Podcasts about Challenger

Today's podcast is a conversation between Eric Triplett, a high-drive "Challenger" personality, and Mike Garvey, a strategic "Achiever." The two entrepreneurs discuss how their distinct Enneagram personality types led to the accidental formation of 38 Special Productions, a media company focused on the contracting industry. They detail the origin of their partnership, explaining how they combine their unique strengths to host Podhouse, a mobile content creation space for trade shows. The episode emphasizes the importance of professional branding and the "LEO vibe" they incorporate into their marketing to project authority and precision. Ultimately, their mission is to move beyond standard industry networking by building a collaborative media legacy for contractors and brands. Through their shared journey, they illustrate how aligned visions between different personality types can spark rapid business growth and innovation. Key Takeaways: Take a personality assessment like the Enneagram to gain deeper self-awareness and improve how you collaborate with different working styles. Partner with individuals who possess complementary personality types to drive significant forward momentum in your professional ventures. Develop a professional and cohesive brand identity to build authority and ensure your business stands out in a crowded market. Intentionally surround yourself with mentors and peers who inspire you and reflect the version of yourself you aspire to become. Challenge your initial judgments of others to remain open to unexpected and highly productive creative partnerships.

In this week's 5 Yrs Ago Flashback episode of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post-show (3-15-2021), PWTorch assistant editor Zack Heydorn guest hosts for Wade Keller and is joined by PWTorch contributor and host of the “MMA Talk for Pro Wrestling Fans” Dailycast, Robert Vallejos, to talk WWE Monday Night Raw with listener calls and emails. Discussion points include the weak hype for Fastlane, WrestleMania overshadowing Fastlane promotion, pros and cons of declaring Drew McIntyre as the number one contender to Bobby Lashley at WrestleMania, problems with Shane vs. Strowman, next steps for the Raw women's division, how to better use the three-hour Raw format, and more. Enjoy!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wade-keller-pro-wrestling-post-shows--3275545/support.

Derrick Kosinski & Scott Yager are joined by Devin Walker and Tony Raines Live and In-Studio at Skutch Media in Atlanta, GA.Devin Walker and Tony Raines join the guys for an epic 4-man pod covering a ton of subjects from Devin's iconic Are You The One Season to Tony's decision to give up alcohol a year ago. We talk about about Nelson and his potential return to the show, who the funniest Challenger are and MORE. And this is ONLY PART ONE!WATCH THE FULL THING HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-devin-and-152976473www.ChallengeManiacs.comwww.ChallengeMania.Livewww.ChallengeMania.Shop

Welcome to the place where we get to let our geek flags fly and talk about all things geek. Basically a fuzzy guide to life, the universe, and everything but mostly geek stuff. This level of the podcast is another poopshoot but now with the whole fuzzy trio. The Marshall, Blue, and I had a fun bro down random convo which included how Poppy Palps named Vader, the Fiio Snowsky Disc, SpaceHey, Sam Witwer on liking things in a critical world, Big Bird on the Challenger, Tokusatsu super sentai going on hiatus, the Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, the Far Cry series at Amazon, video game talk, the Seagulls song, Monster Hunter stories, and more.Congrats on completing Level 485! Feel free to contact me on social media (@wookieeriot). You can also reach the show by e-mail, laughitupfuzzballpodcast@gmail.com. All other links are easily findable on linktr.ee/laughitupfuzzball for merch, the Facebook group, etc. I'd love to hear from you. Subscribe to the feed on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or any of the apps which pull from those sources. Go do your thing so I can keep doing mine. If you feel so inclined, drop a positive rating or comment on those apps. Ratings help others find the madness. Tell your friends, geekery is always better with peers. Thank YOU for being a part of this hilarity! There's a plethora of ways to comment about the show and I look forward to seeing your thoughts, comments, and ideas. May the force be with us all, thanks for stopping by, you stay classy, be excellent to each other and party on dudes! TTFN… Wookiee out!

Go to www.LearningLeader.com  This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Kat Cole is the CEO of AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens) and a renowned business leader known for a meteoric rise from Hooters waitress to Fortune 40 Under 40 executive. As former President/COO of Focus Brands (Cinnabon), she specializes in scaling global brands. Her career is defined by driving billions in sales, strategic innovation, and a strong, people-first leadership style. Key Learnings You can't market your way out of a bad product. AG1 has 3x'd the business in four years while being in only one channel (direct to consumer) for 15 years. 80% of retail is in brick and mortar, so they were doing that volume in less than 20% of where transactions happen. That only works when customers love the product, keep buying it for years, and tell their friends. Scale comes from trusted recommendations, not marketing spend. Real volume comes from people telling their friends, recommending it to their teams and companies. That's where real scale and sustainable growth comes from. Two questions guide every career decision. Is my work done here? Can someone else do what the company needs better than I can? If the answer to either is yes, that guides you toward pushing for change in your role, the way you show up, or finding the next opportunity. Sometimes the best move is the lesser-known role. Kat could have stayed running big franchise brands everyone knew (Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's), but becoming COO of the parent company, Focus Brands, was a bigger, more complex role. Lesser known, smaller team, bigger stretch, more learning. That bridged her into consumer packaged goods and got her ready for AG1. Consider financial needs, learning, and ego separately. Between financial needs, your ability to learn or contribute, and your ego or optics, there are questions you can ask yourself about a particular moment or opportunity that will help you be sharper in what you actually want versus what just looks like what's best next on the surface. The founder heard her on podcasts and asked for an introduction. AG1's founder heard Kat on a couple of podcasts, knew Sahil Bloom, and asked Sahil to make the intro. She just happened to be taking time off and had been a customer for two years. "You're interviewing for your next job every day." Whatever you do now, that choice of time, that tone of voice, that decision, how you show up or don't, creates an impact that leads to an experience and people's actions and then results. Eventually, it leads to the next thing. Showing kindness in the airport matters. A caring note to someone struggling, a teacher or stranger saying, "I see something in you," a compliment when someone's in a dark place. It helps people out of darkness. Or opportunistically, being the one who sent the email or made the ask means you're the one who got the opportunity. Don't burn bridges even when you feel wronged. When Kat was an executive at Hooters at 26, peers in their 50s and 60s would say things in meetings that weren't kind or appropriate. She would write letters expressing how it made her feel, but never sent them. She processed, reflected, and showed up professionally. Years later, those same people became advocates, partners, and references. Four key mindsets for senior leaders. Humility, curiosity, courage, and confidence. By the time candidates get to Kat, they've been vetted on technical capability. She spends time validating those four characteristics because leadership and style trickle far into the organization. Ask "if not for" questions to reveal humility. When someone tells you how they stood tall in tough moments, ask what enabled them to do those great things. They'll say, "I had access to this data, this team, this technical leader." Then ask: "If those people did not exist, if that resource did not exist, how would you have navigated that?" You peel back layers and see if they have the humility to acknowledge their success was due to critical factors. The best candidates do the job in the interview. When someone says, "If we're doing this, we'll absolutely need this person in this specific role," or they have people in mind they're bringing with them, that's a good sign. Hiring leaders who have people who are loyal to them shows something real. In reference checks, ask, "What does this person need to be successful?" It's a positive framing to get at what someone might lack or require around them to be effective. Help people answer "how should I think about this?" In a fully remote company, you have less context and fewer vibes. When you send a note about ending a product line or launching something you said you'd never launch, people's subconscious internal war is "how should I think about this?" Leaders should start communications with "here's how I think about this" or "here's how we should think about this." Sometimes the answer is to shut up and speak last. As teams get stronger, there's more weight on the few things the CEO says. Leave space for other leaders to lead. Kat removed herself from some meetings entirely because she has such great leaders and a strong culture. Pay attention to themes in criticism, not individual attacks. When competitors attack you, ask: Are there patterns? Is there something reflective of industry questions? Sometimes criticisms point to things you already do well but aren't communicating well enough. Comparison ads work short-term but don't build credibility long-term. Challenger brands use the playbook of "we're like the leader, but better/cheaper." Consumers see through it. People tell AG1, "I saw an ad comparing their product to yours, and they're clearly saying you're the leader." The rage bait is brief; the truth is long. Algorithms reward dopamine hits and rage bait. Something untrue or negatively spun can quickly become widely seen because the critique is brief and witty, but the explanation and truth are long. AG1 has more human trials on a single SKU than any other multi-ingredient product ever in the space, but that's harder to say in a sound bite. Don't criticize a car for not taking you to the moon. Someone criticized one of AG1's products for not doing something the product isn't supposed to do. When addressing criticism, clarify what the product is actually designed to do. Her husband will be the fourth person ever to row across three oceans. He's already rowed the Atlantic (set the US record as a pair) and the Caribbean. Now he's training for the Pacific. If he completes it, he'll be only the fourth person to have ever done it in the world.  It's about who you become while striving for the big thing. After her husband got rescued in the Caribbean, he questioned why he was doing this with two kids. But this pursuit is who he is, what drives him, it's inspiring for the kids, and it makes him a better person when he's home. It's about the journey and who you do it with. More Learning 476: Kat Cole - Raise Your Hand, Raise Your Voice 078: Kat Cole - Courage, Confidence, Curiosity, and Humility Reflection Questions Is your work done where you are? Can someone else do what the company needs better than you can? When interviewing someone, ask what enabled them to succeed in a tough moment. Then ask: if that team or resource didn't exist, how would you have done it differently? What communication this week needs context? Start with: here's what this means, what it's not about, and how we should think about it. Audio Timestamps 00:18 Meet Kat Cole  02:42 AG1's Growth Story: $160M to $500M+  03:28 Product-Led Growth Wins  05:57 Kat on Writing and Reflection  07:39 Two Questions for Every Career Move  12:25 How Kat Joined AG1  16:09 You're Always Interviewing  18:47 Neutralizing Opposition at Hooters  24:19 Hiring Great Leaders  27:43 Inside Executive Interviews  31:56 Reference Checks That Reveal Truth  32:52 CEO as the Storyteller  34:16 "How Should I Think About This?"  35:46 Speak Last, Empower Leaders  37:41 Handling Public Criticism  39:59 Separating Signal from Noise  44:49 Staying Focused Through Criticism 48:00 Champagne Question: Family First  48:45 Rowing Three Oceans  51:37 Who You Become on the Journey  56:14 EOPC

Articles and features from the the Community Challenger, a weekly newspaper in Buffalo, NY

Scott Yager is joined by Amber B live in studio in Chicago.Amber is back and better than ever. Hear her message for The Challenge Gods and why her next season will be her best ever, hear where she is at in life and what it took to get her here, hear whether we'll be seeing her on Season 42 and who she finds to be the most understood Challenger.WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-amber-b-on-152168642www.ChallengeManiacs.comwww.ChallengeMania.Livewww.ChallengeMania.Shop

C'était le 28 janvier 1986 le 25ème vol de ce qu'on avait pris l'habitude d'appeler la navette spatiale se conclut, 73 secondes après son décollage, par la désintégration de l'appareil et ses sept occupants. On revient sur ce qui a causé ce terrible et très médiatique accident. Merci pour votre écoute Un Jour dans l'Histoire, c'est également en direct tous les jours de la semaine de 13h15 à 14h30 sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes d'Un Jour dans l'Histoire sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/5936 Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : L'Histoire Continue: https://audmns.com/kSbpELwL'heure H : https://audmns.com/YagLLiKEt sa version à écouter en famille : La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiKAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnUn Jour dans le Sport : https://audmns.com/xXlkHMHSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

EPISODE 158 | Nasty NASA: The Challenger and Other Spacespiracies At 11:38 am  on January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on its 10th mission and 73 seconds later exploded, killing everyone on board. This was seen live on television by millions of people because a civilian teacher was one of the crew.  At first, it was thought an external fuel tank had exploded. But after a thorough investigation, the real culprit turned out to be a faulty O-ring. Over the years, more digging would uncover behind the scenes drama, some of which may have led to the disaster. And for some folks, conspiracy narratives started to circulate that the whole thing was fake, the crew was still alive, that it was aliens, that they slipped into a parallel dimension and so on. Plus, NASA is often the target of conspironauts who think they know what's “really” going on. Review us here or on IMDb. And seriously, subscribe, will ya? Like, just do it.  SECTIONS 01:54 - A Space Boy Dream - What happened with the Challenger explosion 17:07 - Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me) - O-rings, organizational malfeasance, the CT that no one really died, a planned mass trauma, other CTs 32:18 - We Are All Made of Stars - The Untold Story of the Challenger Explosion: A Journey Through Time, Conspiracy, and Alternate Realities by David Moore, NASAHoax CTs: alien tech, Nibiru, Saturn Death Stars, the Mars Hoax, a hexagon on Saturn, straight lines in nature,  43:27 - Space Junk - Skylab comes back down, the Skylab astronaut strike, general belief in science, we aren't all that bright Music by Fanette Ronjat Follow us on social: Facebook X (Twitter) Other Podcasts by Derek DeWitt DIGITAL SIGNAGE DONE RIGHT - Winner of a Gold Quill Award, Gold MarCom Award, AVA Digital Award Gold, Silver Davey Award, and Communicator Award of Excellence, and on numerous top 10 podcast lists.  PRAGUE TIMES - A city is more than just a location - it's a kaleidoscope of history, places, people and trends. This podcast looks at Prague, in the center of Europe, from a number of perspectives, including what it is now, what is has been and where it's going. It's Prague THEN, Prague NOW, Prague LATER 

Why do smart teams still deliver failed projects? Most project failures don't begin with a catastrophic mistake. Instead, they begin with small deviations—minor compromises that seem harmless in the moment. A warning sign gets ignored. A shortcut becomes acceptable. A risk is acknowledged but tolerated because "nothing bad happened last time." Over time, those deviations quietly become the new normal. In this episode of Project Management Happy Hour, Kim Essendrup and Kate Anderson sit down with Dr. Bill Brantley to explore one of the most dangerous patterns in project leadership: normalization of deviance. The concept comes from sociologist Diane Vaughan's analysis of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Engineers had long observed problems with the shuttle's O-ring seals. But earlier launches survived those anomalies. Each successful launch reinforced the belief that the risk was acceptable. Gradually, what began as an abnormal warning became accepted behavior. As Dr. Brantley explains: "We survived that near miss. It's okay. Next time we'll be okay." Project teams fall into this pattern all the time. A design review is skipped because the team is behind schedule. A test failure gets dismissed because it hasn't caused a real problem yet. A risk gets documented—but never truly addressed. Nothing breaks immediately. So the project keeps moving. The conversation explores how this slow drift toward failure mirrors patterns seen in aviation, engineering disasters, and even mountaineering expeditions. Experienced professionals—people who know better—gradually normalize increasingly risky decisions until the system finally breaks. But the episode goes further than just diagnosing the problem. Dr. Brantley and the hosts dive into the decision dynamics inside projects. A typical project team makes dozens—or even hundreds—of decisions every week. Some have immediate consequences, while others take months or years to reveal their impact. One story from the Apollo program illustrates this perfectly: a weld defect made years earlier ultimately contributed to the crisis of Apollo 13. This delay between decision and consequence creates a dangerous blind spot. Dr. Brantley jokingly calls it the "White Castle effect." "White Castle burgers are great going down… and then at three in the morning you realize you made a bad decision." The same thing happens in project management. Decisions that seem harmless in the moment can produce painful consequences much later. One of the most powerful insights from the discussion is that organizations often fail to reflect on their decisions. Teams act, move forward, and stay busy—but rarely pause to ask whether their decisions are actually improving outcomes. That reflection step is critical. "Reflection really helps you break that normalization of deviance." Without it, teams never notice when small compromises start compounding into systemic risk. The episode also explores practical techniques for improving project decision-making. One of Dr. Brantley's favorites is red teaming—a method borrowed from military strategy and cybersecurity. In a red-team exercise, someone deliberately challenges the plan and tries to break it. Their job is to expose weaknesses before reality does. It's a powerful way to counter groupthink and create psychological safety for dissent. Another theme throughout the conversation is something many project managers intuitively know but rarely articulate: Every action—or inaction—on a project is ultimately a decision. "Everything is a decision. Nobody is going to come after you around anything other than decisions." Whether it's changing scope, delaying work, ignoring a risk, or choosing not to act at all, project leaders are constantly making decisions that shape the outcome of the project. The real question isn't whether decisions are happening. It's whether those decisions are intentional, visible, and thoughtfully examined. Because in many projects, failure doesn't arrive suddenly. It arrives slowly—one accepted deviation at a time. Love our content? Then join the PM Happy Hour membership at pmhappyhour.com/membership

On this episode of Old Man Strength, Chris Shipley takes an Enneagram personality test and finds himself getting roasted by Amy Addison and Caitlyn in one of the funniest and most unexpectedly honest episodes yet.The crew breaks down Chris's personality type, including traits tied to The Helper and The Challenger, while connecting the results to real-life situations involving work stress, relationships, family dynamics, therapy, emotional growth, and communication. What begins as a lighthearted test turns into a real conversation about self-awareness, personal growth, and how personality patterns show up in everyday life.Then, because this is still Old Man Strength, the show goes off the rails in the best way with a BuzzFeed quiz, Target jokes, pop culture references, and nonstop family banter.If you like podcasts with humor, honesty, personality-test chaos, and a lot of playful roasting, this episode is for you.Sponsored by Revelton Distilling Company, We Will Pizza, Iowa Beef Steakhouse, and Styled by JJ Boutique.Live from the AKC Andrew Downs Studios.

C'était en 1986, il y a 40 ans, la dernière fois qu'on a pu voir la comète de Halley. Comme souvent elle a soulevé un enthousiasme électrique. Parce que cette comète qu'on ne peut voir qu'une fois au cours d'une vie, à chaque fois traverse l'histoire de l'humanité et nous en laisse une image, un instantané de notre état à ce moment-là et depuis 2023 elle a commencé son retour vers la Terre pour un prochain passage prévu vers 2061. La comète est l'invitée d'Histoire Vivante dans cette série et elle nous raconte notre histoire depuis près de 3000 ans. Le dernier passage de la comète de Halley a laissé un souvenir à la fois extatique et tout à fait tragique. Nous sommes en 1986, l'humanité a déjà foulé le sol de la Lune, on a lancé pas mal de satellites et de vols habités et cette fois on a même des sondes et une navette, la navette Challenger, la technologie la plus avancée pour explorer l'espace. Avec Arnaud Saint Martin, sociologue des sciences, spécialiste de l'aérospatial, auteur de Les astrocapitalistes: toujours plus loin, conquérir, coloniser, exploiter, Payot, 2025.

AI is writing essays. AI is passing exams. AI is graduating with honours. But what’s happening to our kids’ brains? When an MIT study found students who used ChatGPT had dramatically worse recall, headlines screamed: “AI is destroying intelligence.” The truth is more complicated — and more confronting. In this episode, Justin and Kylie unpack what AI is actually doing to developing brains, why schools may be accidentally making it worse, and the one rule every family needs before a child touches ChatGPT again. Because this isn’t about banning AI. It’s about protecting your child’s ability to think. KEY POINTS Brain first, then AI What EEG scans revealed about neural engagement Why students using AI first “never recovered” cognitively The alarming reality inside high schools and universities How over-reliance weakens critical thinking (even in doctors) The “forklift at the gym” analogy from Alfie Kohn Why productive struggle is essential for learning Practical scripts parents can use at home What schools should be doing differently QUOTE OF THE EPISODE “Using AI to write for you is like bringing a forklift to the gym. The weights get lifted — but you don’t get stronger.” ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS Create the Brain-First Rule. No AI use until your child has attempted the task independently. Normalise Productive Struggle. Remind them: frustration builds neural pathways. Use AI as a Challenger, Not a Writer. Instead of “Write this for me,” teach them to ask: “Ask me to explain my argument before giving feedback.” “Challenge my reasoning with three hard questions.” Model It Yourself. Let your kids see you think first, then refine with technology. Have the Long-Term Conversation. Ask: Do you want to think for yourself — or let a machine think for you? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode we sit down with former Ultimate Fighting Championship title challenger Lauren Murphy to talk about the mindset, struggles, and defining moments that shaped her journey to the top of the flyweight division.Lauren shares the story of how she first stepped into martial arts, the role jiu jitsu played in changing her life, and how she went from balancing motherhood and everyday life to competing against the best fighters in the world. She also opens up about the mental side of fighting, the lessons she learned from challenging Valentina Shevchenko for the UFC title, and what it truly takes to survive and thrive in the fight game.This conversation dives into authenticity, discipline, and the mindset required to chase greatness in one of the toughest sports on the planet.If you are a fan of MMA, the UFC, or stories about perseverance and self belief, this is an episode you will not want to miss.Follow for more interviews, fight breakdowns, and behind the scenes conversations from the world of combat sports.

Articles and features from the the Community Challenger, a weekly newspaper in Buffalo, NY

Kevin discusses the following topics and covers the following stories: changes at the Department of Homeland Security; the Federal Reserve released their latest "Biege Bokk," a collection of nationwide anecdotes and data; the U.S. Labor Department reported the Weekly Jobless Claims, Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported layoffs announced by U.S.-based employers; the U.S. Labor Department reported 4th Qtr. Labor Productivity; U.S. Ports report their January throughput; Kevin has the details, sorts through the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin discusses the following topics and covers the following stories: changes at the Department of Homeland Security; the Federal Reserve released their latest "Biege Bokk," a collection of nationwide anecdotes and data; the U.S. Labor Department reported the Weekly Jobless Claims, Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported layoffs announced by U.S.-based employers; the U.S. Labor Department reported 4th Qtr. Labor Productivity; U.S. Ports report their January throughput; Kevin has the details, sorts through the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eric Salliot pousse un coup de gueule suite au maintien du Challenger aux Emirats Arabes Unis. En raison de la guerre au Moyen-Orient, Eric dénonce un manque de responsabilité de la part de l'ATP et de solidarité de la part des organisateurs.

Crunch Fitness CMO Chad Waetzig talks about the brand's recent New Year's campaign "Feel More" and how Crunch is promoting itself as a social destination for younger consumers facing post-pandemic loneliness. He also discusses how Crunch is programming around the rise in GLP-1-medication use and helping customers combat "skinny fat."

Can we learn from more-than-human beings how to bring our bodies into a more direct conversation with the seasons? In this week's story, bioethics and history researcher Melanie Challenger explores how our culture insulates us from experiencing seasonal signals in the natural world, ultimately impeding our ability to respond to ecological change. Examining how animals and plants translate important shifts in the land into meaningful activity, Melanie reflects on what it would take for humans to reawaken the same attunement to the changes, great and small, unfolding around us.Read the essay. Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.Photo credit: Credit: Alex Strohl / Verb Photo

Take the quiz and find out your stage: https://bit.ly/3PbGOl0 Want to move up and need a boost to make it happen? Join Beyond Community? https://bit.ly/4nrfM5N For years, we've been told that fluency is measured from A1 to C2. But those levels measure grammar and comprehension. They don't measure how you show up when you speak. You can be "B2" and still avoid conversations. You can understand everything… and still feel anxious when it's your turn to talk. So what if fluency isn't about levels… but about stages of speaking confidence? In this video, I introduce a different way to think about fluency! With the 5 Speaking Stages.  1️⃣ The Avoider 2️⃣ The Anxious Speaker 3️⃣ The Brave Speaker 4️⃣ The Challenger 5️⃣ The Influencer ✨ Want to find out YOUR stage? Take the Speaking Stage Quiz here! https://bit.ly/3PbGOl0

ATP Weekly: Indian Wells Preview – Alcaraz Eyes Three-Peat, Sinner's Response, Djokovic's Desert Dilemma & Shelton's Brutal Draw The desert storm is here, and the spotlight shifts to the BNP Paribas Open as the ATP's biggest stars descend on Tennis Paradise. Can Carlos Alcaraz make it three titles in a row in the California desert? The two-time defending champion thrives in these conditions—but with a stacked field and rising contenders, the road to a three-peat is anything but simple. All eyes are also on Jannik Sinner. After his blistering start to the season, can he reset and reassert his dominance on one of the tour's biggest stages? Is this the tournament where he makes another statement in the rivalry at the top? And what about Novak Djokovic? Indian Wells hasn't always been his happiest hunting ground in recent years. Can he rediscover his desert magic and reestablish control at a Masters 1000 that once felt automatic? We also break down the dangerous floaters and dark horses who could crash the party—plus a deep dive into Ben Shelton's nightmare draw. Is this a breakthrough opportunity or a brutal early test? Join us as we analyze the form, the matchups, the conditions, and the key storylines heading into one of the most important tournaments of the spring. The road to clay season starts now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Sam Tripoli is a stand-up comedian and host of the Tin Foil Hat podcast that explores conspiracies, shadow agendas, and alternative theories with humor and intensity. He also co-hosts Cash Daddies, Broken Simulation & World War Debate. SPONSORS https://www.twc.health/danny - Use code DANNY for $30 Off + FREE Shipping. https://shopmando.com - Use code DANNY for 20% off. https://stopboxusa.com/danny - Use code DANNY for 10% off StopBox today. https://hexclad.com/dannyjones - Get 10% off your forever cook wear today. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS @TinFoilHatOfficial https://x.com/samtripoli https://www.instagram.com/samtripoli https://samtripoli.com FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - There's only 4 conspiracies left 02:54 - Greater Israel Project 05:19 - Games being played with the Epstein files 08:31 - Operation Trust 10:44 - Epstein's bank statements 13:39 - 98% of Epstein files still unreleased 16:45 - Best possible proof Trump is innocent in Epstein scandal 20:26 - Our entire culture is manufactured by intelligence 24:13 - Hyatt Hotels CEO in the Epstein files 26:47 - Why they picked Epstein 30:53 - The Epstein & Hitler connection 35:49 - FaceBook started as a Pentagon program 38:37 - Apollo Global + NBA + LifeTouch = Epstein 41:42 - The Bad Bunny halftime show 45:05 - 4 pillars of a functioning society 48:46 - The reason behind 73 MILLION annual abortions 51:39 - Baal worship through history 58:45 - Israel's population problem 01:00:12 - The "protected classes" theory 01:03:15 - The divide within the Jewish population 01:09:44 - Ghislaine Maxwell's prison body double 01:13:00 - The British Empire is behind everything 01:15:04 - Secret plan to destroy the Constitution 01:19:39 - The movements Peter Thiel is quietly funding 01:20:29 - Clavicular & looksmaxxing 01:25:42 - Child sacrifice in ancient Judaism 01:29:31 - How Dane Cook changed comedy 01:35:30 - Why comedians started podcasting 01:38:28 - The tombstone algorithms 01:39:28 - How democrats are funding their election campaigns 01:42:24 - Sam's dirty comedy 01:45:07 - The poopy pants family 01:47:40 - The French & Russians' role in the Civil War 01:50:27 - Flying ships in the Civil War 01:52:42 - Modern events foretold in the Bible 01:54:19 - Sam's theory behind Jesus & religion 01:56:42 - Epstein's interest in parapsychology 02:01:36 - Worshipping the God of Crap 02:03:11 - The origins of NASA 02:07:04 - Germany lost WW2 - not the Nazis 02:08:49 - Operation Highjump 02:09:16 - The deal "aliens" made with the U.S. Government 02:15:56 - Nuclear weapons may have been a psyop 02:20:06 - Why Pam Bondi won't released all the Epstein files 02:27:09 - The man who predicted 9/11 02:31:13 - The Challenger crew secretly survived 02:36:49 - The psyop behind alien contact 02:39:34 - The FBI's cult coverup 02:47:06 - How Charlie Kirk's death changed everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exploring Space Innovation with Dan Hart Join us in this episode as Dan Hart shares his incredible journey from childhood curiosity to leading transformative space ventures. Discover the lessons learned from rocket failures, the evolving industry landscape, and the future of space exploration. In this episode: Dan's early fascination with space and engineering sparked by tinkering with toys and curiosity How a cold call to NASA's astronaut corps set him on a space career path The transition from NASA and defense projects to leading Virgin Orbit Lessons from Virgin Orbit's successes and setbacks, including the Cornwall launch failure The shift from government-led to private industry-driven space missions Insights into the future of space industry: commercialization, international cooperation, and scientific discovery Dan's perspective on air launch systems and their niche applications His current focus on space science advocacy, emerging technologies, and mentorship Timestamps: 00:00 - Welcome and Dan Hart's journey into space exploration 01:07 - Inquisitiveness and early influences in space and engineering 02:23 - Cold calling NASA and beginning in the space shuttle program 03:44 - Industry's role in iconic space vehicles and innovations 05:28 - Shifts in space program management and private sector empowerment 06:56 - Scientific discoveries and the pursuit of life beyond Earth 08:13 - Early career at McDonnell Douglas and experience during Challenger 10:00 - Transition to missile defense and satellite systems 12:08 - Virgin Orbit inception, COVID challenges, and early launch attempts 14:02 - The Cornwall launch failure and lessons learned 17:01 - UK launch ventures and regulatory hurdles 18:58 - Market shifts towards national security and satellite launching 22:23 - Reflection on Virgin Orbit's setbacks and industry lessons 24:26 - The resilience of space startups and the importance of perseverance 28:21 - Future of air launch technology and niche applications 32:17 - Dan's current work on space science, policy, and emerging tech 36:39 - Final thoughts and advice for aspiring space entrepreneurs Resources & Links: Virgin Orbit Dan Hart - LinkedIn National Academy of Sciences Atlantic Council James Webb Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope Connect with Dan Hart: LinkedIn Twitter/X Additional Notes: Dan emphasizes the importance of resilience, teamwork, and embracing failure as essential parts of space innovation. Discussions highlight the evolving landscape from government-led projects to vibrant private industry participation. Insightful perspectives on policy, regulation, and international collaboration shape the future of space exploration. Stay connected with us! Use #Astroben across various social media platforms to engage with us! Youtube: www.youtube.com/@astrobenpodcast Website: www.astroben.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/astrobenpodcast/ X: https://x.com/Gambleonit Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@astrobenpodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/astrobenpodcast/

Meet the Professionals with Mike Cation, the voice of Challenger tennis. We talk commentary reps, relationships, journalistic ethics, and how to break into tennis jobs through volunteering and college tennis. Plus a quick tour check-in as Medvedev wins Dubai by walkover and Tiafoe reaches the Acapulco final. Links:Off Season Ep 4 - https://youtu.be/8UTohuZL-oY?si=8ue6NlazOwcIEf23 Ground Pass Substack - https://groundpass.substack.com/Ground Pass Shop - https://www.groundpasspodcast.com/shop Ground Pass Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/GroundPassPodcastChapters:00:00 Intro05:12 Current Events in Tennis: Dubai and Austin Tournaments10:18 Meet the Professional: Mike Cation's Journey in Tennis Commentary19:23 Building Relationships in Tennis: The Key to Success21:30 The Art of Commentary: Skills and Learning Process28:55 The Role of a Commentator: Insights and Relationships with Players36:21 Navigating the Changing Landscape of Sports Media40:59 Advice for Aspiring Tennis ProfessionalsWe have Merch!!! Ground Pass Shop - https://www.groundpasspodcast.com/shop

Articles and features from the the Community Challenger, a weekly newspaper in Buffalo, NY

Becky, Holly, Jakob, and Austin talk about books of the 2020s, trends in reading and publishing, our hopes for the future, and a couple of predictions for the next big thing. This reading data: https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-pleasure-all-signs-show-slump Books mentioned include: Spillover by David Quammen, The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, The Plague by Albert Camus, The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,  These Precious Days and Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez, The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, There is a Door in This Darkness by Kristin Cash ore, All Fours by Miranda July, Book Lovers by Emily Henry, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, What Were We Thinking by Carlos Lozada, Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen, Just Us by Claudia Rankine, The Trees by Percival Everett, Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette, Intimacies and A Separation by Katie Kitamura, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Ducks by Kate Beaton, The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, The Most by Jessica Anthony, The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, Autocracy Inc by Anne Applebaum, Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, Doppleganger by Naomi Klein, Detransition, Baby by Torry Peters, Woodworking by Emily St. James, Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan, Diary of a Misfit by Casey Parks, Jesus Wept by Philip Shenon, Romney by McKay Coppins, Motherland by Julia Ioffe, The Gales of November by John U. Bacon, Murderland by Caroline Fraser, King of Kings by Scott Anderson, All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilberty, Challenger by Adam Higginbotham, More Everything Forever by Adam Becker, Red White and Whole by Rajani LaRocca, The Midnight Children by Dan Gemeinhart, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, Wanderhome by Jay Dragon, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, The House in the Cerulean sea by TJ Klune, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, The Women by Kristin Hannah, Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey,  The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, Alchemised by SenLinYu, Convent Wisdom by Ana Garriga and Carment Urbita, The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo, We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom, Berry Song by Michaela Goade, Legendary Frybread Drive-In edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, The Tragedy of True Crime by John J. Lennon, The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne,  We Tell Ourselves Stories by Alissa Wilkinson, Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik, Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, Back After This by Linda Holmes, The Caretaker by Ron Rash And authors Patricia Lockwood,  Claire Keegan, Rachel Kushner, Timothy Snyder, Helen Garner, Casey Plett, Mr Beast/James Patterson, Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno Garcia, and more!

Trump's State of the Union was the con job of the century: lies about "ending wars" and "securing the border" while drowning in Israeli money and Tel Aviv orders. This wasn't leadership — it was a victory lap for the foreign occupiers who control both parties. Until we drag these traitors out by the neck, America remains occupied and enslaved. Stacy Langton joins Stew to blow the lid off the Zionist Occupied Government's latest assault on American patriots in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Apply to Join Churchfront Premium Apply to Join Churchfront Pro Free Worship and Production Toolkit Shop Our Online Courses Join us at the Churchfront Conference Follow Churchfront on Instagram or TikTok: @churchfront Follow on Twitter: @realchurchfront Gear we use to make videos at Churchfront Musicbed SyncID: MB01VWQ69XRQNSN   Here are the podcast notes: Churchfront Podcast — Erwin McManus Lead Pastor, Mosaic Church (Los Angeles) | Author, The Seven Frequencies of Communication Guest background: Erwin McManus has led Mosaic in LA for 35 years, building a congregation averaging in its twenties across 40+ nationalities. He's also an author, speaker, and has been a longtime participant in the Global Leadership Summit at Willow Creek. Key Topics What holds church leaders back The most common internal limitation isn't skill or resources — it's the lack of felt permission. Pastors are often communal and loyal by nature, which also makes them dependent on someone saying "it's okay to go for it." The church culture tends to withhold permission rather than grant it. This is a big reason conferences are so magnetic — they're not primarily about information, they're about permission receiving. People go to be in a room where they feel free to dream, risk, and believe. Erwin said a large part of his life's work has been giving people permission: to dream big, to risk, to try low-percentage ideas, and to fail without that defining their worth. Giving permission downward in the org chart Leaders often receive permission at a conference and then come back and tell their team what to do — which is not the same as giving permission. True permission-giving means creating space for people to grow, develop, dream, and execute in their own way. Key principle: hold tight to where you're going, hold loosely to how you get there. Someone can execute at a high level and still do it differently than you would — and that's okay. "It's All About People" vs. "You Can't Take Everyone With You" (from Mind Shift)McManus intentionally places these as Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 as a juxtaposition. Most leaders lean hard toward one and neglect the other. His advice: read both, figure out which one resonates more, then go apply the other one. That tension is where relational elegance lives. When people leave, they attack your character At Mosaic, after major style and culture shifts, the people who left rarely said "I don't like the music." They attacked Erwin's character because it made them the hero of their story. He found the exceptions refreshing — the people who were honest ("the church is too young," "too diverse," "too evangelistic") made it easy to respond. His approach: when you bring clarity as a leader, you're giving people the gift of choice. If they hate who you are now, they're going to really hate who you're becoming — so this is actually a good time to part ways. "If you're everything, you're nothing." The white interior at Mosaic Hollywood During the 18-month pandemic shutdown, Aaron McManus pitched painting everything white — stage, speakers, walls. No precedent existed for it. The idea was: when people come back, we don't want them having a nostalgicexperience — we want them going forward. The white space became a blank canvas for projection and lighting in every direction. It's now been widely imitated. (They did the same thing at their current Pasadena theater space, which was the longtime home of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.) The Seven Frequencies of Communication The seven frequencies are a framework for understanding how people communicate and how they're heard — not just outwardly but internally, since your inner voice shapes the health of your soul. The frequencies: Commander, Challenger, Healer, Motivator, Professor, Seer, Maven. This isn't a static identity — it's a dynamic range you can access. The goal is mastery over your frequencies, not just defaulting to your primary one. Every frequency also has a shadow — the dark version of the same trait. Commander → Dictator. Seer → Perfectionist. Challenger → Manipulator. Motivator → Performer. We tend to access our shadows with zero effort and have to work to access the authentic frequency. That's true of all positive human characteristics: courage, forgiveness, integrity all require work. Their negative counterparts (fear, bitterness, dishonesty) require nothing. Practical example: Erwin's wife Kim is a Commander. 42 years of "turn off the lights and lock the doors" instead of "I love you." He learned to translate that as I love you, keep me safe. His daughter Mariah is a Challenger — she's always trying to elevate him, but it reads as reprimand. Understanding the frequency means getting offended less. Hire for character, not for frequency When Jake asked whether leaders need Commander or Challenger to run a department, Erwin's answer was simple: if the character is right, the frequency will work itself out. A high-Motivator leader who doesn't have Commander will still make people want to achieve for them — and the team will learn to push for clarity on execution. Environmental health matters more than frequency profile. Commanders and competency Commanders have competency as a core value. If you move a Commander into a new role without giving them enough context, resources, and framing, they won't feel like they're being trusted — they'll feel like they're being set up to fail. The key: make sure they feel equipped, not just trusted. "He just wants to make sure he has enough swords." Seers in leadership Many megachurch pastors are Commander-Seer combinations. The risk for Seers is confusing movement with momentum — pivoting sideways to get around an obstacle, while the team thinks the direction has changed entirely. The Seer knows they're still heading north; they forgot to communicate why they went east first. Solution from their team's side: instead of assuming the vision changed, ask "this feels like a direction change — is this a strategic move to get there faster? Help me communicate it well." Churchfront "Captive Consultant" segment Erwin's advice for Churchfront: since they're committed to serving churches exclusively, look for where churches are growing fastest — new residential development, emerging demographics — and think about what a scalable package looks like for smaller churches. The message is too important not to be heard clearly, which makes sound and AV integration genuinely mission-critical work. He also noted that once a building is built, the acoustic future is largely set — making early architectural involvement from integrators essential. Book/Resource mentioned: The Seven Frequencies of Communication — includes an assessment on their website.  Also mentioned: Mind Shift by Erwin McManus.

Ako tento nekonvenčný a talentovaný mladík z New Yorku prepracoval základy kvantovej mechaniky a prečo sa na jeho prvé semináre chodil pozerať sám Albert Einstein? Ako jeho vizuálne diagramy skrotili matematické nekonečna a akým spôsobom pred celým svetom odhalil príčinu katastrofy raketoplánu Challenger pomocou obyčajného pohára ľadovej vody. O tom všetkom diskutujú Jozef a Samuel. Podcast vzniká v spolupráci so SME.  Na stránke stubaeuba.sk nájdete celý zoznam nových programov, ktoré spomíname v úvode.   Bonusové epizódy a extra obsah k podcastom nájdete na https://herohero.co/vedator Samuelova nová kniha už je v predaji https://www.martinus.sk/3600333-limity-poznania/kniha   Otázky nám môžete nahrávať tu https://www.speakpipe.com/vedator Podcastové hrnčeky a ponožky nájdete na stránke https://vedator.space/vedastore/ Vedátora môžete podporiť cez stránku Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Vedator_sk   Všetko ostatné nájdete tu https://linktr.ee/vedatorsk Vedátorský newsletter http://eepurl.com/gIm1y5

We look at The Wake of HMS Challenger, How a Legendary Victorian Voyage Tells the Story of Our Oceans' Decline. See more about the book here. The Wake of HMS Challenger, reviewed This is an important book, albeit a depressing one. Even a century and a half ago when this truly epic, multi year voyage took place, the seas had already been significantly impacted by humans and their activities. In the time since these voyages took place, and the author writing this book, even further environmental devastation has taken place, causing even more irrevocable damage. One surprise was that the phrase shifting baseline syndrome only appears for the first time on page 150. This is clearly a huge problem for humanity, both in terms of the scale of damage done to our oceans, and the fact that things have so completely changed that no one, in anyone life time, can realise or remember just how bad it has been. This book, with passion and interest showcases the impressive achievements of the Challenger. Crossing the major oceans many times, suffering tough weather and numerous deaths among it's crew and even the scientists too. Several years passed during the voyage, numerous crew members deserted, others drowned, swept away, or succumbed to tropical diseases. The distances covered were vast, and it took another fifteen years after finally returning to England for the fifty volume collected works, learnings and observations to be described, written up and published. The insights for science were massive, but, time and time again, as the author details, they were capturing a world, either lost, or soon to be, especially with the future wide scale dredging of the sea bottom that has destroyed so much sea life. This is an important, but sad book to read. In these crazy times of climate change denial, and the denigration of evidence based learning the efforts of the HMS Challenger show that the science is not wrong, rather that short term human profit is, time and time again destroying so much of the beauty and biodiversity of our planet. More about the author Gillen D'Arcy Wood is the Robert W. Schaefer Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of the award-winning Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World and Land of Wondrous Cold: The Race to Discover Antarctica and Unlock the Secrets of Its Ice (both Princeton). More about the book In December 1872, HMS Challenger embarked on the first round-the-world oceanographic expedition. Its goal: to shine a light for the first time on the mysteries of the deep sea. For the next four years, Challenger's naturalists explored the oceans, encountering never-before-seen marvels of marine life. The expedition's achievements are the stuff of legend. It identified major ocean currents and defining features of the seafloor, including the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Mariana Trench. It measured worldwide sea temperatures and chemistry, creating baseline data for all ocean research since. And, most spectacularly of all, it collected nearly five thousand sea creatures and plants new to science. In The Wake of HMS Challenger, Gillen D'Arcy Wood looks afresh at this legendary scientific odyssey and shows why, 150 years later, its legacy looms larger than ever. The Challenger's scientists had no way of knowing that the incredible undersea aquarium they were documenting was on the verge of catastrophic change. Off Portugal, they encountered a brilliant starfish now threatened with extinction by microplastics; in St. Thomas, teeming coral habitats that today have been decimated by ocean warming; and at remote Ascension Island, the breeding grounds of the now-endangered green turtle. Lyrical and elegiac, The Wake of HMS Challenger offers a stunning before-and-after picture of our global oceans. It is both a reminder of what we have lost since the Victorian age and an urgent call to preserve what remains of the diverse life and wild beauty of our planet's fin...

When neuroscientists scanned the brains of people going along with a group, they expected to find lying. What they found instead was something far stranger. The group wasn't changing people's answers. It was changing what they actually saw. We'll get to that study in a minute. But first, I want you to remember the last time you were in a meeting, and you knew something was wrong. The numbers didn't add up. The risk was being underestimated. And someone needed to say it. Then the most senior person in the room spoke first: "I think this is exactly what we need." Heads nodded. Finance agreed. Marketing agreed. The consultant agreed. And by the time it was your turn, you heard yourself saying, "I have some minor concerns, but overall I think it's solid." You're not alone. Research shows that roughly half of employees stay silent at work rather than voice a concern. And among those who stayed quiet, 40% estimated they wasted 2 weeks or more replaying what they didn't say. Two weeks. Mentally rehearsing the point they should have made in a meeting that's already over. That silence isn't a character flaw. It's your neurology working against you. And today I'm going to show you exactly why it happens and how to stop it.  It starts with what was happening inside your head during that meeting you just remembered. Why Your Brain Surrenders to the Group Most people know about the Asch conformity experiments from the 1950s. People were asked to match line lengths, and seventy-five percent went along with answers that were obviously wrong. That result gets cited everywhere. But the more important study came fifty years later, and it revealed something the Asch experiment never could. In 2005, neuroscientist Gregory Berns at Emory University put people inside an MRI machine and ran a similar conformity task, this time with three-dimensional shape rotation. Like Asch, he planted actors who gave wrong answers. But unlike Asch, he could watch what was happening inside people's brains while the conformity was occurring. Berns expected the MRI to show activity in the prefrontal cortex, the brain's decision-making center, when people went along with wrong answers. That would mean they were knowingly lying to fit in. Just a social calculation. That's not what the scans showed. People who conformed showed no increased activity in decision-making regions. Instead, the activity showed up in the parts of the brain that handle visual and spatial perception, the occipital and parietal areas. The group wasn't changing people's answers. It was changing what they actually saw. Their brains were rewriting their experience to match the room. And the people who resisted the group? Their scans told a different story. Heightened activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat detection center. The same circuitry that fires when you encounter physical danger lit up when someone disagreed with the group. Berns put it plainly. The fear of social isolation activates the same neural machinery as the fear of genuine threats to survival. When you caved in that meeting, your neurology wasn't malfunctioning. It was doing exactly what it was designed to do. Keep you safe inside the tribe. This is why what I call mindjacking works so well. Algorithms manufacture social proof by showing you what's trending, what your friends liked, and what similar people chose. Your wiring responds the same way it does at the conference table. You're fighting your own threat-detection system every time you try to hold an independent position within a group. You can't turn off the wiring. But you can learn to catch it in the act. And that starts with one critical distinction. The First Skill: Separating Updating from Caving Sometimes the people around you know something you don't. Changing your mind in a group isn't always a surrender. Sometimes it's the smartest move in the room. The real skill is knowing which one just happened. You can test this in real time. When you feel your position shifting in a group, ask yourself three questions. First: Did someone introduce information I didn't have before? If the CFO reveals a data point that genuinely changes the calculus, updating your view isn't a weakness. It's intelligence. That's new evidence. Second: Can I articulate why I changed my mind, in specific terms? If you can say, "I shifted because of the margin data in Q3 that I hadn't seen," that's a real update. If you can only say, "I don't know, everyone seemed to think it was fine," that's capitulation. Third: Would I have reached this same conclusion alone, with the same information? This is the killer question. If the answer is no, and you only arrived at this position because others were already there, you haven't updated. You've surrendered. Getting this wrong is costly. And not just the one time. When you capitulate and call it updating, you train yourself to stop trusting your own analysis. Do it enough times, and you won't even bother preparing, because you already know you're going to defer. That's how capable people slowly become passengers in rooms where they should be driving. Capture those three questions somewhere you'll see them. They're your real-time check on whether you're being open-minded or spineless. Those questions work when you're already in the meeting and the pressure is live. But what if you could protect your thinking before the pressure even starts? The Pre-Meeting Lock-In The most important thing you can do to protect your independent thinking doesn't happen during the meeting. It happens before. I call it the Pre-Meeting Lock-In, and it takes less than two minutes. Before any meeting where a decision will be made, write down three things:  Your position  Two or three key reasons supporting it What would it take to change your mind Put it on paper. Put it in a note on your phone. Just get it out of your head and into a form you can reference. Why does this work? Because once the discussion starts, your mind is going to quietly edit your memories of what you believed. You'll start thinking, "Well, I wasn't really sure about that point anyway." Your pre-meeting notes are an anchor against that self-deception. They're a record of what you actually thought before the social pressure arrived. You want to see what happens when someone has the analysis but doesn't lock it in?  The night before the Challenger launch in January 1986, engineer Roger Boisjoly and his team at Morton Thiokol had the data. They knew the O-ring seals were dangerous in cold weather. They'd written memos. They'd run the numbers. They recommended against launching. But when NASA pushed back hard on the teleconference, Thiokol management called an off-line caucus and excluded the engineers from the room. When the call resumed, management reversed the recommendation. Boisjoly had the analysis. His managers had heard it. But under pressure from their biggest customer, the conclusion got edited in real time. Boisjoly later described it as an unethical forum driven by what he called "intense customer intimidation." He fought like hell, but the room won. That's the most extreme version of the problem. Life and death. But the mechanics are the same in every conference room. The analysis exists. The pressure arrives. And without something anchoring you to what you actually concluded, the room rewrites the story. There's a bonus effect to the Lock-In, too. When you've documented what it would take to change your mind, you've given yourself permission to be genuinely open. You're not being stubborn for the sake of it. You're saying, "Show me evidence that meets this threshold, and I'll update." That's intellectual honesty with a backbone. But you can know exactly what you think and still fail if you can't get anyone else to hear it. How to Dissent and Actually Be Heard Most dissent fails not because it's wrong, but because it's delivered badly.  Blurting out "I think this is a mistake" when the group is already aligned feels like an attack. People get defensive. Your point gets ignored, not because it lacked merit, but because your delivery threatened the group's cohesion. You triggered the same threat response in them that you've been learning to manage in yourself. Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, has studied dissent for decades. You'd expect her research to show that dissent helps groups when the dissenter is right. When someone spots a flaw that everyone else missed. That makes intuitive sense. But that's not what she found. Nemeth discovered that when someone voices a genuine minority opinion, the entire group thinks more carefully. They consider more information, examine more alternatives, and reach better conclusions. And the group benefits even when the dissenter turns out to be wrong. Even when you're wrong, the act of dissenting makes the group smarter. Your disagreement forces everyone out of autopilot. Decades of research by Moscovici supports this. Minority voices don't just influence people in the moment. They shift perception afterward, in private, long after the meeting ends. That's the good news. The catch is in how the dissent happens. Nemeth tested what happens when dissent is assigned rather than authentic, when someone plays devil's advocate because they were told to. It doesn't produce the same effect. Groups can tell when disagreement is performative. The cognitive benefits only show up when the dissent is authentic. When someone actually believes what they're saying. That means the goal isn't just to voice disagreement. It's to voice it in a way that people can actually receive. And the hardest version of this isn't when you have a minor concern about an otherwise good plan. It's when the whole direction is wrong, and finding something to praise would be dishonest. In those moments, the move is to separate the people from the position. "I respect the work that went into this, and I know this isn't what anyone wants to hear, but I think we're solving the wrong problem." You're honoring the effort while challenging the direction. You're not attacking the tribe. You're trying to save it from a bad bet. When the stakes are lower, and you do see genuine merit, you can lead with that. "The market timing argument is strong, and I want to make sure we've stress-tested one thing before we commit." Same principle. You're working with their wiring instead of against it. Either way, your dissent has value beyond being right. Remember that. It's worth holding onto when your amygdala is screaming at you to stay quiet. Everything so far has assumed you're in a room with other people. Your amygdala can't tell the difference between a conference table and a phone screen. The Rooms You Can't See You're not just in meetings. You're in invisible rooms all day long. And most of the time, you don't even know you've walked into one. Every time you scroll past a post with ten thousand likes and think, "I guess that's the right take." Every time you read three articles with the same conclusion and stop questioning it. Every time an algorithm shows you what similar people chose, and you choose it too. Those are rooms full of nodding heads. And your amygdala responds to them the same way it responds to the conference table. Think about the last time you researched a major purchase. You probably started with some idea of what you wanted. Then you read reviews. Then you checked what was trending. Then you asked friends. By the time you decided, how much of that decision was yours? How much of it was the room? Or think about how you form opinions on topics you haven't studied deeply. You read a few articles. They mostly agree. You adopt the consensus. That feels like research. But Berns' scans tell us what's actually happening. Your brain isn't independently weighing the evidence. It's detecting a consensus and rewriting your perception to match. The same process that happens at the conference table is happening every time you open your phone. Mindjacking doesn't need to override your thinking. It just needs to make sure you never finish thinking for yourself before the crowd's answer arrives. And once it arrives, your neurology does the rest. The group doesn't just influence your answer; it shapes it. It rewrites your perception. The Lock-In works for these invisible rooms, too. Before you research a major purchase, write down what you actually want and what you're willing to pay. Before you dive into reviews and opinions, commit your criteria to paper. Before you ask friends what they think about a decision you've already analyzed, record your conclusion. Give yourself the same protection from algorithmic conformity that you'd want before walking into a boardroom. The skill isn't being contrarian. It's being first. First, to your own conclusion, before the room, any room, gets a vote. This is your challenge for the week. Think of one meeting you have coming up where a decision will be made. Before you walk in, open your notes app and type three lines. Line one: what you think. Line two: why. Line three: what would change your mind. That's it. Then sit in that meeting and watch what happens to your thinking when the room pushes back. I think you'll surprise yourself. What if the person you can't resist isn't your boss, your colleagues, or the algorithm? What if it's you? What happens when the decision you need to make threatens something deeper, when being wrong would mean something unbearable about who you are? That's where we're headed next. Closing If this episode gave you something useful, hit that subscribe button. I'm building a complete thinking toolkit here in the Thinking 101 series. If you got value today, share it with someone who could use it, especially anyone heading into a big meeting this week. Drop a comment and tell me: what's the hardest group you've ever had to disagree with? I read every comment and reply. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next episode. Endnotes/References "roughly half of employees stay silent at work rather than voice a concern" / "forty percent estimated they wasted two weeks or more": VitalSmarts, Costly Conversations: Why The Way Employees Communicate Will Make or Break Your Bottom Line (Provo, UT: VitalSmarts, December 2016). In a study of 1,025 employees, 70 percent reported instances where they or others failed to speak up effectively when a peer did not pull their weight. Half wasted seven days or more avoiding crucial conversations. Forty percent estimated they wasted two weeks or more ruminating about the problem. A 2021 follow-up study by Crucial Learning (formerly VitalSmarts) of 1,100 people found the rumination figure had risen to 43 percent. The script's "roughly half" is drawn from the VitalSmarts finding that the majority of the workforce reported conversation failures, with half losing seven or more days to avoidance behaviors. Primary source: https://www.vitalsmarts.com/press/2016/12/costly-conversations-why-the-way-employees-communicate-will-make-or-break-your-bottom-line/. Follow-up study: https://cruciallearning.com/press/costly-conversations-how-lack-of-communication-is-costing-organizations-thousands-in-revenue/ "the Asch conformity experiments from the 1950s": Solomon E. Asch, "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments," in Groups, Leadership and Men, ed. Harold Guetzkow (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951), 177–190. The expanded report was published as Solomon E. Asch, "Studies of Independence and Conformity: I. A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority," Psychological Monographs: General and Applied 70, no. 9 (1956): 1–70. Asch conducted the line-judgment experiments at Swarthmore College. Participants judged which of three comparison lines matched a standard line, with confederates unanimously giving incorrect answers on critical trials. Across conditions, approximately 75 percent of participants conformed at least once, and the mean conformity rate was approximately one-third of critical trials. Group sizes varied across experiments, typically with 6–8 confederates and one real participant. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1952-00803-001 "neuroscientist Gregory Berns at Emory University put people inside an MRI machine": Gregory S. Berns, Jonathan Chappelow, Caroline F. Zink, Giuseppe Pagnoni, Megan E. Martin-Skurski, and Jim Richards, "Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During Mental Rotation," Biological Psychiatry 58, no. 3 (August 1, 2005): 245–253. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.04.012. The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging with a mental rotation task. Participants (n=32, ages 19–41) judged whether three-dimensional shapes were rotated versions of each other while four confederates provided answers. Conformity was associated with functional changes in the occipital-parietal network (visual and spatial perception regions), not the prefrontal cortex. Independence was associated with heightened activity in the right amygdala and right caudate nucleus, regions linked to emotional salience and threat detection. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15978553/ "The group wasn't changing people's answers. It was changing what they actually saw": Berns et al., "Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity," 245–253. The researchers isolated the specifically social element of conformity by comparing brain activation when wrong answers came from a group of people versus when they came from computers. Conformity to group-sourced wrong answers produced greater activation bilaterally in visual cortex and right intraparietal sulcus, overlapping the baseline mental rotation network. Berns interpreted this as evidence that social conformity operates at a perceptual level rather than merely at a decision-making level. Full text PDF: https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2005/berns2005.pdf "Heightened activity in the amygdala": Berns et al., "Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity," 245–253. Participants who gave independent (correct) answers when the group was wrong showed significantly increased activation in the right amygdala and right caudate nucleus. The amygdala is associated with processing emotionally salient stimuli and threats. Berns described these findings as "consistent with the assumptions of social norm theory about the behavioral saliency of standing alone." The script's characterization that "the fear of social isolation activates the same neural machinery as the fear of genuine threats to survival" is an accessible paraphrase of this finding, consistent with the broader social pain literature (e.g., Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003), though Berns' paper does not use that exact language. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15978553/ "engineer Roger Boisjoly and his team at Morton Thiokol had the data": Roger M. Boisjoly, "Ethical Decisions — Morton Thiokol and the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster" (paper presented at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Annual Meeting, December 13–18, 1987). First presented as a talk at MIT in January 1987. Boisjoly, a specialist in O-ring seals and rocket joints at Morton Thiokol, documented how engineers recommended against the January 28, 1986 launch based on concerns about O-ring performance in cold temperatures. During the pre-launch teleconference, Thiokol management called an off-line caucus, excluded the engineers, and reversed the no-launch recommendation under pressure from NASA. Boisjoly described the forum as constituting "the unethical decision-making forum" driven by customer pressure. He was awarded the Prize for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Online Ethics Center at the National Academy of Engineering hosts Boisjoly's full account: https://onlineethics.org/cases/ethical-decisions-morton-thiokol-and-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster-introduction. See also Russell P. Boisjoly, Ellen Foster Curtis, and Eugene Mellican, "Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster: The Ethical Dimensions," Journal of Business Ethics 8, no. 4 (April 1989): 217–230. doi:10.1007/BF00383335. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00383335 "Nemeth discovered that when someone voices a genuine minority opinion, the entire group thinks more carefully": Charlan J. Nemeth, In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business (New York: Basic Books, 2018). Nemeth's research program at UC Berkeley, spanning four decades, demonstrated that exposure to minority dissent stimulates divergent thinking, broader information search, consideration of more alternatives, and higher-quality group decisions. The finding that dissent improves group performance even when the dissenter turns out to be wrong is documented across multiple studies. See also Charlan J. Nemeth, "Minority Influence Theory," IRLE Working Paper No. 218-10 (Berkeley: Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, May 2010). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1pz676t7 "Decades of research by Moscovici": Serge Moscovici, Elisabeth Lage, and Martine Naffrechoux, "Influence of a Consistent Minority on the Responses of a Majority in a Color Perception Task," Sociometry 32, no. 4 (December 1969): 365–380. In the original experiment, participants viewed blue slides while two confederates consistently called them green. The consistent minority condition produced a shift in approximately 8 percent of majority judgments toward the minority position, and roughly one-third of participants conformed at least once. In the inconsistent minority condition, the effect was negligible (approximately 1.25 percent). The script's claim that "minority voices don't just influence people in the moment — they shift perception afterward, in private" draws on Moscovici's subsequent conversion theory and research on the delayed and private effects of minority influence, including afterimage studies showing genuine perceptual shifts. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2786541 "Nemeth tested what happens when dissent is assigned rather than authentic": Charlan J. Nemeth, Joanie B. Connell, John D. Rogers, and Keith S. Brown, "Improving Decision Making by Means of Dissent," Journal of Applied Social Psychology 31, no. 1 (2001): 48–58. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2001.tb02481.x. Groups deliberated a personal injury case under three conditions: authentic dissent (a genuine minority viewpoint), assigned devil's advocate (a member told to argue the opposing side), and no dissent. Authentic dissent was superior in stimulating consideration of opposing positions, original thought, and direct attitude change. The devil's advocate condition did not produce the same cognitive benefits, suggesting that groups detect and discount performative disagreement. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2001.tb02481.x. See also Charlan Nemeth, Keith Brown, and John Rogers, "Devil's Advocate versus Authentic Dissent: Stimulating Quantity and Quality," European Journal of Social Psychology 31, no. 6 (2001): 707–720. doi:10.1002/ejsp.58.

Victoria Mboko (Doha runner-up), Ben Shelton (Dallas champion) and Félix Auger-Aliassime (Rotterdam finalist) contribute to a fruitful February! Arthur Fils reaches an ATP 500 final in his third tournament back. Coco Gauff plays herself into form in Dubai – we gotta stop the Mboko comparisons. Moïse Kouame continues to impress at Challenger level.(Apologies for Lucy's internet messing up the listening experience!)Don't forget to rate, review and share on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Audioboom. For daily tennis updates: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackspinglobalTwitter:  https://twitter.com/BlackSpinGlobalGET OUR MERCH HERE: https://blackspinglobal.com/collectionsIntro 00:00BHM in Tennis 00:53Victoria Mboko 04:40Gauff and Mboko comparisons 05:25 Ben Shelton 15:26FAA 19:27Arthur Fils 22:38 Coco Gauff 31:30Moïse Kouame 37:01Next tournaments 48:16

In this episode of Sales Is King, Dan sits down in the new Midtown Manhattan studio with Craig Bowman, SVP of Public Sector at Trellix and author of the new book Craft: CIA Elite Selling. Craig brings a wild career arc to the mic—from clandestine work with the CIA and the intelligence community to building high‑performing sales teams at Adobe and now leading public sector growth at scale.Craig unpacks how CIA tradecraft, “mission first” thinking, and AI can radically upgrade how you prospect, qualify, and win in complex B2B deals. Key topics coveredThe CIA recruitment story: from a mysterious hotel lobby interview, underground parking garages, and VCR‑filled rooms to landing his first role under commercial cover.Moving from intelligence to entrepreneurship: starting, scaling, and selling his own government contracting company, then returning post‑9/11 for a new mission.Jumping into sales at Adobe: how he was recruited, doubled his salary, and built a new intelligence division by deeply understanding the mission—not just the tech.“In the mud with the customer”: why Craig literally went to the southern border with CBP to understand the mission and coined his mantra about getting in the trenches.Influence maps vs org charts: why the real power sits with the “knuckle‑draggers” in the back of the room, not just the CIO, and how to find and engage true influencers.Frameworks without rigidity: his take on MEDDIC, Challenger, and why you coach the bottom half differently while using top performers as mentors to “shift the middle.”The AI inflection point: how he rewrote his book mid‑stream to integrate AI, and why he now spends 70% of his time using AI agents as a personal chief of staff.Craig's live AI workflow: daily scripts that summarize email, corporate updates, and account intel; auto‑generated dossiers, personas, and value hypotheses. The 90‑Second Takeover: how to send a pre‑meeting hypothesis of value, then open meetings with clarity, validation, and a working session instead of random discovery.Humility as a superpower: the intern experiment that proved “humility emails” beat cold calls, and why genuine curiosity and asking for help unlock meetings.AI from the buyer's side: why your customers are already using AI to shortlist vendors and how you should be using AI the same way to qualify where you can truly win.Metrics that actually matter: the question Craig asks every customer about how they'll measure value 7 months after buying—then how he uses that in MEDDIC the right way.The seven criteria of a successful seller: why he evaluates inputs (character, curiosity, rigor) rather than just outputs (pipeline, quota).Mentors and pivotal leaders: from his grandfather and tough college professor to powerful women leaders in the intelligence community and sales leaders like Ken Karsten.Who this episode is forEnterprise and public sector sellers trying to win complex, multi‑stakeholder deals.Sales leaders looking to blend frameworks like MEDDIC with modern AI and real coaching.Rev leaders who want their teams “in the mud with the customer” instead of stuck on Zoom.Listen for these takeawaysWhy you must deeply understand your customer's mission—and often physically go to the “border” or “boat”—before pitching technology.How to build influence maps, not just chase titles on an org chart.A tested AI + email play that interns used to book meetings your team “could never get.”A simple question that turns MEDDIC metrics from guesswork into a mutual accountability pact.Connect with CraigBook: Craft: CIA Elite Selling on Amazon (hardcover, ebook, and audiobook).Bonus material & AI scripts: unlock the members section using the book, or message Craig on LinkedIn if you bought the audio version.If you're tired of canned discovery, bad qualification, and random acts of prospecting, this conversation will change how you think about mission, AI, and what “elite selling” really looks like.

Articles and features from the the Community Challenger, a weekly newspaper in Buffalo, NY

Revisited: Q&A - Challenger Pt 2

This week on the Retirement Quick Tips podcast, I'm breaking down the generational differences between Gen X &  Boomers. These two generations approach money very differently, and those differences have a big impact on how they save, plan for retirement, and ultimately live in retirement. While Boomers love to talk about the assassination of JFK and the landing on the moon and can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing during both events, Gen X remembers the Challenger exploding, the LA riots, and the suicide of Kurt Kobain.  The defining economic event that shaped Gen X's financial path was the dot com bust. Younger Gen Xs were just finishing school and launching their careers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while older Gen Xs ers - 35 years old at this time, were now well established.

Liquid Death reached a $1.4 billion valuation selling water in cans. Meanwhile, banks spent $500 billion on transformation last year and still struggle to stand out. The gap isn't money - it's courage. Most banks are still designed to protect the status quo. Risk avoidance dominates, small changes are called progress, and true creativity rarely makes it through the internal process to reach customers. Challenger brands like Liquid Death don't win because they spend more or market louder. They win because they decide who they're for, what to stand for, and how to build a culture that supports being a challenger, even when it creates discomfort. I'm joined by Eric Fulwiler, co-founder and CEO of Rival. We discuss their recent study of the top 50 challenger brands and what makes them distinctive. We also uncover what has to change if financial institutions want to stand out instead of blending in.

For most of their lives, Stephen and Zack have kept their eyes to the stars and wondering if NASA or anybody else will ever again get serious about launching ships up there.[1. Image credit: SpaceX on X.com.] Now it seems that moment is upon us. Lord willing, next month's launch of Artemis II will drive new great leaps back to the Moon, not only to orbit or put down boots, but to put down roots. Meanwhile, private firms build reusable rockets and plan satellite networks while setting their sights on Mars. So what other science fictions will come true in reality? Join us to discern and celebrate the God-exalting glories of human spaceflight to faraway lands for this landmark 300th episode of Lorehaven's Fantastical Truth. Episode sponsors The Restitching of Camille DuLaine by Lindsay A. Franklin Realm Makers 2026 Conference & Expo Interregnum by J. A. Webb Above the Circle of Earth by E. Stephen Burnett Mission update New at Lorehaven: reviews on break this very busy week. Last week brought a bot swarm and other technical nonsense. Subscribe free to get updates and join the Lorehaven Guild. Authors, want to talk real sci-fi and beyond? Join the Authorship. Quotes and notes 72. When Our World Groans Under Sin, Should Christians Support Space Flight? 121. Will Humans Colonize the Cosmos Before Jesus Returns? 157. Will We Get Superpowers After the Resurrection? 252. What if Space Missionaries Fought the Secular State? | Above the Circle of Earth with E. Stephen Burnett 253. How Do Classic Sci-Fi Novels Explore the Planet Mars? 255. What Are Space Westerns? | After Moses with Michael F. Kane 256. When Have Newer Christian Authors Explored Mars? 1. Today, every space mission starts on Earth A brief summary of spaceflight: Sputnik 1 satellite (Oct. 1957), Yuri Gagarin (April 1961 aboard Vostok 1), Alan Shephard first American (May 1961), John Glenn first to orbit (Feb. 1962 aboard Friendship 1), 1960s moon race, moon landing (July 1969), six moon landings 1980s to early 2000s: Space Shuttle program, ISS, many others Alas, disasters: 1986 Challenger explosion, 2003 Columbia disaster Late 2000s to present: private companies brings new energy Elon Musk: classic humanist, entrepreneur, controversial, mess But a genius billionaire, anyway, and pioneer in new rocketry Same with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, whatever else you think of him These and more are winning goals to make ships less expensive SpaceX rockets can now reverse themselves to land on platforms 2024: Space X “mechazilla” arms caught a returning rocket This month, NASA postponed the Artemis II launch until March. Last week, SpaceX routinely launched a new crew to the ISS. And finally, Elon Musk revealed he's prioritizing lunar missions: For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars. It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city. That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster. 2. In years, new rockets will reach the Moon Artemis I (Nov. 2022) tested the Space Launch System. Notably, this system is developed separately from reusable rockets. Artemis II (March 2026?) will launch astronauts around the Moon. The mission will last four days and orbit the Moon's far side. The names of these absolutely real, nonfictional astronauts are: Commander Reid Wiseman Pilot Victor Glover Mission specialist Christina Koch Mission specialist astronaut Jeremy Hansen (CSA) As memes foretold, we hope they come back with superpowers. Artemis III will be a real moon landing, first since Apollo 17 in 1972. That mission may launch as early as 2028. No crew announced yet. Axiom Space developed new super-upgraded spacesuits for this. NASA identified possible nine landing sites, all near the South Pole. That region has stable daylight/temperatures plus crater water ice. All said, the first lunar bases could be south polar settlements. Many speculators suggest future lunar manufacturing in this area. NASA, Department of Energy to Develop Lunar Surface Reactor by 2030 Materials include water ice, lunar regolith, and other metals. Musk wants to make AI satellites there and launch them into space. Elon Musk Wants to Build an A.I. Satellite Factory on the Moon Risks: extra radiation could drive habitats under protective layers. You could shield with thick ceilings or else use lunar lava tubes. Listen to our March 2025 podcast series: Martian Month. 3. In decades, mankind may land on Mars In the recent past, Musk and others thought the Moon was jejune. After all, we've already landed there. Where's the fun in returning? But now the Moon seems more accessible. Walk before you run. Last year for ACE's launch, we shared a series: Martian Month. Unlike the Moon, Mars has atmosphere and daylight cycles. It's a little “warmer,” with slightly more radiation protection. Also, Mars has less known surface ice but more carbon dioxide. How to get there? You need to wait about once every two years. Possible transport: nuclear-powered rockets, now in development. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman: nuclear-electric propulsion? 6 Things You Should Know About Nuclear Thermal Propulsion That may reduce travel time by 25 percent (from 6 to 4 months?). Timing: a matter of decades, perhaps the 2030s at the earliest. So yes, you may live to see this happen, yet likely not travel there. Speculators/rocketeers see philosophical, humanitarian motives. For the Christian, our motives for spaceflight are a bit different. After all, God made humans to steward the Earth and maybe more. Alas, sin interferes with our purpose and our very human nature. We're mortal. Space couldn't have killed us before. Now it does. Personally, I see humanity's future with limited spaceflight at best. Yet after Jesus returns and we get New everything, who knows? Either way, with cautious optimism, Christians can rejoice at this. It's healthy to stop navel-gazing and look upward and onward. And someday, yes, missionaries may come to the Moon and Mars. Com station Top question for listeners What big spaceflight news, past or future, is your favorite? Will you watch the Artemis II launch, currently set for early March? Jeremiah Friedli remarked about episode 298: Excellent podcast episode, Stephen! Thanks for tackling these issues from a sound and biblical perspective. I'm looking forward to part 2! Next on Fantastical Truth Three hundred episodes down. Who knows how many to go? Whether you've just found the podcast or have been listening since January 2020, we're grateful for your support of this journey to escape bad books and find the best Christian-made fantasy for Christ's glory. Let's continue to seek and find His fantastical truth!

Support our sponsors this week by using the links below for the exclusive Solomonster offers!EXPRESSVPN ▶ Get an extra FOUR MONTHS FREE of the #1 trusted VPN at http://www.expressvpn.com/solomonsterFACTOR MEALS ▶ Use code "solomonster50off" at http://www.factormeals.com/solomonster50off to get 50 PERCENT OFF your first box plus FREE BREAKFAST for one year!Solomonster reviews AEW Grand Slam Australia 2026 from Sydney with MJF defending the AEW World championship against Brody King, Hangman Adam Page and Andrade El Idolo fighting for the right to challenge for the World title at Revolution and more.***Follow Solomonster on X (formerly Twitter) for news and opinion:http://x.com/solomonsterSubscribe to the Solomonster Sounds Off on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSolomonster?sub_confirmation=1Become a Solomonster Sounds Off Channel Member:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9jcg7mk93fGNqWPMfl_Aig/join

Instead of following trends, Satisfy chooses to build a brand that's different. Daniel said it best: “The easiest way to do something quite different is to not look at anything at all.”In a landscape where brands benchmark competitors and chase fleeting trends, Satisfy focuses on culture. They hire for it before skill, treat customers as guests, and think in decades rather than moments.This philosophy shines through in the Satisfy Pro Team. It's not just a sponsorship roster, but a reflection of the brand's commitment to process and discipline. The key takeaway: Most brands chase relevance, but Satisfy builds consistency. They react to culture, while Satisfy hires for it. They aim for long-term impact, not short-term hype.This conversation is a masterclass in long-term brand strategy and the discipline of saying no.Watch the video version of this podcast on Youtube ▶️: https://youtu.be/CRUMwdDoj5o

Derrick Kosinski & Scott Yager are joined by "The Danimal" Dan Walsh.Road Ruler and Challenger turned Comedian DAN WALSH joined us on the podcast way back when! Here is a throwback to our interview with Dan - all the way back at Episode 170! As we continue to take a trip down memory lane while we get set for Challenge Mania 2.0 - enjoy this flashback episode with one of our favorite people. Reminder that all ads, promos, events etc mentioned are likely outdated. www.ChallengeManiacs.comwww.ChallengeMania.Livewww.ChallengeMania.Shop

Silver, Gold and Crypto (oh my) Hang on – Wild ride here Superbowl, Olympics- Wait until you hear about the CAPex spending! Shakeup in Dietville PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Interactive Brokers  Warm-Up - Silver, Gold and Crypto (oh my) - Need a stock for CTP - Hang on - Wild ride here - Superbowl, Olympics- Wait until you hear about the CAPex spending! - Shakeup in Dietville Markets - Massive moved during the week - - Bitcoin clipped $60k before rebounding - DJIA tops 50,000 for the first time - Wait until you hear about the CAPex spending! - CAT == 1,100 points on the DJIA in 2026 Superbowl and Superbowl ads - Game review - Any ad stick out? - $10M per ad this year - Half Time with Bad Bunny? - Anthropic busting on OpenAi Last Week! - Massive moved - quick calc showed that about $1T was wiped from market caps in the sell-off, particularly in tech names. - HOWEVER - Friday alone is estimated to have added $1.5T to market cap AI Ripping Through - Plenty of names getting cooked over AI announcements - First it was the software companies - Now there are names in legal and finance that got clocked - Today - Altruist.ai can do tax planning and that hurt companies in financial space Earnings Season Update - Reporting so far: 59% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q4 2025 results. - Beat rate: 76% have topped EPS estimates (vs. 5-yr average: 78% (slightly lower) vs. 10-yr average: 76% (in line) - Magnitude of beats (aggregate): earnings are 7.6% above estimates vs. 5-yr average: 7.7% (about the same) vs. 10-yr average: 7.0% (a bit better) - Nothing great,  like Goldilocks Earnings Highlights - Palantir (PLTR): Reported strong Q4 results early in the week , beating estimates with revenue ~$1.41B (vs. ~$1.33B expected) and EPS $0.25 (vs. $0.23). Guidance for 2026 was upbeat (~61% revenue growth). Shares rallied sharply initially (~7–11% post-earnings), but gave back some gains amid broader tech volatility (e.g., down ~11–22% in parts of the week from peaks). - AMD: Reported mid-week, beating EPS (~$1.53 vs. lower expectations) with solid data center growth (~39%). However, Q1 guidance disappointed relative to high expectations in the AI chip space. Shares sank dramatically — down ~15–17% the next day, with some reports noting up to 20%+ drops at points, contributing to broader chip sector pressure. - Alphabet (GOOGL/GOOG): Reported beating on revenue (~$113.8B) and EPS (~$2.82), with strong core performance. But capex guidance for 2026 ($175–$185B, roughly double prior levels) sparked AI spending worries. Shares dipped post-earnings (down ~0.5–5% initially, flat to lower the next day, with some volatility pulling it below key moving averages). - Amazon (AMZN): Reported after hours on February 5, with mixed results — EPS ~$1.95 (narrow miss vs. ~$1.97 expected), but solid overall. The big negative was a surprise $200B capex forecast for 2026 (well above expectations), tied to AI/cloud buildout. Shares plunged sharply — down ~7–10% in after-hours/extended trading, with Friday moves around -5–8% in some sessions. Recent Tech CAPEX announcements - Amazon (AMZN) — Guided to approximately $200 billion in capex for 2026 (a massive jump from ~$125–131 billion in 2025, with ~80% likely AI-related per analyst commentary). This was the largest single-company figure and a major surprise, contributing heavily to the week's "wild" reactions. - Alphabet (GOOGL/GOOG) — Guided to $175–185 billion in capex for 2026 (roughly double the $91 billion spent in 2025, far above analyst expectations of ~$115–119 billion). Emphasis was on AI compute capacity, servers, data centers, and networking to meet demand for Gemini and cloud services. - Meta Platforms (META) — Guidance from late January (but heavily discussed last week): $115–135 billion for 2026 (up significantly from ~$70–72 billion in 2025, potentially an ~87% increase). - Microsoft (MSFT) — No new full explicit 2026 guidance in early February (fiscal year runs July–June), but recent quarterly run-rate and analyst projections put it around $97–145 billion (with some sources citing ~$105 billion or higher based on Q2 spending trends and signals of continued growth from prior levels of ~$88 billion in FY2025). ------!!!!Combined 2026 capex projected at $635–665 billion (low/high ends) or up to $650–700 billion in some reports — a ~60–74% increase from their collective ~$381 billion in 2025. Market Reaction from all of this.... - Markets were a bit spooked on the Anthropic announcement earlier in the week - software sold off and set a sour mood - Microsoft dumped pretty hard as the amount of spend was higher than anticipated, especially with some slower growth in Azure. - Amazon took a beating on the increased spend they anticipate *(extra by $50B) - BUT: Friday markets rallied as there was realization that the $200B spend by Amazon would seep into the economy and fuel infrastructure spending along with chips, tech etc. Other Earnings of Interest -  Reddit reported fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday in which the social media company beat on the top and bottom lines. - The company said it expects first-quarter sales to come in the range of $595 million to $605 million, which is higher than Wall Street expectations of $577 million. - Reddit also announced a $1 billion share repurchase program. - Reddit gets about $250 million a year from OpenAi and Google to have your data for training their LLMs While we are on the subject - Friday, DJIA hit 50,000 - first time ever! - Up 1,200 point of which approx 350 was from caterpillar and 280 was from Goldman Sachs Hats off to WalMart - Walmart Inc. shares pushed its market capitalization past $1 trillion on Tuesday for the first time ever| - Big transformation over the pst year - Walmart has maintained its appeal to households looking for value, its online offerings are drawing new, wealthier shoppers seeking convenience. Google Bond Offering - Issuing several tranches of bonds, denominated in Stirling - one as long as 100 years - Would you buy that? - The Google parent is set to raise $20 billion from a US dollar bond offering on Monday — more than the $15 billion initially expected — and is also pitching investors on what would be its first ever offerings in Switzerland and the UK. - The latter would include a rare sale of 100-year bonds, the first time a tech company has tried such an offering since the dotcom frenzy of the late 1990s Fat Profits in Dietville - Really interesting sequence of events happening... - Hims launches compounded pill at prices as low as $49 per month - Analysts cite questions on efficacy, legality of pill - Hims' move shifts focus from Novo's strong Wegovy pill launch - Broader obesity market whipsawed as pricing pressure rises THEN.. - Hims and Hers Health shares dive 14% after hours on Friday (Down 25% on Monday) - FDA cites concerns over quality, safety, federal law - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it would take action against telehealth provider Hims & Hers, for its $49 weight-loss pill, including restricting access to the drug's ingredients and referring the company to the Department of Justice for potential violations of federal law. AND.... - Eli Lilly last Wednesday posted fourth-quarter earnings and revenue and 2026 guidance that blew past estimates, as demand for its blockbuster weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro soars. - The pharmaceutical giant anticipates its 2026 revenue will come in between $80 billion and $83 billion. Analysts expected revenue of $77.62 billion, according to LSEG. - Meanwhile, NOVO had a really bad outlook that took the shares down 13% after the report. Japan Markets Soar - Japanese stocks jumped to a record high Monday, leading gains in the region after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a landmark election victory. - The ruling Liberal Democratic Party captured a two-thirds supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, public broadcaster NHK reported. - Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped past 57,000 for the first time before paring gains to close 3.9% higher at 56,363.94, while the Topix also notched a record high, closing at 3,783.94, up 2.3%. Employment Report? - Government shutdown is forcing them to postpone again (Which is dumb) - Number due this Wednesday - Maybe because of this:U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009. - At the same time, companies announced just 5,306 new hires, also the lowest January since 2009, which is when Challenger, Gray & Christmas began tracking such data. - Also, job openings fell sharply in December to 6.54 million, to their lowest since September 2020. - Available jobs are down by more than 900,000 just since October. - NO! Ai and advancements in tech have noting to do with this! NO NO NO M&A - Texas Instruments Inc. has reached an agreement to buy Silicon Laboratories Inc. for about $7.5 billion, deepening its exposure to several markets for chips. - Silicon Labs investors will receive $231 in cash for each share of the company's common stock and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027. - The transaction still needs to win approval by investors in Silicon Labs and shares of Silicon Labs surged by 51% to $206.48 after the announcement. Inflation - This helps - PepsiCo (PEP.O), opens new tab will cut prices on core brands such as Lay's and Doritos by up to 15% following a consumer backlash against several previous price hikes, the snacks and beverage maker said on Tuesday after it topped fourth-quarter results. Miran - Moving - Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran is leaving his post as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, CNBC has confirmed. - He joined the CEA in January 2025, but had been on leave from that post since last September when he filled the unexpired term of former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler.- He reamins on Fed board No Biggie???? - There are some astonishing cased being reported of Bad AI in the operating room - JNJ's TruDi Navigation System - Since AI was added to the device, the FDA has received unconfirmed reports of at least 100 malfunctions and adverse events. - At least 10 people were injured between late 2021 and November 2025, according to the reports. Most allegedly involved errors in which the TruDi Navigation System misinformed surgeons about the location of their instruments while they were using them inside patients' heads during operations. - Cerebrospinal fluid reportedly leaked from one patient's nose. In another reported case, a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient's skull. In two other cases, patients each allegedly suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured. Cuba - The main airport has putt out a bulletin that they are out of Jet Fuel - Blackouts and lack of other fuels are creating big problems - No airlines have stopped running at this point, but many will as they cannot refuel - This is a bigger problem for cargo planes (supplies) that may not be able to risk flying to Cuba as they will not be able to get out. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE THE CLOSEST TO THE PIN CUP 2025 Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt!     FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS   See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

It was a trio of reports that turned an already shaky market into a disorderly mess. Private credit stocks were hit hard as were cryptocurrencies after ADP, Challenger and a delayed release from the BLS each overwhelmed expectations. Just more negative fuel to the selling fire as the riskiest financial markets were reeling from the economic implications.   Eurodollar University's conversation w/Steve Van Metre--------------------------------------------------------------------------EDU's Memberships and Subscriptions. Go from getting blindsided by the markets to reading the eurodollar signals weeks before they hit. Try it all risk-free for 14 days.https://web.eurodollar-university.com/eurodollar-vsl-page-a--------------------------------------------------------------------------Challenger Gray & Christmashttps://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-january-job-cuts-surge-lowest-january-hiring-on-record/https://www.eurodollar.universityTwitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_EDU

On Jan. 28, 1986, NASA's 25th space shuttle mission, Challenger, left the launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Seventy-three seconds into flight, Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean as millions of people watched. All seven people on board died. Now, forty years later, journalist Adam Higginbotham chronicles what went wrong. His book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space pieces together stories from key officials, engineers and the families of those killed in the explosion – and details how its legacy still haunts spaceflight today. Consider checking out our episode speaking to an astronaut while she's in space.Have a scientific question you want us to answer? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Freeze warnings, Challenger memories, Don Lemon’s arrest, Chipotle “I Win Bowl,” Singles Night updates, hilarious callers, and real‑life stories from around Houston.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ever watched a daredevil climber defy death on a skyscraper, only to relive a real-life tragedy that scarred a generation? Opie and Ron dive into Alex Honnold's insane Taipei 101 ascent, NYC's filthy post-snow reality, and Ron's chilling eyewitness account of the Challenger disaster where his teacher perished. Tune in for raw banter, shocking stories, and why these moments still haunt us—perfect for fans craving unfiltered insights.

Forty years ago this week, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in flight, 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. All seven crew members were killed. In the months that followed, the tragedy was traced to a failed O-ring in one of the shuttle's rocket boosters. Now, with the Artemis II mission preparing for launch to lunar orbit, what have we learned about spaceflight and risk? Former astronaut Jim Wetherbee joins Host Ira Flatow to remember the Challenger tragedy, and look ahead to the age of private spaceflight and the upcoming Artemis II mission.Guest: Jim Wetherbee is a former NASA astronaut, the former head of flight crew operations for NASA, and the author of Controlling Risk: Thirty Techniques for Operating Excellence.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Forty years ago, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. Seven astronauts were killed, including teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe. It was a devastating blow to the U.S. space program and a national tragedy for the country. In the days after the explosion, the search for answers began. Two NPR reporters, Howard Berkes and Daniel Zwerdling, focused their reporting on the engineers who managed Challenger's booster rockets. On February 20, 1986, Berkes and Zwerdling broke a major story, providing the first details of a last-minute effort by those engineers to stop NASA from launching Challenger. In this special NPR documentary, Howard Berkes unfolds an investigation spanning forty years, from those desperate efforts in 1986 to delay the launch, to decades of crushing guilt for some of the engineers, and to the lessons learned that are as critical as ever as NASA's budget and workforce shrink.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy