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2 episodes with Central Casting
2 episodes with Central Casting
2 episodes with Central Casting
2 episodes with Central Casting
2 episodes with Central Casting
2 episodes with Central Casting
sex trafficking, commercial sex trade, pornography, historic origins of state support for porn/prostitution, ancient Greece, Poland, Galicia, Galicia's legacy of sect trafficking, Galicia-based sex trafficking syndicates, the international reach of Galicia pimps, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hapsburg dynasty, venereal disease, health crisis in Austro-Hungarian Army from VD, World War I, syphilis, syphilis among the Austro-Hungarian officer's corps, intelligence failures related to prostitution in WWI, how the US Navy addressed prostitution, Roosevelt family and their links to the Navy, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Roosevelt family's links to filmmaking, the Navy's likely sponsorship of early porno films, "Health" films, the Hamilton Club, Wisconsin's role in the early filmmaking industry, prostitution and porn in early Hollywood, the rise of stag films and the decline of legal red light districts, the migration of prostitution to LA, Central Casting, Patricia DouglasAndrea's blog:https://www.andreanolen.com/Music by: Keith Allen Dennishttps://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
My sentence for being a self indulgent pig: hamburger hands. A slight reduction on my fatty sides! Things that are needlessly and hopelessly difficult and insanely expensive in Los Angeles: getting your concealed carry permit, rejoining Central Casting, getting your haircut. Rusty came to visit, we saw “Saturday Night.” (That SNL movie)
Connect with Dr. Shockley: https://corehealthlabs.com/awk ——————————— *Our AWK Website: https://www.andweknow.com/ *The Patriot Light: https://thepatriotlight.com/ ➜ AWK Shirts and gifts: https://shop.andweknow.com/ *BOWLING BROS: Sons Bowling channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Bowling_Bros/videos ————————————————— WATCH: Montel Williams says if you don't vote for his former side chick then you have ‘mental illness' & you'll ‘eat out of a garbage can' https://t.me/SpyGateDown/40679 FORMER DEMOCRAT TORCHES KAMALA HARRIS https://x.com/KariLakeWarRoom/status/1821698261935386697 Movie 17 https://x.com/truestormyjoe/status/1821706141170065536 “What a STUPID question”
I smell a rat in this Farage racism row. He can not be responsible for the actions of a canvasser can he? What this fat actor said was offensive and I understand why Rishi is upset. However when you listen to the rant it does seem like the guy is straight from Central Casting. It is cliche after racist and sexist cliche. Reform must be really rattling the Establishment. I watched the Biden and Trump debate last night and it is sad but clear that Joe BIden is really ill and should for his own sake stand down. Trump was very fair and kind to him last night and now will be the next Leader of the free world. Don't talk to me about Car insurance as my company has just tried to increase mine my 90 percent! It's a rip off and I am sure I'm not alone.
Do you hear that sound? Like glass cracking? I'm sure it's nothing. Join us as we celebrate the month of May with some untreated mental illness, a Central Casting 80s punk, and a dog that definitely (probably) had all four legs last time we checked. Please rate, review, and tell your fiends. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future installments. Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/thefrankencast. Follow us on Twitter or Instagram @thefrankencast or send us a letter at thefrankencast@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you! Your Horror Hosts: Anthony Bowman (he/him) & Eric Velazquez (he/him). Cover painting by Amanda Keller (@KellerIllustrations on Instagram).
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Divorce can be a difficult process today, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be. In the late 1800s, women from around the country had to fight for the right to separate from their husbands on their own terms. April White tells their stories and how they still impact us today in her fascinating book, The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. April White has served as an editor and writer at Atlas Obscura and Smithsonian Magazine. Her historical stories have also appeared in publications including the Washington Post, Boston Globe Magazine and The Atavist Magazine. Transcript APRIL WHITE: Each of these women goes out to Sioux Falls for a very personal reason. We start to see the shift in the understanding of divorce. These women have very little traditional power at this moment in history. They are not in any of the rooms where divorce and divorce law are going to be debated. They're not in the legislatures. They're not in the judiciary. They're not in the White House. They're not in religious circles. They're not in those conversations. Yet, they are driving those conversations. BLAIR HODGES: Once upon a time in the late 1800s, Sioux Falls, South Dakota became the hot destination for women from all over the United States. These women weren't coming to see the famous Sioux Falls, they weren't looking for land, or to find husbands. In fact, they came to this frontier of the American nation looking to get rid of husbands. They were looking for the fastest and easiest path to get a divorce. Because in the 19th century, it was almost impossible to get one anywhere else. This wasn't a private process either. It played out in public, in the courtroom, in the press. It was like an old time TMZ saga. Historian April White says these women were really looking for personal solutions to personal problems, but their efforts helped change divorce laws for the entire country in ways that still matter today. April White joins us now to talk about her book, The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. There's no one right way to be a family, and every kind of family has something we can learn from. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations. April White, welcome to Family Proclamations. APRIL WHITE: Thank you so much for having me. RISING DIVORCE RATES (1:54) BLAIR HODGES: We're talking about your book, The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. You're taking us back in time a little bit, this is the turn of the century. We're heading into the year 1900 here. In that last decade of the 1800s, there were some headlines that were popping up around the country that you point out in your book, and the headlines were alarmed. The people were alarmed. The question was, is marriage a failure? Why would they ask that question in the late 1800s? APRIL WHITE: In this moment, you're seeing rising divorce rates. The people who are particularly alarmed by this, and it's most often the clergy, can't imagine that divorce is a good thing. They only see this as an evil. They imagined that somehow marriage is falling apart. What's really happening is marriages are as good or as bad as they've ever been. There's just more opportunity now—economic, political, social, legal—there's more opportunity for spouses to go their separate ways if they are unhappy in their marriage. They're saying they're very concerned about marriage, but what they're really concerned about is divorce because they want to keep this building block of the country to gather these ideas of the family, is really central to that concern. BLAIR HODGES: You point out that they're using language of epidemic—this is some sort of illness that is spreading through society. The numbers back up the fact that divorce was increasing. You say that there was a national census in the 1880s that freaked people out. It showed that divorce had basically doubled in a really short amount of time. You mentioned the clergy were particularly alarmed with this. Did they think much about the context of it in terms of maybe people are unhappy in marriages? Maybe that's where we should begin, rather than should we be letting people get divorced? APRIL WHITE: Very few of them thought that way. You mentioned the census. It's basically the first time anyone has gone and counted marriages and divorces. What the census shows is yes, the divorce rate is increasing, but there's also not a lot to compare it to. These numbers seem really big. You knew a couple of people who got divorced, but now there are tens of thousands. Those numbers are also part of what inflames this conversation, whether they had any point of comparison or not. No, you will largely see people wanting to make it more difficult to divorce. Most of the Catholic sects in the in the United States think about it that way. The one exception to this that I was aware of was the Unitarian Church, which very much thought divorce was a necessary evil, and the focus should be on making marriage better, which would naturally lower divorce rates because fewer people would be seeking to leave their marriage. AUTHORITY FOR DIVORCE (4:38) BLAIR HODGES: You also talk about at this point in American history, there's an important shift that's already happened in how divorce even worked. The question was where was authority for divorce situated? You trace the change over from legislatures overseeing it to the courts. Maybe describe that transition a little bit, because that has a lot to do with people's ability to get divorced—where that power was. APRIL WHITE: In the early days of the United States, in order to get a legal divorce you needed to go before a state legislator for a private bill of divorce. This was the type of thing that could be very difficult to navigate for people who did not have the connections and the proximity to power this would require. For some practical reasons, which is the legislatures had other things to do, you see the country moving away from this state by state and bringing divorce into the courts. This has an unintentional consequence of leveling the playing field in a lot of ways between men and women in order for people to seek a legal divorce, and in some ways between the upper and lower classes—although there is still an economic divide there when it comes to dealing with the courts. It was not the intention when divorce was moved to the courts to make this more egalitarian. It was an unintended side effect. BLAIR HODGES: What did it look like before? Did the husband have to be the one to initiate the divorce? Could women initiate divorces? What did it look like? Would it also affect her ability to get remarried? APRIL WHITE: Either party could initiate divorces, and what we see throughout the history of divorce is there is the law, and then there are all the other factors around the law that affects who can use it. Even in the time period I'm talking about, since we've moved into the court it has been more egalitarian for men and women. That doesn't mean both men and women are seeking divorce at the same rate or with the same ease. Two things happen. One, for a woman to seek a divorce she needed to be in an unusual for the time independent economic position. She needed to have social support that would allow her to go through a divorce and still have a community on the other side. There were a lot of pressures on her, outside of the law, that made it difficult to seek a divorce. That's the other point, and the exact opposite pressure, which is we see in this census we're talking about that two out of every three people who seeks a divorce is a woman. There's a really particular reason for that, too. Men had an easier time seeking extra legal means to get a divorce. A man could walk away from his marriage. Chances are he had the economic resources that the woman didn't so he didn't have to worry about necessarily marrying again in order to be economically, socially, politically stable. He also didn't have to worry about the legitimacy of his children. He could claim those children or not claim those children. The woman did not have that choice. For women that piece of paper was exceptionally important because without it you could not legally remarry. The real important thing to remember here is that for women in this time period, marriage is the single biggest economic, political, social choice she is going to make in her entire life. LEGALLY VALID REASONS FOR DIVORCE (8:06) BLAIR HODGES: Another component here is the cause for divorce. We have no-fault divorce today, although strangely there are some people already trying to claw back that right. Talk about what people had to face in order to even get a divorce because no-fault divorce wasn't a thing yet. APRIL WHITE: It's a little hard to imagine, actually. Divorce, once we get into the courts, is an adversarial process. One spouse has to accuse the other of one of the violations that their state allows—each state was different in terms of what their divorce laws were. The Court needed to find you guilty of that offense. I may go into court and say, "I want to divorce my husband because he has deserted me." I need to prove to the court that has happened or the court is going to say, "Nope, sorry." This adversarial piece is really important because if I and my spouse want to divorce, we both want a divorce, we both want to go our separate ways. We cannot do that. In almost every state there was a law against collusion. That meant if you and I had agreed we wanted a divorce, we were already prohibited from doing that. Of course you see a lot of people working around these laws, but that was the letter of the law. BLAIR HODGES: They could have off the books conversations, like here's how we're going to play it. What were some other differences? You mentioned there was a hodgepodge of laws between states, which was another challenge. What kind of differences, in addition to different causes—I think New York was one that was really hardcore. It was really difficult. There were very specific things. You had to prove adultery or something. What kind of differences between states did people have to consider when they're thinking about getting divorced? APRIL WHITE: New York in this time period only allows divorce with proof of adultery. The only thing I can charge my spouse with was adultery and I have to walk into court and in some way convince the judge. There are plenty of cases in which the judge is not convinced and you remain married to the person you just tried to divorce. BLAIR HODGES: They didn't have cell phones where they could catch people or look at old text messages. [laughter] APRIL WHITE: I've got to tell you, after the time period I write about in the book you actually see this growth of this industry of actresses you can hire to come in and lie on the stand, or to pose for a picture in a hotel room so that a couple who mutually wants to get divorced can. People went to great lengths to separate when the law did not allow them to. That's what the divorce colony in Sioux Falls is. What happens is, in the United States every state has its own divorce laws. There are two components to that. One is the residency requirement. How long do you need to live in the state in order to fall under the jurisdiction of the court and sue for a divorce? The other are the causes. What causes can I claim to get this divorce? New York, South Carolina, very difficult. Other states, in theory more liberal, but how those laws are applied are a little difficult. To the previous point I was making, it's not all about the law, so it also depends on how supportive your community is within that state. That's what ends up making what they call the migratory divorce, or foreign divorce, attractive for those who could afford it. In the time period I'm writing about, starting in 1891, you see wealthy, white women typically, traveling out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to get divorces. I know that sounds incredibly weird. South Dakota has only just become a state. Sioux Falls has only been a city for not even two decades at this point. It's ten thousand people. BLAIR HODGES: It's the Wild West in some ways. It's the frontier. APRIL WHITE: It really is, particularly for these women who are coming from upper class New York, who have had a very different experience. But the train lines run there now. It's the end of the line. It is a place where you can go and live in 1891 for just three months to fall under the jurisdiction of the court and before you can sue for divorce. I said "just" there but traveling someplace and living there for three months and then more as your case winds its way through the courts, is an expensive and difficult endeavor. That's what people would do to get around these different residency and grounds issues. WELCOME TO SIOUX FALLS (12:43) BLAIR HODGES: Your book's written almost like a novel. It really paints such wonderful pictures of the time. Give us a sense of women coming from a place like New York into South Dakota. What would they see as they're getting off the train? What was it like there at the time? APRIL WHITE: Thank you for saying that, because I really did want to bring you as close as you could get to these women and understand what lengths they had gone through in order to seek separation from their spouse. It's a multiple day train ride from New York, and to Chicago that was probably relatively normal at the time. But a woman traveling alone on a train west of Chicago was a pretty rare sight, and one that certainly sparked a lot of gossip. You finally make your way to Sioux Falls—and I have to say Sioux Falls, even at the time, was actually a very beautiful city. This is because they had a local architect who built some very impressive buildings there, and also some local stone, Sioux quartzite, which made this very young city feel more permanent and more of something familiar than it might have otherwise. BLAIR HODGES: It's kind of hip in a way. [laughter] APRIL WHITE: I'm not sure they thought about it that way, but I think we would. [laughter] When you got off the train, what struck me is the two things you could see most clearly on the skyline of this very young city was the courthouse. The courthouse where you were going to stand in a public trial and be questioned about your marriage. You could see the top of St. Augustus Cathedral, and that was home to a man named Bishop Hare, and he was the most outspoken opponent of divorce in Sioux Falls, and eventually a really well-known voice in the country. Those were the two opposing forces of Sioux Falls you could see just as you got off the train. BLAIR HODGES: April, by the way, Bishop Hare seems straight out of Central Casting, too. [laughter] APRIL WHITE: Absolutely. He was quite the character. Someone who was very well respected in the state, had been a missionary there for decades, who truly believed he was preaching in the best interest of his congregants and his city, but in doing so was denying people access to something they really, truly needed. BLAIR HODGES: He was politically savvy too. He'd been paying attention to how laws in the state were influencing people that were coming into the state. He wanted Sioux Falls to be where his flock was, this wonderful place where people could grow families and be prosperous and help expand America. There was definitely this Manifest Destiny feeling there. Then he sees these outsiders coming in, and what he sees is taking advantage. Talk a little bit more about the divorce laws as they played out in South Dakota that differentiated South Dakota from other states. This became the pilgrimage site for a lot of these wealthier women. Why? What were the laws that were so advantageous there? APRIL WHITE: We had this short residency requirement, and it's easy now when you hear that to think, "Wow, South Dakota—super progressive in the 1880s-1890s." No, no, that was not what was going on. We had seen this actually always on the western edge of the United States because when you had white settlers coming into a place for the first time, they wanted to build their community. They wanted to attract people and they wanted people to become a part of the fabric of that community very quickly. These low residency requirements were about bringing people into civic life, not about allowing them to get a divorce. So again, unintended consequences here. Bishop Hare had been a big part of building South Dakota. He had been a missionary in the Dakota territories, very well respected, had spent a lot of time working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so had some politicking in him. He had also spent a lot of time back east raising money from well-to-do people, largely in New York—among them the Astor family, basically known as the landlords of New York at the time. Incredibly wealthy people. The idea of shaping laws and influencing people was not foreign to Bishop Hare, when you had what were known as divorce colonists coming out to Sioux Falls and saying, "Hey, there is a law on the books which I would like to use." Yes, it did in theory raise the ire of people who said, "Oh, well this is never what it was intended for. It's okay if my neighbor, a true resident of Sioux Falls, wants to get a divorce. But we did not intend to be a place where other people came." Now, that's not entirely true. They are actually against divorce in general but it is easier for them to say, "We're okay with it ourselves. This is not the spirit of the law." That's where you see the tension. You have these divorce colonists who are typically of a higher class, have more money than the people in Sioux Falls, who are coming out there, they believe, to take advantage of these laws. You have a lot of social tension in the town in addition to this legal tension around the laws. BLAIR HODGES: How about the economy? Were there enough people coming out to provide a windfall to the place? Were there are people that were like, "Actually, this is kind of nice because people are going to come stay in hotels, or they might buy stuff when they're out here." Was that an incentive? APRIL WHITE: It absolutely was. You see that when people first start coming to Sioux Falls. History never moves in a straight line. What we see is first in the history of the divorce colony as people start to arrive, there is this idea that maybe this is a good thing. We want more people in Sioux Falls. We want more money in Sioux Falls. One of the things that anecdotally seems to have grown up around these divorce colonists was a robust arts scene in Sioux Falls, and the latest fashions that were demanded by these people coming from the east. In the very early days you see some entrepreneurial spirit around the divorce colony, but then we have these bigger name women start to come out mid-1891. The national spotlight follows them. Reporters come to town. They're on the front pages on a daily basis. Very quickly the sentiment in Sioux Falls turns to this is a stain on our community. We don't want people to be looking at us like we're a place for divorce. You still have some supporters in the lawyers, in the hoteliers, and restauranteurs, but at least publicly, at least in front of the newspapers you have a lot of derision towards the divorce colony as soon as the rest of the country is looking at the city negatively. GAINING FREEDOM (19:40) BLAIR HODGES: Before we dig into the particular people, I have one more broad question and that comes from something you wrote. You say, "The women who traveled to Sioux Falls were not activists. What was for them an act of personal empowerment and self-determination became an intensely political act anyway." That stood out to me. That was one of my surprised moments. These weren't necessarily women who were trying to make some larger societal political point about divorce or women's rights. They were seeking help in their own circumstances, basically, for the most part. APRIL WHITE: Each of these women goes out to Sioux Falls for a very personal reason. The only thing each of them is fighting for out there is their own freedom. No one is out there to make a statement. In fact, they would all prefer not to be on the front pages. If they could have done this quietly they would have. What you see is each person going to the extreme to gain their own freedom, but in doing so in the numbers they did, with the attention they did, we start to see the shift in the understanding of divorce. That was one of the things to me that was so interesting about this story. You have these women who have very little traditional power at this moment in history. They are not in any of the rooms where divorce and divorce law are going to be debated. They're not in the legislatures. They're not in the judiciary. They're not in the White House. They're not in religious circles. They're not in those conversations. Yet, they are driving those conversations. I really was fascinated by that alternate path to power. BLAIR HODGES: There was also an element of entertainment about it. As you said, these were public events that were covered in the press. They didn't have true crime podcasts and Dateline and stuff like this to watch back then and it seemed like this kind of played that role of people being able to be voyeuristic a little bit into what were supposed to be private matters. APRIL WHITE: Oh absolutely. This is your TMZ. This is your grocery store tabloid. This is the celebrity gossip of this time period. People love it. Even those in Sioux Falls who claim to hate the divorce colonists want to know every single thing they do in town. It is the attention that is paid to the divorce colonists that really ultimately ends up shifting the conversation. The time period of the book is roughly twenty years, from about 1890 to about 1910. For twenty years you have these people who oppose divorce saying this is going to topple the family and therefore topple the country. Yet every day you see this on the front pages and nothing has fallen yet. The press really plays a big part in how things shift during this time. MAGGIE DE STUERS AND HER DIPLOMAT (22:51) BLAIR HODGES: That's April White. She's senior writer and editor at Atlas Obscura and author of the book The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. That gives us a broad overview here. Your book lays out the stakes for us, and then you're going to get biographical. You're going to introduce us to particular women and their stories to let us know how things played out on an individual level. The first person that you talk about, and I'm probably going to pronounce the name wrong, is Maggie De Stuers. How do you pronounce that? APRIL WHITE: That's how I pronounce it. I can't tell you how she did, but that's my take. [laughter] BLAIR HODGES: Great. Give us a sense of who Maggie is and why you led off with her story. APRIL WHITE: So Maggie De Stuers arrives in Sioux Falls in the middle of 1891. She tries to do so quietly. That is just not going to work for her because she is a niece of the Astor family, and the Astor family is this incredibly wealthy New York family who is on the front pages all the time. Maggie had been married to a Dutch diplomat, and about a year earlier she had disappeared. She had fled from their home in Paris and for a year no one had known where she was. When it becomes known that she is in Sioux Falls, it is on the front pages of papers in Chicago, in New York, in Boston. This was front page news. BLAIR HODGES: Would it be sort of like Paris Hilton appearing someplace? APRIL WHITE: Yes, she's been missing for a year and suddenly she shows up in a small town in South Dakota. That's exactly right. It drags all this attention to Sioux Falls. That's in part why I led off with her. The other reason I led off with her though is in addition to sparking the media attention in Sioux Falls, she sparks Bishop Hare's ire towards the divorce colony. He was always going to be opposed to divorce, but Bishop Hare had a relationship with the Astors. In fact, St. Augustus Cathedral was named for Augusta Astor, who was Maggie's aunt. So the idea that Maggie is there publicly seeking a divorce—let's put aside the fact she would have loved to have privately sought one and was not allowed to—but the fact that she is there publicly seeking a divorce and sitting in his church on Sundays is a personal affront to Bishop Hare, and in many ways sparks him on what will become the effort of the rest of his lifetime, which is to abolish the divorce colony. BLAIR HODGES: You talk about how she was there because she got married young, she was younger than the person she married, it seemed to be one of these diplomatic or relationship legacy type marriages. They didn't meet on an app and connect because of their enneagrams were similar, or whatever. They seem to be a marriage of family connections and he was older than her. He seemed like a really boring guy. It just wasn't the right thing for her basically. APRIL WHITE: They seem pretty ill suited, at least as they grew older. Maggie would accuse him of treating her poorly, of threatening her, of yelling at her. To your point, one of the interesting things about the different women I picked for this book to focus on is they all do marry for different reasons. Maggie, when she marries in the 1870s, it's really fashionable to marry a European title. So there was a lot of strategy in why she would have married this man. She was supposed to be happy with this life, which involves flitting around between European capitals. But she wanted something else. So she has a moment where she fears that her husband is trying to institutionalize her in order to gain control of her fortune. BLAIR HODGES: Which also wasn't unheard of. This is a thing that they do to control women. APRIL WHITE: Institutionalizing women to control women at this time period was unfortunately quite common. Maggie was in an unusual position where she was far wealthier than her husband was because of her family connections. That's what ultimately led her to flee, although it meant leaving behind her children. She has already gone to great lengths to leave this marriage when she shows up in Sioux Falls. BLAIR HODGES: When she shows up she's not alone. She's got a secretary with her, this gentleman who is supposedly helping her in her travels. She's going to connect with lawyers onsite to help her with her proceedings. We meet some other people in the city. We meet Judge Aikens, who is going to be presiding over the divorce court. We meet Fannie Tinker, who seems to be a cool journalist figure that's going to be there telling the tale. We meet these people there and at this point you say how, again, this was an adversarial procedure so spouses could contest this. Her husband the Baron contested it. What it would take is being publicly accused of being a horrible person. He sent this affidavit over that was filled with scandalous charges. APRIL WHITE: He did. For a while it was thought that maybe the Baron was going to come out to South Dakota from Paris where he was living at the time to contest this in person. To the great dismay of the crowds in South Dakota this does not happen, but to Maggie's relief. You still have a public trial. You have a public trial in which the Baron's deposition is read out loud where Maggie is on the stand in a packed courtroom being asked to relive what she considers to be the worst possible moments of her marriage. You really see there both the lengths to which she had to go, but the determination she had to do this. She'd never stop pursuing this, even once she realized what it would take. Including calling her a bad and uncaring mother, which was one of the worst things you could level at a woman at this particular time period. BLAIR HODGES: If I remember correctly he was also saying that she was having an affair, right? That this was a ruse for her to get with somebody else. APRIL WHITE: Yes. He said that she had left him for another man and had been traveling with this man during the period of time she had been missing. BLAIR HODGES: I don't know. Is it a spoiler to say who that was? [laughter] If you want to keep it a secret, I will. But it's so interesting. APRIL WHITE: Let's say we do find out, and the wedding is even more of a scandal than the divorce. BLAIR HODGES: Yes. I'll let people figure it out in the book but suffice it to say she does get her divorce. Why? Why did the judge side with her? APRIL WHITE: You largely see in Sioux Falls—and I talk about Sioux Falls but of course the same laws apply throughout South Dakota—that in Sioux Falls most people get their divorce. The state had a large number of reasons for grounds for divorce. A lot of people did not contest these things and come out and try to oppose it. Almost everyone who goes before the court gets their divorce. She is able to make the case that she has satisfied the grounds that she has put forth before the court. MARY NEVINS BLAINE TAKES ON THE POLITICIAN (29:59) BLAIR HODGES: Let's move to Mary Nevins Blaine. Mary was interesting because it's harder to assume that she married for money. You can't really assume that. She was actually older than the man she married. She was nineteen. Her partner Jamie Blaine was just seventeen when they got married. She was a young actress and Jamie's dad was a politician with national aspirations. This just has the ingredients for a really great story. You've got this young actress marrying the young son of this aspiring politician and the family is not happy about the marriage. APRIL WHITE: Yes. These teenagers elope just a couple of weeks after they meet and marry secretly, to the great dismay of both of their families. Both the Blaine family, as you mentioned, James Gillespie Blaine is the standard bearer of the Republican Party at this time. He's a perpetual presidential candidate, very well known in the country. Mary's family is also like, "We don't know what you're doing with this younger son of the Blaine family." Jamie had not to this point proven himself to be rather reliable and would go on to continue to not be particularly reliable. It was a real scandal, both for the families and again for the whole country who got to watch this elopement play out on the front pages. BLAIR HODGES: That could hurt Jamie's dad's political career so his family would be concerned about how it looks, how it reflects on his dad and his political options. Then for her family, they would be concerned about her options going forward. Could a divorced woman return to acting? Would she get remarried? She, first of all, would need to win the divorce and then would be faced with difficult options after that. The stakes are really high. What do you think was the ultimate reason for them divorcing? Because it seemed like they at least liked each other. Whereas in the previous case, she married a Baron because that was kind of the cool thing to do. But these guys actually seem to like each other, at least at first. APRIL WHITE: Mary definitely married for love. What she didn't love so much was Jamie's family. Jamie was, as I eluded, a sort of wayward, he seems to have had a problem with alcohol. He seems to have had a problem with his temper. He had not accomplished the same things that his siblings had. His parents, particularly his mother, kept him very close and really tried to keep him under their thumb, possibly for very good reasons. But Mary really chafed at this, particularly at Jamie's mother who had never come to like her daughter-in-law. Jamie's father, for a period of time, James did embrace Mary but his mother never did. What Mary would charge in court was that her mother-in-law had instigated this breakup and had driven them apart. Classic mother-in-law situation. [laughter] What happens is when the judge points that out we get a whole big problem. BLAIR HODGES: What happens there? What is that problem? APRIL WHITE: Things had happened, not quietly, but routinely, I would say. The Blaine family had decided not to cause a stir around this divorce. James Gillespie Blaine had decided it was better for his political career to just let this happen. However, the judge, once he hands down his judgment in favor of Mary, goes off on a bit of a tirade against Jamie's mother. He doesn't need to do this. This doesn't need to be part of the court proceedings. He makes it clear that he feels Jamie's mother was the cause of this. The press is very excited about this. James Blaine has throughout his life been very protective of his wife, and he's also hoping to be the presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 1892. This is the moment he decides he needs to go on the offense. Even though Mary already has her divorce at this point, James writes an open letter that's, again, printed on the front pages of newspapers across the country, making it clear that it is Mary's fault and threatens to release her love letters and really is doing everything he can to take down this young twenty-something actress. Which doesn't seem like a particularly good look for the country's top diplomat and a potential presidential candidate, but there you go. BLAIR HODGES: That was what was so surprising is the lengths he was willing to go because what you're showing here is that the battle over public opinion still mattered. Divorce was an issue, right? Public opinion and public thought about how divorce should work really mattered. In this case, divorce was granted, people could move on and still oppose divorce or whatever, but James Blaine, that's when he decided to dig in, as you said. I think there was some protectiveness about his spouse. I would assume there were advisors around him probably saying, "Hey, let's back off a little bit. This might not be the best idea." Yet he pursued. How did Mary respond to that? Now she's being maligned in the press. He's threatening to publish letters and he's insinuating there are these bad letters. Basically saying, "I got dirt on you, and you better back off, or else." What's she going to do? APRIL WHITE: I like her because she seems like such a smart cookie. She is incredibly composed for someone who is taking on one of the best-known figures in the country at this point. She also releases a letter to the press and basically says, "I am a twenty-something actress, it surprises me that you would malign me. I am simply seeking what is best for me and your grandson. However, if you insist on releasing my letters, I will release your son's letters. Game on." She does it in a way that is incredibly effective. I don't think anyone expected this young woman to be able to take on the country's top diplomat. BLAIR HODGES: What exactly did she say that carried the day for her that was so savvy? APRIL WHITE: I don't think anyone expected her to fight back at all. I think the fact that she had the wherewithal not to hide, not to bend to this. I can't speak to her motivation on this, but my thought would be the country already thought poorly of her. She had already been waging this public relations battle and she was a likable character. She had also gotten a divorce. She was now a single mother actress. She didn't have a lot to lose in way of her national reputation. I think that may have emboldened her to take this step. I don't think anyone expected her to confront him, including James Blaine. I think they thought this was the end of the story. Jamie, her ex-husband, had not acquitted himself well. Some people were inclined to believe the accusations against her mother-in-law. There were a lot of ways in which the more space Mary had to tell her story, the worse it looked for the Blaine family. BLAIR HODGES: At this time we're seeing some federal attention on this. People are trying to pass constitutional amendments to regulate marriage and divorce. That just wasn't going anywhere. They couldn't get enough consensus to really nail down any kind of national law about how divorce could look. We look at someone like Bishop Hare, who's a clergy member, he's opposed to divorce for religious reasons. We might expect him to fight hard for those kinds of laws. We might also be surprised at some of the other allies of that cause. I'm thinking, for example, of Emma Cranmer, who was a women's suffragist, and women's rights advocate, and she was on Bishop Hare's side in feeling unsettled about where divorce law might go. APRIL WHITE: One of the other reasons I want to tell Mary's story, in addition to it just being a fascinating tale, was because I got to look at some of these political issues that were coming up at the time. One of the things you realize right away is you had people who oppose divorce, and you had people who were quiet about divorce. You didn't have a whole lot of people out there saying, "Yes, divorce is something we need people to have access to." In that category of opposed divorce, you get what seems today to be some unlikely players. Among them, the suffragettes. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Part of this is because there was, particularly in Emma's case, a large religious component to the suffragist movement, and in Emma's case, the way she thought about the world. But also because there was this fear that the issue of divorce would distract from the issue of the vote. You already had these fears that giving women the vote was going to in some way disrupt family life, was in some way going to take women out of the home and put them into the public space. To also be fighting for divorce was to in some ways, they feared, legitimize that concern. You had a lot of people who simply said, "We can't divide the movement. We can't distract from what we're trying to do here." You really don't see a lot of public support among the suffragettes for this effort. BLANCHE MOLINEUX, THE MURDERER'S WIFE (39:29) BLAIR HODGES: You do see some local changes. In Sioux Falls, there is a change in the law where the residency requirement is made longer, which is going to make it more difficult so people who seek a divorce are going to have to stay longer. It increases the burden they would have to pay. You see a decline in divorces that happen, but it doesn't take even a decade before they start loosening that up again. That takes us to Blanche Molineux, another name that I may be pronouncing correctly or not. She shows up on the scene now that things are loosened up again, and she breaks maybe one of the biggest taboos which is that she openly declares that she's going there specifically to use the lax laws that are there. That was supposed to be an open secret and she just says it. APRIL WHITE: We see a lot of change between 1893, which is when South Dakota increases its residency requirement from three months to six months, and when Blanche arrives in the early 1900s. What's happened at this point is, once South Dakota extended its residency requirements, North Dakota was suddenly the easiest place to get a divorce. Not a lot of people wanted to hang out in Fargo, but still North Dakota decided it didn't like the attention. At the end of the nineteenth century, they extend their residency requirement to a year, so all of a sudden Sioux Falls at six months is again the laxest divorce laws in the country. For a little bit, to my earlier point, you see people coming out to Sioux Falls and there's not a lot of fuss so things are kind of okay. But Blanche has a couple of strikes against her before she even arrives in Sioux Falls. That is that she is already incredibly well known as the "murderer's wife." She had been married to a man who had been accused of poisoning a rival, also believed to have poisoned a romantic rival in addition—one of Blanche's former lovers—and he had been convicted of poisoning, very long story, he had been convicted of a poisoning, and he had been sentenced to death row. BLAIR HODGES: This could be its own real true crime podcast, by the way. APRIL WHITE: It is, it is. Then for evidentiary reasons, his conviction was overturned. He had a second trial and he was acquitted. Now, if you'll remember, there is still only one reason to get a divorce in New York: for adultery. Blanche does not believe that Roland has committed adultery. She cannot make this claim. She believes that he has committed murder. BLAIR HODGES: It seems like he has, too, right? APRIL WHITE: I think it seems like he has too. But that is not a reason for a divorce. BLAIR HODGES: That's what's so funny. They're like, "Oh, sorry, you didn't have an affair. You just murdered people." [laughter] APRIL WHITE: She leaves immediately for Sioux Falls and again brings all that attention back that Maggie had brought with her a decade earlier. Yes, she is outspoken about why she's there. A lot of people worry that's going to cause her legal problems. In some ways it does, it actually causes her more social problems, though. She has broken some of the unwritten rules around how this works and the circumstances under which we're going to accept a woman's decision to do this. BLAIR HODGES: You have to at least pretend you're going to stay there, for example. You're coming out to at least pretend you want to live there. APRIL WHITE: That was one of the questions you see in all of the divorce hearings in Sioux Falls, which is, how long have you been living here and do you intend to be a resident? You were a resident, so you could say, "Yes, I have been here for more than ninety days. I am a resident of the state." Most of them got on a train immediately after getting their divorce, if not within a couple of weeks. To my knowledge, no one who had come from out of state to get a divorce stayed in Sioux Falls for any extended period of time after getting their decree. Except for Blanche. She ends up staying in the end, which causes all kinds of problems of its own. BLAIR HODGES: She had announced that wasn't her intention either. Why did she end up staying? She's granted the divorce. APRIL WHITE: She falls in love and she remarries. BLAIR HODGES: Her lawyer. APRIL WHITE: Yes, her lawyer. He is a respected citizen of Sioux Falls, so there is a lot of concern about if she should be accepted into this society as well. Ultimately, she really isn't. She is still an outcast in this community, but she is the one person who does what they had been saying all along they wanted the divorce colonists to do. If only they weren't taking advantage of the law. But that was a lie. BLAIR HODGES: What kind of things did she miss out on? Was she just not really invited to social events? How was she treated? Because she did end up staying for Wallace, her lawyer. She's married to him. But what did the social consequences look like for her? APRIL WHITE: You see that for instance, Wallace Scott is a member of a bunch of civic society and social groups who have this open debate as to whether Blanche should be at a dance they're throwing, or whether she should be invited to various events. You see her on the outskirts of this community pretty much throughout her life there. SCOTUS AND ANDREWS V. ANDREWS (44:45) BLAIR HODGES: There was also a strange hitch that happened during this trial with a Supreme Court ruling. As we're thinking about how divorce laws are shifting and how they're being applied throughout the United States, this is a pretty pivotal time for that. Right during the middle of her trial, they throw things into question. There's a case, Andrews v. Andrews. It's in Massachusetts, and the Supreme Court basically says—if I understood this correctly—that Massachusetts wouldn't have to recognize divorce that was carried out in a different state, which would cause a problem for people that went to the divorce colony because it was basically like, "Oh, sorry, that doesn't count. We're not going to honor that in Massachusetts." APRIL WHITE: We've been talking about how difficult this was, and something really important we haven't mentioned yet is you could go through all this, you can go and live in Sioux Falls for six months, nine months, a year, you can pay all this money, you can take this hit to your reputation, and still your divorce decree is actually only tentatively legal. It may not be recognized when you go back to your home state. We see a bunch of cases about this over a period of time. Most of the people who go to Sioux Falls are not worried about this because in order for your divorce to be questioned, your ex-spouse needs to oppose it. They need to bring it up in court in the other state. If you are mutually getting divorced, or even a grudgingly mutual divorce, your decree is never going to come up to court for question. However, if your spouse has some reason to not want to be divorced, as happens in the Andrews' case, it will go up before the court and they can decide whether this is legal or not. There's a lot of consequences to deciding that a divorce is not going to be recognized. You may have remarried. Now you're a bigamist. You may have had children and now they're illegitimate. There's a lot of chaos that can be sowed. Charles Andrews, the case you're referring to, Charles came out to Sioux Falls in the early period of the divorce colony, right around the time Maggie and Mary are there. Like everyone else, he goes out for a divorce, he stays for the period of time he has been asked to, he gets a divorce, he goes back to Massachusetts, he meets a woman, he marries her, he has two children. His father dies, this becomes important. His father dies, and then not long later, Charles dies at a young age. Suddenly his first wife thinks, "Oh, wait a second. There is quite the estate here now because he has his father's money. I should challenge to be the administrator of his estate, to be his legal heir." She does. She takes it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and they find that South Dakota did not have the necessary jurisdiction and therefore the divorce is invalid. His second wife is not his second wife, his children are not his legitimate heirs, and his first wife, Kate, is heir to the fortune. Chaos. FLORA BIGELOW DODGE, THE KING, AND THE PRESIDENT (47:45) BLAIR HODGES: You're double married. That's our "what about men?" moment as well for people that were wondering if there were any men that were there. You mentioned a few—Charles Andrews, Edward Pollack. Again, this is where we see laws can just cause havoc. More people were saying we need some sort of uniform law. Why don't we tackle this federally, so we don't have all of this chaos? There just wasn't the political ability to get that done, even though divorce was impacting some of the most powerful people in the country and in the world, as your final profile shows. I'm talking about Flora Bigelow Dodge. When we get to her story, we're going see Teddy Roosevelt and the King of England all of a sudden get involved here. Give us a sense of what's happening here. APRIL WHITE: To your to your "what about men?" point, it's a really important one because I talk a lot about the women of the divorce colony. It wasn't only women who went to Sioux Falls. As we talked about earlier, women had more of an incentive to go great distances to get a divorce. They also caused more of the consternation. I'm not saying that people who opposed divorce were thrilled when men got divorces, but it didn't lead to the same panic that women taking this step did. BLAIR HODGES: Golly, I wonder why. [laughter] APRIL WHITE: We've not seen that since, certainly. What I like about Flora's story is it feels really modern to me. Flora marries young, grows apart from her husband. So far as I can tell from the historical record, neither hated the other. None had done an unimaginable wrong. They were just unhappy. BLAIR HODGES: Marriage for personal fulfillment rather than for all these other reasons. It's a change in what marriage was. APRIL WHITE: Absolutely. We really see that over the course of this book, the ways in which what we thought marriage should be changes. Flora is simply a well-known New York socialite and author. She is well liked. When she decides to get a divorce, everyone sort of thinks, "Well, that makes sense. Her husband's not all that spectacular. She's way cooler." She has lots of connections and her family does, both in in New York and on the East Coast and in England. You realize the extent to which it's not unusual that divorce is affecting these very prominent people, because divorce is affecting everyone. This is over the course of the twenty years I'm talking about, become more of a common place both activity, but just something we understand to be a part of society. BLAIR HODGES: Especially for white folks. Your book is attuned to the racial dynamics of this because this is a very privileged situation. APRIL WHITE: Absolutely. When it comes to talking about Black husbands and wives of this era, it's only very recently that Black people have been allowed to marry in a lot of places. It's a very different dynamic and the economics of divorce and the opportunities for women play a huge issue. Yes, it's a very different story for people who are not wealthy and white. BLAIR HODGES: Sorry to interrupt. To pick up where you left off, you're basically talking about that shift in what marriage was culturally, and we're starting to see someone like Flora who is separating for fulfillment, but she had connections to powerful people. That's how the President of the United States, and ultimately even the King of England, enter the story as well. APRIL WHITE: One of the things I wanted to talk about through Flora was the social change. Part of that is because Flora very much decides she wants something that she believes no one has gotten before, and that is what she called a dignified and legal Dakota divorce. The legal piece, we discussed already how that's a little challenging because no one quite knows what the rules are. But the dignified piece, Flora decides she is going to make friends in Sioux Falls. She is going to make herself a part of that community. She is going to show those people what she has to offer. She performs concerts at the prison. She conducts the city census. She helps raise money for a new furnace at the church. She's really going to enmesh herself in this community, and if it means that she needs to stay there forever in order to have a legal and dignified divorce, she is prepared to. Seeing the ways in which everyone needed to confront this issue, the ways in which Roosevelt had to confront this issue simply because people of his acquaintance were divorcing, and how do you handle that? The ways in which divorce was still a real anathema to some, which is how the King of England comes in. He's basically legitimizing Flora after her new marriage when her in-laws don't like her very much. We really see the ways in which society is dealing with this through Flora's story. BLAIR HODGES: The president is publicly a bit traditionalist. I think he needs to perhaps maintain a facade of supporting "the family," but behind the scenes is also much more sympathetic to the idea of divorce. He wants a uniform model law. He's the president—again, can't get it done. How do things develop for the rest of the century, taking us up to the present where we still don't have necessarily a federal law that says exactly how things should work? If, for example, where does no-fault divorce come into things? APRIL WHITE: We raised the idea earlier of this question of could we have a constitutional amendment that gave the federal government control of marriage and divorce? Could we get all the states to sign on to a uniform divorce law? And there's a bunch of reasons why that doesn't work out so well for anybody. One of them, unfortunately, is the idea that if the federal government had control of marriage and divorce, the southern states fear at this time that they will allow interracial marriage. There were even bigger concerns than divorce out there for some, but what we start seeing is an acceptance of reality. The idea of very disparate state laws is causing a lot of havoc. You don't know what's accepted where. You have these people crossing state lines to gain access to a right they wouldn't have in their states. You basically have people circumventing the laws of the states they live in. Governments slowly start to realize that's not useful to them. If their population is using extra legal means or leaving the state to seek freedom from their marriages, then that state government no longer exercises any control over marriage and divorce. They want to have control over marriage and divorce. You start seeing states recognizing this is going to happen and if they want to say in how it happens, they are going to have to allow for it. That's how we start seeing this shift, eventually, to no-fault. Slowly start seeing this shift to like, "Oh, this is going to happen. How do we shape that in a way we want to?" BLAIR HODGES: It wasn't even until 1970 that no-fault divorce became legal, and that was in California. That's pretty late in the game. I don't know, but I assume every state has no-fault divorce. APRIL WHITE: Every state has a version of no-fault. Those are slightly different, but similar enough that migratory divorce is not a particular issue anymore. THINKING ABOUT DIVORCE TODAY (55:13) BLAIR HODGES: I didn't get a sense either from the book about your own personal stakes in it. Were you doing any sort of work on your own personal background and being interested in this topic? APRIL WHITE: No. I've never been married. This is a whole new issue for me, writing about marriage and divorce. I will say that one of the really fascinating things to me personally as I was researching this was realizing just how recent it was that I could make a decision not to be married. You see these women in the book, those who go to great lengths to divorce, almost all remarry because that is really the only choice they can make for a stable life. The idea that I can have a career, sign contracts, have a bank account, even raise a family if I want to—that I can do all those things is very specific to this moment and this place and the culture I grew up in. BLAIR HODGES: There's this great quote from the introduction where you say, "To be free to choose who we love and how to live is to be free both to marry and to divorce." You're sort of arguing that marriage itself is enhanced or strengthened by the fact that it is more chosen. Divorce and the freedom that that allows can actually enhance marriage and make marriage itself more worthwhile and more healthy even. APRIL WHITE: We spent a lot of time as a country thinking about this when we were talking about same-sex marriage, and ultimately when Obergefell came out of the Supreme Court, this idea that choosing who you are married to is incredibly important, but you can't choose that if you can't also divorce. I like thinking about access to divorce in that same arc of loving and Obergefell. In the same way we say, "Oh, yes. You should be allowed to make the intimate choices of your life without the interference of the government." BLAIR HODGES: It was great to see those attitudes arise early on, even at the turn of the century. You mentioned earlier Unitarians, who were talking about divorce, and a Cornell University professor who basically said the rising divorce rate suggests a rise in expectations of what marriage ought to be. In other words, we're increasing our standards. This is a signal that people want more out of marriage, and people want marriage itself to be better, and when it's not they need the ability to end that to try again or to not try again. All throughout, we did see people with that attitude, whether it culturally prevailed or not, that underlying idea of freedom to come together, or freedom to separate, and how that's a good thing. Divorce can actually signal higher expectations rather than the collapse of "the family." APRIL WHITE: So much about the rising divorce rate was about women having more, not enough, but more agency to make choices, and more agency to pursue happiness and stability and the things they wanted out of life. We see this sense that people should want more out of their life than necessarily what they had been told in earlier generations was possible. BOOKS DO CULTURAL WORK (58:17) BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk about cultural work for just a second. Books are reflective of the times and places they're published. The fact a book exists suggests there's an audience and a need for it. I think books can do different kinds of cultural work. Some books do cultural work that talks about how we got to where we are and maybe celebrates how we got to where we are. Some books do that but also try to push toward better things, like trying to highlight a problem that we could do better at addressing. I wondered what kind of cultural work you think your book is doing—if it's more of a celebration of how far we've come? Or if there's more cultural work to do and what that work might look like. APRIL WHITE: When I first stumbled upon the divorce colonies story it was shocking to me it had never been explored deeply before. I gave that a lot of thought. I think one of those reasons is what you're alluding to—which is how we think about history and how we think about what's important. For me, in this moment, it was obvious we needed to be asking questions about the ways in which women had agency or didn't have agency, the ways in which they could shape and influence power or have power, and the ways in which they couldn't. That was not something that was understood in earlier versions of how we thought about divorce. That's the reason this was a footnote to that. What I'm trying to do with this book is in part just say there's a lot of history we have not explored through the lens of how we understand the world today. If we go back and ask questions in this broader, more open-minded lens we have today where we understand that the people who helped and did the digging, and had the local knowledge in archeological digs, were actually just as important to the discoveries we've made in archaeology as the celebrated Englishman who showed up in Egypt. The more we understand the important players and that everyone brought something to our history, I think changes the way we think about our history. I really like books. What I tried to do here was to go back and say, what did we miss because we were looking at the world through the specific lens of the thirties, or the fifties, or the seventies? What can we understand now because we've been given more tools and have more questions to ask? REGRETS, CHALLENGES, & SURPRISES! (61:17) BLAIR HODGES: It's helpful to get that historical perspective because it also opens up possibilities for the future, because we can see how things played out in the past and how there were different possibilities and different people with different concerns. I also like to use history that way as forward thinking, history for the future. History as a way to expand our imagination about what possibilities are out there. That's why I wanted to do this book for Family Proclamations. I'm trying to feature things from different time periods and look at history and look at sociology and look at all these different ways, because I want people to expand that imagination. Your book really does a good job helping us do that. That's April White. We're talking about the book, The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. She's a senior writer and editor at Atlas Obscura, and she has previously worked as an editor at Smithsonian Magazine and has been all over the place publishing really great work. The last thing I want to ask is a little segment called regrets, challenges, and surprises, April. This is a chance for you to think through doing this book. A book is a big project, it's a big investment of time. I've found that a lot of people change during that process, or discover new things. Was there anything as you were doing the book that challenged you, that challenge some of your previous thinking? Maybe some of your biases were challenged. Or something that surprised you that you totally didn't expect, or maybe something you regret, or you would change about the book now that it's out in the world. APRIL WHITE: I would definitely say one of the challenges was thinking about the idea of independence. When I tell this story to people, as I was through the book process, everyone got really excited about how independent these women were to seek out divorces. Then they got quite disappointed to hear they remarried almost immediately. I was probably inclined to that point of view initially, having given it very little thought, and then realized how important the idea that independence is doing the thing you wish to do. It wasn't about striking off on their own in the world, if that's not a thing they wished to do, or they could do. It was about making your way in the world the best you could. It wasn't a challenge to their independence that they remarried. Many of them remarried because they loved the person they were marrying. Others did so because it would allow them the life they wanted to live. Independence didn't mean striking out on your own. Independence meant making your own choices. That was definitely something I did not arrive at in the earliest stages of my research. I will say I was surprised. We mentioned many of these women came from similar socio-economic backgrounds, wealthy and white. I was still surprised how different their stories were, how different their stories were as to why they married. How different their stories were as to why they were divorcing. How different that path could be if they had a supportive family member in their life or not. If they had income or not. How many different challenges these women faced, even though they were coming from similar social circles, even sometimes had been the person who had told the next person who came how to do this. I really enjoyed "meeting" each of these women, as so many of them who ended up on the cutting room floor, or in the footnotes because I couldn't bear to part with their stories. I really enjoyed being able to hear those stories, largely because I wasn't sure I'd be able to. Tracing women through history is not the easiest thing to do. To be able to meet so many of those women was wonderful. In terms of regrets, aside from some misspellings, nothing yet, but the book has only been out a little under a year. To my earlier point about the ways in which how we think about history changes, I am absolutely certain when I look at this book in a decade I'm going to realize there were so many questions I didn't ask and so many things I didn't interrogate that I should have. Maybe we'll do an edited version a decade from now where I correct some of those things. BLAIR HODGES: That's how history works. Thank you so much, April. This has been a great conversation. Again, I recommend people check out the book The Divorce Colony by April White. The subtitle is How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. April, thanks for coming to Family Proclamations and talking about the book today. APRIL WHITE: Thank you. I really enjoyed this. BLAIR HODGES: There's much more to come on Family Proclamations. If you're enjoying the show, why not take a second to rate and review it. Go to Apple podcasts and let me know your thoughts. Please just take a second to recommend the show to a friend. The more the merrier. Thanks to Mates of State for providing our theme song. Family Proclamations is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges, and I'll see you next time.
https://rumble.com/v3rmwmp-breaking-documentary-short-cutting-off-the-head-of-the-snake-in-geneva-swit.htmlTruthStream Linkshttps://linktr.ee/truthstream Derek Johnson's Website https://thedocuments.info/ Pascal's Truth Socialhttps://truthsocial.com/@najadi4justicePascal's Telegram https://t.me/PascalNajadiNEWSPascal's Rumblehttps://rumble.com/user/neutralswiss - Important Formal Statement as a matter of full Disclosure - I have directly and without lawyers communicated on January 27th 2024 with the Office of the Secretary of Defense of the United States, who exclusively and only reports to the current Wartime President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States, Donald J. Trump. I have previously reported and provided substantial evidence to the JAG officers at the USSF and USAF presenting further material evidence of serious crimes against humanity and corruption. These crimes have been committed by renegade factions within the former and current Swiss Government, Swissmedic, and other organizations, including but not limited to WHO, WEF, Gavi, civil and legal persons, et al. (the list is detailed and extensive.) These crimes are directly linked to the severe terminal injuries and sufferings that I suffer from due to the unlawful COVID-19 PsyOp and the administration of injections without my legally mandated informed consent. These actions were carried out through the illegal use of force, enabled by the state-sponsored coercion of my own government, in gross violations of my constitutional protection and rights. The timing of my dispatching of this report to the office of the https://www.defense.gov/About/Secretary-of-Defense/ is not by random choice but rather by dedicated design as per plan. I have and I am perpetually exercising, my duty and my rights as former Swiss Airforce Officer who took an oath to uphold, defend and protect the Swiss Constitution at all times as stipulated as well in the Swiss Constitution pertaining to all Swiss Citizens, be that military or their civil counterparts. The basis of my reporting action is: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/12/18/press-release-notice-on-the-continuation-of-the-national-emergency-with-respect-to-serious-human-rights-abuse-and-corruption/ https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title50-section1550&num=0&edition=prelim https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jul/31/2003271432/-1/-1/0/DOD-LAW-OF-WAR-MANUAL-JUNE-2015-UPDATED-JULY%202023.PDF And here is the active FAA US Military No Fly Zone over the current White House, the residence and highest executive office of the United States of the current Wartime President & Commander-in-Chief of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and it ends on June 1, 2024. https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_9602.html Ladies and Gentlemen, the fact that I can disclose this FFA No Fly Zone link that is now working for you to click is a clear indication that the Klaeidoscope of the largest Central Casting operation in History of filmmaking soon comes to an end. Otherwise, my Disclosure would not be able to publish a clickable FFA .gov website link confirming my disclosures. You need to learn to read and analyse our Disclosures, Learn how to think and use your state and media fake news-washed brain again. It belongs to you! The United States are since December 20th 2019 in a global covert Defence War. Consequently, the United States Law of War Manual 2015 (updated July 2023) is in force and applicable at any time and wherever you are on our planet Earth, naturally, of course, also on Swiss territory, which includes Berne and Geneva as well.. Go Figure! #SemperSupra
Are we becoming a nation of slobs? George and callers discuss the dress code changes on the US Senate floor. What does this say, if anything, about the respect lawmakers have for their job? Also, you have to listen to the report about the changes George plays from a Pennsylvania TV station. It's like they found an old-time radio announcer from Central Casting to read the story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hey Kits! Weekdays at 7-ish Eastern, we livestream a (sometimes) quick take on the news, in addition to our usual formats. TODAY WE TALK ABOUT: Our Big Interview MB Election Interim Ethics Commissioner Public Inquiry Leader Athletes Who Make Us Proud Greenbelt Cast of Characters Grandstanding on the BoC Our morning show is the purrr-fect thing for busy Kits who are on-the-go, but still want to stay engaged. This is episode 204 of the Daily Beaver Morning Show. ___________________________________________________ If you wish to encourage us to do more, leave us a positive review and stars on Apple Podcasts and/or buy us a cup of coffee. Just go to [https://ko-fi.com/eagerbeaver] to find your way to our tip jar. ____________________________________________________ Not everyone can do everything. But everyone can do something. Because #DemocracyIsSomethingYouDo... If you happen to be the target / victim of a hate crime, report it to the police, every time; if not for you, then to create a record that will help the next person. Write to your MP, MPP, MLA, MNA, Senator, or preferred local media outlet to tell them you expect them to dig deep into the Doug Ford corruption story as well as indicted-in-the-USA-for-trying-to-steal-an-election Mike Roman's links to Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer. Finally, support your fellow Canadians by donating to the Red Cross Wildfire Response. _________________________________________________ Of course, retweets, shares, gentle corrections, constructive criticism, compliments, tips, requests, bribes to be on the show, and positive reviews (if you think we deserve some stars, please rate us) are always welcome. You can do that via our show's Facebook blog page, via Twitter @TrueEager, or by e-mail at TrueNorthEagerBeaver@gmail.com. And if you really enjoy our podcast, why not subscribe via our Podpage [https://www.podpage.com/the-true-north-eager-beaver/], or our True North Eager Beaver Media Inc. YouTube channel, and tell a friend? Until next time, be kind to, and gentle with, yourselves, Your Eager Beaver ____________________________________________________ Thank you to our podcast's founding sponsors: * The Peppermaster * The Miss Vee Mysteries from Corvid Moon Publishing * Canadian Tarot Dot Com Artwork credit: Peter Jarvis [Recording Date: September 8, 2023]
Kenya welcomes the multi-talented New York artist, Mark Benson, a filmmaker, actor, and enthusiastic NYC walker. Mark shares his experiences on popular sets like “Law and Order”, “Succession”, and “Billions”, offering insights on finding his place in the entertainment industry and the importance of following your purpose by first loving your soul. He and Kenya discuss the value of creative expression, the beauty of people from diverse backgrounds coming together, and how nice it is when people share their resources to help others network and find their footing in the community. From background acting adventures to making his first short film while working at Krispy Kreme, Mark's journey is filled with inspiration. He also shares a few valuable lessons on dealing with naysayers and staying true to your unique creative path. Also Talked About: If you really want to get to know NYC and connect with amazing people, background acting is a great way to do it. Mark did theater in Philadelphia in the 90s, and from then on he was hooked on performing and creative endeavors. Mark got curious about bigger sets after directing a few short films and decided to sign up for Central Casting. What true diversity looks like in a scene with 600 people, and the beauty of people from all walks of life coming together. When people share resources and aren't territorial with their opportunities or contacts, it is a beautiful thing. How entertainment has mirrored the growth and evolution of the human consciousness… sometimes. More about Mark making his first short film, ‘Casual Friday' while working his corporate job at Krispy Kreme, and the ways that art imitates life. “Love the Soul” is not only the name of Mark's e-mail newsletter and production company but the idea that being in touch with your soul is like pointing your compass in the right direction. It's okay if some people don't get what you're creating. In fact, that means you are doing things right. Say Hi To Us: Needed On Set | FB | IG | TikTok Source & Cast Kenya: IG Guest: Mark: Website | IG
Kenya welcomes Katie Timakova, a New Jersey / NYC based talented actress and commercial model. Katie's story is a testament to the power of starting over and following your heart. From her humble beginnings in Russia to her experiences as a shampoo girl, hostess, and even cleaning toilets, Katie reminds us that every step of the journey matters. We discuss the transition from background to principal roles and how even the seemingly menial jobs can contribute to your acting career. In this episode, Katie talks about her brave leap of faith into the world of acting. Despite facing adversity and lacking support, Katie carved her own path and booked notable roles, including Gossip Girl. We shine a light on both the successes and the challenges of the industry, especially in background acting. Throughout the conversation, Katie shares valuable insights on being a highly sensitive person and how her wealth of experiences gives her a unique edge in acting. She and Kenya also touch on the significance of training outside the classical norms and the importance of having hobbies to fuel your creativity. Also Talked About: How Katie overcame adversity after moving to NYC from Russia, where she made her own way despite having financial challenges and needing to build her own network from the ground up. Katie persevered and ultimately landed modeling gigs and worked with prestigious brands like Givenchy and Celine. Katie's experience of booking a role on Gossip Girl even as a non-union actor, highlighting the significance of following your heart and setting up a casting profile to seize opportunities. The resources and platforms that have played a vital role in Katie's career, including Central Casting and Backstage, and how they can benefit aspiring actors. Katie shares insights on how being a sensitive person with a wealth of life experiences can provide a unique edge in the acting world, bringing depth and authenticity to performances. Overcoming fear is crucial in pursuing our dreams, as it opens doors to endless opportunities and unlocks our true potential. There are numerous roles and ample room for everyone's talent! Katie shares the value of exploring non-traditional training methods and approaches, which can bring fresh perspectives and enhance your craft. The significance of having hobbies outside of acting, using Katie's love for scuba diving as an example, as they can fuel your creativity and provide a well-rounded perspective. Say Hi To Us: Needed On Set | FB | IG | TikTok Source & Cast Kenya: IG Guest: Katie: IG
Kvothe and Penthe talk about how babies are made. We also talk about how babies are made, and put forward a crackpot theory about whether the Adem are, strictly speaking, human. We talk about the unshakeable faith people have in their cultural points of view, and how introducing certain elements of fantasy worldbuilding without laying the groundwork can ultimately stretch the reader's suspension of disbelief. @pageofthewind pageofthewind.com
Let's time travel back to January 29, 2023, with the glorious gem, Amy Dee, who came to stand by Shift as he firmly defends his reputation with the truth. Some liars have threatened Shift's life and livelihood by targeting him with hundreds of triggered fanatics --- this story is very important. Learn about the timeline of Shift's experience getting caught up in Eat Predators' messy “organization” after Alexa Nikolas started what may be the most selfish, inappropriate, and poorly managed book club that has ever existed outside of Yellowjackets season 1. Amy Dee reminds us that the #metoo movement centralizes around Central Casting, and mentions how irrelevant people can be made relevant by connecting their names in articles to actually important, well-known people and events. Shift covers some anecdotal moments like how Alexa Nikolas' husband randomly left their baby alone with him... In a car... With the keys. And made Shift drive the baby around while he and Alexa Nikolas hung around taking pictures at a protest at Orange County School of the Arts with people like Nomi Abadi, Amanda Peters, and their partners. He also mentions how he was aggressively harassed by a police officer during the time they left him and their child alone. Shift refers to the bizarre and mysterious exposé website, alexanikolas.net, and how far back some truly alarming accusations about Alexa Nikolas' abuse of others goes. He also reviews how Melanie Veronica inserted her undeserved and erratic #freebritney clout to boost Alexa Nikolas' lies. Tangentially, Shift highlights how long he's been working with media, culture, and movements with a story about taking care of Bella Eiko's baby for 2 weeks in 2014 when Bella went to live stream the events in Ferguson just after Mike Brown was killed. Can Alexa Nikolas project a lie that shines brighter than who Shift really is? Can people play dumb while being smartasses? Can movements ever get their shit together? In all these questions and confusions… we know this much is true… liberal movement "leaders" tend to make themselves the Mean Girls in every room they're in. And… Shift and Amy Dee are committed to facing any foe to help make society more trauma-informed and honest. How did Shift go from being called a “godsend” to being falsely accused of being a “stalker” by Alexa Nikolas and her husband, her mother, and her cultish fanatical “organization”? Let's get into it. Hate us or love us? Call us and tell us at 415-343-4420. Also.... get ready for Amy Dee and Shift's upcoming podcast, Glitch Sesh! A media and culturally-informed history and society focusing on spiritual predators and power abusers who seek to serve themselves at the expense of society and the cultural ramifications and consequences and how social behavior contributes to the erosion of trust in the culture of American society in modern times. Season 1 is all about Britney Spears' circa 2004-2005. [By the way, we aren't breaking any laws, civil or criminal, by continuing to tell the truth.]
Episode 123 Streamed Live Tuesday January 24, 2023 Tired of OGL stuff yet? Recent news and thoughts: DnD Shorts https://youtu.be/J4kGMsZSdbY T-shirted Historian https://youtu.be/jP2JLWPX_LI Done with WoTC so maybe we should just move Dungeoncraft https://youtu.be/4oV9Fnkyyfc Grim's Project: https://postmortemstudios.wordpress.com/2023/01/24/opendnd-public-domain-roleplaying-panza-draft-1-0 Main Topic: What do we want from a Dungeon? We used Dungeons by Central Casting to inspire the creation of a dungeon (Thanks to Ryan David @nerdcognito and Max @legion of myth for the suggestion) From both player and DM perspective, what makes for a good dungeon? Even with a Mad God, how random/funhouse before it loses its verisimilitude? Random monsters: many? few? with a theme? Traps and tricks: many? few? Mega? Past dungeon experience: successes/failures Mapping the dungeon - details or broad strokes Flavor text: more or less? How do they fit in the campaign world? Using Central Casting: Dungeon - not sure it's my cup of tea Random Geek-itude Call Ins - One from John at Red Dice Diaries re: Hyperborea RPG (tech fail) Joe's Birthday he is 56 … the old geezer! News for theEmporium Giveaway 2.0- the Double Whammy Giveaway! Guess the number of official3.5 game books by Wizards of the Coast that Randy currently owns in hardcopy. Consider: supplements, sourcebooks, or modules. (28) Winner gets TWO of the following fabulous prizes: C&C's Monsters & Treasures by Troll Lord Games (the good guys)/5th printing Cardboard heroes Castles- the Keep by SJ games (sorry)in the shrink Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races – by Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG (BETA) by Fantasy Flight Games Shameless Plug Time: If you would like to support our show, please like, subscribe, and share us where you are listening or viewing the show, also: We are on all the socials, video and podcast places as well. Cash Support PayPal: https://paypal.me/biggusgeekus Streamlabs: https://streamlabs.com/biggusgeekus1/tip Anchor: https://www.anchor.fm/biggusgeekus Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/biggusgeekus On the Web: Website: www.biggusgeekuspodcast.com Email: thegeeks@biggusgeekuspodcast.com Big Geek Emporium: https://biggeekemporium.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/biggusgeekus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/biggusgeekus/support
Episode 120 Streamed Live Tuesday, January 3 2023 Main Topic: Learning New Rpgs This new years we plan on on covering more tabletop RPGs that aren't Dungeons and Dragons How many times do you play a game before you know if it is for you? Do you prefer to watch a ‘how to” video on Youtube or elsewhere? be taught by an experienced play/gm? dive in with friends and see what happens? read it yourself and teach it to your fellows at the table? Should everyone commit to buying the book after a few sessions? The games on the list for 2023: Rifts Dungeons and Delvers Castles and Crusades Dungeons23 – Our Take We hope to be using Dungeons by Central Casting to create a dungeon over many segments. (Thanks to Ryan David @nerdcognito and Max @legion of myth for the inspiration and suggestion) Loose Background – The Mad God created this dungeon. The god's name is unknown as is the reason why he made this dungeon in the first place. It is a dangerous place which attracts adventurers as well as its denizens. It also has a strange propensity to “acquire” rare treasures from across the world. Random Geek-itude Report from Big Geek Land New happenings for the Emporium, Big Geek Con, and Randy's adventure. Randy will have an article posted in Mad Scribe Magazine - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80594713 SJW staff writer for Troll Lord Gamesinsults OSR and twitter mob loses their collective mind at the game company's response. Related videos: https://youtu.be/HzRgqrOjKLw Diversity & Dragons https://youtu.be/3QeAu_B_LU8 more Diversity & Dragons https://youtu.be/q-A0oixzbU0 RPGPundit Shameless Plug Time: If you would like to support our show, please like, subscribe, and share us where you are listening or viewing the show, also: We are on all the socials, video and podcast places as well. Cash Support PayPal: https://paypal.me/biggusgeekus Streamlabs: https://streamlabs.com/biggusgeekus1/tip Anchor:https://www.anchor.fm/biggusgeekus Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/biggusgeekus On the Web: Website: www.biggusgeekuspodcast.com Email:thegeeks@biggusgeekuspodcast.com| Big Geek Emporium: https://biggeekemporium.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/biggusgeekus/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/biggusgeekus/support
Working the Plan to Stand with Arizona: Central Casting Has Broken All the Rules, We Can Stop the Show Peacefully https://conservative-daily.com/1st-amendment/greater-magistrates-join-us-in-the-gap-americans-peacefully-standing-for-arizona If you want to support the show, you can donate here: http://bit.ly/cd-donate This episode of Conservative Daily is brought to you by DCF Guns. We all see what is happening in America right now. It has never been more important for you to arm yourself, and most importantly, learn how to use your arms safely and effectively. Check out DCF Guns at: https://dcfguns.com/ Become a Conservative Daily member right now for massive savings on Faxblasts, discounts at Joe's Depot, and more perks like backstage time with the hosts of Conservative Daily! Use the link and sign up today! https://conservative-daily.com/forms/Step1b Make sure you Like, Comment, and Share! Text FREEDOM to 89517 to get added to our text list to receive notifications when we go Live! Privacy Policy: https://conservative-daily.com/Legal/Privacy Terms: https://conservative-daily.com/Legal/Terms Reply STOP to stop further text messages from Conservative Daily. Message and Data Rates may apply. Need help? (855) 954-6644 or reply HELP. Please make sure you join our newsletter to receive our action alerts: https://bit.ly/joinconservativedaily Today's show is sponsored by Augusta Precious Metals. They help retirement savers use gold IRAs to diversify and hedge against this crazy economy. Augusta is different. They don't push fear and doom like some gold IRA companies. Augusta has thousands of five-star ratings and hundreds of great reviews. Their most famous customer, quarterback Joe Montana, loved the company's mission so much he's now their paid ambassador! Even Money magazine says Augusta is the best gold IRA company! So, don't get into a gold IRA nightmare. Protect your retirement savings with a reliable, transparent company. Get Augusta's free guide from their website https://www.augustapreciousmetals.com/ Get you and your family prepared at the Brighteon Store right now and stock up on high quality storable food, survival gear, and the cleanest supplements on the planet! https://bit.ly/3PezXDd If you want to support Mike Lindell and our show, use promo code CD21 to get up to 66% off at https://www.mypillow.com/radiospecials or by placing your order over the phone at 800-872-0627. When you use promo code CD21, a Queen Sized MyPillow is just $29, the cheapest it has ever been! Conservative Daily is on Rumble! https://rumble.com/user/ConservativeDaily We are now also going to be streaming on dlive! Check us out here: https://dlive.tv/ConservativeDaily Click here to donate: http://bit.ly/cd-donate Subscribe to our daily podcast at Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/ConservativeDailyPodcast on Google Podcasts (for Android users): https://bit.ly/CDPodcastGoogle We are also available on Spotify! https://open.spotify.com/show/2wD8YleiBM8bu0l3ahBLDN And on Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/conservative-daily-podcast/PC:37034 And on iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-conservative-daily-podcast-53710765/ on TuneIn: https://tunein.com/radio/Conservative-Daily-Podcast-p1350272/ And on Podbean: https://conservative.podbean.com/ And now also on Audible! https://www.audible.com/pd/Conservative-Daily-Podcast-Podcast/B08JJQQ4M Support Joe Oltmann in his legal battle against Eric Coomer: https://givesendgo.com/defendjoeoltmann
The cast, long ago selected, is now rising to their roles. They show themselves as actors but their faces can't hide evil. Where does this leave the people? Physiognomy says more than words. The fraud seems so familiar. Same tactics, same swindle, same people. Stay on script and produce in your role, or be replaced. Not everyone knows who's been cast. As always, trust your gut. Disinfo as cover. Do you have your paperwork? DeSantis and the sly moves against Trump. Intel is used against you, and they know it all. J6 scripts and the effort to control us. Some sinister names return. Karl Rove at the center of the storm. Roger Stone involved. Avenatti again. The Fetterman float. Kammie's origins. Killary, Sri Lanka, money guns and treason. They hate us because we won't take orders. Resist the mind control, do NOT feel distressed, and keep fighting for the best that's yet to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Disney's Prince of Persia was a bold endeavor. With a $185 million price tag, it shattered the ceiling for video game adaptation budgets. The House of Mouse made a bet, and it was a big one. Unfortunately, it was also a bad one. The Prince of Persia franchise is popular, but general audiences have rarely flocked to movies based on games. Thus, despite it being the most successful of the bunch—grossing $336.4 million worldwide—its receipts weren't enough to warrant a sequel. Poor reviews, 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, coupled with a soft domestic opening, under $91 million, doomed its franchise prospects. What it's really remembered for, though, is its bizarre decision to cast Jake Gyllenhall as the titular Prince of Persia. In fact, the majority of the major players are white, rendering this just another tone deaf Hollywood endeavor. Now, sit back, uncork a Pumpkin Ale, and hop on an ostrich! I, the Thunderous Wizard (@WriterTLK), Capt. Cash, Mayor McCheese, and Chumpzilla are rewinding time to nudge the casting director for this film in a more appropriate direction. This Week's Segments: Introduction/Plot Breakdown – Defy the Future. (00:00) Lingering Questions – After a word from our brothers in beer at Hop Nation USA, we discuss what wrong with this movie—whitewashing, of course. (36:43) The "Sands of Time" Trivia Challenge – The Double Turn Podcast does some parkour to warm up, and then Chumpzilla challenges the field to trivia about the movie. (51:50) Recommendations – We offer our picks for the week and next up: We continue "Hops and Star Powered Flops" with Death to Smoochy. (59:36) And, as always, hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to check out all the interesting factoids—the odd demand for a sequel and more—from this week's episode! You can find this episode of Hops and Box Office Flops on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Podbean, Spotify, Acast, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Vurbl, Amazon Music and more!
CEC adventures to find "The Alchemist" book. Along the way he discovers a "Police Academy" artpiece and new synchronicities. Central Casting background stories are shared, new revelations emerge in unexpected ways. Henry D Horse gives us a curious Fun Fact! Plus, Micky Dolenz from The Monkees, Jessica from Life Is Art Reality Show, Man from ManBehindTheMachine Podcast, Abraham Lincoln Impersonator Rob Broski of Twin Peaks, and Maria Humphreys from Strong Body Strong Soul Podcast, stop by to give us fresh ideas and questions! My "Facepalm Theme Song" may or may not be shoe-horned in at the end. Special shoutout to Desert Fawkes from Cannabis Conundrum and Fawkesy Lady from Awesomesauce Radio!!!! Check out yacht rock band YACHTLEY CREW sometime! I play Stoney Shores in it, and you'll be immersed in a time travel dream cruise of love songs galore! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/inspiradoprojecto/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/inspiradoprojecto/support
linktr.ee/CatchingUpOnCinema WARNING! THIS EPISODE CONTAINS FULL SPOILERS FOR THE NORTHMAN! (2022) WARNING! This week, Kyle and Trevor review Robert Eggers', The Northman (2022)! Eggers' third feature following the modestly budgeted The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), The Northman serves as the director's first foray into the realm of large budget/large scale filmmaking. While the difference in production scale is immediately noticeable from frame one, The Northman nevertheless bears many of the core traits of Egger's oeuvre, most notably a perpetually grim and nihilistic atmosphere cast upon actors and set dressings that seem directly pulled from a bygone era rather than recruited from Central Casting. Despite an action heavy marketing campaign, in actuality The Northman pulls double duty as both a bombastic and mythic tale of violent revenge, as well as a beautiful and detailed rendering of a place and time. While quite successful in conveying these pillars of it's presentation, it's aesthetics and elemental, visceral thrills, The Northman's true depth comes from it slyly pulling triple duty in the form of quietly, and scornfully condemning the violence and sensibilities of the world it so lovingly recreates for it's viewers. In contrast to a films such as Zack Snyder and Frank Miller's, 300 (2006), The Northman eschews veneration or glamorization of the culture and time it depicts, in favor of starkly and earnestly recreating the intricacies of said culture, and allowing its brutality and absurdity to be eked out by discerning viewers. Adapted from the Nordic tale of Amleth, The Northman can be read straightforwardly as both a Conan the Barbarian (1982) esque revenge epic, complete with a “triumphant” ending (from a certain point of view), as well as a curious dissection of said tale, occasionally outright judging, but always questioning the sanctity of the beliefs and culture of it's denizens. The Northman was, for this reviewer anyway, a puzzle that vexed more than delighted over the course of it's 137 minute run time, however after the fact, with time to ponder, and opportunity to discuss, one that proved to be quite satisfying in spite of it's insolvable nature. Perhaps too busy or layered for it's own good, possessed of innumerable quirks and riddles in it's presentation that may never be fully explained, The Northman revels in the savagery and philosophies of a more brutal era, while never fully abandoning the perspective and sensibilities of it's 2022 lensing. A challenging film that likely doesn't care how you feel about it, so long as you think about it, The Northman is, in spite of its poor audience ratings and even poorer box office returns, a fine offering from Robert Eggers, more than worthy of his growing filmography of “The” films. Follow us on Instagram @catchinguponcinema Follow us on Twitter @CatchingCinema Like, share, subscribe, and we'll catch you next time!
Jeff Levering, broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers on both radio and television, joins the Best Podcast in Baseball to discuss this "Golden Age of Brewers baseball" and a four-game series between the Cardinals and Milwaukee in June that has a distinct September, maybe even October, feel. With St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold, Levering discusses the Brewers' quest for a fifth consecutive playoff appearance and whether past falls have heightened the pressure on this year's team to do more than reach the postseason. Isn't it time to win? Is the clock ticking on how long the Brewers can remain the class of the National League Central? The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On a hot summer night in 1922, famed Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor was dead in his Los Angeles bungalow home from a gunshot wound. With a suspect list straight out of Central Casting, see if you can solve this case that has baffled the LAPD for over a century. Join us as we go behind the glitz and glamour of the movie industry into Hollywood's dark side. Support the show
If you like tables, we've got some books for you! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Jennell Jaquays' series of Central Casting books, for use creating both player and non-player characters of alarming depth and, sometimes, bizarre circumstances. There are three flavors: Heroes of Legend (1988), our focus, which tackles fantasy backgrounds; Heroes for Tomorrow (1989), for science fiction characters; and Heroes Now! (1991), for characters from worlds not unlike our own. * * * Use code DAYLIGHT with your purchases at Noble Knight! Our friends are their friends and get 10% off all purchases on the site or in the store! Good through May 31. It's Spring Sale time over at Noble Knight - our code doesn't stack cuz the savings are already so big! It'll come back online when the sale is over. Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord! If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going! Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast! Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients. Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com. Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ. Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter. Intro music by George Collazo. The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter. Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!
Jason Luna was born in Tucson, AZ on July 7th, 1986. He's spent most of his life since in California. He graduated from UC Irvine in 2011 with B.A.'s in English/Creative Fiction and Film and Media Studies. In 2016 he graduated from the New York Film Academy (time spent in both Manhattan, NY and Burbank, CA) with an M.F.A. in Filmmaking, learning a lot about film directing and the craft of film on set and as a writer. After a life of elementary and high school plays, and some college improv comedy at UC Irvine, Jason got his first taste of celebrity status in 2008, when he won 1 million dollars on NBC's “1 vs. 100”. He parlayed that success into a brief appearance on the GSN “1 vs. 100” in 2009. And to make this all full circle, Jason won 1 thousand dollars in 2020 for winning the first round of GSN's “Masterminds”. Jason has always loved trivia, and maybe a little more for being paid for it. Game shows are nice, but now Jason Luna is an actor. He has been appearing on comedy improv stages in SD and LA for the National Comedy Theater (SD), as well as the Upright Citizens Brigade, LA Connection Theater, and other places since 2016, and performs currently every week online with the One Love Improv indie troupe. He's performed stand up comedy at the Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank and others places as well, and is expanding on that front, like most of his fronts. Jason is a SAG-AFTRA member employed from time to time by Central Casting, and can't wait to work some more. He's available, and he's surprisingly affordable. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
My name is George Anton, film Director and Producer. Unless you are a hardcore fan please skip this introduction to the movie. My own daughter acted in this film and it is dedicated to her a printed statement that no matter what happens in life you should never give up. The movies that your dad made when nobody believed in me, ended up making a lot of money. Because I actually did it. For all the filmmakers out there dreaming of making a movie, please get off your ass, take a fresh shower and just make it. When everyone tells you are crazy, just go ahead and buy some Bitcoin anyway, against all odds. I personally hold ATARI TOKEN using Coinbase Wallet. This is not a financial advice but this movie is all about dreams and finances. A dream that seems to be impossible today is due for a change tomorrow. You are now so excited to be alive, to test your human limits, get out of coma and use this insane world to get unwrapped from banality. We are now in the past at the end of the year 2008 when Obama is guiding us towards another financial crash. The mortgage payments for my West Hollywood apartment are outrageous and I'm tied up in this scam loan from the bank, that's why it is written in the movie. My daughter Lana Anton, she is almost two years old and my wife, she is about to loose her job as mortgage underwriter, appraising and approving these junk loans like there is no tomorrow. Everyone arround is wondering: “Is the Housing market a bubble, or not?” Of course is a God damn bubble so we decided already to sell the condo to the next fool. I'm about to lose the house that I live in and I'm working 24/7 accepting all the SAG paid background acting jobs I can get my hands on. In the spare time, I pick up actors from Central Casting in Burbank charging them for headshots so I can pay for Anton Pictures Studios because that rent is due as well and the DVD sales for all the movies I've done by now are not adding up the costs. I guess that's why the main character in American Style is a headshots photographer and a degenerate gambler. So I decided the best thing is to get up and go outside for some location scouting within half mile of the North Hollywood Anton Pictures film production offices. I will write all the locations in the script, then create the characters to match it and eventually the dialogue. The plan worked and I sat there at the keyboard crying this 90 pages screenplay in between holding auditions for it with actors from LACasting.com. I was pissed that my phone was not ringing and no Hollywood Executive was calling me like: “Hey, George Anton. We've seen all your movies. You are amazing. Please come on over to 20th Century Fox and Paramount lot, we have a contract ready for you. We're going to take you in.” I was thinking about all the people wanting me to fail in this business so I was like was like fuck them, I'm not going to let them win so I had all this intoxicating energy getting me going. I have a business, ambition and goals and I'm going to gather all the resources I can find and use them in this play, including all the location grounds from my West Hollywood condominium, just before I sell it, including the swimming pool they make me pay for, and the jacuzzi. I'm going to take a step back and embrace Obama's financial change into a positive evolution that will give me the power to return to my own core. If right now, in the year 2022 or the future, if you are going through hard times like I was at the time I was making this movie, embrace the change and the new ideas to rationally establish your own identity. Now, enjoy and share with your friends on Spotify Video, another George Anton Original: AMERICAN STYLE https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1332000/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/georgeantonshow/support
My name is George Anton, Hollywood Executive Producer and Director. Unless you are interested in the back story, please skip this introduction directly to the movie. As one reviewer on IMDb claims: “what you are about to see is one of those rare, terrible movies that deserves to be seen. View with a group and enjoy the spectacle. This will be a cult classic. - end quotes. Every asshole is a critic and has an opinion, but this person in particular happens to be correct. Born Into Mafia is already a cult movie. On 4th of July 2004, I landed in San Francisco with a dream: to write, produce and direct feature length Hollywood Motion Pictures. From 2004 to mid 2005 I played World of Warcraft until Blizzard Entertainment banned my account for trying to sell my character on Ebay. Then, I worked in a Lumber Yard counting construction materials and after few months of that I put in my resignation in and told everyone “I'm moving to Hollywood” So I took my wife and the dog and mortgaged an apartment in West Hollywood, California at 950 North Kings Rd just behind the City Hall. Between wiping tables in a pizzeria on Universal City Walk and selling overpriced sunglasses to tourists, I realised no Hollywood Executive gives a rats ass about my filmmaking creative qualities. I always knew my place is behind the camera as my acting skills suxdix, but never the less I took my chance and became a professional background actor in all the major Movies and TV Shows in Los Angeles from Universal Pictures, Paramount, Disney, 20th Century Fox… carefully observing the behind the scenes work of the biggest actors and directors at that time. One day in 2006 on the Warner Brothers lot, I have met another background actor who spoke my mother's language and introduced himself to me under his stage name of Vitaliy Versace. We started talking about movies and when he found out that I'm a filmmaker and I own a brand new High Definition camcorder and a Hackintosh video editing equipment he would not leave me alone anymore and pursued me to meet him next day in front of Central Casting in Burbank, California. I found him in a Cadillac Escalade that he bought after selling his house in Ohio and moved with his wife and kids to Hollywood so he can become a movie star. I get into his car where he offers to hire me to shoot a movie for him where he will act as the protagonist and become famous. I started laughing and I told him he is crazy. What kind of movie is this? “I have a script.” He goes, I want you to shoot me a movie just like Die Hard with Bruce Willis” I continued calling him mad, told him that is an imposibility and my filmmaking services rendered cost $8000 / day. At the time I was a huge Howard Stern fan and Da Ali G Show HBO series so I knew instantly this Vitaliy Versace he is not only a real person, but a character in my next productions. We became best friends and after tough negotiations he hired me for $180 dollars per day, money that I have never received anyway. Arriving on his movie set consisted in a location at his choosing around Hollywood, where I would encounter other background actors he had met on movie sets coming to play for free and follow their dreams. One thing to be recognised about Vitaly Versace are his producer abilities to set up actors and locations. In 2012 when Anton Pictures YouTube Channel took off, and I started seeing the streaming revenue growing for all my other films, I was certain I had hits in my hand and Vitaliy agreed and to sell and sign the movie rights from Versace Entertainment, the gimmick company I created for him, back to Anton Pictures where they belong in exchange to the money he owed me at that time. Now enjoy: BORN INTO MAFIA --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/georgeantonshow/support
Pat and Adam are transported to the war torn jungles of...State Island (?), as they watch and review 1986's low budget warsploitation drama, Combat Shock! What in the world of Central Casting is going on with kamikaze headband guy? Can you OD by pouring drugs directly into an open wound? Also, is Frankie just a more lucid Richard Chase? Plus...The Good, The Bad, and The Questionable and rundown of our awards.
Rock of Love, Season 1, Episode 8 This week, Bret has some women he either slept with at a gig or hired from Central Casting come be mean to everyone. Sam packs her bag. Lacey cries. Brandi's hair catches on fire. Buy merch here. Join the Patreon here. Email here. Follow the podcast on Twitter here and on Instagram here.
Michael Striano discusses all the ins and outs of being a background actor - how to get work as an "extra" and what you should expect once you get it.Credits:Audio Engineer Gary GlorOne Heartbeat Away is provided to The Theater Project by Gail Lou References:Michael Striano: IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5001524/ Backstage: https://www.backstage.com/u/MichaelStriano/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/mstriano/Central Casting: https://www.centralcasting.com/Grant Wilfley Casting: https://www.gwcnyc.com/Casting Networks: https://www.castingnetworks.com/“The Hollers”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3714720/Irish Rep Theater: https://irishrep.org/Wonder Wheel: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5825380/
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Dearly beloved... we watched Purple Rain (1984) with our friend Christian Turner and we need to purify ourselves in the waters or Lake Minnetonka. There never has been and never will be another like Prince Rogers Nelson and there is no other movie like Purple Rain. This movie is so bananas it has to be seen to be believed. Prince and The Revolution, Morris Day and The Time and Apollonia all play fictionalized versions of themselves in a fantasyland Minneapolis where nightclub acts reign supreme, leather and lace are worn freely (during the day) and people make their way TO Minnesota to make it in the biz. You may finish the movie with more questions than answers but watching nearly the entire Purple Rain album performed in a packed club full of 1984 Central Casting extras makes it all worth while. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts! www.patreon.com/moviesthatmadeusgay Facebook/Instagram: @moviesthatmadeusgay Twitter: @MTMUGPod Scott Youngbauer: Twitter @oscarscott / Instagram @scottyoungballer Peter Lozano: Twitter/Instagram @peterlasagna
About AdamAdam Zimman is a start-up Advisor providing guidance on leadership, platform architecture, product marketing, and GTM strategy. He has over 20 years of experience working in a variety of roles from software engineering to technical sales. He has worked in both enterprise and consumer companies such as VMware, EMC, GitHub, and LaunchDarkly. Adam is driven by a passion for inclusive leadership and solving problems with technology. As an Advisor he works with a number of startups and nonprofits. His perspective on life has been shaped by a background in Physics and Visual Art, an ongoing adventure as a husband and father, and a childhood career as a fire juggler.Links:Twitter: https://twitter.com/azimman TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at VMware. Let's be honest—the past year has been far from easy. Due to, well, everything. It caused us to rush cloud migrations and digital transformation, which of course means long hours refactoring your apps, surprises on your cloud bill, misconfigurations and headache for everyone trying manage disparate and fractured cloud environments. VMware has an answer for this. With VMware multi-cloud solutions, organizations have the choice, speed, and control to migrate and optimizeapplications seamlessly without recoding, take the fastest path to modern infrastructure, and operate consistently across the data center, the edge, and any cloud. I urge to take a look at vmware.com/go/multicloud. You know my opinions on multi cloud by now, but there's a lot of stuff in here that works on any cloud. But don't take it from me thats: VMware.com/go/multicloud and my thanks to them again for sponsoring my ridiculous nonsense.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Jellyfish. So, you're sitting in front of your office chair, bleary eyed, parked in front of a powerpoint and—oh my sweet feathery Jesus its the night before the board meeting, because of course it is! As you slot that crappy screenshot of traffic light colored excel tables into your deck, or sift through endless spreadsheets looking for just the right data set, have you ever wondered, why is it that sales and marketing get all this shiny, awesome analytics and inside tools? Whereas, engineering basically gets left with the dregs. Well, the founders of Jellyfish certainly did. That's why they created the Jellyfish Engineering Management Platform, but don't you dare call it JEMP! Designed to make it simple to analyze your engineering organization, Jellyfish ingests signals from your tech stack. Including JIRA, Git, and collaborative tools. Yes, depressing to think of those things as your tech stack but this is 2021. They use that to create a model that accurately reflects just how the breakdown of engineering work aligns with your wider business objectives. In other words, it translates from code into spreadsheet. When you have to explain what you're doing from an engineering perspective to people whose primary IDE is Microsoft Powerpoint, consider Jellyfish. Thats Jellyfish.co and tell them Corey sent you! Watch for the wince, thats my favorite part.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and periodically I like to talk to people about different aspects of the industry. One that I think is interesting that doesn't get spoken about a lot directly is the idea of leadership. My guest today is Adam Zimman, who's a startup advisor providing guidance on—as mentioned—leadership, platform architecture, Product Marketing, and GTM Strategy—GTM, of course, standing for go-to-market. Who goes to market? That's right, little piggies. Adam, thank you for joining me.Adam: Thank you, Corey. It's a pleasure to be here.Corey: I imagine that you usually don't advise your clients to call their GTM execs, little piggies?Adam: Well, I mean, I guess it depends. You know, if you're actually a bacon manufacturer then that might be actually a reasonable thing to do.Corey: Yeah, that's a level of investment in the product that you usually don't see in most environments, but we take what we can get. So, snark and cynicism aside, what is it you do?Adam: Ultimately, I look for ways in which I can add value. And I've had the privilege in my career to be exposed to a lot of amazing companies, and I look for ways to be able to take the lessons that I've learned, mainly through mistakes and failure, and be able to translate those into success for others.Corey: Most recently, you were at LaunchDarkly for a while, taking a number of different VP roles. While you were there we spoke, back in 2017, briefly while you were in that environment. And in fact, my first guest on the show was one of the folks on your team, Heidi Waterhouse, who has been back at least once since then, and hopefully more than that. But it's been an interesting ride there. Before that you were at places like GitHub—or JIF-ub as I insist on pronouncing it—EMC-slash-VMware—where does one start and the other stop? Hard to say, it's sort of a giant corporate shell game—but you've spent a lot of time in large companies and small ones as well, and now you're effectively hanging out your shingle as a strategic advisor.Adam: This is true. I mean, I think that one of the things that I've found is that doesn't really matter what size of company you're at; you're going to find new and interesting challenges, and you really don't have to look that hard. And so one of the things that I found consistently, and I would say that this was most pointedly phrased for me by Emily Freeman in the context of, “DevOps is this amazing thing of people, process, and technology. And the reality is, is the only one that's complicated is the people.” And oddly enough, small companies, you still got people; big companies, you still got people. So, therein lies some of the challenges.Corey: And people are inherently non-deterministic; you never know what you're going to get by applying the same input, even to the same person just separated out by time. It's a challenge, and the problem that I see across the industry is that very often, you'll have a team of engineers and you'll pick the best and brightest one of those engineers, and, “Congratulations, you manage the team now.” Now, management's inherently orthogonal skill, and what you've simultaneously done is gotten rid of a great engineer and introduced a terrible manager. And that's through no fault of this person's own. But when I started managing teams, I got surprisingly far by just doing the exact opposite of all the stuff that my previous terrible bosses have done.And that works really well right up until it doesn't in a variety of probably fairly easily predictable ways. And the challenge that I'm seeing is that there is no book on how to do these things. If you want to climb an engineering ladder, great; there's a bunch of very qualified people who will tell you how to go from wherever you are technically, to where you want to go, and what you have to demonstrate, and what you have to do. Leadership is squishy, in that sense. At least it always has been to me.Adam: The interesting part that I would challenge you a little bit on is that there are thousands of interesting books on leadership, even smaller subsection on management specifically. I think one of the challenges there is that they're not well circulated within tech as an industry. I think that there are a few that people come back to, like Andy Grove's book on his experience building Intel. There are a lot of books out there that have done a lot for talking about how to manage people and how to think about what are the specific tactical things that you do. It's having one-on-ones, it's having meetings with clear agendas, it's being able to look for ways to set expectations with your organization.I think one of the challenges that I see pretty consistently, is the fact that that effort to be able to go out and find that information or to learn those skills is something that is put on to, as you said, this individual who is coming to management through punishment. They've been extraordinarily successful and now you will punish them by putting them in a role where they can no longer do all the things that they enjoyed, that made them successful. And I think that you see time and time again, where organizations put people in these roles, but they don't do anything to either prepare them for it or do anything to continue that notion of professional development or training for those individuals once they're in those roles.Corey: There are a lot of books out there for any discipline under the sun; some are good, some are terrible, most are somewhere in the middle of the road law of averages winds up working out. I think a key difference, on some level, is I can take to Twitter, or a forum, or something like that, and complain about software; the computer isn't doing the thing I think the computer should be doing. And that's great. I can't very well go and complain about managerial issues while actively having a team and not find myself no longer having managerial issues, if you catch my meaning. It's hard to find communities around this stuff.Adam: I think that you're right. And I think that this is one of those things where not only that, but I think that we also in tech have predominantly taken a very hierarchical structure to the way that we think about management and leadership, to the sense where oftentimes, it is not only discouraged but downright forbidden for an individual contributor to challenge their manager if they want to continue to have gainful employment. And I think that this is a cultural thing that, you know, it's funny; I know that you recently did an episode with John Allspaw and were talking about incident remediation. And I think that one of the things that I've always tried to do as a manager, as a leader, is think about opportunities for being able to do that type of incident response, for people. If you have a person that leaves, whether that is forced attrition, whether that is voluntary attrition, whether that is something that you wanted to happen, something that you didn't want to happen, what are you doing from a perspective of kind of a post-incident assessment to learn from that? And I think that the next level that is, how do you do it so that you actually, in some way, incorporate that for the individual that's actually leaving. Because ideally, they're learning from that experience, as well.Corey: Back when I was a generally terrible employee, I decided at some point, I was tired of dealing with computer problems and wanted to deal with people problems instead. Now, let's be clear, I found a path to do that in a very different direction than I expected at the time, but at the time, it was, “Great. I'm going to go ahead and become a manager of a team.” And I talked to a number of folks about all right, what is the path to go from decent technical engineer—I was a senior SRE type at most of these places—into management. And not just talking to people at the companies I was at, but talking to people in the larger community, and every engineering manager who I respected and talked to about, it always seemed like they got this lucky break at just the right time and that made them a manager for the first time.And once you have a track record of having managed people, then you're in. You can go back and forth between IC and management roles. But, “Well, you've never managed people before, so we're not going to take a chance on you to manage people.” The way that I did it, honestly, was I—a few times—I wound up joining startups where I was effectively the only ops person; we suddenly started scaling and having fun problems, and well, I did negotiate for that director title, so all right, I have teams now. I was more of a team lead than most things, in some cases.But it led to a really pretty interesting evolution in how I approach these things. I find now that the right answer is for me not to manage people at all because what I fundamentally do here at The Duckbill Group is basically become the loud, obnoxious center of attention. And I think that what managers need to do is showcase their people instead. And those two things, at least in my view, are opposed. And it's very challenging to do both of them, let alone well. For me at least, I tend to back away from the management side of things almost entirely and abdicate the role. Which is great. People self-manage, right?Adam: Well, I mean, I think that there are individuals who definitely will take—have the ability to self-organize and self-manage to a degree. I think that the challenge that you run into is, as the organization scales, as the nature of their role tends to change with that scaling organization, it becomes more challenging for them to navigate through those changes. A great example would be, I have had the pleasure and the privilege a number of times in my career of managing extraordinarily senior individuals; these are individuals who, to your point, don't need a whole lot of care and feeding. But what they do sometimes need is they need someone who is able to be in rooms that they're not in, whether that's from a higher-level leadership meeting understanding larger organizational goals, or they need someone that's going to check them; they need someone that they can trust, someone that they can bounce their ideas off of to know is this something that's going to be perceived value or something that's going to actually take me in the wrong direction, or somebody that's, kind of like, paying attention to the work product that they're doing and giving them some coaching, whether that's cheerleading or whether that's connecting of saying, “Hey, there's also this other person you should talk to.” Those types of things are really valuable for those individuals who are, to your point, a little bit more self-sufficient.Corey: On some level, I ran into this trap a lot, and having over drinks conversations with a bunch of people who went on similar paths, it's blindingly obvious that it's a dumb move in hindsight, but an awful lot of us did it, where we're sitting there as engineers with the belief of, “Ah, if I can make my manager—or beyond, several skip-levels up—look incredibly foolish in the middle of a large meeting, they will inherently see the value of what I have to say and will thus elevate me to management.” As it turns out, they elevate you to customer because you're not working there anymore, in many cases. And when I talk to people about this, it usually has that lightbulb coming on moment of as soon as you hear it, of course, it is blindingly obvious that you aren't going to sarcastically obnoxious your way into being management. Instead, the path there—in hindsight, also blindly obvious—is act as if: act managerial; help to effectively carry on your manager's message to the rest of the team, and when you have reservations or whatnot, talk to them in private rather than calling them out. And it's the obvious stuff of who gets promoted to management? Well, the people that look managerial. And that is what that looks like, in many respects.Adam: And this is one of the reasons why, when I talk about management I like to separate the notion of management from leadership. Because I think that anyone can be a leader. You don't actually have to be the administrative manager of an individual to be a leader to them.Corey: I saw a great poster once when I was younger. “Leaders are like eagles. We don't have either of them here.”Adam: [sigh]. Yeah, yeah. Ugh. I do miss good motivational posters.Corey: Oh, yeah.Adam: You know, I think that there's some truth to it. I think that finding people who are genuinely invested in being able to enable the success of others—which is how I define leadership—is challenging. I think that, especially in rather capitalistic-type industry like we're in, there is a lot of measurement of people's success by their own personal achievements and by their ability to beat their own drum. And I think that it's something that is, frankly, a failing of our industry, where we don't do a better job of encouraging folks, and rewarding folks that actually look out for others and enable the success of others. Because I think that's something that is—ultimately you think about how you build strong teams, and it's not about getting a bunch of individuals who can do amazing things individually. It's about getting individuals who are capable of working together and being able to do more than they would be able to if they were simply working individually.Corey: Do you ever find that people are chasing management in many respects because they think that it's something very different than what it is, and then find themselves in situations where well, I'm the dog that caught the car that I was chasing and only now do I realize that I have no idea how to drive the thing?Adam: Oh, absolutely. So, this is something that has been interesting me a lot recently, in the sense that I think we as an industry also do a very poor job of measuring management, measuring leadership. We give a lot of power to managers through performance reviews to measure their individual contributors, but there are very few companies who actually efficiently do things like 360 reviews, which has always confused me because I think that implies that you're getting feedback from all around you, as opposed to what you really want is you want feedback pointed back at you, which would be 180. But maybe that's just—Corey: Let's be clear, that was also pioneered by the German [Wehrmacht 00:13:48] in World War II, which is yeah, basically how some people I've worked with do tend to manage.Adam: Yeah. I think that if we can think about how do we measure the success of a manager, is it simply a function of the output of their team, or are there other efficiency metrics that you should be looking at? Very obvious one is how efficient is a manager from a perspective of the utilization of their resources? And when I think about that, I think about are they actually able to effectively hire? Are they able to effectively retain the people that they hire?What does it look like for the people on their organization from a promotion perspective in terms of skill growth? Do they become more valuable over time? Those are ways in which we can think about how we measure the manager, potentially, directly. And then there's indirect things like what's the qualitative aspect of those individuals that work for them? Are they people who are enjoying the work that they're doing?Are they motivated to continue to work towards the company's vision and mission, to be able to actually make their manager look good, but also make the company successful?Corey: A challenge, too, because I've seen this myself is, all right, you're not elevated to manager. Congratulations. It's not really a promotion. It's a lateral move. However, a lot of companies don't treat it that way.They don't compensate it that way, et cetera. And oh, okay, management, it turns out is not for me. There's no real good way to say, “I'm going back to being an IC,” especially at the same company, without it being perceived by many—rightly or wrongly—as a demotion or a failure.Adam: This question of, like, motivation to people, why do they want to go into management? I think that oftentimes this is misplaced. A lot of times the number one motivation that I've heard has nothing to do with wanting to actually help people or solve people problems, as you said earlier; it has to do with I want a bigger paycheck, I want more seniority, I want more responsibility, and therefore the only path available to me is management. In fact, many career ladders at organizations require an individual contributor to go to a management position before they can become a principal or a staff-level engineer, which is nonsense. First of all, why would you torture the individual to do something that is so completely and utterly outside of where their interests are? Secondly, why would you just decimate your lower-level individual contributors, your newer individual contributors by having someone who is completely non-inclined towards management be responsible for them? Oh.Corey: Oh, yeah. Used to be your peer; now they manage you, and great. I think people underestimate exactly how broad the blast radius of a manager is.Adam: Yeah. Talk to anyone, and they'll be more than happy to tell you the worst manager that they've ever had. At the same time, they'll also probably be able to tell you the best manager they've ever had.Corey: Oh, yeah. I called both of those out—only one the one of those by name, by the way—in conference talks that I've had because it's—yeah, you can probably guess which one I would call out and which one I would not name publicly—yeah—Adam: It depends on the conference, I guess. But yeah.Corey: Oh, yeah, absolutely. If it was you-know-what-your-problem-is con, yeah, it went super well.Adam: [laugh].Corey: It was fun. And management, especially in the current era is getting interesting, as we're seeing the heating up of the market in a bunch of different ways. And I understand, to be clear, that Twitter is not a perfect microcosm of the industry, but there's a recurring theme that I'm seeing among a number of engineering types that seemed to get—and again, I don't want to get letters for this, so if I misstate it, audience, please go ahead and be kind—but there seems to be a certain thread running through engineering communities that the purpose of a company is to provide a utopian work environment for its staff. Now, as someone who runs a company myself, yeah, I absolutely want to provide the kind of working environment I wish I'd had in a bunch of different environments. And that's not going to work for everyone, but that's okay.But fundamentally we're here to make money, and ideally, enough monies that we can keep the lights on. And that does mean that, however, we want to treat our staff that has to be subordinate to can we continue as a going concern? So yeah, it turns out, we can't—sustainably—outbid Netflix on every hire that we make and we aren't able to wind up having three catered meals a day as a full remote company delivered to everyone's house. Now, I'd like to, in a world where money flows like water, but it doesn't. For better or worse, there are constraints, and constraints shape us.But there's a thread that I'm starting to see of… I hesitate to call it entitlement, but it trends slightly toward the direction of folks who are in tech, and in some ways seem very far removed from business realities—now, let's be clear in the FAANG world, yeah, it's pretty attenuated. And in startup land where well, we're the VC backed, so we're losing money by the billion but we're making it up in volume. Great. That is not necessarily what I'm talking about here. I'm seeing a thread where, oh, engineers are clearly the smartest people in any company, which means that every other department should defer to them. I disagree with that position.Adam: I want to follow that thread a little bit with regards to engineers. So, I've worked as a software developer—Corey: My condolences.Adam: Yeah. I've worked as a technical salesperson. I've had the opportunity to work in pretty much every department with the exceptions of HR and finance. So, that has been part of my career of jack of all trades, master of none, but it has given me some interesting insights in terms of the value that different organizations, different individuals, bring to a company. And I think that—one of the things that I will say is that for the longest time, in large organizations, especially non-tech industry organizations, the engineer or the developer was at the same expectations or the role as someone in the janitorial staff.It was basically, “You're part of the plumbing. You just do the things so that the tech just works, and we're going to have the other business folks that are more responsible for actually making decisions that are going to make our business money.” The quintessential example is someone like Kraft Foods or someone like John Deere, right, where you're building tractors; for the longest time, the guy who ran the website wasn't going to be the guy who was going to make or break John Deere's quarterly earnings. Now, you've got tractors that literally are more computers than they are mechanical devices and so you suddenly have this change in dynamic with regards to the importance of that developer. But I think that something that's interesting, also, is that those other people who worked at the company didn't go away.They're still there; they're still important. In fact, they're still oftentimes making the buying decisions on behalf of the developers. The developers aren't the ones that are making those choices. And so you need to figure out, how do you actually make the technology choices and the technology outcomes accessible to individuals that are in roles that were, historically, had nothing to do with tech.This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking databases, observability, management, and security.And - let me be clear here - it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build.With Always Free you can do things like run small scale applications, or do proof of concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free. No asterisk. Start now. Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: I've always been a big believer in the idea that if you're going to transition into a new field, be it into tech, out of tech, et cetera, great. In almost every case, you should find ways to do that laterally. I think that this idea that, oh, you're going to go ahead and just start over with an entry-level job after you've been in a field for five years—no. Find the position that's halfway between where you are and where you think you want to go next and start getting exposure there. In time, it's those niches that add value that distinguish you from other folks.It turns out that they don't generally want to hire someone in almost any role that comes from Central Casting, where it's alright, give me a standard MBA with the following pedigree and drop them in as my new executive, whatever. No. They want to see things like industry experience; they want to see things that distinguish folks, and having experience in industries that are not traditionally, purely what this role is, is super helpful in a lot of different ways. What I do pretty clearly blends finance and tech; that goes reasonably well. Increasingly it starts to blend media, which is something I don't pretend to understand. But here we are, he said into the microphone.Adam: Yeah. Well, as long as you're not starting the next Fox News, I'm fine with that.Corey: No, no. Generally not.Adam: Okay, fair enough. But I think that you're right. This is one of the things where, trailing back, we've throughout this conversation to the notion of leadership, this is something that I found extraordinarily rewarding and empowering that I've done with individuals that I've brought into new organizations, either through initial conversations during an interview process, or during, as part of their onboarding, is I sit down, and I actually talk to them about what are their plans? What are their expectations? What are their goals, not only for the next 30, 60, 90 days in this role that we're talking about but what are they thinking about from a perspective of what do they want to do in the next year? In the next three years? Five years? Ten years? What are those checkpoints of what do you want to do in this role? What do you want to do at this company? What do you want to do with your career? Like, where do you see it headed?And it doesn't mean that you're writing this in stone, or that I'm going to hold you to it, but I think that one of those things that's really empowering for a leader is to be able to help those individuals find those connective threads that tie one position to the next and help them get there. If they're somebody who is saying, “Hey, look, I'm currently a developer, but I really wish that I could give more talks.” Okay, well, that's great for me to know. Let's put you on some projects that maybe actually would result in great content for a talk that you could give at a conference. And then we'll figure out, how do we work with the marketing department to be able to help you bring that to fruition?There's a lot of ways to be able to leverage this experience that you have as a leader, as a manager, to an individual who's coming up in their career and saying, “Hey, look. This is how some more ancillary things are connected.” And being able to bring those back to them.Corey: I really wish, on some level, that there was a more defined path toward a lot of these things, where the stuff is explained to folks. So often, I had terrible managers that, in hindsight, weren't that terrible. Because I didn't understand where the role started and stopped, I tended to view the role of the manager is there to protect the team. The end. And be our advocate in the organization, and get us the thing that we want, and what do we want? Comfy chairs.And it turns out that isn't ever how it really works. If I had to define management, it would basically be, balancing competing priorities more than it is almost anything else. And counterintuitively, the higher you rise in an organization, the more responsibility you have, and the less you can actually directly do. Everything you do drives influence. And that's it. That's how it distills down.Adam: You talk about the engineer that wants to move into management role because that's how they see their career progressing. This is a close corollary to the engineer that wants to move into a product management role because they want to have greater oversight into the decisions that are being made about what's getting built. And what you come to realize, for any engineer who successfully made that transition, is it's really complicated and difficult to be able to have that mental switch take place between this is how I'm going to build it versus this is the priority of what needs to get built next. And all too often you see engineers that land in product management roles that are dictating how something should be built, and suddenly the engineers are just like, “No, I have no respect for you. Because that's not your job.”And likewise, in a management role, oftentimes people view that as an opportunity for them to make all the choices, make all the decisions, and suddenly lose sight of the fact that they used to be on the other side of that outcome themselves, and were disappointed when they weren't included in some way, shape or form, or their priorities weren't taken into consideration.Corey: As you look at your own career, what is the worst job experience you've ever had? Or the worst job you've ever had? Or the worst boss you've ever had? That's always a good one to do.Adam: [laugh].Corey: Pick a superlative and not the good kind. Hit me.Adam: Yeah, no, I mean, look, I think that probably the worst… experience that I ever had with a manager, with a boss, was actually when I was first a software developer. And my manager would occasionally just come up behind me and just stand and watch me code. And we're not talking about peer programming, where it was just like, we're working together. No, it was, literally would come up, stand behind me on my shoulder, and just stand there. Not saying anything; just watching me write Java code. And that was probably the most disconcerting experience that I've ever had in a job ever. I lasted about six months and then I was just like, “I need to move on to something else.”Corey: It turns out one of my failure modes was that I was great for the first three months in new ops roles because things were invariably a fire, and—Adam: [laugh].Corey: —I know how to solve those things. And then it becomes a maintenance role, and I'm bad at that. For longest time, I thought I was just a crap employee. And I am, but for different reasons. Instead, though, for me, it turned into a, I need to find the thing that I'm good at and embrace that. And I have to say, it was not being, basically, a cloud comedian on Twitter where my primary means of communication is shitposting. But you know, here we are, and this is how we've gotten there.Adam: I mean, know your strengths, man. Know your strengths.Corey: Yeah, lean into it. I mean, you went to college in Maine; you know what it's like there. It's dark and cold nine months out of the year, so all we do is sit inside and develop personality disorders. And well, here we are.Adam: Well, hey, I mean, I took a break from tech after that first job in software development and I actually went back and worked for a guy that I met while I was in school, and I worked for him, he was a general contractor. So, I have an appreciation for Maine winters in a way that I never gained as a privileged college student, when I was actually digging snow out of ditches to be able to pour concrete at six in the morning and then later in the day, I got to go up and use 80-pound weight shingles to reshingle the roof in 20-degree weather. So, it was an eye-opening experience. But I'll tell you, I learned pretty much everything that I know about how to build infrastructure from that eight months that I spent doing everything from framing, ditch-digging, to electrical, and plumbing, and roofing.Corey: Kind of fun how often is that we wind up trying other things. And this is part of it, too. As much fun as it is to complain about various jobs and whatnot that we have, let's be very clear here for a minute that I'm not dealing with hot tar, being paid seven bucks an hour. There are advantages to the [unintelligible 00:28:08] jobs I have.Adam: I mean, that was a number of years ago, but I still got ten bucks an hour.Corey: My first job at the University of Maine call center working in tech, in those days, I think I was being paid something like $5.35 an hour. To answer phones, which again, not that hard of a job. I made a lot more money a couple years later when I moved to construction. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend any of those things for me these days, but it was instructive.Adam: But at the same time, I would argue that you also have benefited from those experiences in the way that you approach the things that you do now. And I think that's one of the things that I've tried to bring forward in my career is look for those opportunities to make those connections, and understand the value of those experiences, and be able to help to enable other people because I've had those experiences.Corey: To me at least, the answer is to turn whatever you've done or whatever happened to you into some form of empathy. The idea of well, I had to struggle coming up, so you should, too. Let's instead focus on making it better for people who follow us. Send the elevator back down, as it were.Adam: I mean, I think that's great advice, and I think that it's something that's done far too infrequently. One of the things that I've noticed is that that aspect, unless somebody has actually been through the experience where somebody has done that for them, it is oftentimes something that is a lot harder for people to see. This goes to your earlier statement around the expectations that maybe are changing, and they're not such great ways with regards to what people are expecting from companies, what people are expecting from managers. I think that there is a distinct lack of expectation setting that takes place at companies in terms of what is the role of the company, what is the role of an employee, and how can those two come together to still have a positive interaction, but aren't overstepping on either side? Because that's really where you get into problems. That's where all of a sudden you have these companies that are looking to fill the role of, I will take care of all aspects of your life, when in reality that's not a very healthy relationship for an individual to have with a company.Corey: So, I want to thank you for coming and speak to me. What are you up to these days, and where can people find you? And why should people find you?Adam: Well, I don't know that anybody should find me.Corey: “I hope this email finds you never. I hope you're free.”Adam: Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I would love to find folks that I can add value to and help out. It's easy enough to find me on Twitter. It's just @-A-Z-I-M-M-A-N—azimman. And they're welcome to reach out to me there. My DMs are open—much to my displeasure sometimes—but happy to help people who are looking for help. I'm particularly interested in spending my time with those individuals who maybe are coming from underrepresented backgrounds in tech and looking for ways to be able to either get into tech or to move up within leadership roles in tech.But I'm spending a lot of my time doing a lot of coaching, doing a lot of advising for small startups, and then also just as a small side project have been working pretty extensively with James Governor and a woman by the name of Kim Harrison on this little thing called Progressive Delivery, which is, as far as we're concerned, it is the next iteration of the software development lifecycle that we've written about and talked about pretty extensively. James and Kim and I are working on a book together to be able to capture all those ideas and bring them and coalesce them for people, to make more consumable. But ultimately, we're trying to say, “Hey, look. The way that we've done things leading up till now, moving from waterfall to agile to continuous delivery into what's next?” And look at some of the market conditions that have changed. A lot of stuff that you talk about. I think that you would be the first to point out how things have changed since the launch of AWS.Corey: Oh, yes. It's more confusing now.Adam: Oh, way more confusing. And the ways in which people consume cloud-based services has radically changed. And so I think that the way that we are building software and the way that we're consuming software is something that we need to put some serious thought into. And the players that are—you know, as I spoke about earlier on this talk with you—are different. It's no longer just your developers that care about your AWS choices or care about the cloud service choices that you're making.You've got other individuals, whether it's the finance side you focus on or thinking about it from the perspective of the marketing team, or the HR team that's thinking about which cloud service HRIS are they going to use. There's a lot of people that need to be party to those choices that you're making and how you build out your company stack, as it were. And the Progressive Delivery model looks to take into consideration that changing and evolving group of people.Corey: And we will, of course, have links to that in the [show notes 00:32:46]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.Adam: Corey, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.Corey: Adam Zimman, startup advisor, and oh, so much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a scathing comment telling me why you as an engineer are best suited to be the manager of everything.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
The Big Themes:• The Ambassador: Excited about the project and are telling everyone about it. They'll be the first ones that post their go-live badge on LinkedIn. They're also rolling-up their sleeves to contribute.• The up-and-comer: Might not have previous experience but see the project as an opportunity to grow in their career and add a successful digital transformation to their resume. Great attitude.• Debbie Downer/Don Downer: “We've always done it this way” is their MO. They have a problem for every solution.• I'm only here for the snacks: Quiet and non-participatory in meetings and email. Demotivate the team and get credit where credit is not due.The Big Quotes:“The success of a project is going to boil down to good people management.”“You want to make sure that you're hand picking the team.”“A lot of these problems can be solved through good documentation and a good project blueprint where people have known exactly what they're needing to contribute and buy one.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.
I read from central casting to -centric. The word of the episode is "central nervous system". dictionarypod@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/thedictionarypod/ https://twitter.com/dictionarypod https://www.instagram.com/dictionarypod/ https://www.patreon.com/spejampar 917-727-5757
Episode 87- Comedian Andrew Sleighter! Andrew has appeared on Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central, Last Comic Standing and more. He also wrote on Norm MacDonald’s sports show, but his main focus is performing stand up comedy, which he excels at. He has an album out now you can listen to everywhere titled “The Great Backsby.” We’ll talk about all this plus opening for Dennis Miller, being Leonardo DiCaprio’s stand in, living in Portland, and much more! 0:00:00 - Intro0:00:59- Sleighter Last Name0:02:05 - Tantrums & Drugs 0:06:05 - High School & Sports0:09:02 - Breaking Nose 0:11:55 - Comedy Influences & Start0:14:10 - Graveyard Shift Working Radio0:15:55 - Protests0:17:30 - Early Stand Up Career in Seattle 0:20:30 - Moving to Boston 0:22:55 - Doing Crowd Work 0:24:55 - Moving to L.A. & Central Casting 0:28:25 - Stand In For Leonardo DiCaprio 0:30:40 - Working with Norm MacDonald 0:38:10 - Opening for Dennis Miller 0:43:39 - Performing on Conan O'Brien 0:48:58 - Last Comic Standing & Doing Stand Up0:51:50 - Scheduling Gigs Around Seahawk Games 0:53:20 - Craig Gass, Jeff Dye, Fahim Anwar & Group Tour0:56:47 - Podcasts and Comedy Albums 0:58:26 - Living in Portland & Having Kids 1:02:42 - Future Comedy Plans 1:04:10 - The People Concern & Homelessness 1:07:00 - Wrap Up Andrew Sleighter Website:http://www.andrewsleighter.com/The People Concern:https://www.thepeopleconcern.orgChuck Shute Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/andrewsleighter/Support the show (https://venmo.com/Chuck-Shute)
The Couple thank their listeners for sending them mail in our new segment, Mail Call, discuss the most popular Halloween songs, and talk about their favorite Halloween movies. After the break, they chat about Rogelio's Vanity Fair subscription, the demise of theme parks, and the exciting conclusion of mayo talk! This episode is brought to you by Central Casting! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/i-swear-were-not-a-couple/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/i-swear-were-not-a-couple/support
I discuss my extra work. My fitness cheat day, and my reasons for getting into fitness. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tibicus-dunn/support
My guests today -- Jen Bender (Executive) and Claire Benjamin (Casting Director) -- are from Central Casting, the largest employer of background actors in the Industry. We discuss how background casting worked before COVID-19 and how the process is changing in response to the pandemic.
Working as a background actor is a great learning experience as it can help you meet the crew members, observe other roles, and get on set experience, while earning a little extra money. Jennifer Bender, Executive Vice President of Central Casting, talks with Tanya about her role at Central Casting and how it can help springboard your career into the industry.Listen to Jennifer share tips on how you can become a background extra and use it to launch your career in film.Key points:2:03 - How Jen got started4: 57 - Being a woman in Hollywood10:01 - Central Casting returning to work14:16 - Changes in the industry 16:46 - Set etiquette for background actors17:38 - How does working as a background actor impact your ability to work in other departments19:34 - Career longevity of a background extra 20:05 - What SAG covers21:39 - Working with different studios22:23 - Always looking for people22:49 - How often do background extras get a speaking role 23:40 - Is being an extra worth the money 24:25 - What should you bring to the casting25:10 - What color & car type should you have 26:05 - Advice for breaking in the industry Get the latest the There To Here: Film & Media Podcast sent to you Find more podcasts from CoLab INC Film & Media Follow us on: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Twitter YouTube
Good friend and comedy cohort, Aryiel Hartman and I talk proudly being 'Sheeple', Central Casting, Sparkling water AND MORE!
During these rough times of pandemic self-isolation and coronavirus fear, our friend Patti Londre suggested she entertain us with something really different – how to be an actor with no talent required. Of course, right now, everything is on hold. But let’s talk about what Background Acting has entailed in the past and what direction it may be headed in when production starts up again. Patti has been a business owner and entrepreneur throughout her career. She ran a successful boutique public relations agency for 25 years, retired from that and then reinvented herself in the early days of blogging by creating one of the first national conferences for food bloggers. She dallied in being fully retired for at least a dozen years, and during that time had a lot of fun in an evolving array of Hobby Jobs (also known as being a volunteer). When a fashion photographer suggested she look into silver modeling (as in shiny gray-haired lady), her ego fluffed up again. That panned out to zero but lead her to a VERY LA job…background acting in TV series, movies and commercials! Show links:Los Angeles Central CastingQuilts from the Heart Join our community, get links to past episodes, or drop us a line.Women Beyond a Certain Age is an award-winning weekly podcast with Denise Vivaldo. She brings her own lively, humorous, and experienced viewpoint to the topics she discusses with her guests. The podcast covers wide-ranging subjects of importance to older women. Denise Vivaldo, host and producer. Denise’s books on Amazon.All other hats worn by Cindie Flannigan. See Cindie’s work here.
In this Episode, we will discuss: - Dropping out of film school to go make films. - How to tell your parents you are moving to Los Angeles to make movies. - Finding work when you make that move. - How to get into Central Casting and work as an extra. - Submitting your short films to festivals and is it worth it or not? - We also discuss the best first date movie. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show!
The entertainment industry this week prepared for an unprecedented shutdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus, cancelling upcoming movies, suspending all Broadway performances and scuttling concert tours until it's safe to welcome crowds back.To accommodate calls for social distancing, Hollywood moved to pause the normal hum of TV productions and the bustle of red-carpet movie premieres. After New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned gatherings of more than 500 people, Broadway theaters announced that they would close immediately and remain dark through April 12. The Tribeca Film Festival was called off too.The closures amount to a nearly complete halting of the industry, from Lincoln Center to Disneyland, and the largest-scale shutdown of many of the country's major arteries of culture.The Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater and the Kennedy Center in Washington all canceled events through March 31. Live Nation Entertainment and AEG Presents, the world's largest live-entertainment companies, suspended all current tours through March, including those of Billie Eilish, the Strokes and Post Malone.The dawning awareness of the virus' reach had already forced the cancellation or postponement of all major imminent events on the calendar, including the sprawling South by Southwest conference and festival in Austin, Texas; Hollywood's annual movie expo CinemaCon, in Las Vegas; this month's Kids Choice Awards in Los Angeles; and the sunny California music festival Coachella, which was put off until October. TV networks saw the scuttling of most major sporting events, including the NBA season, March Madness and the NHL season.Earlier Thursday, California urged bans of not just the largest events but also gatherings of more than 250 to help stymie the virus' spread. California Gov. Gavin Newsom recommended the cancellation or postponement of gatherings of 250 or more people through at least the end of the month. That put a new focus on Broadway, multiplexes and concert venues.Disneyland plans to shut its gates Saturday for the rest of the month. After Sunday, Florida's Disney World will also close to guests through the end of March. And Disney is suspending any new cruise ship departures starting Saturday.Beginning Saturday, the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles will close until at least March 28. Universal Studios in Orlando plans to shutter for the rest of the month starting Monday.Hollywood still planned to usher several new movies into theaters beginning Thursday evening. North American's largest chains, AMC and Regal, did not respond to emails. Cinemas have already been closed in China, India, Italy, Poland, Greece and other countries.But they will soon run out of movies to play. Postponements have erased much of the upcoming movie release calendar.The Walt Disney Co. wiped out its upcoming slate, including "Mulan," "New Mutants" and "Antlers." Universal Pictures said the "Fast and Furious" movie titled "F9" would not open May 22 as planned but in April next year. John Krasinski, writer and director of "A Quiet Place 2," announced that his film from Paramount Pictures would not open next week as planned but be rescheduled to for another date."One of the things I'm most proud of is that people have said our movie is one you have to see together," Krasinski said in a message on social media. "Well due to the ever-changing circumstances of what's going on in the world around us, now is clearly not the right time to do that."Across Hollywood, the usual machinations of show business, from auditions to rehearsals, ground to a halt. Apple's "The Morning Show" was among the many productions put on hiatus. Central Casting closed its offices. The TCM Classic Film festival, scheduled next month in Los Angeles was canceled. Leading talent agents closed their offices and sent agents home to work.The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame postponed its annual inducti...
On the Gist, Central Casting strikes again. In the interview, comedian Moshe Kasher is here to talk about his new comedy album Crowdsurfing. He and Mike discuss the difference between crowd work and prepared material, and the history of Moshe’s family. In the spiel, Nancy ripping his speech. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On the Gist, Central Casting strikes again. In the interview, comedian Moshe Kasher is here to talk about his new comedy album Crowdsurfing. He and Mike discuss the difference between crowd work and prepared material, and the history of Moshe’s family. In the spiel, Nancy ripping his speech. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this Episode, we will diacuss: Dropping out of film school to go make films. How to tell your parents you are moving to Los Angeles to make movies, then finding work when you make that move.How to get into Central Casting ans work as an extra. Submitting your short films to festivals and is it worth it or not? We also discuss the best first date movie.
Master and pupil discuss Central Casting, comedy defensive driving and Alice Cooper'stown, "Where Rock and Sports Collide."
Get Rich Nick goes Hollywood as the boys try to break into the business of being a background extra for TV, movies and commercials. First, they interview actress and background artist extraordinaire Allison O’Malley and get all the behind the scenes info on making it in the extra-tainment business. Then, the Nicks head to Burbank and sign up at Central Casting. Are they weird-looking enough to get cast? Does a SAG card still mean something in this town? Will the boys be seduced by Scientology while waiting in line? There’s a lot of money in Hollywood and we try to get a piece. This episode is brought to you by Dashlane (www.dashlane.com/nick).
Just when you think New Orleans couldn't surprise you any more, you meet Luke Hooper. Luke Hooper is the kind of character a Hollywood screenwriter would dream up. Tall and handsome. A semi-professional iron-man athlete who is also an award-winning inventor. He's invented a new version of delivering wireless power (yes, that's right, wireless power), creates futuristic games for children, designs creative solutions for giant companies like Nike, and has defended his patents in the Supreme Court of the US (yes, the Supreme Court) and won. He invented shoes that do themselves up, called Slaps. And he works out of an office downtown, next to the yoga studio he founded. Even the name "Luke Hooper" is from Central Casting superhero. There's nobody larger than life than Katrina Brees. Katrina is the founder of The Bearded Oysters Mardi Gras parade troupe, the Kolossos Bike Zoo, a do-it-yourself coffin business, and now she's sponsoring legislation that is making its way through the Louisiana legislature. Donna's Law is named for Katrina's mom, Donna. In 2018 suicidal thoughts got the better of Donna, and she bought her first gun and killed herself with it. Donna's Law will allow people who feel they are a threat to themselves or others to self-register on a list that denies them the right purchase a gun. Somehow, Katrina is managing to do what literally nobody in America has accomplished - she is shepherding bipartisan gun control into law. While at the same time retaining her sequined, giant-eyelashes, crown-wearing flamboyance. If you've spent any time in New Orleans and you love going out to hear live music, there's a fair chance you've never heard any bluegrass. Well, you have nobody to blame for that but yourself. Any time you feel like hearing some bluegrass you can go check out The Tanglers. Jacob Tanner and Craig Alexander are the core of the band, which is a 6-piece, and they do a duo gig where the two of them call themselves The Tanglers. Yes, that's confusing but if you never see the full band, the duo version of The Tanglers is awesome, as you'll hear on this Happy Hour. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.
Major League Rugby Show #MajorLeagueRugby #RugbyWrapUp NEW YORK, NY - If you drew up an over-the-top, suspension-of-reality script and then cast too-good-to-be-true characters at Central Casting, maybe - just maybe - you'd equal the episodic rugby television we witnessed in Major League Rugby Week #1. In this Week #80 of our Fantasy Sports Network show, Matt McCarthy and Steve Lewis break down each dramatically close match. Their analysis/exchange includes: -Fans making noise during opposing kickers going for the posts -Controversial Officiating -Brock Staller of the Seawolves live on the pitch -Surprise Results -6 Rugby World Cups between Lou Stanfill & Mike Petri -Disappointing performances -Stadiums and Fans -Jesuits vs Jesuits And it all gets kicked off by one of our favorite people on and off the pitch, Ollie Kilifi. *Watch or download as a Podcast. Please feel free to comment below and please share with your mates! All Segments: rugbywrapup.com/category/videos/ Find All Here: -Web: http://www.RugbyWrapUp.com -Twitter: https://twitter.com/RugbyWrapUp @RugbyWrapUp, @Matt_McCarthy00, @JonnyLewisFilms, @Junoir Blaber, @JWB_RWU, @Luke Bienstock, @Ronan Nelson, @MeetTheMatts, @Declan Yeats. -Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/RugbyWrapUp -Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/RugbyWrapUp -YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/RugbyWrapUp -Google + (Yes, apparently that's still a thing): https://plus.google.com/+RugbyWrapUp -Apple PodCasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rugby-wrap-up/id1253199236?mt=2 #RugbyWrapUp
Welcome, Junior Wizards! This week, thanks to a prompt from Princess Cimorene, Scal Brexton is born! Join our Senior Wizards as they use their old pal Central Casting to craft the backstory of "A gentle grocer with a past. There are buried skeletons in those woods"
Join me this week as I discuss the process of joining Central Casting, being moved up to training with Berg as well as locking down a house deal out of state! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ervin-musabelliu/support
In this episode I reflect on the significance of “Number 99” as it relates to the Great One and my own journey from Canada to the U.S. We’ll take you past Venice Beach buskers to the mountains of Big Bear for a comical-but-legit modern rap parody and into the heart of Hollywood, following the delivery of an antique chair from Orange County. Cold Open: Shots fired — I tried to go to a burlesque show but wasn’t allowed to bring my bag in. So I went back to my truck in order to drop it off. I got into a daze listening to podcasts and was jerked into action by the helicopters overhead. Just outside the show I encountered these two dudes, who describe a shooting that had just taken place. 28:35 - I pay homage to one of the radio greats — Joe Frank — who I only discovered through his untimely passing. I think his writing is on par with greats like Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Twain. Do yourself a favour and educate yourself here: https://www.joefrank.com/ 76:00 - Joining the hoards trying to “make it” in Hollywood, I headed up to Burbank early in the morning to sign up as a background actor with Central Casting. There I met 19-year-old Krill Mikhaylow, from Russia, and 33-year-old Gwaii Thyword, from Tanzania (85:55) — a fellow radio presenter. They each had a different take on what acting success is all about. 94:50 - Big Bear party house freestyle in the vein of modern trapped-out mumble rap. 63:46 - Track of the Week Xinobi “Real Fake (Jonjo Jury rmx)” @jonjojury 1:08:59 - I hear the Hulk tell me in his own words what it was like to come to LA and crash on the beach, as he struggled to make it. From mumble rap to comic book character speech, we’re definitely covering all the modes of diction this week. 1:20:24 - Rad Review: Oakland’s Idiot Grins (@idiotgrins) “State of Health” and Rebel ACA & French Monkey Wrench “John Wayne” (@user-20948793) 1:26:18 - Michael Jackson talks about the time a kid at his school came close to shooting it up, and why he decided to join the walk-out to protest gun policies in the US. Music: Squarepusher (@squarepusher), Cut Chemist (@cut-chemist), Cleptomaniacs (@cleptomaniacs), Kidnap (@kidnap_music), Daniel Avery (@danielavery), Tek.Lun (@tekdotlun), Bredden (@bredrenbe), Zeds Dead (@zedsdead), Hybrid Minds (@hybridminds), Tinlicker (@tinlicker), Miguel (@miguel), Kanye West (@kanyewest), Todd Terje (@toddterje), Cern (@cern), etc. Theme: Nasoshnik … check out his latest album here: nasoshnik.bandcamp.com/album/droga-przez-mlecze *This episode is dedicated to Beth Karrer and her circle up in SF... it's a tough week but hopefully some of these vibes will help carry you through it...
Courtney & Cody are joined by returning guest Ginger Wu as they discuss Netflix's Death Note. Topics covered include: settling in/for Mountain View, Central Casting attractive, & Red Delicious apples.
Michael talks about church, Central Casting, and bums.
Mary Wilson with today’s rundown: The Mar-a-Lago WiFi security needs some work, Robert Mueller’s bona fides, and a harsh burn about the KitKat bar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today's Guest: Novelist Lida Sideris, author of Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters, former Hollywood studio attorney. Watch this exclusive Mr. Media interview with Lida Sideris by clicking on the video player above! Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience full of gun-totin’ gumshoes with no regard for their own health or welfare – let alone their mother’s expensive wardrobe… in the NEW new media capital of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida! Here’s a great title for a mystery novel: Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters. It’s writer Lida Sideris’s first crack at fiction writing and the former Hollywood studio attorney certainly promises a lot right up front! LIDA SIDERIS podcast excerpt: "My day job as a lawyer can be a bit intense. So this book was an escape hatch for me, carved with words, zany characters, odd situations, action and adventure the whole way." You can LISTEN to this interview with lawyer and novelist LIDA SIDERIS, author of MURDER AND OTHER UNNATURAL DISASTERS, by clicking the audio player above! The good news is that she delivers a fun, frothy read with lots of kooky showbiz types circling our heroine, amateur sleuth Corrie Locke. You might say I came for the title and stayed for the characterization, as Sideris moves the story along with a cast of characters straight out of Central Casting and plot twists that would be unlikely in Des Moines. LIDA SIDERIS podcast excerpt: "I've been asked by people, 'Is there a "Me" character in the book?' And I've said, 'Not unless you've done this and that.' I asked someone who worked closely with me (when I was a Hollywood studio attorney), 'Did anyone seem familiar to you?' She said, 'No. I wish things like that happened!" Sideris started her career as a law clerk for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and later worked as a business affairs director at Lorimar-Telepictures (which is curiously hyphenated like Keith-Ameripictures in her novel). She currently works as executive director for a legal non-profit organization and writes on the side. Key interview moments: • 3:55 If your day job is a roller-coaster, attorney-turned-novelist Lida Sideris suggests writing to take the edge off; • 11:40 Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters is the kind of novel that has the authors friends wondering if they are in it; • 19:00 Sideris answers questions about a possible sequel for the book's star, Corrie Locke. Lida Sideris Website • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads The Party Authority in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland! The post Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters is novel attention getter! VIDEO INTERVIEW appeared first on Mr. Media.
The phrase ‘from Central Casting’ has become a kind of cultural shorthand for a stereotype or archetype, a subject so visually suited to its part it appears to have been designed for that role. Search the news for ‘straight out … Continue reading →
The phrase ‘from Central Casting' has become a kind of cultural shorthand for a stereotype or archetype, a subject so visually suited to its part it appears to have been designed for that role. Search the news for ‘straight out … Continue reading →
This month MPTD speaks with Dagmar Wittmer, president of Central Casting, one of the top casting agencies here in the District of Columbia. She has provided extras casting on such blockbuster projects as the Exorcist, Forrest Gump, Salt, J. Edgar, Wedding Crashers and Syriana. She provides some insight on how aspiring actors and actresses can get started in the local film and television industry.
This month MPTD speaks with Dagmar Wittmer, president of Central Casting, one of the top casting agencies here in the District of Columbia. She has provided extras casting on such blockbuster projects as the Exorcist, Forrest Gump, Salt, J. Edgar, Wedding Crashers and Syriana. She provides some insight on how aspiring actors and actresses can get started in the local film and television industry.
Being a fringeworthy explorer is a great honor but it gets old after the mellor are chewing at your boot. We discuss monetary and intangible rewards that can be given to the characters to keep them and their players interested in the campaign. Also we discuss how a detailed backstory or player created character motivations helps the gm and the other players to trigger events that interest the characters. 02:00 – Characters that are Fringeworthy but don't travel the pathways. 03:15 – The early adventurers will be “drafted”. 04:50 – Money as a reward. The first to offer and the first to go. 09:30 – Fame as a reward. Invites, book deals, and super models! 11:30 – Endorsements. Pepsi and pizza logos on your IDET uniform. 16:00 – Spending money on charities and such to increase your fame. 17:40 – Altruism as its own reward. 19:00 – Land grants on other worlds. 21:45 – Connections as a reward. 25:30 – The player's contribution to the game. These are things that help the GM reward the player. 29:40 – Character backgrounds as they contribute to the game. 34:30 – Knowledge & discovery as a reward. 36:45 – The power of the 3x3. 38:20 – Central Casting! 39:20 – Share character knowledge during character generation. 43:15 – Vacation. 48:10 – I do it for the chicks man! NOTE: Going to a Con? Take us with you! If you contact us, we'll send you a bunch of special promotion CD for the podcast. Please give us at least 4 weeks of advanced notice so that we have time to get these put together and to get them out to you.
The Palin family - straight out of central casting to the McCain campaign!
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