Podcasts about churchillian

The Matts pick off the Tory leadership candidates one by one with the nagging doubt in their minds that, whoever wins, it doesn't really matter. The Tories are in such deep trouble as a party that restoring any sense of relevance and legitimate opposition to Keir Starmer's monster majority will require Churchillian energy and determination. And sorry to break it to you Kemi, Robert, James and Tom … but you ain't no Churchill. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I have to admit that I'm always a little uncomfortable with non-Jews fetishizing the supposedly unique gifts & accomplishments of the Jewish people. A century ago, Winston Churchill did it. And now George Gilder, the influential tech futurist, picks up that Churchillian mantle in a new edition of his 2012 book The Israel Test. Israel's “genius”, Gilder argues, “enriches” the world to such an extent that anyone who questions it is, by definition, a critic of innovation, freedom and progress - not to mention, of course, a rabid anti-semite. I'm not convinced. But then, as a secular Jew who would fail Gilder's Israel Test, what do I know?GEORGE GILDER‘s books have sold more than two million copies worldwide. In Wealth and Poverty, one of the most influential works of our time, Gilder made the moral case for capitalist creativity. In Spirit of Enterprise, Microcosm, Telecosm, Life After Television, Life After Google, a bestseller in both the US and China, and Life After Capitalism, Gilder achieved renown as a stunningly accurate prophet of the direction of technology development and enterprise, including Israel's promethean contributions. With Men & Marriage, republished in 2024, he maintained a half century of rare insight in social theory. Long a contributing editor to Forbes magazine, Gilder has produced the annual Gilder/Forbes Telecosm Conference, now called COSM, offering leading edge forecasts and analysis from the world's top technology firms and research centers. Gilder also heads Gilder Technology Group, focusing on breakthrough technologies, and writes or edits four investment letters for Eagle Publishing. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan presented Gilder the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. A founding fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, he writes for such national publications as The Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Review, The New Criterion, The American Spectator, and Claremont Review.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A short poem I wrote in the Churchillian style as a rousing battle cry to charge our team to victory.

D-Day remembered; The Exceptional Speaker Masterclass; Speaker Coaching; The King's Speech; A dodgy waterfall; How to be Churchillian; Relax at home; Pret a Post; An interview with Ian Wills; Music from Wills and the Willing

The classic movie half-time locker room Churchillian oratory from the coach, whipping the team into a frenzy for the coming onslaught is now gathering dust in Hollywood's archives.  Today's most successful coaches are masters of human psychology, combining insight with superb communication skills.  What about leaders in business in Japan?    In my experience, the Japanese model of sports leadership is antiquated, excelling in only one area - “gaman” - perseverance.   Japan's feudal militaristic regimes for leadership spill over into business from the domestic sports world.  University “club” members know that age seniority, group dominance, rigid hierarchy and the suppression of the individual are the key leadership lessons learnt at varsity.  Not a sparkling sport's blueprint for leadership in the modern world of business.  The lesson for business in Japan is to train our leaders to motivate our teams, one person at a time, based on what that person finds motivational Motivating others requires a good understanding of the interests and aspirations of that person.  Communication skills and time invested in getting to know that person are critical. In a time-poor world however, of doing more, faster with less, we are skipping steps and rushing toward the finish line.  We just don't invest enough time in knowing our people.  How many business leaders can you think of who are really great communicators or motivators?  What about yourself?   Let's all pause, reflect and commit to improve. We need to build business success through our people, individual by individual and the time to start is right now.

Last time we spoke about Operation Flintlock, the invasion of the Marshall islands. The allies brought overwhelming power against the Marshalls, unleashing the simultaneous invasions of numerous islands in an attempt to strike at the heart of the island chain at Kwajalein. The horror of the Gilbert Island campaign plagued the minds of the commanders who hoped to thwart such carnage. Airstrikes, naval bombardments and massive amounts of land based artillery smashed the Japanese defenders into submission before amphibious assaults were made. Countless islands such as Roi-Namur fell one by one as the Americans secured places to deploy further artillery to forces the ultimate submission of the defenses on Kwajalein. The casualties were light, but the fight for Kwajalein would soon descend into a bitter struggle, for the Japanese were not going to give up their stronghold without a good fight. This episode is The Fall of Kwajalein Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  Operation Flintlock went off with a bang, and was initially a grand success. Aerial bombing, followed by naval bombardment and then land based artillery was smashing the Japanese defenders into submission. One by one the islands were falling into the Americans hands. On the second day of the battle, Roi-Namur, the northern objective was seized. Yet the stronghold of Kwajalein would provide much more of a fight. Back on the morning of January 28th Admiral Frederick Sherman's Task Force 58.3 landed a knockout blow against Kwajalein's airfield. Dawn saw a Hellcat fighter sweep ensure the airfield would not be tossing any further action before the amphibious assault occurred. The next day Sherman's force hit Eniwetok with the same kind of treatment. Sherman's carriers would remain off Eniwetok for 3 days while his aircraft smashed its airfields and ground installations. On the third say not much was left, just heaps of rubble and a few scattered palm trees stripped of their foliage. Sherman's airmen reported “they could not find any targets on the ground or in the lagoon that seemed worth bombing, and the island looked like a desert waste.” The warships came in on the 31st just off Roi and at 6:51am, Admiral Conolly maneuvered Maryland 2000 yards away from the northern beaches before unleashing 16 inch guns. As Holland Smith put it “So close that his guns almost poked their muzzles into Japanese positions.” By 7:15am the naval guns went silent as carrier planes came swooping in. Then 127mm artillery from Roi began firing, alongside cruisers and destroyers. Return fire occurred, but for a very short amount of time as they were snuffed out. Admiral Truman Hedding recalled “We learned a lot about softening up these islands before we sent the Marines in. We really worked that place over. They developed a tactic called the ‘Spruance haircut.' We just knocked everything down; there wasn't even a palm tree left.”  The Kwajalein atoll islands were hit with 15,000 tons of bombs and naval shells in 72hrs. Admiral Turner would make a Churchillian statement about the event “Never in the history of human conflict has so much been thrown by so many at so few.” Then transports carrying nearly 64,000 men of the 4th marine division and the 7th army division were launched at Ivan, Jacob, Allen, Andrew, Albert and Abraham islands. Once they were secured, the marines set up artillery batteries. The 7th infantry division was assigned the task of taking the banana shaped Kwajalein island as their colleagues set up 105mm and 155mm howitzers on nearby Roi-Namur. The 32nd and 184th regiments landed on the lagoon side at 9:30am on February 1st, first encountered only feeble and intermittent resistance. The eastern half of the island was secured in quick time, as the bombardments had certainly inflicted heavy casualties upon the enemy. The army moved slowly and methodically, advancing cautiously against the Japanese fixed positions. Soon they reached Carl Road, where they were met with an impressive defense system consisting of an anti-tank ditch on the south and a long rifle trench on the north. As February 2nd came on, so did another wide scale smashing of the Japanese. Artillery fire on Carlson Island and from the 32nd Regiments Cannon Company in the Wart Area coordinated with the tank and infantry movements. While the new assault units were moving up, the enemy in Corn Strong Point were kept under heavy artillery bombardment and were isolated from possible reinforcements by naval gunfire. Enemy guns that were still active in the northeastern end of the island were struck by dive bombers. The jump-off was ordered for 12:45. A series of delays deferred this crucial attack over an hour. To assemble the staff and coordinate the plans for employing tanks, artillery, and infantry while the 3d Battalion made its approach march, proved difficult to arrange. The time for the assault had passed before the planning difficulties were resolved. Then came notice of an air strike to be made at 1:15pm later postponed, on Admiral Turner's order, to 1:30, thus necessitating the suspension of all artillery fire. Since the attack on Corn Strong Point was to be immediately preceded by a heavy artillery barrage, the whole operation was postponed to 2:00. For the initial assault on the tank trap and Corn Strong Point, Colonel Logie's 32d Infantry's 3d Battalion was ordered to pass through its 2nd Battalion at Carl Road and to lead the attack. These fresh troops were to be supported by the tanks of A and D comapnies, 767th Tank Battalion and, from the left flank, by the tanks of B company, which would be temporarily detached from the 184th. The tanks of A company, 767th Tank Battalion, lined up along Carl Road to fire against the strong point, while those from B company took up positions almost at right angles to that road and prepared to strike the enemy from the left flank during the first stage of the attack. One of the batteries on Carlson continued to fire during the air strike, and the Cannon Company's howitzers also laid a preparation on the target area before the advance commenced at 2pm. Then, while the artillery lifted fire to ground northeast of the target, the tanks and infantry approached the tank trap in a 225-yard advance across open ground. The tanks poured machine gun fire into the area. Thirty yards behind them the troops came forward to the shelter of the tank ditch without receiving an enemy shot. The Japanese were pinned down. The assault initially saw the Americans pin down the Japanese. While the left wing of infantry troops started to push across the wide tank barrier, the tanks on their left momentarily broke off fire from the flank. A few tanks from A company, 767th Tank Battalion, moved toward the ocean to bypass the deep ditch, and the others after a brief hesitation laid a base of fire to cover the infantry's advance. The tanks hesitated to poke out along the flimsy wooden bridge by which Wallace Road cut through the angle of the tank trap. At this stage, a concentration of white phosphorus shells commenced to fall into the area in which I company, 32nd Infantry, was moving, and countless men were burned. After hesitating briefly the infantry moved steadily to the tank ditch. There the troops remained for some time because the medium tanks pulled back claiming they could not get over the ditch. The tanks finally broke through and began to make their way to the beach smashing pillboxes in the Corn strongpoint. An estimated 100 Japanese were killed in the area, the majority by demolition charges carried forward by engineer details while rifle and BAR men covered them. Little or no defense was put up against these tactics. The Japanese remained huddled in their shelters in spite of efforts made to coax them out to surrender. Only a single prisoner was taken in the whole area. Grenades were thrown into the shelters, and those who survived were then destroyed by demolition charges. Altogether, it took about 35 minutes to reduce Corn Strong Point once the American infantry got beyond the tank trap. Contact between the forward battalion of the 32nd Infantry and that of the 184th was temporarily lost during this fray, and K company, 32nd Infantry, moved through the left platoon of I company to establish contact firmly as soon as Corn Strong Point was taken. Advance to the Nora Road line seemed practicable within the time remaining before taking defensive positions for the night. To escape spending the night in an area too heavily wooded for security, the 3rd Battalion, 32nd Infantry, planned to advance northeast of the junction of Nora Road and Wallace Road, even though that would place its perimeter slightly forward of the 184th's front-line elements, which were resting just short of Nora Road itself. To the north, Colonel O'Sullivan's 2nd Battalion began advancing at 12:45 without tank support. F Company was on the right while E Company on the left along the lagoon. For the first 45 minutes no serious resistance was met. There were no tank obstacles in the area and the enemy's positions along the lagoon shore were less formidable than had been expected. At 1:30, however, the 184th had to lend its medium tanks to the 32nd Infantry as the latter moved against Corn Strong Point. This left the infantry unprotected at a time when they began to meet their first serious resistance. Without the tank support the infantry became stalled. The 184th suffered over 60 casualties by the end of the day, including the loss of F Company's commanding officer. O'Sullivan was forced to organize night defenses just 100 yards northeast of Carl Road, which also forced Logie to pull back to the abandoned trenches of Corn for the night. Heavy casualties were suffered that day, with 11 dead and 241 wounded. Japanese prisoners reported only 200 to 300 defenders remained, so the Americans expected a banzai charge to occur during the night. General Corlett's headquarters warned, "Be alert for counterattack at anytime day or night, it's bound to come. The Jap makes his suicide counterattack at dawn on the day after his cause becomes hopeless. Watch out tomorrow morning.” Yet there was no attach, so General Corlett prepared his men for a new assault at 07:15am. For the next day's operations, General Corlett ordered the two assault regiments: "Organize vigorous attack 0715 tomorrow… Finish the job not later than 1500 3 February. The Northern Force [at Roi-Namur] has finished the job…". At this point the Americans on Kwajalein faced a narrow 2000 yards of island. After artillery rained down at 7am, O'Sullivans 1st battalion advanced. In the first 150 yard B Company, along the lagoon, and Company A, at the right, advanced through rubble and broken trees west of Nora Road without more than scattered rifle fire from Japanese riflemen and occasional light machine gun fire from pillboxes. Their momentum carried them on for another 75 yards with such rapidity that the prospects for swift advance seemed excellent. B Company cleaned out an air raid shelter with grenades and shot down fleeing Japanese wearing arm bands like those of the American troops. Both companies were advancing over ground that had been under American mortar fire just before the jumpoff. At 8:06 enemy opposition was reported to be weak. After 250 yards the Americans reached the Admiralty area, finding a group of shattered buildings along the lagoon shore where it was believed the Japanese HQ was. Among the ruins were several underground shelters, with great earthen mounds above them. There were also concrete blockhouses.  Against strong resistance, B Company would not be able to advance further; A Company, meanwhile, pushed farther north and attempted to attack from the flank through the Admiralty area, but became quickly bogged down. At the same time, Logie sent forward his 3rd Battalion, with I Company rapidly advancing along the coast while K Company stopped to subdue a large concrete pillbox on the corner of the Admiralty area. By midday, I Company reached Noel Road and K Company successfully bypassed the Admiralty area. Yet behind them, there was a vertical gap including most of the Admiralty area between the two regiments. Thus, Corlett sent Logie's 1st Battalion to cover the gap and O'Sullivan's 2nd Battalion to swing right and continue the advance north while his 1st Battalion contained and neutralized the Admiralty area. At 3:30, the new attack was launched, with Logie's 3rd Battalion rapidly smashing into the Nap strongpoint while O'Sullivan's 1st Battalion concentrated on the Admiralty area and his 2nd Battalion attacked north towards Nob Pier. E Company started its attack before those of either G Company or the 1st Battalion. At 2:40 E Company began moving northwest. Somewhat more than half an hour later E Company  crossed Noel Road, with G Company on their right. 2 medium and 2 light tanks, taken over from the 1st Battalion, moved forward with each of the companies, and each had one squad of engineer troops with demolitions. Enemy rifle fire was heavy. The men broke up into small groups, proceeding unevenly in the general direction of Nob Pier. Between 6:30 and 7:00, Captain Peter Blaettler, commander of E Company was seriously wounded. Control from the battalion command post was lost seeing the men hugging the ground to avoid sharp fire from enemy riflemen. Colonel Aulich became separated from the main part of his battalion and was to remain so until the next morning, for all intensive purposes he lost command of his unit. The 2nd Battalion's attack was pushed along the eastern side of Will Road toward Nathan Road, but as sunset approached it became evident not only that Company E would not reach Nob Pier but also that across Will Road on the left flank there was an area with many strong enemy defense positions too powerful to be occupied in the 45 minutes before dark. Meanwhile, at 3:45 A Company 1st battalion was joined by 2 medium tanks and C Company  by 2 mediums and 2 M10 tank destroyers. At 4:05 they assaulted the western edge of the built-up Admiralty area along a 300 yard front, with A Company's right wing somewhat south of Noel Road. 10 minutes later they advanced towards the lagoon. Will Road was crossed shortly after 4:30. The enemy was much more firmly established between the highway and the beach, in pillboxes, blockhouses, and strong shelters. Mortar fire kept the enemy down until the tanks and infantry approached. The coordinated effort of tanks, infantry, and demolition teams ran very smoothly, gradually destroying the pillboxes and blockhouses of the Admiralty area, successfully reaching the lagoon by 6pm.  To the east, Logie's I Company rapidly reduced the weakly-defended Nap strongpoint and then pushed forward to the objective Nathan Road with haste while the other companies made slower progress against stronger defenses and would not be able to reach their objectives before nightfall. The Japanese in the areas south of the front line, were in greater numbers than on either of the preceding nights of the Kwajalein Island operation. They prowled in the forward area all night. Some incidents occurred as far to the rear as Corn Strong Point, more than a 1000 yards from the 32nd Infantry's advanced position. Japanese came out of shelters, screaming and yelling, throwing grenades, and charging at the men in their foxholes. They fired rifles and threw grenades from buildings that offered places of advantage. In a pocket northeast of the Admiralty area, they greatly harassed the companies near them. Attacks from the north and from the lagoon shore were also attempted by enemy troops at various times during the night. Just after sunset, a bugle could be heard sounding among the enemy shelters near the base of Nob Pier, and shortly afterward a headlong counterattack by screaming Japanese was made toward E and G Companies, 184th Regiment. As the Japanese tried to cross Will Road, they were cut down to the last man. 5 more attacks were broken up before they were actually in progress by barrages along the entire front from mortars and from the supporting batteries of artillery on Carlson Island; and more attacks followed after midnight. From various positions beyond Nathan Road, enemy machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire was directed into the forward area at irregular intervals during the night, sometimes coinciding so closely with the fire from Carlson Island that Japanese monitoring of the artillery radio was suspected. Nonetheless, over 1000 yards had been gained, by February 3. The Americans estimated they had killed around 1300 Japanese, more than were expected to still be in the island, at the cost of 54 dead and 255 wounded.  After sunset, several Japanese counterattacks and infiltration attempts were carried out against the steadfast Americans, all ending disastrously. Corlett expected to end the enemy resistance by February 4; but far too many small pockets remained in the rear and the reserve battalions were experiencing difficulties rooting them out. Corlett's final plan was for Logie's 1st Battalion to clear the remainder of the island, allowing  Companies C, B and A to attack through O'Sullivan's 2nd Battalion and Logie's 3rd Battalion. Unbeknownst to him, O'Sullivan also directed his 2nd Battalion to attack towards Nob Pier in order to complete the unfinished task of the previous day.  At 7:15, Corlett unleashed his final attack, supported by tanks. On the east, Logie's Companies A and B ran into a full-scale battle with the Japanese who had been bypassed the day before and who now poured heavy fire on the companies as they advanced toward the line of departure. It was not until 10:00 that the 2 1st Battalion companies reached the lines held by the 3rd Battalion. Then, the Americans successfully managed to advance 200 yards past Nathan Road, where the advance was stopped pending relief. Meanwhile, to the west, the attack of O'Sullivan's 2nd Battalion, supported by B Company , prevented the advance of Logie's C Company until 11:00. The Americans managed to push towards Nob Pier by 1:00, where they found no enemy resistance. Behind them, the lagoon shore continued to be mopped up, showcasing a surprising number of Japanese and Koreans surrendering.  All forward movement of the 1st Battalion had stopped, its line consisting of a series of small, exhausted groups in a dense confusion of debris. The ground was interlaced with innumerable trenches and foul with bodies of the enemy, many of them long dead. Some of the corpses had been mangled by maneuvering tanks, adding greatly to the nauseating stench that blighted the area. Finally, at 3:45, Logie's 2nd Battalion passed through the 1st to complete the assault along Kwajalein. These troops would successfully push to the island's northern tip, blasting through the remaining Japanese camouflaged dugouts and ruined concrete blockhouses.  As in every other island battle, Japanese stragglers had infiltrated the American lines through tunnels and overlooked bunkers, and the assault troops quickly learned to watch their backs. Nisei interpreters broadcast surrender appeals through loudspeakers, but there were only a few dozen takers, and most of the men who gave themselves up were Korean laborers. At long last, G Company reached Nero Point at 3:15. At 4:10 Corlett radioed to Admiral Turner: "All organized resistance… has ceased. The troops have been organized for mopping up operations." yet F Company, would still have to methodically destroy the enemy positions until they finally secured Kwajalein's northern end at 7:20. Ken Dodson went ashore the next morning. Writing to his wife, he described a desolate landscape of “shell craters and hillocks of upturned coral. Some of the Japanese had been dead from the first bombardment, the day before we landed. Their bodies were seared and bloated, and the stench was sickening. I saw one half buried in a pillbox. You could not tell whether he had on any clothes or not. The skin was burned off his back and his head lay a few feet from his body. Another looked like a bronze statue in Golden Gate Park. He lay forward in a crouch, helmet still on, both hands holding on to a coconut log of his pillbox. There were many, many others. I lie in bed at night remembering how they looked, and that awful sweetish sickening stench of powder, and kerosene and decaying human flesh, and I wonder, after all, what war is all about. I feel sorry for those Japs in a way. They died courageously after a stubborn, last-ditch, hopeless fight. They fought for the things they had been taught to believe in, with their poor little bundles with pictures of their wives and kiddies tied to their belts. . . . They can't tell me war is a fine and noble thing.' Losses during the last day were 252 wounded, with 65 Japanese killed and over 100 captured. Thus, for the Battle of Kwajalein Island, the Americans suffered a total of 142 killed, 845 wounded and 2 missing, killing around 4300 Japanese and capturing another 166. During the week after Operation Flintlock, numerous high ranking visitors descended on the battle-scarred islands of Kwajalein Atoll. Admiral Nimitz flew out from Pearl Harbor with an entourage of officers. On February 5, when fires were still burning on Kwajalein Island, he toured the blackened wastes alongside Spruance, Turner, Smith, and several other major commanders of the fleet and Amphibious Corps. Three weeks earlier Nimitz had been the guest of honor at a huge “Texas Picnic” in a Honolulu park. Walking among 40,000 sailors, soldiers, and civilians. He had pitched horseshoes, posed for photographs, and signed autographs. Afterward, the park looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane—clean-up crews had to cart away more than 50 truckloads of garbage and debris. An estimated 120,000 beer bottles had been left strewn across the grass. Now, upon setting foot on the lagoon beach at Kwajalein, Nimitz was waylaid by a mob of correspondents. “What do you think of the island?” one asked. The admiral drew a cheerful laugh by replying, “Gentlemen, it's the worst scene of devastation I have ever witnessed—except for the Texas picnic.” The operation had been a model one in almost every respect. The attacking force had achieved strategic surprise; artillery preparation, naval gunfire, and aerial bombardment had successfully softened up the target in a fashion unexcelled at any other time in the Pacific War; the ship-to-shore movement had been conducted expeditiously and without too many hiccups; supplies flowed ashore and to the front lines relatively smoothly and without interruption; the infantry-engineer teams assisted by tanks moved steadily clearing the enemy from shelters and pillboxes; and American casualties had been fairly light. Altogether, the battle for Kwajalein represented the ideal for all military operations. To complete the conquest of the southern Kwajalein islands, detachments of amphibian tanks had been landed on Buster and Byron back on February 3. Troops of the 2nd Battalion, 17th Regiment landed on Burnet and Blakenship on February 4; the chain between Ashberry and Bennett was secured by February 5. On that same day, Clement, Clarence, and Clifford Islands were also secured, although on Clifton a force of 101 Japanese fought to the death. Beverly, Benson and Berlin were also secured on February 5, seeing 119 Japanese dead on the latter. Bennett fell against the 7th Reconnaissance Troop and O'Sullivan's 3rd Battalion with 94 Japanese killed. Most importantly, Colonel Zimmerman's 1st and 3rd Battalions landed on Burton's Beach Orange 4. The fortifications on Burton were much lighter than those on Kwajalein, mostly machine gun positions and rifle pits. These were organized at the beaches with a concentration of dual-purpose machine guns grouped around the seaplane base in the lagoon. At the base of the south seaplane ramp was a 20-mm. antiaircraft machine gun. Near it, and between the two seaplane ramps, were two 13-mm. single-mount machine guns, three 7.7-mm. machine guns, and a concrete pillbox. Two 8-cm. dual-purpose guns were located on the ocean shore. The large number of empty machine gun emplacements would seem to indicate that the defenses of the island had not been completed at the time of the invasion. The few pillboxes found in the vicinity of the seaplane base were small, reinforced concrete shelters, each with two firing ports facing seaward. Most of the fire trenches and rifle pits were on the ocean side at the center of the island and at the north and south ends of the island. On the morning of February 3 after a heavy artillery, air and naval bombardment, the 1st Battalion traversed the southern end of the island against weak resistance and began pushing north supported by tanks, ultimately getting stopped by strong enemy resistance at Bailey Pier.  The following morning, the assault was resumed at 0730, the main enemy resistance had shifted to the eastern side of the island. The Japanese had reoccupied four pillboxes close to the American front line on the ocean side, and were able to hold up A Company, but with the aid of self-propelled mounts, the company took the positions. During the morning, a flight of five Navy bombers made two runs over targets that had been spotted with the aid of information from a prisoner. The planes dropped a total of two and three quarters tons on an ammunition dump, a shelter, and a heavy machine gun that had an excellent field of fire across the hangar apron. Direct hits on these targets apparently disheartened the enemy. Not a single shot was fired by them at any later time during the operation. They remained buried in their dugouts until forced out or until they killed themselves. By 1130, when the 3d Battalion passed through and took up the assault, B Company  had moved about 350 yards to the southern edge of the concrete apron, and on the right A Company  was fifty to 75 yards farther back. The 3rd Battalion continued the advance north against meager resistance, ultimately reaching Burton's northern tip by 12:10. After this, the last of the enemy were readily mopped up; and by 3:37, the island was fully secured. During this battle, the 17th Regiment suffered 7 killed and 82 wounded while reporting 450 Japanese dead. Meanwhile, to the north, the 25th Marines led by Colonel Samuel C. Cumming occupied some 55 islands in the northern part of the atoll between February 2-7, finding absolutely no enemy resistance. With Kwajalein Atoll finally secured, the next objective in the Marshalls for Admirals Nimitz and Spruance would be Eniwetok, where Major-General Nishida Yoshimi was preparing his men to fight to the last. Yet that's it for the Marshall islands today, as now we are traveling over to the CBI theater, where Generals Christison and Stilwell's offensives continued.  Now last time we left off with the gang in Burma General Liao's 22nd division, Colonel Rothwell Brown's 1st provisional tank group, General Merrill's Galahad Unit alongside Chinese and American engineers were busy building the Ledo Road through the Hukawng valley. Location parties up ahead cleared a trace the width of a bulldozer and put in the center-line stakes. The final clearing averaged 150 feet. The route of the Ledo Road in some cases followed existing roads, a circumstance that did not greatly diminish the amount of clearing needed. Most clearing was by bulldozer. Combat trails and access roads were cleared to the necessary minimum that would permit heavy equipment to use them. In the valleys, the road was generally built on embankments in order to lift it above flood level. In mountainous regions, side-hill cuts were used. The road itself had about seven culverts to the mile in the mountains and five to the mile in the lowlands. These culverts were most necessary as the road was a barrier to the normal runoff of water. Surfacing was with stream-bed gravel in the valley sections and, so far as hauling permitted, natural gravel in the mountainous sections. Surfacing was about ten inches thick on the average, and from twenty to twenty-eight feet wide. Compaction was by the normal road traffic. Two regiments of Chinese engineers did pioneer construction work. There was also a combat road, a hasty improvement of the existing Kamaing Road plus the Kachin and Naga trails, that ran through Shingbwiyang, Yupbang Ga, and Taihpa Ga, then went south. The trace of the Ledo Road was moved to higher ground on the north. Forward construction units were rationed from combat supply points. Meanwhile Vinegar Joe sought to end the campaign with a single decisive victory. He planned to deploy the 1st Tank Battalion as an armored spearhead against Maingkwan, the 1st battalion, 66th regiment, the 113th was to follow down the road to take over successive positions, while the 114th would assemble at Taihpa in reserve and the 112th was to protect the flank east of the Tanai, advancing on Mashi Daru. He expected his men to hit the enemy across their rear areas. Now January had been a very rainy month, armored warfare does not do well in mud, so it was important the terrain was dry for the offensive. Stilwell would end up on February 4th decided to shift the bulk of the 22nd division to seize Yawngbang-Lakyen line while General Sun's 38th Division cleaned up the area south and east of the Tanai.  Once this first phase was done, then General Liao's 2 regiments could support an armored advance south towards Walawbum. The bad weather, however, had also delayed road work and hampered their supply lines. Stilwell biding his time, building up a reserve at Shingbwiyang and Ningam, while the men progressed their work on the Ledo Road, and built an airfield at Taihpa before launching his second phase. This unfortunately also gave enough time for General Tanaka to prepare an orderly withdrawal towards Maingkwan. During early february, General Sun's 32nd division successfully accomplished their part of the mission, but to the southwest, the enveloping hook from the Taro Plain did not go as planned. By February 14th, the 66th regiment were beginning to arrive on the Taro Plain through heavy rain, but only the 3rd battalion of the 65th regiment managed to join them. The 66th regiment was forced to continue without the proper support until they diverted to Yawngbang Ga which they seized on the 16th. By the 18th, Stilwell and Liao personally went over to check on their regiment's location and found the entire force was within the neighborhood of the 66th command post. It seems the utter confusion during these movements saved the Japanese, as quoted by General Tanaka: "If the Chinese 65th and 66th Infantry Regiments operating in the vicinity of Yawngbang had been prompt in closing in on our left rear flank on the 15th or 16th, as predicted, the main force of the 18th Division would have faced a grave crisis." After sorting out the confusion,  the Chinese advanced from Yawngbang Ga to Lakyen Ga. There they captured a Japanese document indicating they were withdrawing. Thus another chance to envelop the enemy had thus been lost.    Meanwhile, to support Stilwell's offensive, the two Allied long-range penetration units, the Chindits and Merrill's Marauders, were preparing to embark on a new mission, codenamed Operation Thursday. It was to be the second Chindit expedition with the objective of mounting a long range penetration behind the Japanese who were opposing Stilwells forces in the Northern front. It was hoping the action would prevent the arrival of any reinforcements from the two Japanese divisions on the Central Front. General Hap Arnold wanted his airmen to take the Chindits behind Japanese lines, carry their supplies, evacuate their wounded and eventually fly them off, so he decided to create the 1st Air Commando Unit, under Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Cochram. The unit consisted of a squadron of P-51s; one of B-25s; 100 C4A Waco gliders; and a squadron of C-47s. Arnold spelled out the mission to Cochram and Lieutenant-Colonel John Alison, his deputy. "This man [Wingate] has really done some remarkable things. He has walked through the jungles. He has carried his supplies on mules. It takes him about six weeks to get his men through the jungle, across the rivers, and in behind the Japanese lines. The next time he goes in, I don't want him to walk. I want him to go by air. I want to make this an air operation completely independent of land transport. I want to demonstrate that you can use the air just like the navy uses the sea. You can land and maintain a force and support it in battle. I want you to go in there and take out General Wingate's wounded. We will make available the resources that you need. 'I not only want you to do that... but I want the USAAF to spearhead General Wingate's operations.' We gathered he wouldn't mind if we turned it into an air show." The mad onion lad Wingate also wanted to created strongholds within the Japanese controlled areas that could serve as bases to receive aircrafts of all types, store  supplies, hold wounded until they could be extracted, and act as centers for locals resisting the enemy. The motto for the Stronghold, as he called it, was “No Surrender”. Meanwhile Stilwell ordered Merril to close in on Ledo by February 7th, and the last American unit would arrive to Margherita on February 9th. Merrill's Marauders were to assemble at Ningbyen by February 21st whereupon they would envelop the 18th divisions east flank and block the Kamaing road near Shaduzap with the support of Sun's 113th Regiment. Simultaneously Stilwell's other troops were preparing for their attack on Maingkwan. Further in the south General Christison's 15th Corps was in a lot of trouble. The Japanese had been bringing in a lot of reinforcements for their forthcoming Arakan counteroffensive from both within and outside the Burma theater throughout December and January. By early February, General Hanaya had assembled his men and was ready to launch the first phase of Operation Ha-Go. General Hanaya planned to destroy the 7th Indian Division in the region east of Mayu Range using a pincer movement launched simultaneously from the north and south. After that, he would shift the main weight of his 55th Division near Ngangyaung against the 5th Indian Division in the Maungdaw region west of the Mayu Range. From there, he hoped to advance along the Kaladan valley to perform the phase of Ha-Go, named the Kaladan Operation. For this the men would advance towards Chittagong to distract attention from around Imphal and to draw the British reserves into Arakan.  On the night of February 3, Hanaya unleashed his offensive, with several columns, under the command of Major-General Sakurai Tokutaro, commander of the 55th Infantry Group. His force secretly infiltrated through the jungle under the cover of darkness, on the left bank of the Kalapanzin river near Buthidaung, through gaps between the 7th Division's widely separated brigades. The element of terrain and weather was paramount. Throughout the dry season a morning mist with heavy dew formed daily in the small hours and, unless cleared by rain and wind, normally persisted till well after sunrise; the noise made by the dew falling from the trees on to the dry undergrowth was loud enough to drown the sound of footsteps so that, in the jungle, movement in the early morning could be unheard as well as unseen. The tides were an important factor in planning, for at high tide many of the chaungs were unfordable. The knife-edge ridges into which the Japanese so often dug their defenses presented an unusual artillery problem. If guns were to bring effective fire to bear, they had to be sited on the line of the axis of a ridge, which was always difficult and sometimes impossible. Fire from any other angle meant that reverse slope defenses were untouched and accurate ranging was extremely difficult. The dense jungle covering the hilltops greatly restricted their use as observation points. Using the early morning mists, Hanaya's men shrouded their columns advance cutting deeply into the British defenses. At about 9 am the Gwalior Lancers reported to 7th Division by wireless that a column of Japanese about a hundred strong followed by another about eight hundred strong were approaching Taung Bazar. Major-General Frank Messervy immediately ordered his reserve brigade, the 89th to advance north to locate and destroy them and asked 15th Corps to speed up the arrival of the tanks. Christison ordered the 25th Dragoons to send a squadron to Sinzweya and 5th Division to send an infantry detachment to prevent infiltration over Goppe Pass. The 89th Brigade advanced north in two columns: the right column encountered the Japanese at about 4 pm near Ingyaung resulting in hand to hand fighting, and the left reached the bend of the Prein Chaung east of Preingyaung. The right column  dug in at Ingyaung and Lin babi and the left over the Prein Chaung. Although the main force of the 1st Echelon was delayed by some confusion, the advance guard surprised the Taung Bazar garrison at 7am. Without delay, the Battalion crossed the Kalapanzin River south of Taung Bazar, using captured boats, and was followed closely by the 2nd Echelon and the 3rd Battalion of the 112th Infantry Regiment. The main body of the 1st Echelon crossed the river northwest of Taung Bazar on the morning of the 5th. By 9am Taung Bazar was overwhelmed as the Japanese forces crossed the Kalapanzin River to cut the Ngakyedauk Pass in order to isolate the 7th Division. Meanwhile the 1st Battalion, 213th Regiment headed towards Ngangyaung. The battalion advanced parallel to the Sakurai Column before moving towards Goppe Bazaar. It was held up short of its objective, however, by the leading elements of 26th Indian Division committed from army reserve on 5th February to bolster 15th Corps. Despite this local setback, the Japanese hauled their mountain guns and equipment over the Mayu Range, midway between Goppe and Ngakyedauk, before attacking administrative troops, bridges, dumps, ambushing convoys and building a roadblock on the main line of communications along the Bawli-Maungdaw road. It failed to prevent supplies reaching 5th Indian Division, however, whose ammunition, equipment and food was transported by sea to Maungdaw. Overnight the rear areas of 15th Corps were transformed into the front line with administrative troops bearing much of the burden of dealing with advancing Japanese troops. To the surprise of many officers, they displayed a determination and fighting spirit unknown a year before and took a heavy toll of the Japanese attackers bearing out Slim's direction that every man in the army should be a soldier first and a tradesman or specialist second. The bulk of the 112th regiment led by Colonel Tanahashi Shinsaku marched towards the pass as the 2nd battalion 143rd regiment and Sakurai's HQ advanced south. The quickly found enemy resistance near Ingyaung which delayed their advance for over 2 days. Failing to make contact with General Sakurai, the Battalion continued its advance southward, bypassing Awlanbyin. Major Gen. Sakurai and his headquarters also got involved in fighting off enemy counterattacks near Ingyaung on the 5th and 6th and due to failure of his communications, was unable to keep in touch with his units. To further support the offensive, Japanese fighters and bombers from the 5th Air Division's 7th Air Brigade launched a heavy offensive to gian air superiority over the battlefield, using 34 fighters and 10 bombers. Between the 4th and 14th their fighters flew 350 sorties, and bombers attacked the Bawli and Briasco bridges and Sinzweya. Spitfires intercepted them but had less success than before. Japanese losses were believed to be some 14 aircraft destroyed and a number damaged, while RAF losses during the same period were around 11 fighters. On february 5th, having made such quick progress, Hanaya ordered the 143rd regiment to advance north. The 3rd battalion, 143rd managed to infiltrate through the Indian brigades en route and joined Sakurai's men to hit the pass. Seeing the danger, General Slim decided to reinforce Christison with the 26th Indian division led by Under General Lomax. Christison in turn ordered Lomax to move it forward to Bawli Bazar as quickly as possible. Upon their arrival at Bawli North, the 71st Brigade was then ordered to relieve the detachment from 5th Division on Goppe Pass and then attack the Japanese operating in rear of 7th Division. Likewise the 36th Indian division of Major-General F. W. Festing sped up their advance towards Chittagong while C-46 Commandos and C-47 Dakotas air dropped ammunition, food and other supplies to the front units. On the morning of the 6th, the 112th Regiment reached the sector north of Sinzweya and overran the headquarters of the British-Indian 7th Division while the 1st Battalion cut the Ngakyedauk Pass. In a perfect position to envelop the enemy in Sinzweya, Colonel Tanahashi disregarded the vital necessity for speed and delayed for 24 hours, giving the British time to establish a perimeter defense in the Sinzweya Basin. East of the range at about 5:00am, an enemy force, estimated at battalion strength, penetrated the widely separated posts held by the company of 24th Engineer Battalion defending 7th Division Headquarters, established machine-gun posts on tracks throughout the headquarters area and broke into the signal center. In hand-to-hand fighting the attackers were driven out, but not before all communications had been cut and ciphers compromised. Tanks from Sinzweya moved to the sound of the fighting as soon as it was light but the ground prevented them from reaching the headquarters area; rain which set in about 8:30 further hampered them and they had to withdraw. At about 10:00am, the signal center was finally overrun. Messervy, unable to exercise command any longer, sent orders to all branches of his headquarters to destroy papers and equipment of value and make their way in small parties to Sinzweya. Most of them succeeded in doing so during the following 24 hours. Major-General Frank Messervy and his staff would manage to successfully escape towards Sinzweya. Consequently, instead of ordering a general withdrawal like the Japanese expected, Christison directed the 9th Brigade to organize a defense of Sinzweya, which was the weakest link of the four isolated, self-contained all-round defensive boxes held by each brigade of the 7th Division. By the 7th, the defense of Sinzweya, also known as the Admin Box had been consolidated. The perimeter consisted of a series of small defended posts held, in the main, by administrative units, except at the south east and southwest corners where the roads entered the area. These were held by 4/8th Gurkhas and a company of 2nd West Yorkshire. There were insufficient troops to hold the whole of the Point 315 feature, and thus there was a deep reentrant between the southeast and northeast corners of the perimeter extending back to the southern end of Ammunition Hill. Most of the artillery was disposed on the southern face with attachments holding perimeter posts. The 25th Dragoons were in mobile reserve in two harbors held by a company of 3/4th Bombay Grenadiers, one each side of Ammunition Hill. The 2nd West Yorkshire constituted the infantry reserve and was located with divisional and garrison headquarters on the western side of Ammunition Hill. The main dressing station in the southwest corner was being moved to a more secure area. During the night, the Japanese launched an assault against Sinzweya, yet the tenacious defenders managed to hold on against the fierce enemy pressure. That night, the 33rd Brigade also managed to repulse an attack against Sinohbyin, though the arrival of these reinforcements would allow Sakurai to extricate himself from Ingyaung and head to Sinzweya to take command over the assault. On February 8, all British troops east of the Mayu range were receiving supplies by air, yet the strong presence of enemy fighters disrupted the first few attempts. Eventually, British air superiority would be restored. The No. 31 Squadron and 62 Squadron were reinforced on the 10th by 194 Squadron and on the 25th by 117 Squadron, recently arrived from the Middle East. Not only were 7th and 81st Divisions kept supplied with food and ammunition, but such amenities as cigarettes, rum, mail, razor blades and newspapers were delivered by air to the troops in increasing quantities as time went on, certainly a morale booster. Throughout the battle the Strategic Air Force and 224 Group gave constant close support to 15th Corps. In addition to providing escorts for transport squadrons, Hurricanes harried road, river and coastal transport on the Japanese lines of communication to Arakan that movement by day into the area virtually ceased. Tactical bombing of enemy positions was undertaken by two Vengeance squadrons which flew no less than 269 sorties in just over a week. The transports flew a total of 714 sorties in 5 weeks, successfully delivering nearly 2300 tons of supplies. From the night of February 8 onwards, the Admin and other boxes would also hold firm against repeated ferocious Japanese infantry night assaults, occasional air attacks and limited artillery bombardment from a handful of mountain and battalion guns by day and a medium gun firing from the nearby tunnels, thus showcasing the new spirit of the British-Indian troops. As quoted by Lieutenant-General Pownall: “We've learned how to fight where we stand and NOT to be frightened of the bogey of infiltration.” I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Kwajalein has finally fallen, leaving the rest of the Marshalls at the mercy of the colossal allied air, land and sea forces. Within Burma, the Chinese, British, Indian and Americans were ferociously meeting the Japanese, showcasing their dominance in the theater was no longer as sure thing, now the Japanese faced a much stronger enemy.   

Are you restricting yourself too much? Attempting to stick to a too-embracing structure? It might be time to loosen up a bit. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The 2024 ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script | 310 Hello, and welcome to episode 310 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Having some kind of structure or routine built into your day is important if you want to consistently get the important things done. The trouble starts when you try to stick to that structure or routine too rigidly. It begins to limit what you can do and holds you back from accomplishing the things you set out to accomplish. Plus, if your plan is interrupted by the inevitable “emergencies”, the plan is usually thrown out the window, and everybody else's problems become the focus. I'm all for building a structure around your day and week. It's this structure that will ensure you get the right things done on time every time. But sometimes, something will inevitably come along and stop you from sticking to your routine or structure, and then, if you don't have built-in inflexibility, everything will come crashing down. Either you drop everything, which leads to a build-up of backlogs, or you'll stay too rigid and miss an opportunity that could lead to bigger and better things.  This week's question goes to the core of this dilemma, and I hope to give you some ideas to prevent it from happening to you.  So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Andre. Andre asks, Hi Carl, I love the idea of having a structured day, but I am having a hard time sticking to my plan. I never seem to have enough time to get all my work done, and I have a huge backlog of emails and project work to catch up on. It's causing me so much stress and worry. Do you have any advice?  Hi Andre, thank you for your question.  You are right to create a structure around your day and week. Aside from weekly planning, I would say if anyone wants to become better at managing their time and ultimately more productive, they are going to need some form of structure to their day.  However, as with most things, this can be taken too far. Take time blocking, for example. Time blocking is an excellent way to make sure you have enough time to do the critical things that need doing, yet if you try to micromanage your day—that is, you block your whole calendar—you only need one meeting or one task to overrun by just a few minutes and your day is destroyed. For time blocking to work effectively, you will need plenty of blank spaces.  For example, you may wish to block two hours for some deep work in the morning, say, between 9:30 and 11:30, then an hour for managing your communications and an hour for clearing your admin tasks for the day. That way, if you work a typical eight-hour day, you have four hours for anything else that may come up.  However, this rigidity may also be coming from outside forces.  I love reading contemporary history. My favourite era is between 1945 and 1990. These were transformative years in both the US and Europe. I am particularly interested in how creative people, like Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books, managed their days.  What was noticeable was with few exceptions, there were no rigid working hours. If you worked in a factory doing physically demanding work surrounded by dangerous machinery, there were laws in most countries preventing you from being forced to work beyond eight hours. For the rest, you worked until the work got done.  And between 1940 and 1980, there were no computers helping you to do your work. If you needed to write a report, you either sat down at a typewriter and typed it yourself (no delete key with typewriters—if you got a page wrong, you began again), or you may have been lucky and were allowed to hand the work to the typing pool for typing up—and then you either needed to handwrite the report or dictate it.  And don't let anyone tell you that people got less mail in those days. People got a ton of mail each day (often quite literally). It wasn't electronic mail; it was physical mail, and responding to that wasn't as simple as hitting the reply key and typing. There were conventions to a written letter. You could never write, “Please find attached the file you requested”. You had to include a greeting and an ending, then sign it by hand, stick it in an envelope and take it to to post room.  There were a lot of late nights in the office getting work finished back then. Probably a lot more than we have today. I also remember in the 1990s regularly having to come into the office on a Saturday to clear files that needed clearing before the start of a new week.  Yet people adapted, and the work got done.  In many ways, we might be attempting to structure our days in the wrong way. Let me give you an example.  I've recently been reading a biography of Winston Churchill. Now, Churchill had an unusual structure to his day. He would wake up around 8:00 and while in bed, read the newspapers and deal with his communications. He'd read his letters, call a secretary into his bedroom and dictate the replies.  He would get out of bed at 11 am and take a bath. Often, he'd have a secretary outside the bathroom door taking more dictations—that could be a speech he was preparing or one of the many articles or books he wrote.  Let me pause here. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s, only a privileged few could afford to hire their own secretaries or assistants. Today, it's relatively affordable to hire a virtual assistant, or you could learn to use the dictation features on your digital devices. This means you could dictate in a Churchillian way—while taking a bath and while reading your emails in bed.  After his bath, Churchill would come downstairs for lunch. This wouldn't be a sandwich while sat at his desk. It was a full hour affair with wines and champagne. After lunch, he'd walk around his garden, feed the fish in his pond, and often paint. This was his rest time. A time when he spent some time thinking and relaxing.  Then, at 4:30 pm, it was nap time, and again, this wasn't a quick twenty-minute nap. It was a full ninety minutes. After his nap, it was another bath, then some card games with his guests or family before a full dinner—including an array of alcoholic drinks.  At 10 pm, Churchill would disappear into his home office (or “factory” as he called it), where he would work solidly for the next four to five hours. Then it was back to bed.  If you look at Churchill's daily structure, it was solid. It got the important work done, and it was conducted on his terms. It was unconventional by the standards of those days. His “class”—the upper class—would usually disappear to their clubs after dinner for meetings and socialising. Yet, Churchill got a huge amount of work done. He wrote almost fifty books in his lifetime, thousands of articles for newspapers and was a full-time parliamentarian.  I tell you about Churchill because his daily structure is a great illustration of what you can do when you work within your own ideals. Churchill was a night owl, not a morning person. He took advantage of that by doing his most important creative work late at night. Tim Ferriss, the author and entrepreneur, is another person who likes to do his creative work late at night.  When people see my calendar, they think I am working too much. Yet, if you look closely, I do my creative work in the mornings, then take the afternoon off (in the same way Churchill did) then return to my work after dinner. I get four or five hours of rest from work every day and can enjoy it in daylight when the cafes are open and when I can actually enjoy living close to the beach. I am also a night owl.  What Churchill did was have some solid structures in his day. These were his wake-up time (8:00 am), lunch and dinner times. If he had guests for dinner, he would stay talking with his guests until late into the evening but would still return to his home office to work until he was tired enough to go to bed.  I fear many people have come to believe it is bad to work after they finish work. But do you really ever finish work? I'm not suggesting you always take work home with you, but if you have backlogs and project deadlines approaching, perhaps giving yourself an extra hour or two in the evening to do a little more work isn't such a bad thing.  Think about that for a moment. You have the choice of two evils. The stress and anxiety of worrying about all the work piling up and not getting done. Or extra time in the evenings to get on top of the work. One will lead to health issues, and the other is inconvenient.  I remember reading about Michael Dell's work routines when his family was still young. He would ensure he was home by 7 pm every evening for the family dinner. After dinner, he would play with his kids until they went to bed and then go to his home office to work until midnight.  Hopefully, your days won't be destroyed too often, Andre, but it is going to happen—that's inevitable. The key is to be flexible. Over time, you will learn to distinguish between the genuinely urgent and the false urgencies. The thing is, and the reason I told you about Winston Churchill, is you have options beyond nine til five.  Tim Cook is famous for waking at 3:30 am and doing his email—he is clearly a morning person. Former President Jimmy Carter would go to the Oval Office at 7 am every morning to read through the reports he needed to know about that day before having a meeting with his security advisor at 8:30 am.  Productive days are not built by accident. They are built on structure. We can learn from immensely productive people like Churchill and build a structure around meal times and rest.  Insisting you must not work in the evenings is admirable, but if you have outstanding work to be done and a backlog of emails and other messages, what is that doing to your stress levels? Would it not be better for your long-term mental health to spend a few evenings or early mornings getting on top of that backlog so you give yourself less stress and more free time in the long-term?  Thank you, Andre, for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Eastbourne Borough away tomorrow! Ian, Ben and Dave talk about a quiet week and take your GCQs!Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Leave us a review and share the pod with a pal.We'd love to welcome some local businesses into the Gloverscast family through advertising. If you're a business that would like to speak to a dedicated audience of more than 1000 monthly listeners, please get in touch. Find out more about advertising with us here.If you have an idea for the website, want to contribute or just want to send us a message, feel free to email ian@gloverscast.co.uk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wendover joins very happy and starts off the Bronze, Silver and Gold medal awards in fine style before realising he forgot Kayembe completely. We then speak to Mrs Wendover who politely turns down our offer of trying to force Greg to cook a meal on the basis of the one meal he tried to cook previously.Stevo joins us from Northern Ireland and forces the improving Northern Ireland International Jamal Lewis towards the bronze medal places before calling out EasyJet for the Orange Luton based organisation we know it to be!!!RichWFC2 comes and balances the books with his views on the manager but says he wants to stick with Ismael he just wants him to “let the team of the leash”. Rich's traditional theme of ignoring people's actual names means that Paul Ince and people called Valerie Michelin and Slavisha Jovokovic make an appearance in his Churchillian speech to let the attacking side of the team come to the fore – Brilliant, brilliant stuff!Charlie points out Healey's long throw does mean that he isn't on the end of that same long throw, we channel the memory of Leigh Bromby before calmly noting that the missing Jake Livermore was indeed missed but that the belief, effort, and determination of the team was great to see. Rajovic being in the right place but for some fine last ditch defending but asks to see Healey start and echoes Rich's call to see more of Matheus Martins. Charlie then tells about a couple of other Twitter Spaces that he is working on including an interview with the 1881 Group (Not to be confused with the Roy Moore/1881 Movement) who issued a statement this week.COYH!This Podcast has been created and uploaded by Do Not Scratch Your Eyes. The views in this Podcast are not necessarily the views of talkSPORT.Huge thanks to all our Patreons:Chris Giannone,RichWFC2,Steve Holliman,Ian Ball,Paul Fiander Turner,Sean Gourley,Lee Anselmo,John Parslow,Mark von Herkomer,Neil Silverstein,Steve Brown,Dave Lavender,Kasey Brown,Nipper Harrison,Boyd Mayover,Colin Payne,Paul Riley,Gary Wood,Karl Campion,Kevin Kremen,The Big Le – Bofski,Greg Theaker,Malcolm Williams,Bryan Edwards,Peter Ryan,Luka,Jack Foster,Jason Rose,Michael Abrahams,Ian Bacon,Ken Green,Nick Nieuwland,Colin SmithAnt!!!!!& PDF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 525: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) pay tribute to Charlie Munger by telling stories about how his wisdom changed their lives and businesses.  No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:00) To get what you want, deserve what you want (6:30) I'm not entitled to an opinion unless... (8:00) Churchillian self-confidence (12:30) Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance (18:00) Optimize for the truth (23:00) Invert, always invert (35:30) Learn all the big ideas in your space — Links: • MFM meetups - https://getriver.io/mfm • Cloud Poker tournament - cloudpokernight.com/mfm • Free 2024 Goal-Setting Session - https://planfor2024.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

New Series! Explaining the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics. This time: Winston Churchill is caricatured as either a bigoted villain or a stainless hero. Is he neither… or both? Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt take on a Churchillian task: to avoid reducing the legacy of Britain's war leader into a simple binary.  In part one they look at Churchill's complicated childhood, his military adventures, his surprisingly progressive time as Home Secretary, his role in the Gallipoli disaster and his journey from the Tories to the Liberals and back again, leaving him on the brink of the 1930s. And they weigh up the allegations against him, from racism to sending troops to fire on striking miners at Tonypandy. Between the myths and the countermyths there's a fascinating mess of a man. Get Part Two of our Churchill exploration right now – and all of our episodes a week early – when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod  “Yes, he is a racist imperialist warmonger. He's also the most important antifascist of human history.” – Ian Dunt “He had no followers. No ‘Churchillites'. Nobody in politics would sacrifice a thing for him.” – Dorian Lynskey  “At this point he's Woke Winston. He's a liberal, supports votes for women, nationalising the railways and restrictions on monopolies.” – Dorian Lynskey  Reading List: Churchill by Roy Jenkins Walking With Destiny by Andrew Roberts The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson Churchill: Military Genius or Menace? By Stephen Napier Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks  Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill by David Stafford Churchill's Shadow by Geoffrey Wheatcroft Free Thinking: Churchill's Reputation – BBC Radio 3 Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

READ THE TRANSCRIPT AND FOLLOW PETER AT HTTP://PETERNAVARRO.SUBSTACK.COM THE BIDEN REGIME HAS PUT PETER NAVARRO IN LEG IRONS AND NOW WANTS TO PUT HIM IN PRISON.  YOUR PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO HIS SUBSTACK HELPS FUND PETER'S LEGAL DEFENSE. Last week, as Communist Chinese warships completed a coercive circumnavigation of Japan's main islands, G-7 leaders met in Hiroshima to forge a unified response to China's ever-increasing economic and military aggression.  The result – a weak communique without neither bite nor teeth -- was hardly Churchillian. Why do G-7 leaders act as kowtowing rug merchants rather than Churchillian leaders?  Like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each is compromised in his own way.  

On this episode of Free Range, host Mike Livermore is joined by Alex Guerrero, a philosophy professor at Rutgers who writes in moral and political philosophy. Guerrero is a leading philosophical defender of the idea of lottocracy—the practice of choosing political leaders through lottery rather than elections. The podcast begins with Guerrero's diagnosis of the failures of our current politics and the limitations of reforms such as changes to the campaign finance system. (0:33 - 12:40) Guerrero goes on to challenge what he referred to as the “Churchillian shrug,” which is the view that there are no viable alternative to electoral democracy. For Guerrero, elections are a technology, and there is no good reason to think that there are not better options available. There is no guarantee that elections are not the ideal system, but they are imperfect, and it would be wise to be open to different ways of organizing our politics. (12:40-19:19) One difference between today and the periods when elections took hold is that contemporary society is much more complex than in the past. As we deal with globally interconnected issues, it is much more difficult for our communities to really understand or see the effects of political decisions. In addition, elections tend to produce unrepresentative outcomes, with a small segment of economic and social elites occupying positions of political power. In an increasingly diverse society, this is a problem. Lottery selection would mean that groups that are frequently underrepresented, such as single parents or members of the working class, would have a voice in the legislature. (19:19-25:56) The conversation turns to some of the logistics of how lotacracy would work in practice. Guerrero favors a set of single issue legislatures that would allow members to cultivate expertise. A question that remains is how executive oversight would work in a domain such as climate change where many important decisions must be made by administrative agencies. (25:56-28:47) Guerrero believes that agencies should be overseen by the legislature rather than an elected, or randomly selected, executive officer. (28:47-35:05) Broadly, agencies could operate as they do now, but with a different set of political leaders that they are accountable to. (35:05-52:31) The attractiveness of the lotacracy idea turns in part on the people one envisions as being selected. Perhaps a randomly choses legislature would be a place where thoughtful, responsible, and diligent citizens deliberate on matters of public concern. Or, it could be cacophony of conflicting voices, with segregationists, QAnon supporters, or simply those who do not have the ability to understand the complex issues at hand vying for influence. Guerrero is optimistic and believes the lottery system cannot be much worse than the current system. Ultimately, he believes that bringing individuals from all backgrounds together to talk about political problems facilitates better discussion and engagement than what exists in our electoral system currently. (52:31-1:01-35)

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full end of year special on Ukraine, Guantanamo Bay, and Meet the Press's cringiest moments: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-useful-idiots-2022?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web 2022 is nearly dead! Last year in our year recap with Thomas Frank, we asked “WTF will happen in 2022?” While we predicted correctly some brutal Jan 6 hearings and a nightmare midterm year, none of us thought the biggest news of the year would be a proxy war in Ukraine. So in our 2022 end of year special, Aaron and Katie deep dive on the latest in Ukraine, Zelenskyy's Churchillian visit to Congress, Pelosi's weird kiss, and all the insane politicians, generals, and corporate journalists who can't seem to stop saying the quiet part out loud. And now that the year is over, we're asking you: WTF will happen in 2023? Let us know your craziest theories in the comments. Subscribe for the full end of year special. Plus, miss our full interview with Irish members of European parliament (and Useful Idiot rockstars) Claire Daly and Mick Wallace? We're giving everyone the full extended interview for free. It's the Useful Idiots 2022 end of year special. Thanks for sticking with us all year, it's been a wild ride. Let's keep mourning and laughing into 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Tory leadership hopefuls try to outdo each other on culture war clout and tax cuts, we assess the would-be PMs. Plus, with Big Dog turning lame duck, the panel looks at what Johnson might do in Downing Street until he is ejected from the building. And as Conservatives set out their stalls, who's won the battle of the launch video? “He wanted to be Churchillian and his tenure is one of the most embarrassingly short tenures.” – Ayesha Hazarika  “Penny Mordaunt's pitch is that she's very telegenic, was in the army and voted leave.” – Marie le Conte  “Grant Shapps' entire pitch is ‘you will keep your jobs if you vote for me'.” – Ahir Shah https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast  Presented by Andrew Harrison with Ahir Shah, Ayesha Hazarika and Marie Le Conte. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Lead Producer: Jacob Jarvis. Producers: Jacob Archbold, Jelena Sofronijevic and Alex Rees. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Johnson's going and his emphatic collapse in office was no less shameful than expected. But historically, just how abnormal was it? Jacob Jarvis speaks with Rock & Roll Politics host Steve Richards to discuss endgames of the past and where the latest Prime Minister's ranks in the grand scheme of things – all recorded immediately in the aftermath of Johnson's Thursday speech.   “Johnson wants to be a Churchillian figure. Instead he will go down as someone who blew a big majority, and he will hate that.” “When Johnson lost Javid and Sunak, I knew we were going to reach the end quite quickly.”  “When choosing a Prime Minister, you have to look beyond whether they can win an election.” https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Lead Producer: Jacob Jarvis. Producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Audio production by Jade Bailey. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the twelfth installment in Eric Ludy's epic summer Daily Thunder series entitled Spiritual Lessons from WW1. This episode investigates the uncomfortable atmosphere in Great Britain in 1914 as the Great War was breaking out. It was an atmosphere of sharp division and contrasting viewpoints. In fact, the division was so sharp that a unified national action against the German aggression in Belgium seemed unlikely. But, in the midst of this chaos, a man stepped onto the stage that would speak clarity to the nation amidst the terrible fog of war.

Q-NEWS - JUNE 12 VK4 ON AIR 2022 ------------------------------------------------------------* THE FOLLOWING NEWS CAN BE HEARD FROM OUR AUDIO SERVICE based in BRISBANE, OLYMPIC CITY 2031, RIGHT NOW:- www.vk7ax.id.au/wianews/ OR www.wiaq.org.au Importantly remember to download from the site by COT (Close of Transmission) Mondays. Also search QNEWS (make sure it IS the Ham Radio QNEWS) in your podcast app. ------------------------------------------------------------* VK4 SILENT KEYS @ WIA YEAR COMMENCING MAY 2022 SK CALL SK NAME DATE ADVISED BY VK4MBH Keith Allison MAY OR JUNE (vk4vp) VK4AVF Des Flor 13/06/2011 (vk4hit) IPSWICH AND DISTRICT AMATEUR RADIO CLUB HAVE LOST VK4AVF Des Flor VK4AVF, a long time member of the club, passed away Monday 13 June after a series of illnesses and sickness. Des was a long time member of the club and a long time participant on the morning net and will be sadly missed by many in the club. For those of you who find yourselves available and wish to express your final regards to Des, there will be a Service of Remembrance to be held at the Apostolic Church in Hattonvale on Friday 24th June at 10.30am. Vale Des Flor VK4AVF (Silent Key) SUNSHINE COAST www.wia.org.au/clubs/vk4/SunshineCoastAmateurRadioClub/ Maleny VK4RSC 146.850 and 438.075 VK4RSN 53.7 Noosa Heads VK4RSL 146.825 and 438.175 News from the Sunshine Coast Amateur Radio Club This is Gordon VK4VP Sad news today as we record another Silent Key, Keith Allison VK4MBH passed away in hospital just over 2 weeks ago. Keith was 92 yrs old and had an interesting life starting from a coal mining background in the UK to a Mines inspector in India and then as a mines inspector in Queensland. Keith moved into the Tewantin township and he was well known on the radio bands while he lived there. He had an on-call service technician by the way of Mal VK4ML to sort out any issues he had and he seemed to have a few from time to time. Keith was also part of the Emergency Communications group set up by SCARC and was keen to be involved and help out. A couple of years ago Keith and his wife moved nearer to their son in Brisbane and they moved into a senior's living complex at Sinnamon Park. Amatuer Radio antennas were severely frowned upon but a quick call to his on-call service tech, Mal, soon had a magnetic base antenna with a 5/8 whip sitting on the air conditioner unit on the balcony and a PRM80 programmed up for the local repeaters. The PRM80 has very few buttons that could be inadvertantly pressed so this kept the callouts to a minimum. He could access the SCARC repeater and also Bayside repeater where he spent a lot of time talking to Laurie VK4ACW. He also was still driving at the age of 92 in Brisbane so it seemed that nothing was going to stop him and so it was quite sad news that he had passed away so suddenly. Vale Keith VK4MBH --------------------------------------------------------------------* Hello, I'm Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I've been thinking. Years back when working areas accommodated a paper office regime, there was one item that nobody gave much importance to and that was the flip over desk calendar. With a page devoted to each day except for Saturday and Sunday which had to share, it had the date reminder and a printed calendar for the month. Down the bottom was a little gem, a quotation from some person aimed at stimulating the mood and thinking for the day ahead. Like many things the date blocks have disappeared and we now have an app for just about anything, it seems. So it was that I saw a post during this past week, attributing the words to a Winston Churchill, that told me that criticism was necessary as it served the same purpose as pain does to the body; a warning that something was wrong and in need of attention. Now you must confess, as I did, that this has a certain ring to it and the idea is certainly catching. Criticism is a fact of life and it is part of the discourse and debate that clarifies thinking. There is the other side of things that with a lack of consideration and a level of discourtesy, criticism is personally offensive and potentially harmful to the individual and whole books have been devoted to the theories of personality and mental and emotional development and the popular theories that our mental structure could be damaged by things our parents told us in childhood. It was during this week that I saw that a modern version of the Amateurs Code had been posted to a club page as a reminder of what we set out to be in this pursuit of amateur radio. So when we marry these two posts we are reminded that an amateur is courteous and considerate to his fellows and that criticism points the way to something that needs correction. In this way there is nothing offensive or objectionable about an idea being subjected to scrutiny as there seem to be few things in this life that can't be improved upon. This is perhaps what scholars have been trying to teach us throughout history and on a day to day basis it is something that we can apply privately and certainly in the working of our club activities. The point is not to be selfish or destructive but to point out what is seen to be ineffective or not suitable and hopefully bring forth a better solution. Our executive members should, in my opinion, encourage this form of discussion which supports the members and leads to shared achievement amongst the membership. After reading the Churchillian meme, another came across my screen. It is something upon which we can think appropriately. This thought was, a great man is hard on himself and a small man is hard on others. I'm Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that's what I think… how about you? ------------------------------------------------------------* TO SUPPLY QNEWS ITEMS:- Send SCRIPT to qnews@wia.org.au send audio to http://www.wia.org.au/members/broadcast/upload/ QNEWS Tips to get MORE out of your weekly newscast on VK4WIA If you would like to submit club news items for inclusion in QNEWS broadcasts, please email your item in text to:- qnews@wia.org.au THEN submit audio:- To submit audio email qnews@wia.org.au Remember the sooner you submit audio material the more the likelihood of it being broadcast in the very next QNEWS. Each item will only be broadcast once, if you want a couple of mentions, please submit different slants to keep your event 'fresh .‘

In this week's Fatal Conceits Podcast, we are joined by long time friend of the Bonner Private Research group, Mr. Byron King... A Harvard-trained geologist, ex navy pilot and nuclear weapons expert, Byron lends us his unique insights into the unfolding situation in the Ukraine… including sanctions blowback, the bifurcation of the global monetary system, a gold/methane-backed ruble… and what it all mean for the US and Europe. We also touch on the continued erosion of trust in America's once-great institutions in the wake of the Supreme Court leak, why inflation is here to stay, where the stock market is headed from here… and what individuals can do to avoid the fallout. It's always a pleasure catching up with Byron. We hope you enjoy this conversation, a transcript of which will be available – gratis – on the website (or below)…Please feel free to drop your comments in the section below and to share it with friend and foe alike. Cheers,Joel BowmanHost of The Fatal Conceits PodcastThank you for reading Bonner Private Research. This post is public so feel free to share it.“[T]hat's not central banking. That's band-aiding a hemorrhaging, suppurating compound fracture of a wound. It's a sucking chest wound and you're giving the patient an aspirin saying, ‘I hope you feel better.' Doesn't work.” ~ Byron King, geologist and editor, Lifetime Income Report TRANSCRIPT:Joel Bowman:All right. Well, welcome back to the Fatal Conceits Podcast, dear listeners, a show about money, markets, mobs, and manias. If you haven't already checked out our Substack page, please feel free to do so, where you can sign up for our daily e-letter. We have hundreds of articles on the sites there, covering everything from lowly politics to high finance and everything else in between. Of course, you'll find research reports and more conversations just like this one. That's bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com. And now, today, I'm very, very excited to welcome our special guest, longtime friend of the show and of the Bonner Private Research family, Byron King. Byron, welcome to the show, mate. How are you doing?Byron King:Very well. Thank you, Joel. It's a pleasure to be here. And hello to all of our Bonner Private researchers out there who subscribe and make it all possible. Thank you.Joel Bowman:Yeah, outstanding. Mate, as you and I discussed over a couple of emails before we scheduled today's show, there's so many things that I want to get your insights and expertise on, not least of which the unfolding situation on the Eurasian steppe. We've got supply chain issues to talk about, we've got inflation heating up, there's market meltdowns, there's all kinds of things going on here. But I thought just out the gate, worth speaking the day after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's announcement of his 50 basis point rate hike, which, for those at home paying attention, puts the Fed a long way behind the curve with regards to real inflation, which, pick a number, is running anything from 8.5% officially to maybe some multiple of that, depending on how you calculate it. Markets, I'm just looking at right now, are awash in red this morning after a brief window of optimism yesterday afternoon. Byron, what's your take, 24 hours in?Byron King:Well, I wasn't surprised to see the 50 basis point raise. It was telegraphed well in advance. But if you want to see central banking, that's not central banking. That's band-aiding a hemorrhaging, suppurating compound fracture of a wound. It's a sucking chest wound and you're giving the patient an aspirin saying, "I hope you feel better." Doesn't work. You want to see central banking? Look what the Russian Central Bank did two months ago when the sanctions hit. The conflict started in Ukraine they jacked up their interest rates in Russia to 20%. Bam, just like that. That was their way of saying to the world, "You might not like us. You might not like what we're doing and you're putting sanctions on us and kicking us out of SWIFT and everything else, but our rule book is still a valuable item and we're going to pay you 20% for the rubles. And oh, by the way, we're going to buy gold based on rubles."Joel Bowman:Right.Byron King:You want to see central banking, that's central banking. What we saw yesterday is just American politicking. And it's the same silliness that we've seen in monetary policy and so much of everything else that passes for policy in America these days. We have an ungovernable country run by people who don't know how to govern and a lot of people who don't want to be governed. Where does that leave us?Joel Bowman:Right. Something of an ineptocracy at hand here. What would the Fed have to do, in your opinion, to kind of “pull a Volcker,” if you will, and stand strong behind its currency? What would it have to do to get out ahead of the curve and send a strong enough signal to the market that it was serious about protecting the integrity of the greenback?Byron King:Well, if they did pull a Volcker and they raised interest rates to well above what we see as inflation, they would have to do, I would say, at least 10 or 12% rate rise, which, of course, is politically impossible. And it's utterly fantastical to even think of our Washington DC policymakers doing something like that because they're cowards and they can't really do things that require bravery. The markets would crash, people would hate them. We would certainly get the Supreme Court and the Roe v. Wade decision off the front page for at least a day or so if they did that. But of course, America's concentrating on that, as opposed to other things that are important, like, oh, the value of the dollar going forward, or perhaps even a nuclear war with Russia. Who cares about that when we have some little toady in the Supreme Court who can leak out a decision in advance. This gets into a lot of different things, but Paul Volcker should just be rolling in his grave.He did what he had to do, he jacked interest rates up to 19% and he killed inflation and the country lasted another, let's say, 35 or 40 years, although monetarily it's been just sort of falling apart, certainly since the 2008 crash, which was never properly addressed. Gets into a lot of different things. But people write books on this stuff. We're just having a conversation.Joel Bowman:It is almost unfathomable to think about what kind of havoc a 10 or 12% rate hike would wreak upon the markets. I'm looking at the tickers on the broader indexes this morning after just 50 bps and we see, as I'm reading the scroll here, the Dow's off 3%, over 1,000 points down. S&P down 3 1/2. The NASDAQ, tech-heavy NASDAQ, of course, was down over 5% earlier this morning. So this is with just a half a percentage. It's almost unthinkable to imagine the carnage that would come down the pike if they pulled a Volcker or jacked up as did Putin.But you bring up an interesting point there, of many interesting points, Byron, and maybe this is a little off topic here, but just given the Roe v. Wade leak and the timing of it all, without getting into that sort of quagmire of a debate, what do you think this says about the confidence or the lack of confidence, just in the institutions of the United States which have been the backbone, the scaffolding of the democracy, or the republic, rather, that the founders envisioned. They've become extremely politicized and one can't help but imagine that this leak whiffs of timing with the upcoming election and whatnot, but it does seem to indicate a kind of erosion in the confidence of America's institutions. Is that the way that you read that?Byron King:Oh, I think it's a major crack in the dam. And I mean, nobody trusted Congress. They leak like a sieve. Nobody trusts the executive office. They leak like a sieve. You can agree or disagree with what the Supreme Court does in its decision making. I don't think anybody who really follows the court would ever have a question, though, that they are a collegial bunch who, they engage in their debates behind closed doors. And when they are finished, out come the decisions. Whatever the decision is in Roe v. Wade, it is what it is. I mean, there's going to be a decision one way or the other. It is what it is. All that the leak did was put it into play in a public sort of way. And you lose confidence in the whole process.People may know it. I have a Navy background. I was in the anti-submarine warfare business. Rule number one of electric boat, you don't talk about electric boat. Rule number one about submarines, people who know a lot about submarines don't talk about submarines. People who don't know a lot about submarines try to tell you, convince you that they do. You don't talk about submarines, you know? Yeah, that's where I come from. You don't talk about submarine stuff because that's how quiet you want to keep it. You don't talk about what happens in the Supreme Court. If you're a clerk and you go there and I don't care how much you really want to, "Oh, I know this, I know this. I have to tell somebody."No, no, no, no, no. You cut your wrists, you jump off a bridge, you take a pill, whatever you have to do to not... You don't do that. You don't do that. Somebody did it. I mean, was it a clerk? I don't know. We may never know. But it's just the idea that in a broad sense, the US is becoming more and more ungovernable. It's big country, 350 million people. They say 330, but really there's like 20 million that the Census Bureau doesn't count just for political reasons. But big country, it's widely diverse, massive disparities of wealth, massive disparities of opinion. And can the country still function? Well, there was this one little place on the top of Capitol Hill, the white marble building with these stone statues in front of it where we could at least have a little bit of confidence that, okay, there's rational thinking going on behind the bronze doors. I guess not. I guess not.Joel Bowman:It seems like just another in a long list, or a long convoy of institutions, from academia to corporate America that now seems to, as you said, enter the fray for hyper-politicization. And I'm wondering as we can talk a little bit about the situation on the Eurasian steppe and sort of get into all that. But just to kind of preface that, it does seem, to your point about political polarization, it does seem now that every week there's a shiny new object, a shiny new subject on Twitter or on the social media channels, whereby everybody has to fall immediately in line with their partisan kind of checkbook. And it seems that no matter where a rational, level-headed, circumspect inquiry might lead you, there's no time for that.You immediately need to make up your mind on subject A, B or C, and it needs to be in complete alignment with the rest of party left or party right politics. And of course, we saw that with everything happening over in the Ukraine. You know a lot more about this than I do, but I was very, very surprised to see the rapidity with which people who I had long friendships with who had never mentioned the Ukraine before, who gave no indication that they were experts on Eastern... I've got some traffic outside here, but who gave me no indication in our 20 or 30 years of friendship that they were PhDs in the history of Eastern European geopolitics, and within three days, knew exactly which flag they needed to put up, whether it was a Russian flag or a Ukrainian flag, to indicate their position. Talking about an ungovernable country, I'm wondering what role our media platforms play in this polarization of the body politic.Byron King:If you have studied, let's say, World War I, for example, the First World War, and as it played out in Europe, if you studied what happened in the United States, there are a lot of eerie similarities. In the US, they took the British side, although there was a very large German population in the United States. First thing the British did when the war broke out was they cut the cables under sea from Europe, from mainland Europe, to the United States. So the only news that came to the US was filtered through London, through the British sources.And in the US, as World War I progressed and eventually as the US entered the war there was a tremendous war fever, an anti-German fever. They banned speaking German, they banned teaching German, they burned German books in the United States. A big part of the Prohibition movement that eventually became the Prohibition Amendment had to do with bias against beer, which was considered a German substance. The ancient Egyptians actually invented beer, but that doesn't matter. Doesn't matter when you're trying to make a certain point here. And so here we are today. I mean, you are in Argentina, I'm in the US. I'm not in the Ukraine, okay? I watch what's going on.I'm a Navy guy. I was combat-coded air crew in the US Navy. I was a nuclear weapons guy. If they had said, "Go out there and bomb that spot," that's me. If there had been a nuclear war that would've been me blowing holes in the ocean. I hate war, man. I want nothing to do with it. I did Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I was in the Middle East in the '90s. I visited a lot of people in the last 20 years who got their legs blown off in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's going on over there is just human tragedy. Russia invaded Ukraine. They should not have done that. There's a lot of things that could have happened to keep that war from happening, but it happened and it's there.But the idea that a whole lot of outsiders are now... We're all in it to win it, as certain politicians in Washington are saying. Politicians on the outside are saying, "Oh, we're behind you. We're going to fight to the last drop of your Ukrainian blood against those terrible Russians." I have to wonder about that. When the politicians go to Kyiv and they're getting medals for bravery, we're trying to reenact World War II again. We talk about World War I, trying to reenact World War II. We got Churchillian rhetoric. "We're going to fight on the beaches and on those forests and on the hillsides." Okay, I get it if your country's being invaded, you say things like that. But we're talking about Lend-Lease. It's like, oh, for God's sakes, we're going to do Lend-Lease again.We give 50 crappy destroyers that leak to Britain and we get all this other stuff back. I don't see the balance of what's going on there. We're feeding these weapons into Ukraine and we're prolonging this conflict. And people are saying, "We're going to fight this war for months, for years. We're going to weaken Russia. We don't want Russia." I mean, if you're the Russians what do you think about that? There was an article, it was in The New York Times, the headline of The New York Times at the top of The New York Times just yesterday that US intelligence is going to Ukraine and this is how the Ukrainians have killed these Russian generals.And even if it's true, even if it's true, you don't say things like that. For me to help this guy kill a general, I'm an accessory to murder. That's an act of war, by the way, when you feed information to somebody and say, "Here, go kill that guy." And especially a Russian general. I mean, what are we doing? What are our policy makers doing? People say, "Well, should we just let Ukraine get overrun?" Here we are. I'm thousands of miles away from this situation. We're dealing with two people. I've met real Ukrainians, real live Ukrainian Ukrainians. I can't say I've ever met a Nazi, though.Maybe I have, I just didn't know. But I've met Ukrainians and I understand kind of this Ukrainian conception, and I know a lot of Russians, and I understand this Russian conception. These tribes have this thing that goes back centuries, 1,500 years, something like that. And I'm over here in the United States and I don't quite get it. I get that they have something, but why is there something, my something? And as a great power, as the United States, as a great power, even though it's ungovernable, even though we can't decide on policy, we can't decide on how much to spend or not to spend, we fight over leaks from the Supreme Court, despite all of that, we're a great power and we have to be careful about getting involved in big wars with big countries.And Russia's a big country. It's big geographically, and it has lots of nuclear weapons. These guys have 6,000 nuclear weapons and they have ways to deliver them. We're not talking about embargoing Cuba. We're not talking about beating up on Iran. We're not talking about beating up on North Korea, not that that has ever done us any good either. We're not talking about fighting some little third-rate army, like Iraq or something like that. We're talking about a nuclear superpower, and it's very troubling from my end. I'm not making policy, I'm not in Washington DC, but I don't know that the people in Washington DC know what the hell they're doing either.Joel Bowman:No, well, they're giving us plenty of reason to think that they don't know what they're doing, which brings me to this concept of this law of unintended consequences. And as we all rush to formulate and broadcast our opinions, sometimes called virtue signaling, as quickly as we possibly can to show that we're on one side or another side and let all our friends know that we're with them, I wonder that in our haste to enact policies such as the various sanctions that have been visited upon not just Russia as a state, but also Russian individuals.And we're talking about confiscation of private property and extra-jurisdictional confiscation of private property, which, if you were trying to set an example of not acting like a global authoritarian dictatorship, you might want to have a look at some of the things like the rule of law and start abiding by those. But all that aside, just from a kind of reputational standpoint, how have these sanctions, particularly those from the West against Russia, do you think, damaged our credibility in the eyes of other nations that may not be so sympathetic to our causes, such as, obviously China, India, et cetera?Byron King:I think sanctions have been an ongoing disaster for many years. When I was writing Whiskey & Gun Powder and other newsletters with the Agora Group over the years, I often mentioned that sanctions are not working, sanctions are not effective. They don't change behavior of people who don't want to change their behavior. And so with the sanctions against Russia, we've basically backfired against ourselves. To say that, we don't want to buy your oil or your gas, or we're going to kick you out the SWIFT system, we're going to kick you out of all these other international organizations, we're confiscating your sovereign wealth, we're confiscating your oligarch wealth.It's a disgraceful abuse of the US Constitution in the sense that... The idea that we go to, let's just pick oligarchs for a second here. I don't think I know any oligarchs. Again, it's kind of like, I don't... I've met Russians. I don't know that I've ever met a Russian oligarch. I've never been on a Russian oligarch yacht. I have seen a couple in my travels and they're pretty impressive, but nobody ever invited me on board. But the idea that okay, you're a Russian oligarch and we don't like you, and we're going to take all your money and we're going to seize your yacht, and we're going to take your real estate from London, or wherever it happens to be, I was kind of, wait a minute. This Russian oligarch, did he drop a bomb on somebody and kill them in Ukraine?Was he driving a tank? I missed that part of the logical connection here. What'd this guy do? Why are we taking his money? And then the sovereign part of it, the sovereign wealth, "Oh, Russia, you have, whatever the number is, $300 billion. We're going to scoop that and just drag it off the table." It's kind of like, whoa, we just told everybody in the whole world, every country in the whole world that buys US treasuries or that keeps money in US banks or US institutions or US bonds or US... That if we don't like you, and maybe it's something very bad that we don't like you about, but if we don't like you, we're going to take your stuff.You've just diminished the credibility of the dollar, you just diminished the credibility of your whole system. During the Crimean War in the 18- early '50s, 1853, Russia was fighting Britain, France, over Crimea, of all places, but Russia and Britain were still having commercial dealings. Russia paid interest on bonds, Britain paid interest on... Because this is what proper businesses did. And this was during a real war. Right now, it's Ukraine and Russia, with obviously NATO's backing it up. But call me old-fashioned but I missed the declaration of war against Russia if there was one. Technically, we are not at war with these people although we're doing everything short of it. And who knows? Perhaps we're doing everything necessary to egg it on eventually, which talk about...Joel Bowman:It does seem a little bit, just watching some congressional testimony from... It used to be the case that, and I'll just use sort of air quotes here, if we're doing audio only for this podcast so listeners know, but it used to be that there were neocons on the Republican side who were hawkish, who never met a war that they didn't want to march somebody else's son off to, but then you had this socially progressive liberals at home in the United States who were again, air quotes, supposed to be dovish when it came to interventionist foreign policy.But it does seem now on Capitol Hill that you have, to use your term, egging on, you have a whole bunch of congressmen and women from the floor that are looking for any excuse to, "When do we get to send the fighter jets in? In what scenario would we deploy the next level up of weapons?" You almost get this kind of mad rush for war. And I'm just wondering if we're not sort of thinking all of the consequences through as the situation escalates.Byron King:Absolutely. Outside of the certain cadres within the military, very few people in America, and very few people in American policymaking understand the military and/or war making. You can study all sorts of history in colleges across the country: social history, diplomatic history, environmental history, history insight, history in this, history in that. You can study all different species of history, but try to find a program at a reputable university in military history. You won't. There are a couple, they're very few.So Americans tend intellectually, and certainly in our policymaking intellectual classes, they tend not to understand issues of military, military thinking, military history. To understand modern military matters takes a degree, and probably an advanced degree, in a hard science, lots of math, lots of physics, whatever. I think the last war that people could have understood without knowing chemistry, physics and math was maybe the Spanish-American War, because by World War I, with radio, with sonar, with long-range artillery, it was starting to get into calculus. World War II-Joel Bowman:The cavalry was already the last war by that stage.Byron King:Exactly, exactly. By World War II, we were doing lots of math and lots of physics and lots of chemistry. Again, radio, radio electronics, radar, sonar, nuclear power, jet engines, things like that. If you don't understand some of the basics of those things you don't really get... You can read a lot about it, and you can read a lot of comic books about it. You can read a lot of fantasy fiction books about it and think that you know what's going on. But the people who are out there banging the drums, saying, "Oh, let's do a no-fly zone," they don't know what they're talking about in terms of what that involves and what you're up against.Certainly when you want to do a no-fly zone against Russia, are you kidding me? Give me a break. And one more thing, let me just add to that. I've talked to people and they say, "Well, you know the Russians, they suck. Their tanks blow up or kill other guys. I've seen the pictures." Yeah, they have bad equipment, bad training. They had a bad plan when they started out. But a lot of people start their wars with bad plans and they learn and I think the Russians have learned. And when you've got a country like Ukraine with whatever the number is, 44 million, or 40, or 35 million, or 32 million, whatever that number is now because people have been moving out and this and that, versus Russia with 144 million people, and the legacy of the Soviet militarization of that entire continent, you got a hell of a fight.When people say, "Oh, the Russians, they're going to run out of weapons. They're going to run out of missiles," and I say, "Are you kidding me? No, they're not." They have entire cities devoted to cranking out ammunition. "Well, they were using junky artillery shells that didn't explode." Yeah, so what? They've got train loads of that stuff that's going to come in and it will explode. And "Well, they're going to run out of advanced missiles." I don't think so. They have entire factories in the mountains that crank out those missiles like sausages. So I'm just saying that if you want to get into a fight with these guys, you better appreciate what that involves. For the last, pick a number, 75 years, the United States has never fought against a country that can really, truly hit back at us.I mean, the Korean War, we fought China. Soviet pilots fought against American pilots in the Korean War and they actually did pretty well, frankly. And in North Vietnam, Soviet equipment and Soviet advisors and Soviet trainers were right behind the North Vietnamese. And although it's hard to really say that technically we ever fought mano-a-mano, American against the Soviet in North Vietnam it's not hard to imagine that they were right behind. And the Vietnam War in certain respects was a real slap in the face to American military might. We lost 10,000 aircraft in the Vietnam War. 3,500 were high-performance jets shot down.I talk about this a little bit. I was fortunate in my life and in my Navy days to be... I went in the Navy after the Vietnam era, but I had instructor pilots who were there. I was trained by guys who had dodged service-to-air missiles over Hanoi and Haiphong. And we talked about this stuff. And the Soviet equipment in the '60s was pretty good for its time and it has gotten better and better and better over the years. So when people say, "Well, the Russians..." Do not dismiss what's going on over there, just because over what we've seen in the last month and a half. Okay? You saw a line of burnt out tanks. Okay, yeah. That happened.But don't dismiss them as a military power. The policymakers are so cavalier in Washington about this. They just think that war is a video game, war is a comic book, because they don't understand it. They never studied it in college. Never studied it in grad school. A lot of them, most of them, never spent one day of their life in a US military uniform, never did one push up for one drill instructor, and they don't know what the hell they're talking about. They're more than happy to send the kid down the street over there to get his legs blown off. Just saying.Joel Bowman:Right. What's that old Creedence Clearwater Revival song? Reminds me of the Fortunate Son. I always have that lyric, "I ain't no senator's son." They aren't going to be marching off to war anytime soon. But it's interesting that you mentioned the resilience of the Russians. As if we needed to underscore that point, surely the most of the 20th century went to illuminating the point that Russians can go scorched earth, they can hunker down, they can withstand sieges. And I even saw during the last few months certain reports that they were going to be running out of energy. And that's when I thought that surely we've jumped the shark here. Russia run out of energy?Anyway, so we can maybe use that to segue-way into speaking a little more broadly about the energy markets, because it does seem that Russia have a lot of aces up their sleeve, and again, this isn't a commentary on the political situation, this is just sort of hard facts on the ground. You've written fairly extensively about a version of either a gold or methane or gold and methane-backed ruble. First of all, maybe just sort of tell us what you mean by that and then we can get into some of the ways that impacts the situation, both in Russia and in the US directly.Byron King:Okay. It goes back to what we were talking earlier about what does a real central bank look like? Russia, when they got sanctioned, they raised interest rates to 20% and they said, we're going to pay 5,000 rubles per gram of gold. Now, since then, they've said, well, we'll negotiate that 5,000, but it's still around that number. So when you do the math, a gram of gold, 31.1 grams is an ounce, you do the math, you translate it from rubles to dollars on the exchange rate or whatever, depending on what your ruble rate is, the Russians are saying that we will pay, back then it was about not quite $1,600 an ounce of gold. Today with the exchange rate of the ruble, that 5,000 rubles per gram, it's up well over $2,000 an ounce for gold.What the Russians did with that was they basically put, let's call it a bumpy floor underneath the price of gold, or, well, they backed their ruble indirectly with gold and they put a floor under the price of gold. Because if you're a paper gold trader, if you're a paper trader and you try to trade it down and really crash the price, if you get too far below that Russian gold ruble number you're going to get arbitraged, right?Joel Bowman:Yeah.Byron King:But then the next thing they did, and this is part of it, these things all fit together, the Russians said, we're only going to sell our natural gas for rubles. We want rubles. And so it's like, wait a minute. They want rubles for their gas, that they got rubles over here that they'll pay for gold. All of a sudden, you've just connected the price of natural gas, methane gas, to the price of gold. Now they're saying, over time, we're going to sell our oil for rubles as well. We just haven't got there yet because there's been a lot of contracts in the way and there's a lot of legalisms that worked out, and there's just a lot of mechanics involved in something like that. And then just the other day... And I forwarded it to you, in fact, I believe you saw it. The Russians are saying that if you sanction us, we're going to sanction you, unfriendly countries, we're not going to sell our products to you; oil, gas, uranium, which is a big part of what Russia exports, other metals; nickel, titanium, fertilizer, whole list of things.So to the extent that Russia has now said, we're not going to take your dollars or your euros or your yen or your pounds, or what have you. We're only going to take rubles for the goods that we export. And they've tied their ruble to the price of gold. Russia has just basically created a commodity global economy that is tied to the price of gold. And now, you can say, "Well, we're not going to play that game. We in the West, we're not going to play that game." Fine. Go without the Russian gas, go without the Russian oil, without the Russian titanium, without the Russian fertilizer, without the Russian you name it, without the neon gas that you use to make the computer chips, without the sapphire substrates that you need to make the computer chip, without all that stuff that the nuclear-armed gas station over there exports, you go ahead.Be yourself. We're creating, in a sense, instead of a global world, we're deglobalizing, that's for sure. Then we're creating two different economies. There's going to be this debt-based fiat economy where the central bank doesn't have the guts to raise interest rates to kill inflation. And then we've got this commodity-based economy over here where Russia says, "We have lots of oil. We have gas, we have nickel, we have palladium. You come and pay us in rubles." But now you've got to get across that barrier and "How do I get some rubles? How do I get me some of those rubles?" So, there's your commodity-based ruble, a commodity-based global currency. And then the other side of that, the big 800-pound gorilla on the other side of the room here is that here's Russia, here's China. China needs everything.They need the oil, they need the gas, they need the nickel, the palladium, you name it. Whatever Russia exports, China will take it all if they can. It's the Halford Mackinder concept of the world island on steroids. It's the Heartland theory. It's these geopolitical theories that have evolved in the last 120 years or something. You got the Alfred Mahan navalist Influence of Sea Power theory. You've got the Julian Corbett theory of sea power influencing land. You've got Halford Mackinder with his Heartland theory. You've got Nicholas Spykman in the 1940s with kind of that Rimland theory. But basically, you've put Russia with its resources and China with its industry and its people together and they've created that core world island. And China's already well on the way with its Belt and Road to kind of tie the Heartland together. Add up the numbers of people involved; China, throw in India while you're at it.Joel Bowman:I was going to say, India, yeah, it's right there.Byron King:You're looking at four and five billion people on the face of this earth. And you can have a hell of an economy when you take four billion people and you tie them all together with resources and a form of trading where people settle their accounts routinely. The West is just going to be... We're going to be on the Rimland, so to speak, on the outside.Joel Bowman:And I think are the Indians buying that sort of Urals blend at whatever discount it is now, 20% or something? There's some meaningful discount, isn't there, between West Texas, Brent and the Urals blend? It was about 20% when I last checked, but it might have come up a bit since then.Byron King:The numbers that I saw, and this was just a couple days ago I was looking at it, if the global number was $105, $110 a barrel, Russian oil was going for about a $25 to $30 discount. So let's say $75. Well, guess what? Russia produces oil at an internal cost of far less than $75. Their production cost per barrel could be... Let's say that it's $25 a barrel. It's actually less than that, but I'm just going to use it because the math is easy. But if they sell it for 75, they're still making 50 bucks a barrel.And okay, so they're leaving that $30 on the table for some Indian guy or some Chinese guy or some other global trader or whatever, that's the slot that they're going to get out of it. And there's all sorts of tricks going on where the Russian tanker will come out off shore and they'll offload their oil into another tanker and then they'll put some other oil in it from a completely different source. But as long as you got 51% not Russian oil, or only 49% Russian oil you can still sell it as just... Nobody can say, "Oh, this isn't Russian oil anymore." Only the chemists would know and even-Joel Bowman:And they're probably paid not to know at some level.Byron King:When you have a refinery to run and you've got to put the product in over here to get the product out over there sometimes you just don't worry about where it came from as long as you can check off the boxes on paper.Joel Bowman:Yeah. And you can turn the light on. Talk us through a little bit, because you and I spoke about this, we've spoken about it a couple of times now. And of course, when we first touched base after some time at our emergency winter catastrophe summit, this was back in December 2021, we can't have known all that was going to come down the pike geopolitically within just a few months from then. But you were banging the table back in late last year about Germany having surrendered a huge amount of its energy independence by sort of decommissioning its nuclear plants, and this kind of green pipe dream, and then having to revert to lignite.Now they're in a very precarious situation indeed. But just with regards to taking Russian raw materials, and you can take Ukrainian raw materials off the table for that matter as well, while we're speaking. But what does it mean for people in the West to no longer have access to, or have very restricted or very conditional access to, for example, 30% of the world's fertilizer or chicken feed or organic seed, all of the things that you just mentioned. How, when an American goes to a grocery store, three, six, nine months from now, what is the reality that is going to confront them that they might not have fully processed yet?Byron King:Well, here we are. We're talking in the early part of May and it's the spring planting season in the Northern Hemisphere. And you plant the seeds, you put the fertilizer on there, and a whole lot of other inputs and hard work and expenses over the growing season. Without the upfront fertilizer, which you might say it's available, but it's very expensive. So this reports I hear that a lot of farmers are just, we're going to use less, we're not going to use as much, whatever. Come the fall, come the harvest we're going to have lower harvests.And in terms of where the ags are going, as the commodity traders say, price of wheat, price of corn, price of everything's going to be going up, so there's going to be less just raw food being produced from the farms and the fields. The processing isn't going to be any cheaper at all, because costs of energy are high and getting higher. Diesel, which is what we run tractors on and what we run tractor trailers on and generators and things like propane or the things that farmers use to dry the grain when they harvest it, it's wet and they put it in the silo and then they pump warm air through it to dry it out, so otherwise it rots.All of those inputs are going up in price. So in terms of individuals, what are you going to do, Joel? What am I going to do, Byron? The listeners out there, the watchers, what are they going to do out there? You're going to go to the store and you're going to say, "Oh, my goodness. A gallon of milk is almost as expensive as a gallon of diesel fuel." That's a joke. It's a macabre joke. A loaf of bread is pick a number, $2, it's going to be $5. There will be things that happen. Farmers will say, "Oh, I can't afford to keep these livestock fed." So off they go to the slaughterhouse.So great, there's going to be a time when pork chops are cheap or there'll be a time when certain kinds of beef is cheap or something like that. Yeah, that's because they're killing all the cows, killing all the hogs, because can't afford to feed them. And so off they go. As this unfolds, I expect to see scarcity across the world. Parts of the world are going to experience extreme scarcity. Parts of the world that have money and have supply chains and sophisticated logistical systems, there will still be things on the shelves.But I remember about two years ago, little over two years ago, just when COVID was kicking off, I wrote an article in Whiskey & Gun Powder, and I actually said something like, we're probably going to see National Guard units guarding supermarkets to control crowds as people go in and out just to buy their food with their masks on and all their anti-COVID gear and everything, because everybody bought into that narrative as well. I certainly think that the price of food historically has always been a revolutionary point in time. When Marie Antoinette said, "If they have no bread, let them eat cake, ha ha," well, she got her head chopped off, didn't she? When you look at all those color revolutions 10 years ago, 11, 12 years ago, that started... The Tunisia revolutions-Joel Bowman:The whole Arab Spring?Byron King:Yeah, the whole Arab Spring. It started in Tunisia with a food seller who had a little cart. And he was just eking out a bare existence, a bare living. And along came the cops to rough him up and take his cart. And he killed himself and the next thing you know the country was in revolution.Joel Bowman:I think he set himself on fire.Byron King:Set himself on fire?Joel Bowman:Yeah, if I remember correctly. Yeah. I don't think many of us are wondering what's going to be on the shelves in a few months time, our favorite cereal or whatever. But for those who don't have a whole lot of wiggle room, you dip below that minimum daily caloric intake level and all of a sudden civil unrest becomes not just an attractive alternative, but the only thing you've got. And you get enough people together who feel like that and all of a sudden governments can topple and dominoes can fall.Byron King:Well, it takes us back to what we mentioned at the beginning about the US becoming an ungovernable country. Because you don't have to read too many news articles or go too far to see articles about these store lootings that go on. And certainly in big cities where people just crash into some drug store or a convenience store, whatever, and these flash mobs, and they just kind of loot everything off the shelves they can stuff into their bags and run away. And it has to do with the whole concept of how hard do we police the country anymore. Are the district attorneys going to prosecute? California has the $950 law, so that if you steal anything under $950, they won't even bother. You just walk away with it. There's that. But transform that. Imagine that transformed into supermarket mobs, where hungry people are out there saying, "Oh, no, I only have 50 bucks in my pocket and it's going to take $200 to buy the food that I need to feed the family."Next thing you know there's going to be a flash mob down at the Shop 'n Save or a flash mob down at the Vons or something like that. And you're going to have National Guard troops outside with their vests and their guns and their helmets and stuff kind of letting people in, one at a time, one at a time. It's going to be like the Soviet Union, where you'd walk into some store, you'd go and some shelf that had almost nothing on it, you'd say, "Oh yeah, I want one of those." They give you a ticket. You go and you pay for it, take the ticket back. Then the surly clerk behind the counter, okay. They wrap it up in a piece of greasy newspaper and hand it to you, something.Joel Bowman:Rock hard piece of bread and some crusty, brand imitation gruel or some such. I feel like it's not as if we haven't... Not to sound conspiratorial, but we have been conditioned, or gaslit or whatever terminology you want to use, to expect boots on the ground in certain cities to ward off so-called, euphemistically-termed “peaceful protests.” We have gotten accustomed to a lot more authoritarian overreach from the state, especially during the past couple of years of lockdowns. Who would've thought that just a couple of years ago you had told or, say, 30 months ago, if you had told an American, maybe just in heartland America, "By the way, there will be officers of the law handing out fines if you don't have your face covered in public areas. You won't be able to leave your home or your apartment. There'll be all these kind of mandates that encroach in a way that we had never experienced before." They would've thought you had lost your marbles.Byron King:It has been surreal. It has been surreal. I remember I wrote about this in Whiskey & Gun Powder two years ago where the Los Angeles police arrested somebody for paddle boarding in the Pacific Ocean.Joel Bowman:I saw that. Yeah. Amazing.Byron King:This guy is like... He's like 200 yards offshore.Joel Bowman:He couldn't be more socially distant.Byron King:He's just paddle boarding and they send out the boat police or whatever, the fish police or whatever to arrest him. But we saw it everywhere. We saw it in Britain. We saw it in Australia. We saw it in New Zealand. The cops brought out their inner whatever it is that makes people not like them. Obeying these stupid edicts from the people above, if you're walking in the park without a mask and there's nobody within a quarter mile, "Oh, we're going to cite you for that." Not too far from where I live there was a woman who was sitting in the far section of the stands in front of a sports field, watching her kid play soccer or football or something, I don't know. And some cop just sort of walks up to her and arrests her for not wearing a mask. Well, there was nobody there. And then she resists and now it's sort of like, "Oh, well, you resisted arrest so now we're really going to arrest you."Joel Bowman:Goodness gracious.Byron King:This is a country where a year ago or a year and a half ago people burned down entire sections of cities and got away with it. But at the same time, little old ladies got ticketed and hauled into court for not wearing a mask. I mean, it's crazy.Joel Bowman:It is certainly an opportunity for everybody to bring out their little Eichmann, I like to call it, their little petite fonctionnaire rule-following impulses, and get to boss a bunch of other people around. Byron, I know I'm pressing up on your time, which you've generously given to us today, but I do want to get just your take on one more issue, which just came across the news wires this morning. And I would be remiss if I didn't get your input on this. And this is news that the Biden administration have announced that they will supply bids to restock the SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I know you had been writing about that. I wrote about them having drained it not so long ago, after many senators... By the way, just a little backstory here for our listeners.It was a couple of years ago when a fashionably unpopular president suggested refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserves at, I think, something like 22 or 25 bucks a barrel. When prices are low, you're supposed to buy, according to conventional wisdom. Anyway, that was quashed because it was marketed to the public as an unwarranted and unearned subsidy to big oil and big gas. And so you had people like Senator Chuck Schumer skiting and gloating that he had put the kibosh on refilling the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And then we saw late last year, and then earlier again, in 2022, the Biden administration tap that Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And now with prices way back up over 100 bucks, he's talking about... Well, not just talking about, he's giving the markets advance notice that he will be purchasing something in the order of 60 million barrels.Then there'll be three tranches, so it'll be 180 million barrels, thereby sending the price even higher in expectation. It reminds me a little bit of Gordon Brown's Brown Bottom when he told the market in advance that he was going to be unloading half his majesty's gold coffers and that way tank the price in advance of the auctions. But is this just more unintended consequences? Is it stupidity? Is it arrogance? Is it just something that we're not seeing? Is it genius in the disguise of idiocy? What are we looking at here?Byron King:I actually hope that it's not stupidity because if it's stupidity, these people really are pathetically stupid. I had an old professor who used to talk about the too dumb to live rule, the guy who crawls underneath the bus to get his hat after it blows off his head and the bus pulls out and squashes him. Well, some people are just too dumb to live.Joel Bowman:Another Darwin Award contender, yeah.Byron King:Yeah, really. You've summarized it very well. My real worry is that these people actually do understand what they're doing. We're going to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for some political spectacle. We're going to say, "Oh, we're selling the oil. We're going to sell the oil and drive the price down." Of course, it didn't drive the price down. And of course that particular oil, those barrels that have been coming out of the SPR, most of them have been going on a tanker and sent off to foreign destinations. They're not going to some refinery in Houston or some refinery in Philadelphia, some refinery in Long Beach so that Americans can put it in their tank and burn it up as they drive around. No, no, no, no, no.Most of that oil went overseas. It still is. But here we are, we're going to refill the reserve. My solution, my suggestion to that is that what the US government should do is what it has long done. It should take a royalty, what's called a payment in kind, from oil companies that are producing oil on US federal leases; federal lands, federal offshore. Okay, let's say you're an offshore oil production platform out in the Gulf of Mexico and you produce, pick a number, you produce 10,000 barrels a day. Well, your royalty to the government's 12.5%. But rather than write a check to the government, give us 12.5% of the oil that comes out and that'll go to the salt domes in Texas or Louisiana. That's what they ought to do.And that way there's no real cash burn that goes. But for the US government to just go out and say, for whoever it is that's going to buy this, Department of the Interior, the Defense Logistics Agency, whoever, to say, "Oh, yes, we'll write you guys checks and we're going to bring in tanker loads of oil, from where? From Nigeria, from Saudi, from whatever and we're going to pump it into... It's just crazy economics. And it actually brings us back to the very beginning of our talk today, which is the US has this incredible debt. And our federal bank, our central bank, is doing these tiny, little baby half percent steps to address the inflation problem.And it's all just window dressing, it's all narrative and it's not even good narrative anymore. It's kind of like really dumb comic book narrative. It's dumb comic book governance, governance by imbecility or something like that, policymaking by imbecility. I'd like to think that Winston Churchill was right when he says America will always do the right thing after it's tried everything else. Maybe we will, but for now just invest the best you can. Go for hard assets, energy, mines and minerals, gold, silver, land, ag, real stuff. Companies with real factories full of smart people that make real things, that kind of stuff.Joel Bowman:Yeah. Well, speaking of that, Byron, tell our readers and our listeners or our viewers, depending on the medium in which they're imbibing this, your insights and expertise, tell everyone where they can follow you, where they can get your latest research and keep up to date with your thinking as America tries everything else but the best thing on that long road.Byron King:Well, you'll find me writing a periodic article in a St. Paul research pub called Lifetime Income Report. And you'll sometimes find me here at Bonner Private Research. I know that I promised the readers a couple of times that I'd give them a few updates, and I'm behind on that so I do need to catch up. I am going to be at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference in Vancouver in May, 16 and 17, I'm giving a talk on the 17th. That'll probably be on YouTube. And I sometimes write for an outfit called Investor Intel, which is up in Toronto. I send them an article every now and then. So I get around. But I certainly enjoy talking with you, talking with the old hands from the olden days of Agora, because everything has changed and transformed so much.Joel Bowman:Indeed, it has.Byron King:I'm around and I'm not going anywhere. I'm not writing Whiskey & Gun Powder anymore, which was a publisher's decision. And it's too bad because I kind of miss that format.Joel Bowman:Yeah, I love that. One of my long time favorite reads from the Whiskey Rebellion onward. Well, Byron, as you know, your insights and expertise always have a grateful home at Bonner Private Research. Whenever you want to flick us over an article, we're more than happy to forward it on to our readers and listeners. And so on that note, do check out our Substack page. Again, it's bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com, and I'll include all the links to Byron's various writings. And he is a man of letters, so they are prolific and they can be found in many different places. So I'll put links to all of those down below where you can follow on with Byron's work. And Byron, I think I got to about a quarter of the things that I wanted to ask you today, but maybe that just means we've got many more productive conversations in the near future.[Ed. Note: See more of Byron's work at St. Paul Research, right here. Also his many, many memorable columns at Whiskey & Gunpowder.]Byron King:What it means is we have to do this again, huh?Joel Bowman:Outstanding. Byron King, thank you so much for your time today, mate. I really appreciate it. Until next time.Byron King:Thank you, Joel. And good luck to everyone out there.Thank you for reading Bonner Private Research. This post is public, so feel free to share it with friend and enemy alike...© 2022 Bonner Private Research, Carrick Road, Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, copying, or distribution, in whole or in part, is prohibited without permission from the publisher. Information contained herein is obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. It is not designed to meet your personal circumstances–we are not financial advisors and do not give personalized financial advice. The opinions expressed here are those of the publisher and are subject to change without notice. It may become outdated and there is no obligation to update any such information. Investments should be made only after consulting with your financial advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company or companies in question. You shouldn't make any decision based solely on what you read here. Neither Bonner Private Research nor its employees and writers receive any compensation for securities or investments covered herein. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/subscribe

Our image of leaders is often of someone giving orders or pontificating about what is supposed to happen.  Our leader monologue is always one way traffic and we may be laying down golden advice in English or our imperfect Japanese, but is it being received, understood, digested, accepted or employed?  In this modern, stressful, super busy life, we give the team a rapid burst from our content firehose and then we move on, because there is a lot for us to do.  Subsequently, we discover what we wanted wasn't done at all or was done incorrectly or was taken off on a tangent we never imagined possible.    This is more common than it should be and we must be cautious when we are engaging in linear communication with our teams.  The content is often published rules and regulations, policies and procedural guidelines.  We may have developed Standard Operation Procedures which outline how things are supposed to be done.  We send out our memos, emails, text messages using various broadcast media. The good thing is it is written down,  so for Japanese team members, it is easier to absorb than rapid fire conversation. These are some typical ways we launch our missives into the void and we are never sure if people actually read, noted or understood what we were saying.   We are the boss right, so they have to take careful note of what we say, especially when we take the time to get key messages in front of everyone.  We are busy people, so this type of activity by its nature will be reserved for the most important content.  Therefore, everyone should know that communication hierarchy and treat these contributions carefully and thoughtfully.  Except they don't always do that, do they.  Why?   Like their bosses, they are drowning in information, are subject to a constant bombardment of emails, messages on Teams or Slack, etc., updates on social media or from any of the other burdensome abominable conduits piling on the workload and filling up every minute of the day.  And it was in English.   So yes, we have to be articulate, concise and clear in our communication but we also have to use questions to clarify understanding and operate at the highest levels of listening capability.  Asking clarifying questions is relatively easy, but are we actually good listeners?  We assume we are, simply because we are too busy to pay any attention to how we listen. Let's explore the five levels of listening and see how we stack up.   Ignore. We might be thinking, “I never ignore the team member when they are speaking”.   Is that true though?  The person may say something which triggers a strong thought in our mind. We are now completely diverted from what they are saying, to what we are thinking.  In effect, we are no longer paying any attention to them, because we are consumed by our own thoughts.  Effectively, we are ignoring them.   Pretend. In this case, we are polite, considerate and very boss like.  We are nodding our head and looking like we are concentrating, but we may not be fully taking in what we are being told.  Again, our mind may be busily crafting what we are going to say in our clever response to their points.  Or we may have been given an indication from the team member about something that interests them and we are getting ready to give them the benefit of our genius ideas and brilliant experiences.  If we hear something that sounds like resistance to our idea, that gets an instant counter response.  We are now mentally consumed with getting our evidence ready, so that we can go into an argument with them.  We want to sort them out, get them to fly right and get them to agree with our “correct” opinion.   Selective. Bosses have a highly tuned ability to hear agreement with their opinion and may miss key information.  Our listening skills are directed only to hear a “yes” or a “no” response regarding our ideas and nothing else from subordinates.   There may be key information attached to that “yes” or “no”, but we are certainly not listening for that.  We are filtering what we hear, according to our interests and preferences.  Effectively, we are only partially listening to the person.  We are standing right there in front of them, but they do not have our full focus.  My wife assures me I am doing this at home too and she is probably right, so more work to be done here.   Attentive. In this case we are giving the team member our full attention.  We are not filtering for signs of agreement or resistance.  We are not cutting them off, finishing their sentences or redirecting them mid-sentence. We are patiently and politely waiting for them to finish what they want to say.  We then paraphrase back to them what we heard. We are not shortchanging them, thinking what we are going to say, because we are fully absorbed by what they are saying.   Empathetic. This is the highest form of listening, where we are listening with our eyes as well as our ears.  We are reading what is going on behind the words.  We are conscious of what is not being said and we are listening to the tone of how we are being told the information.  We are trying to meet the person “in the conversation going on in their mind”.   Churchillian long bursts of our brilliance may make us feel good, I certainly enjoy giving them, but as leaders we should be aiming for more interactive communication with our team.  We need to have them respond to what we have said to ensure we are on the same wavelength and that we have actually heard each other correctly.  If we discover there is a gap in understanding, then that reflection allows us to correct it on the spot.  “I never said that”, “That isn't what I meant”, “No, it is the other way around”, are all exchanges we want to avoid having to engage in.  When we are each speaking in another language, the opportunities for misunderstanding are rife.  Both sides never have enough vocabulary to completely frame entire thoughts and communicate the subtleties of the language in its original form.  English is very confronting and direct and Japanese is often vague and circuitous. Checking for understanding becomes obligatory.   However, even the act of checking is no guarantee.  If I don't completely understand what I am being told in Japanese, I may be smiling, nodding and looking like I get it, because it is tiresome and embarrassing to admit my linguistic skills are not perfect.  My Japanese team members do the same when we operate in English, so the linguistic bear traps are many.  We need to have our team members feed back to us what we think they understand, to see if it is a match.  Empathetic listening and habituated checking for understanding have to become our firm habits in Japan.

Laura Dodsworth, author of the fantastic book: "A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic" joins the show to discuss masks and how global governments used fear to ensure compliance with mandates. You can find Laura’s Substack here and her incredibly important book here. You can also follow her on Twitter here.The podcast is also available through Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Full transcript is available from the web version of Substack.Ian Miller (00:00):Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the unasked podcast. We've got another very special guest today. Her name's Laura Dodsworth she's the author of the book, a state of fear, and she writes the Laura Dodsworth Substack. Everybody should go check that out. But so Laura, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.Laura Dodsworth (00:17):Oh, thank you for having me. I can't think of a better podcast really you know, fit wise for me. So it's fantastic. I loved your book.Ian Miller (00:26):Yeah. Well, thank you. And I, I really enjoyed speaking with you, so I'm glad we're getting to do this again. My, my first question for you was kind of about your initial reaction to it. And, and you wrote about it in the book that the virus you were initially seemingly were a little concern because it's something new you weren't familiar with and, but you kind of seemed a little bit more, fairly measured in your response, but then when Boris Johnson gave his speech saying everybody needs to stay home, we're locking down. That's you know, we're moving in that direction in terms of policy, it seemed like you kind of reacted a bit more viscerally. So why do you think it was that his speech in particular kind of do that way? Maybe even more so than the virus did?Laura Dodsworth (01:06):Mm, yeah, isn't it funny? I think that there was just a lot of fear in the air and really everybody was subjected to some fears. It's just which fears you yourself are susceptible to. Now, I did have some fear about the virus and, you know, I remember up on tined food, I'm a, a single parent. And I thought, well, if I'm, if I'm terribly ill, how will my children cook? Because we were being told we couldn't leave the house at all. Mm-Hmm . And so the sort of normal recourse to help like family and friends wouldn't be available. So I had some nerves and my children still tease me about the fact that I asked them to wash hands when they came indoors for the first couple of weeks. . But my my approach is often to sort of deep dive and research and, and look things up for myself.Laura Dodsworth (01:56):And from very early, I was reading up on different epidemiologists and scientists, views of the virus. So rather a lot of unknowns at the beginning, there were also very respected voices urging caution on the IFFR for instance professor Johnny and Artis and contextualizing epidemics and pandemics. And I don't think I had an out of scale fear of it. And you see here in the UK, the initial response was that we would cocoon the elderly and a certain amount of herd immunity would build up. And then there was this sudden U-turn and I think I found the U-turn discombobulating. I just couldn't believe the address to the nation. On the 23rd of March, it was very stern. It was really going for a wartime vibe, you know, war on a war, on a virus. And for some reason I fast forwarded mentally very quickly, not that night, but very quickly into what the consequences could be.Laura Dodsworth (03:06):And to be honest, watching those fears become fulfilled, you know, to see them on furl over time has been quite horrific. So the longer lot I went on it was, it was obvious that we would have high inflation because we were quantitative easing our way through this. I was surprised that people were so adamant that children were resilient and children would be okay, and shutting schools and masking children would be fine because clearly it hasn't been. And I felt very frightened about the consequences of the very extreme, absolutely unprecedented actions we were taking. I think what confounded that as well was, as soon as you stepped outside your, your daily allowed exercise, people were really different with each other, just, you know, where I live just semi country side. They would hop to the side of country lanes or pavements to avoid each other.Laura Dodsworth (04:06):And it, it created that additional fear in the air. So for me, the fear wasn't of the virus, I thought it was strange that people were so frightened of a virus out in the open. For me, the fear was how easily fear was communicated and how manipulated people could be and what the effect of lockdown would be. And I did, I did feel it viscerally that first night of the speech. I had that freeze response. I felt everything drained from my body. It was, it was a very, very wobbly, shaky feeling. I've always thought I've got the most useless fear response. this is not the first time this has happened to me, that I drain and become, become useless. And interestingly, there is a lot of shame with this fear response because you know, it's people feel like they should have been able to run away or, or to fight, I guess I'm a freezer.Ian Miller (05:03):Hmm. Did you also mentioned in the book about a section about his body language during that speech, and did you know, is that something that you noticed as well that he, it, you know, I think it was phrased something like that. It was almost like a hostage situation. Was that something that you noticed when you were watching it or was that something that just kind of came up with in conversations with people?Laura Dodsworth (05:24):No. The whole thing felt completely weird to me and it threw me and it is part of what scared me. His words about the virus did not scare me the extreme semi Churchillian and authoritarian language SC me. And it was that combined with this very staccato, peculiar body language, there was something about it that just felt off. And that's why I thought it would be a good place to start the book. So I consulted with forensic psychologists, somebody who interviews people who have lied to the authorities and tried to cover their traces and somebody who also works with body language to see what they made of it. And actually it's more that their professional opinions concurred with the feeling that I'd had that is his body language. Wasn't congruent with his words. There are parts when he's more relaxed, cause he, he appears to believe what he's saying. And there are parts where he's not comfortable with what he's saying at all, what that means exactly. Who knows whether he was lying, whether he just felt uncomfortable, maybe with delivering some very bad news to the nation. This is a man who likes to be liked and to deliver the news about lockdown would be a very difficult message for any statesman.Ian Miller (06:45):Yeah, it's interesting. And it's, it's one of those like important moments of history and, and it's really important I think, to kind of go back and look and see and what they were thinking and saying at the time and how they, how they were saying it. Another thing I think that we, we kind of both bring up a lot is what a poor job the media has done with with regards to COVID. And, and I know you wrote about it, how they kind of gave a lot of softball questions to, to Boris Johnson or to other health leaders which was definitely the case of the United States as well with certain governors that were not Ron DeSantis from Florida. So why do you think that that was a consistent feature across both countries? Like what, what was it about the journalism profession that was so ready and willing to go along with, with lockdowns and all these other policies?Laura Dodsworth (07:29):Oh, it was just so depressing. I had to stop watching the press briefings, cause I felt like shouting at the TV to, you know, tell the journalists off for not asking more probing questions. We had questions like, do you think we'll be able to have Christmas? Or can we hug our relatives? It was truly pathetic. all the questioning came from within the framework, not outside of the framework. So things like the, you know, the, the assumption to the model weren't challenged, the ingests were never questioned the data wasn't questioned. The presumptions weren't questioned. The only question was, are we doing enough? Are we doing it early enough? Hard enough, soon enough. I think that there are it's multifactorial. There are probably a number of reasons for this. I think activists, journalism is a real problem. The response to COVID has been very partisan among journalists.Laura Dodsworth (08:25):You know, if Trump said something had to be wrong, you know, orange man, bad wrong. And here, you know, there's also a lot of Tory bashing. So anybody who doesn't like the conservatives or didn't like Brexit might taking opposing position and give their conservatives a hard time for their handling. Also, you know, it was a pandemic, things were happening fast. There isn't a lot of time in newsrooms to consider things carefully. It's been obvious to me as well that some journalists aren't very Nuer or scientifically minded. Now I'm not saying that I'm especially Nuer or scientifically minded. I had to work harder to it. And where I didn't understand, I I've asked maths with friends to help me with, with stuff. And I think there's a big problem about click bait, journalism fear, fear cells, better than sex. It turns out, and there is a way in which remuneration is very, at least subtly connected to those clicks. There is one there's one broad sheet journalist I interviewed anonymously who explained that there remuneration is linked to the success of their articles. So, you know, the most lurid headline, the most fear driven headline will also generate the most clicks and views. And then journalists are compensated for that. Everybody likes their likes on, on Twitter. You know, Twitter's an important habitat for journalists too. And you'll see that you'll see broadcasting, print, journalists break their thoughts and stories on Twitter.Ian Miller (10:04):Yeah.Laura Dodsworth (10:05):So I think, I think it's multifactorial and, and there's another really important aspect, which is off com that's the the regulator for broadcast media here to guidance saying that broadcast journalists should be careful not to go against the government advice cause it might create public harm.Ian Miller (10:29):It's, it's crazy. It, it's insane to think about that. That a regulator was telling journalists not to question the government. I mean, that's just mind boing. It's, that's literally their whole job, you know, it's seemingly that's their whole job. But you, you mentioned how the fear seems to sell and, and that was a section I really enjoyed of your book was where there's a lot of these quotes that you, you bring up from the media with these kind of outrageous, at least looking back, they're outrageous headlines that are very obviously fear driven. And it, it seemed like, and let me know if I'm wrong, but it seemed like the vast majority of people, especially in the UK and in the us bought into that would you have, have expected that people would buy it pre COVID or were you surprised that people weren't skeptical? I, I mean, I, my personal sense as an outsider is that a lot of, you know, Britain, there's a lot of skepticism towards these things, but it seemed like that kind of went away recently.Laura Dodsworth (11:17):Oh no, I think we've got a very, he healthy, skeptical community here. I'm gonna have to say, but I think you can't underestimate something like this off con guidance. You know, it really chilled the inclination of the media to explore theories. And the broadcast media is very important and also big tech were sensory views that went against the world health organization or governments. And we gotta to remember that their positions changed on things. Now, if you know, social media like say YouTube or Twitter, we we're going to hold up the world health organization view at any one given time think about things they said during this pandemic, there's no human to human transmission. That's one thing world health organization said or it didn't originate from a lab or it's not airborne. Well, you know, the, the advice and the, the thoughts change constantly.Laura Dodsworth (12:08):So it's very, you know, you have to have debate and allow questions. And this is, this is part of, of science to, to ask questions and challenge hypotheses. There shouldn't be a faith in it. You know, the situation we had here is where the, the state broadcast or the BBC and other broadcasters couldn't really challenge the state orthodoxy because of off con guidance. So that's, you know, that's part of the, the media landscape. Now publications, which have had a, a good epidemic were probably more skeptical, such as the Telegraph and the spectator. They've both seen their subscriptions grow substantially during this time. And they, they have online subscriptions as well. They have a subscription model, which personally I, I'm a really big fan of, you know, you're gonna pay for your news one way or the other you're gonna pay via ads or sponsorship or the sale of your data, or you're gonna pay through individual copy sales or subscription.Laura Dodsworth (13:05):I think subscription is a really good model for providing sound journalism. So we have had a, a mix and, you know, that chapter referring to my book that is called headlines. So it's really some of the very worst examples. It, I mean, it was horrific in a way, keeping the tally of it through the year. People were told to be frightened of literally everything from ice cream to semen. There wasn't anything you couldn't catch COVID from. And there wasn't any aspect of your health that could, it could damage. I dunno how much people believed it all. I, I mean, I really don't know in my own little bubble, I, I brought quite a lot of skepticism to it, but I think there's something about Britain, you know, where we're definitely at home of liberal thought and I nation, and I, I think there's actually been a lot of pushback in this country about things such as vaccine mandates, for instance, and vaccine passports, a very successful political pushback and some political rebellion. And I think overall there has been a good amount of skepticism, but it's very difficult to know in your own bubble. And of course, this is one aspect of, of lockdown where atomized we talk, you know, during those really crucial peak times, we didn't talk to other people as much in real life. Whereas you might settle some ideas in the par or, you know, by the water cooler at work. We were all at home and really engaging with our screens a lot more.Ian Miller (14:30):Mm-Hmm . Yeah. and so you, you brought up kind of the vaccine mandates and, and that there was a little bit, it, more of a success successful pushback. And I did want to ask you about that as well, because you, you recently wrote a SubT stack kind of to talking about how masks were essentially the idea was to soften the public up for plan B, which was essentially vaccine passports among other things. But it seemed like they, you know, were, were, do you think that they were successful in that attempt to soften people up, but, or did, were they, were the people willing to kind of fight back against, was that like a bridge too far for them at that point?Laura Dodsworth (15:03):No people dawned their masks again. See, that was very interesting. That's some, somebody who works on a COVID task force within government contacted me to say they would like to talk to me anonymously about developments and they, they shared some documents with me and we talked, and that was a report of that conversation really. And the reason those contacted me is I'd written about this already in the Telegraph, one of our national newspapers, when the government brought out its its winter plan, it had plan a and plan B. And for me it was obvious that the, the whole point of these plans were to, to lay the groundwork for what they really want to do. And the government advice were saying, yes, that's correct. Masks have been reintroduced to soften you up for the next stage. It's it's like a, you know, a form of psychological technique.Laura Dodsworth (16:01):And the interesting thing about that person that contacted me and really some of the most severe criticism of the government is it has come from government advisors. You know, some, some quite shocking accusations, really. I mean, one of the, one of the behavioral psychologists who spoke to Mely anonymously did warn about creeping authoritarianism in government, that the pandemic can be used to grab power and drive things through that wouldn't happen otherwise. And another told me that psychology is, is a, is a weapon without a psychology without vaccine psychology is your best weapon and said, psychology has had a really good epidemic actually. And another told me that the use of fear had been dystopian. And I think this is part of the reason that the works and it's had such a good audience it's because there are people who are close to government who report with the techniques with the psychological with the games, with the behavioral psychology approach. And that's why they wanted to talk to me anonymously to, to help expose it.Ian Miller (17:12):Yeah. Well, I I'm, I'm glad that they did because it is, I think it's very, very important, but you know, I, I, I focus a lot on mass. We're just kind of talking about it. And so I wanted to, to get your thoughts, you know, what was, what did you think of mass as the mandates started to roll out in the UK and especially there, because I feel like early on maybe even more so than the us, a lot of the, the kind of health leaders in the UK were downplaying masks and saying that they weren't going to make a difference and what gonna work.Laura Dodsworth (17:41):Oh, that's exactly right. I mean, you had Fauci, didn't you say that masks wouldn't actually prevent transmission. They might just stop a few droplets. And we had the, the, the same here from multiple public health officials, senior public health officials. And then there was this U-turn wasn't there. Now, one of the MPS I interviewed for the book told me that the sec of state for health and social care told the MP that masks were introduced to encourage confidence when the first lockdown ended. The problem was that the high street didn't bounce back. When the lockdown ended, people didn't go and hit the shops and hit the high street in the way the government had expected. And so masks were supposedly reportedly introduced as a way to give people confidence. The problem is they turned people into walking billboards for danger, and it became obvious that masks offer another kind of signal known a select committee hearing.Laura Dodsworth (18:48):That's when MPS get to ask experts for their almost like witness statements for their opinions David Halpin, who is the head of the behavioral insights team, that's the nudge unit referred to masks as being a signal that masks be useful as a signal, as well as the underlying evidence that they reduced transmission. I think it's really important to note that there are people in government ministers, the head of the nudge unit and behavioral psychologists science for my book who referred to masks primarily as serving the purpose of being a signal. Now, how did I feel about it? I hated it. I couldn't actually believe that the uptake was as high as it was mm-hmm cause it was clear that there wasn't any new scientific evidence to justify the use of cloth and surgical masks in the community to reduce transmission. And I think it's incredibly onerous to make a law, to compel people, to dress a certain way without evidence, because really without evidence, it is just a form of dress.Laura Dodsworth (19:54):It's not PPE mm-hmm . And I think over time, the symbolism of masks has really changed while they were signals to indicate that we were in a pandemic, they've become something else. It's, it's fading now it's receding now, but they've really become signals of morale and virtue, you know, good compliant, virtuous people wear masks, your mask shows you care for other people. And if you don't wear a mask, what does that mean? That you don't care? And so that's, that's the thought behind it. Now, there also was quite a lot of shaming attached to masks. Don't CRE to Dick who's the head of the, the met police said that police wouldn't be enforcing the mask mandates and shops. And instead she was trusting on the public to shame each other for not own masks. Now in this country, we did actually have exemptions.Laura Dodsworth (20:45):For instance, let's say you had a physical disability that might prevent you from wearing a mask or even if the idea of wearing a mask could cause you significant stress. You didn't have to wear one. So you can imagine that could in, that could include perhaps people who have been raped, who might commonly have a problem with stomach covering the mouth or veterans with post-traumatic stress to I've spoken to two veterans with PTSD that make masks very difficult. There's lots of reasons people could have for not wearing a mask. So we always had exemptions. So the idea that we had the head of London police saying she wanted the public to shame each other was quite staggering. Going back to, again, the head of the UK's nudge unit, he also talked about the, that the British public would do most of the heavy lifting in socially enforcing masks. And this is all part of the behavioral psychology approach to use that kind of herd mentality so that we are really policing each other and making, you know, enforcing the mask querying.Ian Miller (21:45):Yeah. And, and the nudge unit thing I wanted to, to ask you about as well, because, you know, I think in the us, most people listeners are probably in the us. That's not something that we've been familiar with. I mean, I've read about it obviously because of your book and, and other sources, but you know, can you explain to people what exactly the nudge unit is and, and how they've been operating during the pandemic?Laura Dodsworth (22:07):Yes. Sure. So you will also have nudge in the us, you do, you just don't have something called a nudge unit. you need to find out where your nudges are lodged within government, because nudge is really part of how governments do their business now. So the nudge unit is the col political term for the behavioral insights team. And that was set up in the UK in, oh, I'm gonna get the date right now. I hope 2011 under the David Cameron department. And originally it was part of strategy and policy. And then it spun out to become its own unit. And it was one third owned by the government. It's one third by an organization called nester and one third by the nudge unit directors. So that's lovely set up a expense, but it's ended up making some of them really quite rich and the idea behind behavioral psychology and nudge is that it's all about helping us to become better people and model citizens without having to resort to new laws.Laura Dodsworth (23:17):In fact, there's a great quote from cast Einstein, who you probably have heard of as he, he held from your side of the pond mm-hmm and he said, let think I got the quote just here. Yes. So Kas Einstein is a famous behavioral psychologist, scientist. He's a famous behavioral scientist. And he said by knowing how people think we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society. So isn't it great. There are people who know what's best for you. Now, cast Einstein was quite close to the Obama administration. I believe he still works for the us government now. So behavior, the behavioral insights team of it exported their company around the world. They have offices around the world, but other, other countries too, have nudge units embedded in government. And even beyond the nudge unit, there are behavioral scientists in other government departments too. I believe there are 54 in the treasury, in the UK governments and also in government agencies, you know such as the UK HSA and also the NHS in the cabinet office itself, they're everywhere.Ian Miller (24:34):Hmm. That's in, it's very interesting and it's kind of scary and that's, that's, I also wanted to, to get your thoughts on that because you know, do you think that this is something that will, the public will be more aware of now? I mean, it it's obviously been around for 10 years or a little more, but you know, this, it feels like this was the most concerted effort to, to deploy that kind of behavioral psychology to get people to comply with, with lockdowns and mandates. So do you think the population will be more aware of it and more skeptical towards these kinds of, of ideas now? Or is it gonna be continued and, you know, accepted going forward?Laura Dodsworth (25:06):I think it's interesting that well, I do, I do think, I like to think, I hope that my book has moved the dial. I mean, it was out early, it was out in may 21, and it was really important to me to, I mean, in a way, lay ego aside and get it out early so that it would move the dial because I, I could have turned out a more, a more complete and more perfect book had waited another year, but I really wanted people to be aware. And they obviously are. Now there was a poll that was conducted this week in the UK by a grassroots organization called recovery. And, you know, they used a, a reputable polling company to do this with a representative sample of the British public. And they were fi they were trying to find out what people think of the COVID inquiry terms of reference.Laura Dodsworth (25:54):So the government is gonna hold an inquiry into its handling of the pandemic, but there are quite a few things missing from the terms of reference, you know, most, most famously people talking about the fact that children aren't specifically mentioned in the inquiry mean, obviously we have to look at what lockdown and school closures did specifically to children. Now, this poll by recovery found that 42% of the British public want the inquiry to consider the use of behavioral psychology in influencing public behavior. And I think that's incredible because before the I before the pandemic, the issue of nudge rarely, rarely hit the headlines. And although my books had some very favorable press and media coverage in certain outlets, it's been completely ignored by others. So it was on the Sunday times best sell list for four weeks. It's sold really well. It's had reviews from really respect to public figures, such as law assumption.Laura Dodsworth (26:55):Number of times it's been mentioned by the BBC, or I've been invited for interview zero, you know, it's, it's interesting, there's been a real I really tend to ignore nudge and the fear Mon growing on use behavioral psychology in some areas, but not in others. So the fact that 42% of British people want this specifically to be looked at in the inquiry, I think is incredibly hopeful. It's the best news I've had for ages in . However, I don't think the government will want to look at it. Cause I think the enactors are the policy, you know, that plans deliberately frighten people to make them comply with the lockdown is a really difficult charge to answer. Yeah, most people would say that frightening people beyond the scale of a threat is quite egregious. It's quite sinister, quite insidious, and it's also anti-democratic to subliminally influence people and frighten them in to doing what you want them to do. You know, furthermore, they're still nudging all the time. You know, depending how much time we got to send this interview, but there are other areas where nudge is being applied now to not just towards policy goals, to soften us up for tough, tough policies. It's incredibly convenient and effective for government rather than passing laws and having all the tricky and convenient debates.Ian Miller (28:08):Mm-Hmm , if you can get people to do what you want without having to force them to do it, it's theoretically it's better for them. And it's kind of the implications of that are really, really horrifying when you think about it in detail mm-hmm I did wanna ask you one, one more thing about kind of a data related question and it was, it was mentioned, I believe in your, in your Subec about masks making the comparison between England and Scotland and, and I've done this recently with, you know, you can post the charts showing that England without mandates is doing better than Scotland with, with mask mandates in place. And you show, you said it was, you know, essentially the trial and it showed that really matter. So how are people able to kind of continue to get away with ignoring these comparisons? It just, it feels inarguable at this point, doesn't it? Laura Dodsworth (28:56):Oh, in you'd think so. I wish I had an answer to that because literally just today there, there were calls for mask mandates to be in IED because cases are so high in England. And like you I'm thinking, excuse me, would you look at Scotland? They haven't dropped their mask mandates and they've had higher case numbers in England. Yeah. So although there might be other confounding factors, there's no clear argument in favor of masks here. It's ridiculous us. And you know, the number of cases has recently just peaked and it's peaked despite the fact that we haven't reintroduced masks or lockdowns or any other restrictions. So that kind of illusion of control that people might have been, you know, hanging onto before it's got to be dispelled by the fact that a wave has, has peaked and is declining all on its own.Ian Miller (29:51):Yep. Yeah. It's it seems so obvious, but it, it's still so hard to get people to to accept that. BecauseLaura Dodsworth (29:59):There's such vision reminders. That's the thing, because it seems to be common sense. It's covering your mouth where you breathe or you cough, you know, it feels intuitive and it feels like common sense for people. Plus it's something that they can do. It gives them the illusion of control, which is why they were introduced in the first place.Ian Miller (30:17):Yeah. But it,Laura Dodsworth (30:19):An illusion,Ian Miller (30:20):It is an illusion, but it's very hard to convince people of that. And ironically, you know, they can't use the nudge unit to convince people that it was all an illusion in the first place. Laura Dodsworth (30:28):Well, absolutely. Now I, I have had an MP say to me, do you think we need a reverse nudge plan? I said, no, I couldn't possibly agree with that. What we need is a honesty from now mm-hmm and forever not gonna happen. But the, you know, the, the problem with using fear is how you reverse from it. You do see some signs of reverse nudging now. So a little bit of challenging of the data. So while a year ago, you would not have been able to challenge or drill down on hospitalization easily, not without insight sources, which, which I had, and some journalists that the Telegraph had, and you were kind of breaking the story that the overall hospitalization figure we had was including people who were admitted hospital with COVID and had symptoms. It also included people who went to hospital with something entirely different and were tested and found to have COVID.Laura Dodsworth (31:21):And it also include people who called COVID hospital. So it's important to know about all of those subgroups people, but the reason the number was presented as one big number was for effect mm-hmm . Now what they've done this year is say, ah, but this number includes incidental hospitalization. So you have people who hospitalized with COVID and from COVID and they're different things. So this is what I'd call a little reverse, nudge, a little bit of honesty about the granular detail of the data in order to start dispelling fear, because you can't go back and say, well, we were exaggerating before.Ian Miller (31:57):Yeah. Well, do you, and do you think that part of that also was, was to show, okay, well, you know, we've had this incredible vaccination roll out huge amount of uptake. If hospitalization numbers are so high, people are gonna start doubting how well these are working and not potentially going to get a booster or a, you know, they're rolling up four shots now, or fish shots down the road. Do you think that that played a part in that as well?Laura Dodsworth (32:20):Yeah, I mean, absolutely because I think people oversold what the, what the vaccines could do and were four at the beginning which I think is very unfortunate. There was never any evidence in the trial data that they would stop death or reduce transmission. Those were hopes there was an evidence. But you know, indeed if they have reduced severity of symptoms and reduced hospitalization, then that has to be shown in the figures. Otherwise it would look like it hadn't worked. So you're right. The data has to correspond, although have been enormous amounts of inconsistencies in data at various times.Ian Miller (32:57):Yeah. looking at, at the UK's reports on those occasionally it's it's you can see there's a shift when they started putting in a little add-on there saying, you know, we we've calculated vaccine efficacy ourselves. So look at our numbers. Don't go look at the rates that we've posted down further on. Those are those can't be interpreted properly. That that was very entertaining. Well,Laura Dodsworth (33:16):I mean, that, that is difficult because the HSA has published really transparent data about vaccine efficacy. And it's quite hard to know what it means. Cuz for instance, at the moment, if you look at the report, it would appear that the triple vaccinated are much more likely to be effective COVID than the UN vaccinated. But this is, it depends which population estimate you use. Cause there are different ways of estimating the overall population. And so that's what all those disclaimers are about. I would have personally, no idea mm-hmm which population estimate is the right one to use and therefore what it shows about vaccine efficacy.Ian Miller (33:52):Yeah. It's it is a really hard question to answer. I don't think we'll ever get a, a perfect answer and it might be totally different between different populations even as well. So but I wanted to ask you as well you know, the UK has pretty much dropped almost every restriction and, and it kind of seemed like it happened pretty quickly after going from, you know, mass mandate or softening up to plan B to almost essentially back to normal, just a matter of months. Mm-Hmm so do you think that kind of Boris Johnson's political issues that happened around that timeframe that kind of came up the party gate, things like that, did that play a part in it? You think?Laura Dodsworth (34:26):Yes. Two things party gate was an absolute gift. I mean, nobody E everybody likes fair play don't they, nobody likes hypocrisy. So the idea that while people were suffering really, really strict restrictions, which came enormous personal that the number 10 Downing street was hosting parties was so unpalatable and that had to has in the end of the restrictions here, but also Omicron. So although our own public health officials didn't want to concur with the view coming out South Africa, that it was milder and needing to feel of hospitalizations. Ultimately it has proven to be milder and like, so I think it's the combined effective party gate massive gift and on micron.Ian Miller (35:14):Yeah. Well, I guess we have one thing to be grateful for with being hypocritical about not follow our own rules. So what, what's the end game for kind of the opposite side of the coin, which is countries like, you know, Australia, New Zealand and others, you know, Chinas and these incredibly strict lockdowns now and they're, they seemingly are okay with having kind of endless pandemic policies. You know, what, what do you think is the end game for those places?Laura Dodsworth (35:40):They'll have to reverse out of it because it's not sustainable. The, the social, the health, the economic destruction can't be, can't be sustained. You can't keep countries lodge down. I think, you know, zero, zero, that zero COVID is being revealed as the absolute nightmare that it was, it was always going to be cause funny people don't talk about Sweden much anymore. Do they? Yeah. You know, Sweden was in the news all the time, all the time when they were branching out on their own and following existing pandemic policy. But look how well it's worked out for Sweden.Ian Miller (36:19):Yep. That'sLaura Dodsworth (36:20):Good. So yeah, I, I, I I'd say it can't be sustainable because if it is all that will be all that will remain is to salt the earth in those countries.Ian Miller (36:28):Yeah. I was gonna say that's exa and that I listened to an interview with one of the Swedish epidemiologists at the time who was saying, you can't sustain these policies forever in democracy. You just, you can't do it. But some, some, some places are still trying. Your latest sub was about something other than COVID, which I think is, is also good to have reminders of there are other issues in the world.Laura Dodsworth (36:50): andIan Miller (36:51):, it was kind of about how ignoring biology is, is impacting the NHS in a real way in, in, and and it's become a hot topic here in the us as well with the we've had this, the, the transgender swimmer that has been swimming in these, in female sports competitions. So I wanted to ask what you think about this topic and you know, where does it go from here with these kinds of policies?Laura Dodsworth (37:12):Mm, well, it's been quite hot topic in the UK for several years because the conservative government proposed to reform the gender a recognition act, which would mean that somebody would change their gender just on self identification. They wouldn't need to go before a medical panel or have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. They certainly wouldn't need to embark on any kind of medical treatments. And there have been concerns that that would impact single sex spaces and single sex rights and the most obvious examples of sport. Like your you're just saying with Leah Thomas also prisons, we have had a transgender male sexually assault women in a, in a woman's prison here in England. But also, you know, this, this issue with the NHS is just arisen and it's kind of incredible really because the NHS waiting list has gone from 4.2, 4 million, the outset of the pandemic to 6.1 million in January, 2022.Laura Dodsworth (38:04):So the NHS has got some big problems on its hands and with the hidden backlog, that's going to grow millions more that's people who avoided elective outpatients or elective procedures. So it was just astonishing to find out that thanks to advice from the society of radiographers that some hospital trusts are asking everybody man, or woman, if they could be pregnant before they have cancer treatment or scans involve radio. Now, obviously it's essential to protect unborn babies from radiography. You know, patient safety is paramount, but it's normally quite obvious whether somebody could be pregnant or not based upon their sex. And there will be times when it's not in the case of say a pregnant trans man, but these case are quite rare. And you would think that in those cases, a question might suffice or even referring to the patient notes. But in fact, the NHS doesn't record biological sex anymore.Laura Dodsworth (39:06):It records gender identity, and it could record both, but it's not it's recording gender identity. So it just seems incredible that where, you know, in the exact place where biological facts and data are really important, they're not being recorded. So my article was to draw attention to that. We've got the NHS asking very silly questions of elderly men, whether they're pregnant before they have an x-ray. And at the same time you know, journalists are asking politicians here, you know, what's a woman, what's a man because they hot topic and some of foundering unable to answer. So we've got the NHS asking silly question and politicians completely unable to answer them.Ian Miller (40:00):Yeah. I mean, do you think that this continues just to get worse as far as these, these kinds of obvi things that seem very obvious that don't make sense? Is that just gonna get worse or is it, do you think that there will be some pushback and get better?Laura Dodsworth (40:14):Oh, there's lots of pushback. And there has been, there has been here for a while. So I think ultimately truth always wins. Sometimes it just takes time, you know accommodating people's identity and rights is one thing, but denying biological reality is ultimately going to be futile. And you know, it's a bit like zero COVID, it's not, it's not gonna work long term. I don't think.Ian Miller (40:44):Hmm. I hope you're right. And so my last question for you is, is back to COVID because, you know, what else are we gonna talk about at the end of the day so I just wanted to, to get your idea of the future of pandemic policy in the U. Okay. And, you know, specifically with COVID and or if they're a future pandemic. So, you know, I mean, do you think mass vaccine passports that they, that there's the political capital for them to come back there at some point? Or are they gone permanently and then, you know, down the road there's another pandemic or severe flu or something like that will lock downs become kind of a permanent feature now of societies.Laura Dodsworth (41:18):Yeah. I think there's a real danger that some people would exert muscle memory and want to go back into lockdown and also masks. And I just pray that the inquiry will be independent, will be robust and dispel any remaining ideas that they're scientifically proven. I think that the vaccine passport isn't going anywhere, it's just quiet at the moment because Saed, Jat made a speech at a digital transformation summit and he was talking about the NHS app and saying, it's been, you know, it was the most downloaded free iPhone app in England. And, and that would've been unthinkable just, you know, just a little while ago, couple of years ago now he said he wants to keep the momentum going. And he would like by March 20, 24 for 75% of adults to have the NHS app. So he actually said he wants the app to be life, not just for COVID now using the app as a way of interacting with the NHS.Laura Dodsworth (42:28):I remain to be convinced whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I haven't looked at that. And it doesn't mean it's the same past sports being required for entry into civic, social and, and economic life, but it's not actually going away. There's clearly some plan to retain it. So I think that's something to be aware of. There is at the moment, a lot of bad press right now about some of the effects of the pandemic things, which, I mean, honestly, they're, they're kind of enraging. I, I barely have words to express how I feel about what's being done to children. You know, it's coming increasing that children have got social development and language issues from having been surrounded by masks in their early years. And not having had normal social interaction and not going to school. And I, I think this has been an explosion of drugs, bullying and depression among teenagers.Laura Dodsworth (43:20):You know, I have teenage sons and I've, I've seen this for myself. So there is gonna be more and more coverage, I think about the harms of lockdown. And I hope that will make people pause for thoughts in the future, but what we've seen kind of an ideological split in people where, you know, the difference between left and right left and white wing, isn't really the main thing anymore. It's about authoritarianism and, and Liberty. And we've seen, there are a lot of people who want to lean into that sort of strong on government into the government, making decisions for them and into this authoritarian response. And that is, that is still what frightens me. It frightens me. It frightens me when I wrote the book and, and it frightens me now.Ian Miller (44:02):Yeah, well, hopefully you know, the, the inquiry and another kind of pushback will hope get, get these policies out of the, the public view of as being acceptable. You know, we gotta stop thinking of them as something that could even be tolerated at any point. Cuz like you say, the harms are tremendous Lu Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate all of your input and everybody you can follow Laura on SubT stack, Laura dot SubT stack. The book is called a state of fear, how the UK government weaponized fear during the COVID 19 pandemic you can also follow follow Laura on Twitter at at bear reality. And again, and thank you so much Laura for doing this. This was great.Laura Dodsworth (44:39):Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe

The Ukraine president Vlodomyr Zelensky has refused to leave the country, despite reportedly being ‘target number one' for Russian troops invading the country.  He went from comedian to leading his country in a David v Goliath battle against Russia.     Zoya Sheftalovich is a contributing editor for POLITICO based in Australia with a Ukrainian background.  Zoya says the scale of this invasion is a reaction to Zelensky and Zelensky's effect on Ukrainian resistance.    So who is Vlodomyr Zelensky – and how did he go from a TV comedian, to a Churchillian wartime president?    Todays Headlines PM denies acted inappropriately in pre-selection battle Support for Labor slows as election approaches Russia denies troops killed innocent Ukraine civilians Six shot dead in Sacramento Australia wins Women's Cricket World Cup   Follow The Briefing DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR THE BRIEFING NEWSLETTER. LINK IS IN OUR BIO ON INSTAGRAM Instagram: @thebriefingpodcast  Facebook: TheBriefingNewsAU Twitter: @TheBriefingAU  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's the Ricochet Podcast to do when the world insists on calamity? We invite one of the leading historians in the English speaking world and a former National Security Advisor, that's what. Joining the fellas in our opening chat is Andrew Roberts. He reports from Eastern Europe to tell us about his recent trip to Ukraine, and, as the Churchill expert, to give his take on the comparisons between... Source

What's the Ricochet podcast to do when the world insists on calamity? We invite one of the leading historians in the English speaking world and a former National Security Advisor, that's what. Joining the fellas in our opening chat is Andrew Roberts, who reports from Eastern Europe to tell us about his recent trip to Ukraine, and, as the Churchill expert, to give his take on the comparisons of the English Bulldog and President Zelensky. Next, lieutenant general H.R. McMaster returns to assess the war in Ukraine. The hosts have him try on a couple strategic hats to help us size up the enemies of the free world. (Be sure to check out his new web series Battlegrounds, available on Youtube!) The hosts chat about San Francisco's boycotting the U.S. over laws they don't like, and Rob tells us about his wonderful get together in New Haven with members ctlaw, Jack Mantle and KirkianWanderer. Want in on the good times? Want to know the recipe for Bryan Stephen's award-winning Spicy Whiskey Sour? Join Ricochet, why don't ya?! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s the Ricochet Podcast to do when the world insists on calamity? We invite one of the leading historians in the English speaking world and a former National Security Advisor, that’s what. Joining the fellas in our opening chat is Andrew Roberts. He reports from Eastern Europe to tell us about his recent trip to […]

The Christian Outlook – March 19, 2022 Kevin McCullough turns to retired Army Lt. General Keith Kellogg to talk about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's video address to the U.S. Congress about the plight of the Ukrainian people. Georgene Rice and James Carafano, of the Heritage Foundation, talk about what the leadership of China is learning from the Western response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kevin McCullough talks with Michael Goodwin, of the New York Post, about the brokering of a proposed new arrangement with Iran facilitated by Russia. Dr. Albert Mohler looks at the Idaho “Heartbeat Bill” that is modeled on the bill passed in Texas. Bill Bunkley talks with Jason Riley about his book, “The Black Boom.” Bob Lepine talks with Brant Hansen about his book, “The Men We Need: God's Purpose for the Manly Man, the Avid Indoorsman, or Any Man Willing to Show Up.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eric and Eliot host British author and historian Andrew Roberts and discuss his revisionist account of King George III and how a good man was nonetheless the monarch under whom the American colonies were lost. They discuss his new podcast Secrets of Statecraft, the most important characteristics of leadership in wartime, and the role Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is playing today and its Churchillian and Reaganite overtones. They also talk about Vladimir Putin, the role of individuals in history, and more. Shield of the Republic is co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric and Eliot host British author and historian Andrew Roberts and discuss his revisionist account of King George III and how a good man was nonetheless the monarch under whom the American colonies were lost. They discuss his new podcast Secrets of Statecraft, the most important characteristics of leadership in wartime, and the role Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is playing today and its Churchillian and Reaganite overtones. They also talk about Vladimir Putin, the role of individuals in history, and more. Shield of the Republic is co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

On Thank God It's Friday, Richard Glover is joined by James Colley, Tommy Dean and Jean Kittson as they discuss Zelensky's Churchillian speech, Labor's small target election technique, and a childhood in which a much-wanted gift was substituted with a cheaper alternative.

On Thank God It's Friday, Richard Glover is joined by James Colley, Tommy Dean and Jean Kittson as they discuss Zelensky's Churchillian speech, Labor's small target election technique, and a childhood in which a much-wanted gift was substituted with a cheaper alternative.

On Thank God It's Friday, Richard Glover is joined by James Colley, Tommy Dean and Jean Kittson as they discuss Zelensky's Churchillian speech, Labor's small target election technique, and a childhood in which a much-wanted gift was substituted with a cheaper alternative.

Photo: #Ukraine: #LondonCalling:  Parliament welcomes virtual Zelinskiy speaking Churchillian. @JosephSternberg @WSJOpinion https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-will-not-give-up-on-ukraine-zelensky-says-in-address-to-parliament-lqwdnrkv8 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/03/germany-putin-ukraine-invasion/623322/

This morning new research from Consumer NZ was released that found the top national concern is now the cost of living.  For Consumer the research confirms how badly we need stronger competition and fairer prices in the sector. For Christopher Luxon and the National Party it confirms how much we need tax cuts. This weekend in his State of the Union speech Mr Luxon declared that New Zealand was in a cost-of-living crisis. To battle it, his party would roll back every tax Labour has introduced. Including some taxes that don't even exist yet like wage insurance levies and light rail tax. Now, this surprised no one as since time has begun National has sought to leave tax-payer's cash in their pocket, particularly the wealthier pockets. And since time began Labour has always believed they can spend your money better than you can. What did surprise me was that Christopher Luxon went for such a safe policy plank at this remarkable time. I was expecting something more Churchillian. And uplifting. But it was safe and it's given us all the chance to talk about something else. So let me say how much I have hated tax bracket creep. The thresholds have remained the same for a dozen years. That's 4 governments including National who could have fixed it. In essence, leaving the tax brackets locked in is giving the government a tax rise equivalent to wage inflation every year. I pointed this out 7 years ago when National once again claimed to be the "no tax rise" party even though the schedular excise taxes kept going up and the tax brackets didn't move. Mr Luxon is right to point out we are in a cost-of-living crisis. Covid and Supply chains and cheap money are fuelling this worldwide. The Prime Minister denies it's a crisis but she should ask people who work in food banks. The people affected by this the most are poor and the taxes that most affect the poor are not brightine tests. It's the tax on everything, even other taxes. It's GST. The tax John Key famously increased from 12.5% to 15% in 2010 after strenuously claiming his government would not raise taxes If National is truly committed to tax cuts and truly want to help the nation in this cost-of-living crisis then why don't they cut the GST. Go on Chris. I dare you. 

In the final episode of Series Three, Joe speaks with Essex University historian Lucy Noakes and Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz on the creation of cultural memories around war and conflict. They cover a wide array of topics, including the Churchillian turn of British World War II narratives and how the words monument and demonstrate are linked by their roots in Latin. Their discussion beautifully encapsulates a number of topics covered across the series and explores more radical ways of remembering - or remembering better. Lucy Noakes is a social and cultural historian with specific interests in war, memory and gender.  She is co-editor of the book British Cultural Memory and the Second World War, sits on the Academic Advisory Board of the Imperial War Museum's Second World War Galleries redevelopment project, and is a series editor for the Social History Society book series New Directions in Social and Cultural History. Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. His anti-war statue April is the Cruellest Month formed part of the Turney Contemporary for the English coast series in 2021. Michael is also Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.As always, the show was presented by our very own Joe Glenton. If you'd like to learn more about Joe's new book Veteranhood (as mentioned in the podcast by Michael) then head over to his publisher Repeater.ForcesWatch is a small organisation funded by grants and donations. All contributions - no matter the size - can make a huge difference. If you want to support our work then please follow the link below.Support the show (https://www.forceswatch.net/support-our-work)

What behaviours and traits from the leader, help your team raise their game and perform at their very best? To answer this question, leadership expert Sam Walker sought out 16 leaders whose results were outstanding in the highly competitive field of professional sport and studied the traits they shared. He reveals his findings in the fascinating book The Captain Class. Inspired by what Walker found, in this episode Rob explores two traits found in the 16 most successful captains in the history of all team sport, and shares examples from very successful fundraising leaders who share these characteristics. The traits were a) consistent, low key, practical communication (NOT inspiring Churchillian speeches!) and b) extreme relentlessness. I hope you find these stories and principles helpful in relation to your own leadership / fundraising roles. If you'd like to get in touch or share this episode, thank you! You can find me on Linked In or on twitter I am @woods_rob. You can find lots more free resources, as well as details of our training courses, on our website, www.brightspotfundraising.co.uk.

In all the big-name speeches in Glasgow, was there anyone with a Churchillian standard of speech in what is clearly a world crisis?  You be the judge.  And what's so special about Churchill anyway. A new book will have you thinking.  And finally, a good news COVID update.

As the Conservatives convene for their Manchester conference, are there sufficient supplies of Churchillian cosplay, blather about levelling up and performative woke-bashing to cover up their failings on supply lines, fuel, COVID and the economy? Will anyone dare mention the “B” word? Plus the Pandora Papers lift the lid on big money chicanery, anger over police misogyny grows, and who will win the Nobel Peace Prize? Naomi Smith starts your week. “There's petrol in Kabul, but there's no petrol in Brighton." “Johnson's performance on Marr was so embarrassing. He's trying to gaslight the nation.”“How many appalling situations does Cressida Dick have to preside over before something is done?”Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The classic half-time locker room Churchillian oratory from the coach, whipping the team into a frenzy for the coming onslaught is now gathering dust in Hollywood's archives.  Today's most successful coaches are masters of human psychology, combining insight with superb communication skills.  What about leaders in business?  Conferences, off-sites, retreats are supplying substantial income for sports coaches, as they induct business folk into the mysteries of motivation.  Everyone heads back to work feeling fired up, but they often fail to adopt what they have been told, because they were not clear on how to do it.    I originally came to Japan in 1979 to study karate, have competed internationally and have been a national coach for Australia representing my country.  In my experience, the Japanese model of sports leadership is antiquated, excelling in only one area - “gaman” (perseverance).  The Japanese really know how to gaman.  They do love technology, so lots of equipment in sports training, but the leadership soft skills are still underdeveloped. No great proliferation of sports coaches becoming gurus on leadership for business audiences here.  Japan's feudal militaristic regimes for leadership spill over into business from the domestic sports world.  University “club” members know that age seniority, group dominance, rigid hierarchy and the suppression of the individual are the key leadership lessons learnt at varsity.  Not a sparkling sport's blueprint for leadership in the modern world of business.   In 1988, I attended a luncheon speech by John Ribot, the CEO of the new Brisbane Broncos rugby league football club.  He had been a top player and was launching this new club, which today is a powerhouse.  By that time, I had been a karate instructor for 17 years, had studied under Japanese karate masters for 4 years in Brisbane and had studied in Japan for 6 years.  I was a National Level 2 Coach, graduated from the Australia Coaching Council programme and thought I knew about motivating and coaching people.    John Ribot said something at that luncheon which stunned me.  He was contrasting the old style rugby coaching technology with the more psychology based approach.  He made the point that in the modern era, leaders coach each player individually and the big rah rah rally style was gone.  He gave an example where one player would be reminded of his big salary package and that he better perform or else!  In the case of another player, the coach just said, “it's a beautiful day to play football, go out there and enjoy yourself”.  Absolutely no pressure placed on that player.   The lesson for business in Japan is to train our leaders to motivate our teams, one person at a time, based on what that person finds motivational.  Sounds obvious when you say it, but how many of us have any experience of being led that way or in leading others?  Normally the leaders do whatever they want and we have to fit in with it. They are often “Driver” personality types, where the key philosophy is “my way or the highway”.  Motivating others requires a good understanding of the interests and aspirations of that person.    Communication skills and time invested in getting to know that person are critical. In a time-poor world however, of doing more, faster with less, we are skipping steps and rushing toward the finish line.  We just don't invest enough time in knowing our people.  How many business leaders can you think of who are really great communicators or motivators?  What about yourself?   Let's all pause, reflect and commit to improve. We need to build business success through our people, individual by individual and the time to start is right now.   Action Steps   Reduce the amount of mass broadcast communications with the team and add in more one-on-one opportunities Get to know the team better so you can understand their interests and aspirations Find out what motivates them and work off that base Improve communications skills by having better awareness of others

We are live in Falmouth, Cornwall for the G-7 summit where leaders are set to meet. U.S. President Biden and UK Prime Minister Johnson are to re-hash the Atlantic Charter - a WW2-era Churchillian pact between the two countries – to strengthen trade, travel and technology ties. G-7 nations are hoping to use the meeting to pledge a billion Covid vaccines to distribute globally with the U.S. to provide more than half of the doses. We hear exclusively from Goldman Sachs CFO Stephen Scherr who says markets may well feel the heat should rates rise to address inflation. In tech news, President Biden revokes a Trump-era executive order banning Chinese-owned social media apps. He has, however, ordered a security review of the software which could yet bolster the legislation.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dominic Cummings; A free storytelling masterclass; Eurovision loser and winner; Bitcoin; How to be Churchillian; Be re-bookable; Four Social Media Tips; An interview with Sean Weafer; Music from Chris While and Julie Matthews

On this week’s Grease the Wheels, we talk about those people and places that you don’t talk about anymore, because they’re on the blacklist! The blacklist when we are talking about the automotive industry also includes the “do not hire” list, and there are a lot of ways to get on someone’s blacklist. Almost every shop has some form of a blacklist, whether it be related to customers or staff. Additionally, certain shops can become blacklisted by both mechanics and customers because of the quality of the work they provide or the general attitude of the people that work there. There are many recent and historical blacklists as well. In an episode that hilariously meanders the spectrum from Abraham Lincoln to Harvey Weinstein, the blacklist is typically not written down- but that doesn't mean it does not exist. We also dive into the idea that people are more likely to believe and remember negative stories about people rather than something positive.  We just wonder how many shops have this podcast on their blacklist! Also Uncle Jimmy mounts a Churchillian defense of Arby’s. This episode is distributed by The Wrenching Network. Whether you're a technician, a mechanic, or someone who just loves the car scene, The Wrenching Network is a place that you have to check out. They have all sorts of great content, gear, and snacks to keep you turning wrenches in whatever capacity you do it. Also if you see us over there, make sure you say hi and leave a comment with what you think about the episode! 

Today, we have the honor of speaking to Sir Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister, as impersonated by Randy Otto. Randy has been playing Winston Churchill for the last forty-seven years, and he is phenomenal! In this episode, you will learn about history. You will hear the great quotes of Sir Winston Churchill, and you will also get some great leadership advice.  We know you are going to love this show! Randy Otto's background Randy Otto's British history professor did a spot-on impression of Winston Churchill, and Randy thought he could impersonate him impersonating Winston Churchill. The professor walked up behind him and surprised him by telling him that he might have something, and Randy's life changed instantly! That professor became a great mentor in his life, and Randy gave him credit every day for allowing him to see the world through the prism of Winston Churchill.  You don't know as much as you think  Randy urges you, as business people, to always remember that you don't know as much as you think you do. Go and find the people in your life who know more than you do, or who can complement your knowledge, and ask as many questions as you can.  Mentors Throughout his life, Randy has had several great mentors. One of them was the great actor Hal Holbrook, who impersonated Mark Twain on stage for 64 years and died recently at the age of 94.  The best advice Hal Holbrook gave Randy the best advice he has ever had, which was that he did not need a script. He told Randy that he knew enough about Winston Churchill to become Winston Churchill at any time he wanted to do so. All he had to do was to tell the stories and string them together with segues.  Some advice for business people Randy's advice to business people is not to lose track. He advises you not to get so involved in the details that you lose track of the opportunities that come your way. Winston Churchill said, "The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Eight principles Randy has eight principles that he does on stage for groups, organizations, corporations, and associations in a piece he calls Winston Churchill CEO. One of the things he stresses in it is that you touch the troops.  Great leadership Winston Churchill set the standard of great leadership for Randy because he could stand up and sway the course of history. He did that by simply telling the truth and reminding the British people of who they were. Press Churchill had the cooperation of the press during World War Two. Although he knew they could take it, he asked the press not to give the British people all the bad news at once.   Taking ownership People appreciate leaders who take ownership of it when there is a problem or when something goes wrong and asking for help is powerful.   A painter's eye Winston Churchill had a painter's eye, and he used it as a leadership technique. He would choose a focal point for where he wanted to go in a meeting. He would then focus on that point. Sometimes, it was something that the audience thought of as inconsequential, but Churchill would stick to it like a bulldog for hours until they found a solution. As a result, he was very successful in the cabinet meetings when things got tough. Mein Kampf Churchill got quoted as saying that he was the only person who read the English translation of Mein Kampf as early as he did. He realized that it was a roadmap to disaster. Unfortunately, he had no proof at the time. Writing Churchill made a living by writing. When he started criticizing the Germans and the Italians, he lost the ability to be published by many magazines and newspapers. He kept on despite that, however. Painting in Marseilles Churchill painted at a chateau in Marseilles. You can see a beautiful painting that he did here.  Chamberlain When Churchill became Prime Minister, he was clever enough to invite Neville Chamberlain into his cabinet. Chamberlain was his fiercest enemy before doing so, and despite that, Churchill gave the eulogy at Chamberlain's funeral. He was himself Churchill was true to himself as a leader. He was unafraid and honest, and he told the truth. He always said what he meant and meant what he said. Winston Churchill gives some management and leadership advice for small business owners “One must look at the past before one looks at the future.” “History is our best teacher. Study history. Study history. Study history.” “In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.” “The further back that you can look the further forward that you can see.” What is important as a leader when you are managing a team “You must find your enemies and keep them close to you.”  President Lincoln assembled a team of rivals. He found the people who opposed his policies most assiduously and asked them to be part of his cabinet. As a leader, you must do the same thing in business. You must find those who are not afraid to take you on or disagree with you, and you must welcome it. You must find the best men and women, and not the ‘yes' men and women today, to help you, and to ask the difficult questions of you. Then you might learn to better run your company. Managing a budget and finances You should hire someone you can trust, who is good with facts and figures, to do that for you. “And don't be afraid to spend money to make money.” (Churchill was not the greatest financier that ever lived.) Company culture You must have a vision for the future, and you must be able to communicate it. If you don't, you had better figure out a way to find out what your vision is and communicate it. That vision must drive every single strategy that you have in your business.  Randy Otto's bio as Keynote Speaker, Playwright, Academic, Actor Randy Otto does NOT enter onstage. He explodes into your midst. The suspension of disbelief immediately immerses the audience. It IS Winston. Without doubt, Churchill. Through Randy Otto's astonishingly authentic portrayal of Churchill, based on decades of academic research and performance passion, the true genius of the man, the statesman and most admired leader can be fully seen, heard and even questioned! Randy Otto, with unapologetic admiration, depicts a witty, humane, accessible living portrait of the most admired leader ever.  Randy's KEYNOTES & THEATRICAL SHOWS (Winston Churchill: CEO, Winston Churchill: Man of the Century, and Winston Churchill: The Blitz) skillfully leads the audience on an immensely entertaining Churchillian journey, imparting WHY Churchill was a VISIONARY organizational genius who harnessed a unique MAGNANIMOUS, ACTION ORIENTED STYLE infused with boundless enthusiasm; and how today's 21st Century leaders easily incorporate Churchill's Timeless Principles of Leadership into their personal and professional lives. Randy answers the questions: WHO was Winston Churchill, HOW did Churchill leave a timeless legacy of leadership and WHY Churchill is relevant and needs to be heard now more than ever in the 21st Century. Randy Otto's Awards/Honors/Education/Experience: Has portrayed Winston Churchill professionally for over four decades Honorary Archivist – Churchill Archive Center – Churchill College/Cambridge University/Cambridge, UK Advisory Board – International Churchill Society - Milwaukee, WI Hosted 70th Anniversary of Churchill becoming an American Citizen - Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI Commissioned by National Churchill Museum to create “Painting as a Pastime” February 2014 – honoring the largest exhibition of Churchill paintings since 1976 in St. Louis, MO Rotary 20+ Years - President of 2 Clubs, Assistant Governor Randy Otto is the ONLY Winston Churchill endorsed by members of the Churchill family Native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, alumnus of the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and numerous theatrical roles– BA graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire Missionary two years Hokkaido and Kyoto Japan 20+ Years Vice-President of Investments - Fully licensed private investment management with Stifel Nicolaus Investment Brokerage - Offices in Brookfield, WI & St. Louis, MO     Connect with Eric On LinkedIn On Facebook On Instagram On Website Connect with Randy On Churchill Speaker On the telephone – (920) 988-4459  See Randy as Winston in action!

"In spite of the high degree of confidence being delivered by the undoubted success of the Government’s vaccination programme, independent members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee still believe that negative rates will be necessary later in the year. There is a clear fracture between the independent members of the committee and the Bank of England’s Officials. It is widely expected that the UK will see a tsunami of demand in the first one or two quarters following the loosening of lockdown measures, but it is once the euphoria has died down that the concerns begin. Unemployment remains a major concern. The Government’s focus during all three lockdowns has been more around support than stimulus and it is naive for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to believe that the withdrawal of restrictions will provide all the support the economy needs. The grow the economy back to health refrain sounds more and more like a Churchillian rallying cry and less like a policy statement. Next week's budget will probably extend the furlough for what will certainly be the last time, also provide house buyers the continued benefit of a stamp duty holiday but will then hopefully provide, not support, but stimulus to drive the economy forward. " Beyond Currency Market Commentary: Aims to provide deep insights into the political and economic events worldwide that can cause currencies to change and how this can affect your FX Exposure.

Despite trying to live out her meatball sub and reality tv fantasy, Liz finds herself being wooed by a cute and much younger man (Val Emmich). Jack’s very supportive, Liz is not so sure and Jenna and Frank are competitive and jealous. Tracy “volunteers” to help a youth baseball team from Knuckle Beach until Jack decides he and Kenneth have the more appropriately Churchillian chops and kick Tracy off the project. Sometimes you’ve just gotta shut it down. Original airdate: November 29, 2007 Want more Nick and Julie? Check out their other podcast: Takes All Over the Place! @takespod and @blergpodcast on social www.takespod.com Please rate, review and subscribe! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

It's important that you're prepared before pressing play today, because there's an awful lot to take in. Are you ready? Good. This week, most of the IBS have been sent gifts, but not everyone is happy. There's also a fair bit of supernatural stuff to get your teeth into and an unashamedly Churchillian moment from the bloke at No. 10. Please send your listener comments to Danny@radiox.co.uk Thank you.

Who's number one in No.10? And which governmental loser is tandem inter pares? Commentator, LBC broadcaster, author and “not a fan of Boris Johnson” Iain Dale tells our own Ian Dunt what makes Prime Ministers succeed and fail – and how Boris Johnson's Churchillian fantasies match up to reality.“Clement Attlee is among our greatest Prime Ministers but he wouldn't have a hope in today's intense environment.”“Boris won't go down as the Brexit Prime Minister. He'll go down as the COVID Prime Minister.”“Twitter is blogging on acid, isn't it?”“Boris Johnson will enjoy being an ex-Prime Minister a lot more than being Prime Minister.”“Every Prime Minister wants to be a Churchill… but can you really compare coronavirus with 1940?”Presented by Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is Wales really setting the COVID agenda for the rest of the UK? As the “firebreak” comes down, former special advisor to First Minister Mark Drakeford turned political consultant Cathy Owens talks to Jude Rogers. Is Wales responding better to lockdowns than England? What is the pandemic doing to support for Welsh nationalism? And why it's not all about trying to keep English tourists out.Audio note: Includes sound effects live from Cardiff!“This is a time for boring competent leadership, not Churchillian speeches and promising the moon.”“We don't want Boris and his chums to be in charge of Wales.”“Wales leading Westminster? That's the opposite of what we see happening here.”“People in Wales voted for Ukip just like the English. We do get the Daily Mail here…”Presented by Jude Rogers. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. President Trump has returned to the White House for the remainder of what will, hopefully, continue to be an extraordinarily speedy recovery from the Chinese Communist Party virus. Before he left the hospital, Mr. Trump made a Churchillian appeal to our countrymen and women. He urged them not to “let COVID-19 dominate you.” That could mark a tipping point since, for months, the pandemic has been exploited for that very purpose – serving as a political control mechanism over the American people, our economy and our freedoms. If the President continues to heal and lead, he will upend the transparent agenda of our nation’s adversaries, foreign and domestic, to employ the CCP virus as a weapon that keeps us afraid and isolated, demoralized and unfree. Should that happen, it will be Donald Trump’s Finest Hour and one that just may save our Republic. This is Frank Gaffney.

With the RFL changing the Super League table to points percentage, the podcasters have their abacuses ready. Wire score a brilliant winning try in the 97.5% moment of the match but Dennis calculates what percentage of tries are lost due to rugby posts. Sam takes us through his mathematical top-four-clusterfuck-ratio, with Rob offering to provide supportive graphs because he’s got sod all else to do. Over on Rimmer’s Lot, just what has Steve Price put down his pants to hide from Health Inspector Cummings? And with the season on a knife-edge, the show embraces a Churchillian speech for Rugby League’s finest hour (that’s 4.16% of a day, by the way). Enjoy. Dennis' Rick Stein dinner menu: https://bit.ly/2RlNQ5D

Daniel Mahoney of Assumption College has a short and compelling essay up today at Real Clear Politics on “What Does Our Nation Mean to Us? Rejecting the Culture of Hate.” I decided to post our regular weekly podcast a couple days ahead of schedule to match up with Dan's article because it meshes perfectly with the conclusion of our wide-ranging conversation about the roots of our present... Source

Daniel Mahoney of Assumption College has a short and compelling essay up today at Real Clear Politics on “What Does Our Nation Mean to Us? Rejecting the Culture of Hate.” I decided to post our regular weekly podcast a couple days ahead of schedule to match up with Dan’s article because it meshes perfectly with […]Join the conversation and comment on this podcast episode: https://ricochet.com/podcast/powerline/needed-a-gaullist-moment-with-churchillian-fortitude-dan-mahoney/.Now become a Ricochet member for only $5.00 a month! Join and see what you’ve been missing: https://ricochet.com/membership/.Subscribe to Power Line in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.

In this Podcast we discuss if there is a deficit of democracy on Enfield Council. Democratic discussion, scrutiny and accountability of Government both national and local, are important at all times and especially at times of crisis. During the War, Winston Churchill always respected the House of Commons and made himself available for criticism through the darkest hours. But there are some who believe that this is not happening in Enfield. The Leader of the Council is not following the Churchillian model of holding herself to account. The Cabinet has not met and no attempt has been made to have online digital sessions where accountability can take place - and at a time when there have been questions that need answering. This is a feeling held by a large section of the Labour Party, the Greens, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. So we have invited representatives of those Parties to discuss this on a Webinar and Joanne Laban for the Conservatives, Rob Wilson for the Lib Dems and David Flint of the Greens have all accepted. We have also written to the Labour Group but have had no answer.. The digital world offers great opportunities to engage and answer questions in depth and we thank all those who have agreed to engage this way and hope the Council Leadership will follow suit. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/globalnet21/message

Getting Your Staff Messaging Right In A Crisis   There are plenty of experts providing insight and recommendations for corporates with their messaging during this Covid-19 crisis, but not so much attention is being paid to our internal messaging.  The public, customers and shareholders need to be fed updates and assurance by the company's PR department.  Funnily enough the PR department rarely gets involved in the internal messaging of the boss.  Basically, the leaders are expected to work it out themselves.  Usually they are pretty hopeless communicators at the best of times and now in the worst of times, this ragged assembly are exposed as gross underperformers.   Having people gathered around in the office or neatly arrayed at the town hall, makes communication relatively straightforward and easy.  Having everyone dispersed and sitting at home in ignoble isolation is a different ask of the leader.  The Covid-19 crisis is scary, from a physical health perspective but also from a financial health viewpoint.    Watching TV and reading the newspapers about rising numbers of people catching the virus and then seeing the associated mortality rates climb, tells you this is serious.  Watching companies shut down, many going bankrupt, millions of workers out of jobs and the share markets plummeting, under the weight of the economic consequences of the virus spread, adds to everyone's fear roster.   The team are worried about their family's health, the overall lifestyle disruption, their job security and here you are, their leader.  What are you telling them?  How often are you telling them and what mediums are you using?  There is a tricky balance required.  We must be transparent, without triggering alarm and panic.  We must provide hope, without being Pollyanna.    We also have to be well informed of what is happening because things change very quickly.  Within a few short days, British PM Boris Johnson went from talking about building “herd immunity” and letting the virus spread, to locking down the whole country.  One minute Tokyo Governor Koike is talking about the calling off of the Olympics being unthinkable, to having the whole shebang postponed.  Within days, President Trump went from saying all the troops would be home for Easter, to instead chastising Governors for not locking down their states to stop the spread of Covid-19.   Most companies in Japan have a daily chorei or huddle, usually in the mornings, amongst the work group.  If you don't, then now is a good moment to create one. The leader must keep this chorei cadence going, even if everyone is now beaming in by video.  Not everyone might make it, but do your best to insist that this is a priority. Continuity builds comfort that although things have changed, some normality, some stability can be assured.  These are good opportunities to remind everyone of the strategy in place for dealing with this crisis.  If you missed that bit of leadership fundamentals at the start, then put a strategy together pronto.   Update everyone on the company's situation.  The cash situation is the difference between survival and just becoming a memory of what once was.  Tell people the truth.  This must be coupled with reference to the plan to get everyone through this crisis.  Hope and reality have to be doled out equally.    Follow up with regular written communication.  If you are a foreigner speaking in Japanese, your range of vocabulary will rarely be equal to that of your mother tongue.  More likely, you don't speak fluent Japanese.  In both cases get things down in writing as well.  If you have internal resources who are now freed up, get the text into Japanese. Even if that isn't possible, then send it out in English. Most Japanese read English much better than they can speak it.  The live speech delivery may have presented some audio clarity issues, as well as linguistic challenges, so you can't be satisfied that everyone got the message.    Try to increase the amount of one on one communication as much as possible.  Reach out to your people sitting at home. Broken apart from their routine of 16 hours a day at work with colleagues, this new order can be disconcerting and lonely for many of the troops.  Hearing your voice and knowing that you were thinking of them is much more important than the content of your Churchillian call to arms.   Create a coffee time for staff to join in on-line and shoot the breeze.  Staff are constantly chatting, chatting, chatting throughout the day anyway.  Now we can recreate that personal connection with our colleagues, although compressed, into a virtual coffee time every afternoon.  You should join in as well and just chat. Don't make it a rerun of the morning's rousing call to crash through or crash.  Keep it light, communal and interactive.  Draw out those who are a bit quiet and have them speak up, so that they feel included and their colleagues can hear their voice.   Use video, text, phone calls and use them more frequently than you imagine is enough.  We are serving the weakest links in our teams in these times of crisis.  You might be independent, resilient, tough, a survivor, but you are also in the minority amongst your team.  Don't see their world, through your personal prism.

Elected official press conferences suddenly make for great TV. Are any of our guys at all Churchillian?

It's a Podcast on the back of a win this week but there's a muted feel to it as Cardiff Blues' return to winning ways comes on the back of a disappointing first half to Benetton and the feeling of bouncing back to victory is fast wearing off. There's still a base to build towards a big game away at Edinburgh this Friday night though, while Cardiff RFC return to action ahead of a packed two-month run to the end of the season at which we could be winners of the double. Elsewhere, Wales pass up an opportunity to get the win against France, the U20s put in a serious shift up at Colwyn Bay and Robo Mulvers comes over all Churchillian, although he maintains he is original.

The Left once again is playing the race card in lieu of addressing President Trump’s legitimate criticism of the failures of Democrat leadership in struggling US cities such as Baltimore. Rather than calling the President a racist, what are some concrete steps we can take to fix our broken cities? Bob Woodson, an African American community development leader with decades of experience, joins us to share his thoughts. Plus, Dr. Shelby Steele stops by to debunk the Left’s claim that Trump is racist by shining a spotlight on Democrat failures.

First time guest Jayant Bhandari believes that democracy is a flawed system that has failed to bring people out of poverty in the last century. Rather, authoritarian benevolent regimes, such as China, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc., have been the wealth building leaders. Not that we're unmindful of democracy's flaws, but we tend to subscribe to the Churchillian view that "Democracy is the worst system in the world, except for all the rest!" And perhaps at present our participatory democracy is a chimera, but Donald Trump is president and that says something. Jayant sees continued growth in East Asia and economic leadership. And he believes he's freer in East Asia than elsewhere and that most people don't really care about government and just want to be left alone. Tell that to the thousands of victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. 

First time guest Jayant Bhandari believes that democracy is a flawed system that has failed to bring people out of poverty in the last century. Rather, authoritarian benevolent regimes, such as China, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc., have been the wealth building leaders. Not that we're unmindful of democracy's flaws, but we tend to subscribe to the Churchillian view that "Democracy is the worst system in the world, except for all the rest!" And perhaps at present our participatory democracy is a chimera, but Donald Trump is president and that says something. Jayant sees continued growth in East Asia and economic leadership. And he believes he's freer in East Asia than elsewhere and that most people don't really care about government and just want to be left alone. Tell that to the thousands of victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. 

Here to tug on your heartstrings is the latest funny cricket podcast! Two weeks without a show must have you gagging for cricket satire... (or at least that's what Whitto tells himself!) In this episode, one stern mother, two male cads and a charity appeal. Plus we hear a Churchillian speech by the new captain of Durham cricket. A cricketer in need is a cricketer indeed! Oh and if you're looking for the best deals on cricketing books, kits and merch check out www.cricshop.com - our new batting partners.  

It's all about sex tonight, from Churchillian fanboy service, to how to trick your kids into watching teen sex, to whether a Freddy Mercury Biopic had enough of it. We tackle Darkest Hour, Sex Education, and Bohemian Rhapsody.

Join Us as Michelle teaches you how to start visulizing through books. she will take us through the proses of visulizing creatively as she starts with story time. The key to achieving what you want—whether it’s a healthier body or increased confidence—may lie in your ability to visualize it. Here’s how to use mental imagery to become stronger, happier, and more effective. Ever fantasized that you’re a lean, mean fighting machine, with Churchillian speech-making talents, winning charisma, and superhuman willpower? If so, then you have already tapped into the tool that can help you get there in real life. Mental imagery—the kind that involves imagining success—has long been employed by professional athletes to boost their strength, confidence, and results.  atunetwork@gmail.com www.awakeningtheunknown.com

Were you underwhelmed by Gabby Agbonlahor's short on-pitch farewell speech (in opening credits) to Aston Villa supporters after the last regular game of the season at Villa Park? If so, here's the alternative Churchillian style, heartfelt and inspiring speech, we wish Gabby had delivered to the House of Villans.The sketch originally appeared at the end of Episode 44 of the My Old Man Said podcast, so just in case you didn't have the stamina to make it that far, we thought we'd give you a chance to hear it again as a mini bonus podcast.EnjoyUTVThe My Old Man Said show is from a different dimension than the usual footy podcast show, so please do support the creative endeavour of it by becoming a MOMS Patron. You will get bonus patron-only episodes, advanced sneaks and also get entered into regular reward draws. For more details and to become a Patron, click here: Join MOMS Patrons Alternatively, you can drop us a one-off tip here. Many thanks in advance.Enjoy!UTVD & DGabby's Alternative Farewell Speech features:David Michael - @oldmansaid Dan Rodgers - @avfc_vilrMy Old Man Said - https://www.myoldmansaid.comVilla Underground - http://www.villaunderground.comWritten and performed by Dan RodgersProduced by David MichaelThanks to Adam aka socialgraphic for the 'Gabby Churchill' podcast cover art, follow him on Instagram here See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Silly and sophisicated, My Old Man Said fully opens the fourth dimension of podcast crazy to look ahead to Aston Villa's play-off battle against Middlesbrough. David and Dan, look at how the season ended in the PL and EFL, before focusing on the double-header against Boro.The show is bookended by Gabby Agbonlahor's goodbye speech and the Churchillian farewell he perhaps should have given Villans. There's a season's recap of Tony's Tweets and the return of Negatron, who's getting anxious about the play-offs.Also popping up in the show is a crying Baggie, an insane Middlesbrough granny and an expert on Tony Pulis.As well as plenty of laughs to ease the play-off tension, there's:Arsene Wenger and Alex FergusonSwansea City, WBA, Sunderland relegationBirmingham City survivalAston Villa kit deal with Luke 1977 and FranaticsPitch AwardsDetailed look at Middlesbrough with Adama Traore focusTony Pulis revenge missionDerby County and FulhamCardiff City promotionOur early season Villa predictionsAnne Summers party pitch invasionAnd more...This show took a whole day to edit together, so please support the show by becoming a MOMS Patron. You will get bonus patron-only episodes, advanced sneaks and also get entered into regular reward draws. More details and to become a Patron, click here: Join MOMS PatronsEnjoy!UTVPodcast Episode 44 features:David Michael - @oldmansaid Dan Rodgers - @avfc_vilrMy Old Man Said - https://www.myoldmansaid.comVilla Underground - http://www.villaunderground.comSketch writing David Michael and Dan RodgersVoice 'talent' - Dan RodgersProducer - David Michael See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

About the Book: Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal: Ike, RFK, and Reagan's Emergence as a World Statesman is an inspiring never-before-told history of how Ronald Reagan first began to restore pride in America when he first ran for president in the late 1960s. Against the back-drop history of Reagan's first campaign for the presidency, it can now be revealed that behind the scenes, none other than former President Dwight Eisenhower was Ronald Reagan's hidden political mentor. In fact throughout the 1960s, Ronald Reagan was tutored by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower: how to enter politics, and then how to run his 1966 gubernatorial primary, and then general election campaigns. Eisenhower even counseled Reagan on how to fight charges of antiSemitism and critiqued Reagan's speaking style. Reagan followed Eisenhower's political advice virtually to the letter, and indeed Reagan based his 1966 campaign theme (common sense) and campaign persona (the citizen politician) on Ike. Ike certified him as presidential timbre, said he would endorse Reagan for president if he were the 1968 nominee, urged him to run for president as California's favorite son, and may actually have favored political winner Reagan over loser Nixon as the 1968 Republican nominee. Ronald Reagan's 1968 campaign was a crucial dress rehearsal for his ultimate triumph in 1980. During 1968, Reagan became a world statesman and shaped his crusade to restore pride in America. For Reagan, Ike's tutelage was critical. Indeed Ronald Reagan now may be seen as one of Dwight Eisenhower's proteges and his major political heir. This political mentorship changed America's national priorities through the end of Reagan's presidency, whose effects still are very much with us today. About the Speaker: Gene Kopelson is president of the New England chapter, on the Board of Trustees and Book Prize committee, of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, an active Churchillian, and a holocaust educator. As a historian, he has published works on Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, Ronald Reagan's 1966 campaign and Mexican American voters, the 1968 Nebraska and Oregon Republican primaries, and Washington State Republican politics in the 1960s. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial featured his research on Robert F. Kennedy as an inspiration to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. His research on Reagan and Eisenhower was featured in 2015 at the 125thCommemoration of the Birth of Dwight Eisenhower at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. When not researching and writing history, Dr. Gene Kopelson is a cancer physician. He has published over forty medical articles, contributed chapters in medical textbooks, and lectured in the U.S. and abroad on radiation oncology.

In his first show after the weekend when Donald Trump had yet another Twitter storm, which as Max has long said, are essentially windows into the Trumpsters soul, so we can look into over one dozen Tweets to realise that Trump really only cares about himself.  Now we know 19 women have accused Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior, yet will the so called Evangelicals still support the Donald. Of course they will! It is also very good to know that Fox & Friends is the sole source of “intelligence” if that's the right word, for Trump, yet he has the best intelligence agencies on the planet. But apparently Fox & Friends has better sources than the CIA, FBI etc etc. Max also outlines how Trump has become Churchillian much to his amazement. Meanwhile Trump goes after everyone but Russia, so much for protecting the United States. Finally, Max begs the Democrats to get their act together.

In his first show after the weekend when Donald Trump had yet another Twitter storm, which as Max has long said, are essentially windows into the Trumpsters soul, so we can look into over one dozen Tweets to realise that Trump really only cares about himself.  Now we know 19 women have accused Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior, yet will the so called Evangelicals still support the Donald. Of course they will! It is also very good to know that Fox & Friends is the sole source of “intelligence” if that’s the right word, for Trump, yet he has the best intelligence agencies on the planet. But apparently Fox & Friends has better sources than the CIA, FBI etc etc. Max also outlines how Trump has become Churchillian much to his amazement. Meanwhile Trump goes after everyone but Russia, so much for protecting the United States. Finally, Max begs the Democrats to get their act together.

How did Ronald Reagan emerge as a national figure, and come to challenge Richard Nixon for the GOP nomination for President in 1968? This edition of the Nixon Now Podcast features Gene Kopelson. Gene Kopelson is president of the New England chapter, and on the Board of Trustees, of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, an active Churchillian, and a holocaust educator. As a historian, he has published works on Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, Ronald Reagan’s 1966 campaign and Mexican American voters, the 1968 Nebraska and Oregon Republican primaries, and Washington State Republican politics in the 1960s. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial featured his research on Robert F. Kennedy as an inspiration to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. His research on Reagan and Eisenhower was featured in 2015 at the 125th Commemoration of the Birth of Dwight Eisenhower at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. He’s a medical doctor — an oncologist by training — and the author of a new book called “Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal: Ike, RFK, and Reagan's Emergence as a World Statesman.” Interview by Jonathan Movroydis Photo: Henry Burroughs/AP

Fine Music Radio — This happy hour: Andrew Marjoribanks, Wordsworth Books, finds fine reads for fine minds, while we raise our glasses to two connoisseusr du vin – the great and glorious John Platter on his new book 'My Kind of Wine', and Caro Feely who tells of the Feely family’s ultimately successful venture into a French vineyard in 'Grape Expectations' and 'Saving Our Skins'. Peter Soal finds provocation and stimulation in Ferrial Haffajee’s 'What if There Were no Whites in South Africa?' while Philip Todres finds a new monograph Sue Williamson – 'Life and Work' edited by Mark Gevisser a seriously handsome overview of Sue’s work. In 'The Secret Chord' by Geraldine Brooks, Cindy Moritz finds a biblical King David ecstatic, visceral and virile. Beverley Roos Muller checks Churchillian financial facts and figures in 'No More Champagne – Churchill and his money' by David Lough. RC Sturgis writes rivetingly and revealingly on 'The Mammals that Moved Mankind – A History of the Beasts of Burden'. If we've time, Jon Geidt reviews David Byrne’s multi-headed, prolific and reflective discourse 'How Music Works'.

This happy hour: Andrew Marjoribanks, Wordsworth Books, finds fine reads for fine minds, while we raise our glasses to two connoisseusr du vin – the great and glorious John Platter on his new book 'My Kind of Wine', and Caro Feely who tells of the Feely family's ultimately successful venture into a French vineyard in 'Grape Expectations' and 'Saving Our Skins'. Peter Soal finds provocation and stimulation in Ferrial Haffajee's 'What if There Were no Whites in South Africa?' while Philip Todres finds a new monograph Sue Williamson – 'Life and Work' edited by Mark Gevisser a seriously handsome overview of Sue's work. In 'The Secret Chord' by Geraldine Brooks, Cindy Moritz finds a biblical King David ecstatic, visceral and virile. Beverley Roos Muller checks Churchillian financial facts and figures in 'No More Champagne – Churchill and his money' by David Lough. RC Sturgis writes rivetingly and revealingly on 'The Mammals that Moved Mankind – A History of the Beasts of Burden'. If we've time, Jon Geidt reviews David Byrne's multi-headed, prolific and reflective discourse 'How Music Works'.

Modern Sports Coaching For Business Leaders   The classic half-time locker room Churchillian oratory from the coach, whipping the team into a frenzy for the coming onslaught is now gathering dust in Hollywood's archives.  Today's most successful coaches are masters of human psychology, combining insight with superb communication skills.  What about leaders in business?  Conferences, off-sites, retreats are supplying substantial income for sports coaches, as they induct business folk into the mysteries of motivation.  Everyone heads back to work feeling fired up, but they often fail to adopt what they have been told, because they were not clear on how to do it.    I originally came to Japan in 1979 to study karate, have competed internationally and have been a national coach for Australia representing my country.  In my experience, the Japanese model of sports leadership is antiquated, excelling in only one area - “gaman” (perseverance).  The Japanese really know how to gaman.  They do love technology, so lots of equipment in sports training, but the leadership soft skills are still underdeveloped.   No great proliferation of sports coaches becoming gurus on leadership for business audiences here.  Japan's feudal militaristic regimes for leadership spill over into business from the domestic sports world.  University “club” members know that age seniority, group dominance, rigid hierarchy and the suppression of the individual are the key leadership lessons learnt at varsity.  Not a sparkling sport's blueprint for leadership in the modern world of business.   In 1988, I attended a luncheon speech by John Ribot, the CEO of the Brisbane Broncos rugby league football club.  He had been a top player and was launching this new club, which today is a global powerhouse.  By that time, I had been a karate instructor for 17 years, had studied under Japanese karate masters for 4 years in Brisbane and had studied in Japan for 6 years.  I was a National Level 2 Coach, graduated from the Australia Coaching Council programme and thought I knew about motivating and coaching people.    John Ribot said something at that luncheon which stunned me.  He was contrasting the old style rugby coaching technology with the more psychology based approach.  He made the point that in the modern era, leaders coach each player individually and the big rah rah rally style was gone.  He gave an example where one player would be reminded of his big salary package and that he better perform or else!  In the case of another player, the coach just said, “it's a beautiful day to play football, go out there and enjoy yourself”.  Absolutely no pressure placed on that player.   The lesson for business in Japan is to train our leaders to motivate our teams, one person at a time, based on what that person finds motivational.  Sounds obvious when you say it, but how many of us have any experience of being led that way or in leading others?  Normally the leaders do whatever they want and we have to fit in with it. They are often “Driver” personality types, where the key philosophy is “my way or the highway”.  Motivating others requires a good understanding of the interests and aspirations of that person.  Communication skills and time invested in getting to know that person are critical. In a time-poor world however, of doing more, faster with less, we are skipping steps and rushing toward the finish line.  We just don't invest enough time in knowing our people.  How many business leaders can you think of who are really great communicators or motivators?  What about yourself?   Let's all pause, reflect and commit to improve. We need to build business success through our people, individual by individual and the time to start is right now.   Action Steps   Reduce the amount of mass broadcast communications with the team and add in more one-on-one opportunities   Get to know the team better so you can understand their interests and aspirations   Find out what motivates them and work off that base   Improve communications skills by having better awareness of others

Churchillian connections for this week's podcast. The obituary of Mary Soames shows her affinity with her father Winston Churchill and her uneasy relationship with her mother Clementine. Christy Campbell is here in the studio to talk about the brave efforts by Commander Ronald Borner to put into effect one of Churchill's wheezes: fluvial mines in the Rhine. Then there's glamour, with the life of Barbara Murray, star of Passport to Pimlico. And of course Christopher Howse is here with your letters. What did your mother say when you asked: "What's for dinner?"

Boyd brings in Ben Winston and Billy Lunn from The Subways for the first podcast in the post-RVP era. We hear the shocking truth about Boyd's relationship with Theo 'the torso' Walcott and Ben gets all Churchillian again. Song? Who he? Produced by Paul Myers A Playback Media Production playbackmedia.co.uk

“If you are going to go through hell, keep going.” This is just one of the many robust adages coined by Sir Winston Churchill during World War II. A new exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum called “Churchill:  The Power of Words,” which showcased his long, celebrated career as a statesman, writer, and orator, opened on Friday. Churchill's inspirational speeches and radio broadcasts helped to guide England from its darkest to its finest hour during the long years of fighting and the constant threat of attack and invasion by the Nazi forces. As noted by the journalist Edward R. Murrow in an introduction to Churchill's collected speeches: "Now the hour had come for him to mobilize the English language, and send it into battle, a spearhead of hope for Britain and the world.” The exhibition at the Morgan kicked off with a lecture by Churchill’s granddaughter, The Hon. Celia Sandys, who has written extensively about him. During the talk, Sandys asserted that Churchill’s combination of clarity, command, courage and charisma make him a much-needed model for leadership in our own dark times. Indeed, she pointed out that a renewed interest in Churchill began at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as world leaders looked for ways to console and inspire their citizens. The Sandys talk also included a video of iconic Churchillian moments in war and peace, accompanied by examples of some of his most vivid utterances, and the purposeful, magnetic voice that bound a nation together. The lecture is part of the Winston Churchill Literary Series, a program of The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, and The Writing Center at Hunter College. Sandys was introduced at the Morgan by the series patron, Tina Santi Flaherty. Click on the link above to hear the talk. "Churchill: The Power of Words" runs at the Morgan through September 23. Bons Mots from Sandys On Churchill’s integrity: “Even today ... you can listen to my grandfather’s words without ever wondering, ‘What on earth did he mean by that?’” On the fact that Churchill employed no speech writers: “Modern leaders’ speeches often betray their origins in committee.” On Churchill as inspiration: “It’s been said that Hitler could persuade you that he could do anything, but Churchill could convince you that you could do anything." Bons Mots from Churchill On assessing historical events (in light of a military failure): “Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” On the need for good intelligence: “Facts are better than dreams.” On his own reputation as a bon vivant: “I am a man of simple tastes, easily satisfied by the best.”

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full end of year special on Ukraine, Guantanamo Bay, and Meet the Press's cringiest moments: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-useful-idiots-2022?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web 2022 is nearly dead! Last year in our year recap with Thomas Frank, we asked “WTF will happen in 2022?” While we predicted correctly some brutal Jan 6 hearings and a nightmare midterm year, none of us thought the biggest news of the year would be a proxy war in Ukraine. So in our 2022 end of year special, Aaron and Katie deep dive on the latest in Ukraine, Zelenskyy's Churchillian visit to Congress, Pelosi's weird kiss, and all the insane politicians, generals, and corporate journalists who can't seem to stop saying the quiet part out loud. And now that the year is over, we're asking you: WTF will happen in 2023? Let us know your craziest theories in the comments. Subscribe for the full end of year special. Plus, miss our full interview with Irish members of European parliament (and Useful Idiot rockstars) Claire Daly and Mick Wallace? We're giving everyone the full extended interview for free. It's the Useful Idiots 2022 end of year special. Thanks for sticking with us all year, it's been a wild ride. Let's keep mourning and laughing into 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the second part of their conversation, Dr. Owen Strachan and Dr. Jason Allen discuss Sir Winston Churchill's accomplishments as... More Information ›

In this episode of the City of God, Dr. Owen Strachan and Dr. Jason Allen discuss Sir Winston Churchill's leadership.... More Information ›