. By June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the western world. S. C. Gwynne’s Rebel Yell is a vivid narrative that delves deep into Jackson’s private life, including the loss of his beloved first wife and his regimented personal habits. Gwynne traces Jackson’s brilliant twenty-four-month career in the Civil War; his stunning effect on the course of the war itself; and his tragic death, which caused both North and South to grieve the loss of a remarkable American hero. S. C. Gwynne has spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor, and with Texas Monthly as executive editor. He is the author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson.

EPISODE 256 WITH COLORS Z S RAMADAN AKA COLORS THE NETWORKMAN ON POSITIVE POWER21 WIT' JERRY ROYCE LIVE - WORLDWIDE! http://youtu.be/pVLI_96VjdwBorn Zakariyya Syed Ramadan, Colors started life in Manhattan, Kansas in 1979, where soon after he became a native to South Carolina where he reps and roams to this day. Deciding between basketball and music, Colors always knew music was his destined path. Starting out with the group "Fatal Instinct" where he was known as Sassy G and Sleazy Z. Still pursing basketball, he wore a very colorful shirt one day, and was called colors and it just stuck. From there he started on his own self project called "Shining Through". By June of 96, he had an album and a half written. The summer of 97 was the birth of Dangerous Alliance. Which expanded and decreased in members over the years leading to Colors working on his own recorded solo project "Time Waits For No Man". Today the rapper, promoter, and networker stays very busy. With everything from shows & features on other artists’ tracks, to promoting his double disk mixtape entitled "Where's The Love" that> > > dropped February 5, 2011. Also he shot 7music videos entitled “Keep It 100” featuring Quana P of singing dual NYA “Not Your Average” also shot J.O.B featuring Harmony Ella also Sun Don’t Shine featuring Lady J and Madam Lishes the album version of the song also features Alazae.COLORSBLIND FEAT DAWANNA PRICE N ANJAE,HERE NOW FEAT JEY BROWN,WHERE'S THE LOVE FEAT TAMARA JOHNSON.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyo4O43NBRU ,ALBUM VERSION FEAT TIA-G,AND REALTALK FEAT SHALANDA DAVIS Stay tuned more videos to come. Also he’s been working on his long awaited album "Time Waits For No Man, The Progression" schedule to drop june5 of 2012. Colors was also A&R for Jigalow Records bringing in new talents. He also had his own show on NOBODYGRINDS LIKE US DVD Magazine called "THOSE TO WATCH" where he interviews a young upcoming act to the entertainment indy of sc! Currently Colors is keeping everyone in the "know" with daily phone texts about everything from> > > music, modeling, entertainment, and business.> > > The texts are currently $25 per blast to over 7,000 contacts which includes fans, entertainment world, and people you want to know. Colors also> > > promotes everything on Facebook, Myspace, twitter and his site www.colorsnetworkman.wordpress.com. Colors has been featured in write-ups in publications which includes the Post and Courier and as a freelance writer in the Geeche One Magazine. From December 2008 to December 2010, COLORS was a well known promoter of Kween Kat Entertainment aka “KKE”, which is lead by Ms. Anita aka Catwoman aka Kween Katt, Who's been a friend to Colors since 03. He left to start his own company, Long Time Coming Entertainment, but the two remain close. Colors started managing from march17-oct16 2011 singer Tamara Johnson.(Still good friends) His current roster inculdes: Artist DRE DRIOD, Cajmonet and models SHONTELLE, CHELYCE AND SHARMAINEColors mixtape “Spiting Bars Sitting Bars was nominated for 2008 Geeche One Awards for mixtape of the year in 2011 COLORS was nominated for slept on artist of the year at the geecheeone awards and promoter of the year at the leviatate>

EPISODE 256 WITH COLORS Z S RAMADAN AKA COLORS THE NETWORKMAN ON POSITIVE POWER21 WIT' JERRY ROYCE LIVE - WORLDWIDE! http://youtu.be/pVLI_96VjdwBorn Zakariyya Syed Ramadan, Colors started life in Manhattan, Kansas in 1979, where soon after he became a native to South Carolina where he reps and roams to this day. Deciding between basketball and music, Colors always knew music was his destined path. Starting out with the group "Fatal Instinct" where he was known as Sassy G and Sleazy Z. Still pursing basketball, he wore a very colorful shirt one day, and was called colors and it just stuck. From there he started on his own self project called "Shining Through". By June of 96, he had an album and a half written. The summer of 97 was the birth of Dangerous Alliance. Which expanded and decreased in members over the years leading to Colors working on his own recorded solo project "Time Waits For No Man". Today the rapper, promoter, and networker stays very busy. With everything from shows & features on other artists’ tracks, to promoting his double disk mixtape entitled "Where's The Love" that> > > dropped February 5, 2011. Also he shot 7music videos entitled “Keep It 100” featuring Quana P of singing dual NYA “Not Your Average” also shot J.O.B featuring Harmony Ella also Sun Don’t Shine featuring Lady J and Madam Lishes the album version of the song also features Alazae.COLORSBLIND FEAT DAWANNA PRICE N ANJAE,HERE NOW FEAT JEY BROWN,WHERE'S THE LOVE FEAT TAMARA JOHNSON.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyo4O43NBRU ,ALBUM VERSION FEAT TIA-G,AND REALTALK FEAT SHALANDA DAVIS Stay tuned more videos to come. Also he’s been working on his long awaited album "Time Waits For No Man, The Progression" schedule to drop june5 of 2012. Colors was also A&R for Jigalow Records bringing in new talents. He also had his own show on NOBODYGRINDS LIKE US DVD Magazine called "THOSE TO WATCH" where he interviews a young upcoming act to the entertainment indy of sc! Currently Colors is keeping everyone in the "know" with daily phone texts about everything from> > > music, modeling, entertainment, and business.> > > The texts are currently $25 per blast to over 7,000 contacts which includes fans, entertainment world, and people you want to know. Colors also> > > promotes everything on Facebook, Myspace, twitter and his site www.colorsnetworkman.wordpress.com. Colors has been featured in write-ups in publications which includes the Post and Courier and as a freelance writer in the Geeche One Magazine. From December 2008 to December 2010, COLORS was a well known promoter of Kween Kat Entertainment aka “KKE”, which is lead by Ms. Anita aka Catwoman aka Kween Katt, Who's been a friend to Colors since 03. He left to start his own company, Long Time Coming Entertainment, but the two remain close. Colors started managing from march17-oct16 2011 singer Tamara Johnson.(Still good friends) His current roster inculdes: Artist DRE DRIOD, Cajmonet and models SHONTELLE, CHELYCE AND SHARMAINEColors mixtape “Spiting Bars Sitting Bars was nominated for 2008 Geeche One Awards for mixtape of the year in 2011 COLORS was nominated for slept on artist of the year at the geecheeone awards and promoter of the year at the leviatate>

The Flava is back with host Queen of Love~Tigress & Three  We will be interviewing new and upcoming artist and playing a variety of music.  Here is the bio of the artist for this show Born Zakariyya Syed Ramadan, Colors started life in Manhattan, Kansas in 1979, where soon after he became a native to South Carolina where he reps and roams to this day. Deciding between basketball and music, Colors always knew music was his destined path. Starting out with the group "Fatal Instinct" where he was known as Sassy G and Sleazy Z. Still pursing basketball, he wore a very colorful shirt one day, and was called colors and it just stuck. From there he started on his own self project called "Shining Through". By June of 96, he had an album and a half written. The summer of 97 was the birth of Dangerous Alliance. Which expanded and decreased in members over the years leading to Colors working on his own recorded solo project "Time Waits For No Man". Today the rapper, promoter, and networker stays very busy. With everything from shows & features on other artists’ tracks, to promoting his double disk mixtape entitled "Where's The Love" that.  

EPISODE 132 JERRY ROYCE LIVE! 5.0 out of 5 stars A must read!, June 19, 2014Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Hello My Name Is... Forgiven (Kindle Edition)What I love is that Ms Balom really bears her soul as she shares her own story/ journey towards forgiveness. It is very honest and raw and I definitely think that her readers will connect as a result. Also, be prepared to WORK because the tips that she shares are very practical but also make you dig deeper. If you are ready and willing to do your work, this book will give you the tools to go there. am sharing my story in an effort to encourage and inspire someone else who may have walked or be walking a similar journey...When I first embarked upon the journey of starting my first business, Temple Body Fitness, I had a business partner and a lot of dreams. We had the common goal of helping people lose weight and live healthier lives. We struggled through the first few months building our clientele and our reputation. We grew through word of mouth from our satisfied clients. It was a great feeling, unlike any I had ever experienced before. I knew that I was doing what I was created to do, help people and make an impact on their lives. I was pursuing my degree, and had started my women's group Hadassah's Retreat. I was finding myself on my own personal spiritual journey and was beginning to feel as if my life was good and going in the direction I wanted... I was finding my purpose.At first it felt like I started down this spiral...I found out my partner was being "unprofessional" and having a personal relationship with a client.I dissolved the partnership & set out to rebuild my business.I was in two car accidents two weeks apart, neither one was my fault, go figure, lol!Then one day, it seemed as if my whole world began to crash, literally. Initially after the accidents I had the customary aches and pains but assumed that they would go away after a few weeks. I began seeing a chiropractor the week after the accident and thought that soon enough I would be back up and at it again, being the strong woman I was used to being.That was not been the case. After the first few weeks of treatment I was relieved of some of the pain, but that was short lived. My Chiropractor began questioning why I would experience relief for a few days and then spiral back into a pattern of pain. I experienced excruciating neck and back pain, indescribable migraines, intense aches in my joints, my ribs kept popping out of place, and numbness in my hands and feet just to list a few things. I kept trying to push forward thinking that I would be okay and it would go away after my body adjusted and bounced back from the trauma of the car accidents.Again, this was not the case. Instead of getting better I kept getting worse. By March 2006 I had an upset stomach all the time and migraines everyday. I started experiencing mood swings that I couldn’t explain. I had a hard time remembering things. I was lucky if I got four hours of sleep a night. The numbness and tingling in my hands and feet got worse. I started struggling with depression and anxiety. The joy of finding my purpose was gone, replaced by anger at what was happening..."Next thing I knew, they were picking me up of the floor"By June 2006 I was struggling to sit through classes for a few hours a day. By this point i had done an MRI that showed damage to my vertebrae in my neck and lower back and diagnosed me with Degenerative Disk Disease. Then, in August 24, 2006, my body crashed because it couldn’t take anymore.I went to class one day and everyone kept asking if I was okay because I was walking sideways and looked as if I were in pain. I kept saying yes, trying to keep up a good front. I thought after class was over I would go home, lie down and rest. Again, this was not the case. I was in the middle of a conversation with a fellow classmate when all of a sudden I felt as if I were in a tunnel. His voice started fading out and getting farther and farther away. I was looking at him but it seemed as if this black cloud was moving in front of my face and blocking out everything else.Next thing I knew, they were picking me up of the floor. I had collapsed and my entire body had begun to convulse. Because God is so awesome, a friend of mine at the time was a former Nurse, Fire Fighter/Paramedic and Army Medic and was able to help me during that situation. After about 45 minutes the spasms stopped and I thought wow I must really be tired and went home to lay down... I thought maybe I just needed a few days rest. This was on a Thursday so I figured Id just sit still that weekend and my body would find its balance. I thought by Monday Id be back in class and feeling better.LOL!!! How wrong I was?!By that Sunday night I was feeling even worse, and finally had to go to the emergency room that Monday. I had a constant headache, was having constant spasms and convulsions and my hands and feet kept going numb and I was starting to have nerve irritation. I had the unfortunate experience of being assigned to an ER doctor that had never seen a case like mine and he tried to convince me that I was crazy and needed to have a psych evaluation. I left the hospital feeling even worse mentally and physically than I had before I'd gotten there. All they had done was to tell me it might be a neurological problem and given me morphine to stop the constant spasms and ease the pain.Over the next few weeks I continued to get progressively worse: I had constant muscle spasms in my back, chest, neck and right arm (the longer they lasted, they spread to my whole body) Every time the barometric pressure (atmospheric pressure) changed I would get an excruciating migraine Frequent numbness and tingling sensations in my arm, hands, legs and feet Constant joint pain Extreme sensitivity to any sensory input (light, sound, touch, etc.) My nervous system was totally confused and there were times when I couldn’t go to sleep for 3-4 days at a time, then other days when I couldn’t stay awake Constant mood swings and panic/anxiety attacks

EPISODE 132 JERRY ROYCE LIVE! 5.0 out of 5 stars A must read!, June 19, 2014Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Hello My Name Is... Forgiven (Kindle Edition)What I love is that Ms Balom really bears her soul as she shares her own story/ journey towards forgiveness. It is very honest and raw and I definitely think that her readers will connect as a result. Also, be prepared to WORK because the tips that she shares are very practical but also make you dig deeper. If you are ready and willing to do your work, this book will give you the tools to go there. am sharing my story in an effort to encourage and inspire someone else who may have walked or be walking a similar journey...When I first embarked upon the journey of starting my first business, Temple Body Fitness, I had a business partner and a lot of dreams. We had the common goal of helping people lose weight and live healthier lives. We struggled through the first few months building our clientele and our reputation. We grew through word of mouth from our satisfied clients. It was a great feeling, unlike any I had ever experienced before. I knew that I was doing what I was created to do, help people and make an impact on their lives. I was pursuing my degree, and had started my women's group Hadassah's Retreat. I was finding myself on my own personal spiritual journey and was beginning to feel as if my life was good and going in the direction I wanted... I was finding my purpose.At first it felt like I started down this spiral...I found out my partner was being "unprofessional" and having a personal relationship with a client.I dissolved the partnership & set out to rebuild my business.I was in two car accidents two weeks apart, neither one was my fault, go figure, lol!Then one day, it seemed as if my whole world began to crash, literally. Initially after the accidents I had the customary aches and pains but assumed that they would go away after a few weeks. I began seeing a chiropractor the week after the accident and thought that soon enough I would be back up and at it again, being the strong woman I was used to being.That was not been the case. After the first few weeks of treatment I was relieved of some of the pain, but that was short lived. My Chiropractor began questioning why I would experience relief for a few days and then spiral back into a pattern of pain. I experienced excruciating neck and back pain, indescribable migraines, intense aches in my joints, my ribs kept popping out of place, and numbness in my hands and feet just to list a few things. I kept trying to push forward thinking that I would be okay and it would go away after my body adjusted and bounced back from the trauma of the car accidents.Again, this was not the case. Instead of getting better I kept getting worse. By March 2006 I had an upset stomach all the time and migraines everyday. I started experiencing mood swings that I couldn’t explain. I had a hard time remembering things. I was lucky if I got four hours of sleep a night. The numbness and tingling in my hands and feet got worse. I started struggling with depression and anxiety. The joy of finding my purpose was gone, replaced by anger at what was happening..."Next thing I knew, they were picking me up of the floor"By June 2006 I was struggling to sit through classes for a few hours a day. By this point i had done an MRI that showed damage to my vertebrae in my neck and lower back and diagnosed me with Degenerative Disk Disease. Then, in August 24, 2006, my body crashed because it couldn’t take anymore.I went to class one day and everyone kept asking if I was okay because I was walking sideways and looked as if I were in pain. I kept saying yes, trying to keep up a good front. I thought after class was over I would go home, lie down and rest. Again, this was not the case. I was in the middle of a conversation with a fellow classmate when all of a sudden I felt as if I were in a tunnel. His voice started fading out and getting farther and farther away. I was looking at him but it seemed as if this black cloud was moving in front of my face and blocking out everything else.Next thing I knew, they were picking me up of the floor. I had collapsed and my entire body had begun to convulse. Because God is so awesome, a friend of mine at the time was a former Nurse, Fire Fighter/Paramedic and Army Medic and was able to help me during that situation. After about 45 minutes the spasms stopped and I thought wow I must really be tired and went home to lay down... I thought maybe I just needed a few days rest. This was on a Thursday so I figured Id just sit still that weekend and my body would find its balance. I thought by Monday Id be back in class and feeling better.LOL!!! How wrong I was?!By that Sunday night I was feeling even worse, and finally had to go to the emergency room that Monday. I had a constant headache, was having constant spasms and convulsions and my hands and feet kept going numb and I was starting to have nerve irritation. I had the unfortunate experience of being assigned to an ER doctor that had never seen a case like mine and he tried to convince me that I was crazy and needed to have a psych evaluation. I left the hospital feeling even worse mentally and physically than I had before I'd gotten there. All they had done was to tell me it might be a neurological problem and given me morphine to stop the constant spasms and ease the pain.Over the next few weeks I continued to get progressively worse: I had constant muscle spasms in my back, chest, neck and right arm (the longer they lasted, they spread to my whole body) Every time the barometric pressure (atmospheric pressure) changed I would get an excruciating migraine Frequent numbness and tingling sensations in my arm, hands, legs and feet Constant joint pain Extreme sensitivity to any sensory input (light, sound, touch, etc.) My nervous system was totally confused and there were times when I couldn’t go to sleep for 3-4 days at a time, then other days when I couldn’t stay awake Constant mood swings and panic/anxiety attacks

By June, Xiaojie & Ai hongmei

A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history. November 10, 1849: Gold Rush ships choke Yerba Buena Harbor In the closing days of 1848, President Polk sent a message to Congress confirming the discovery of gold in California. This marked the beginning of the gold rush from the east coast. By June of 1849 there were already about 200 ships floating deserted in the harbor, abandoned by gold-seeking crews. On this date -- November 10, 1849 -- the Collector of the Port of San Francisco filed an official report stating that since April 1st, 697 ships had already arrived. For the record, 401 of these were American vessels and the remaining 296 had sailed in from foreign shores. This brings to mind the famous daguerreotypes of Yerba Buena Harbor looking like a burned-out forest of ship masts, but searching for that little item led me serendipitously to another. This next piece is a far more interesting story, and one that took place just seven years later. November 15, 1856: Mary Ann Patten, Heroine of Cape Horn It was the era of the tall-masted clipper ship, an era of speed, adventure and danger, with every trip around the Horn a race against time, other ships, and the odds. In late June of 1856, three clippers cleared New York Harbour and set off for the race to San Francisco Bay. One of these -- Neptune's Car -- was captained by Joshua Patten. This was to be Captain Patten's second voyage on this vessel, the first having been a memorable one. It had been his maiden command, and he'd made the 15,000-mile trip from New York Harbour round the Horn to the Golden Gate in a mere 100 days, 23 1/2 hours -- a time as good or better than the fastest clippers on the water. Even more interesting, the promising young sailor had refused to accept the command until the shipping company allowed him to sail with his new wife, Mary. Though no one yet knew it, this was to be Mary's story. read on ...