Podcasts about Croatia

The Tim Conway Jr Show Hour with Mark Thompson Hour 4 (7.27) When Mark was in London he only saw two people sleeping rough — proof the UK seems to handle homelessness far better than Los Angeles. With LAHSA about to get a massive budget boost, Mayor Karen Bass has some explaining to do about the city’s churn-and-burn homeless industrial complex. Switching gears, has anyone actually seen Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”? Turns out the original story kept changing every time it was told, and one classics professor who translated the source material just shredded Nolan’s film, calling it an absolute stinker. Mark also took his fiancée Courtney on a deep dive into her Croatian roots on the island of Hvar, where her family has lived for 12 generations. She was told no relatives remained… until she actually found them. Mark opens the TalkBacks and the calls are flying — strong opinions on England and The Odyssey — plus a listener tips everyone off to a free app called RunPee that tells you the perfect time to hit the bathroom during a movie without missing key scenes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tim Conway Jr Show Hour with Mark Thompson Hour 3 (7.27) Mark kicks off the hour with a flood of listener TalkBacks — strong opinions flying about England and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. One caller tips everyone off to RunPee, the free app that tells you the perfect moment to duck out for a bathroom break so you don’t miss key scenes (it even rates the dull stretches and warns you about post-credit scenes). Mark downloads it on the air and puts it to the test. He also paints a poetic picture of Croatia, saying the Adriatic country looks a lot like the wizarding world of Harry Potter. In Hollywood news, Tom Holland (also in The Odyssey) is officially the most bankable young star, with his films raking in around $12 billion. Is Covid making a quiet comeback? Up in Big Bear, Jackie the bald eagle is still in the hospital after that brutal gang attack by other eagles, while her mate Shadow appears to be cozying up to one of the attackers. She’s improving but remains in critical condition. And for the free-spirited, Mark rattles off 25 of the world’s best nudist beaches for anyone who prefers to go sans pants. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tim Conway Jr Show Hour with Mark Thompson Hour 1 (7.27) Mark Thompson is in the chair tonight filling in for Tim Conway Jr., who’s off on his Alaska cruise. Mark just touched down hours ago with his soon-to-be wife Courtney from their European vacation to her ancestral homeland of Croatia. They kicked things off in London during a stifling heatwave and even had a theater run-in with the sexy new couple Meryl Streep and Martin Short. Mark only spotted two homeless people the whole time he was in London — so why can’t LA and its homeless industrial complex do better? Has anyone seen “The Odyssey”? The big-screen remake of the classic tale is crushing it at the box office and helping rescue Hollywood. Was it really written by the blind poet Homer? Turns out the story kept changing every time it was told over the centuries. One classics professor who translated the original text that inspired Christopher Nolan’s film just ripped the movie to shreds, calling it an absolute stinker. Meanwhile, big cities are losing kids as families pack up and move to smaller towns — the number of children under 18 in major urban areas has dropped 10% in the past decade, while fertility rates keep falling across the country. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tim Conway Jr Show Hour with Mark Thompson Hour 2 (7.27) Mark’s getting married in a few days and just returned from a special trip with the love of his life, Courtney, to England and her ancestral homeland of Croatia, where her family history stretches back 500 years. Courtney jumps on the phone to share highlights, including seeing her favorite artist Ludovico Einaudi perform for the 30th time and catching the London theater production “1536” about Henry VIII and the beheaded Anne Boleyn. Swedish pop-rock duo Roxette has canceled their entire US tour, blaming expenses and logistics — though soft ticket sales may have played a role. Mark recently caught a downtown LA band whose singer sounded exactly like Taylor Dayne — only to discover the whole group, including the vocalist, were men in drag performing under the name Transatlantic. In sadder news, iconic “You’re So Vain” singer Carly Simon, 83, is battling both cancer and Parkinson’s disease. The daughter of a Simon & Schuster founder and an activist mother grew up in the Bronx and has become increasingly reclusive as her health declined. And one year after Dolly Parton lost her husband of 60 years, Carl Dean, her brother Coy “Denver” Parton has died at 82. With 12 siblings in the Parton household, it’s no wonder Dolly never had kids of her own. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How much work do you do to keep your household running smoothly? Figures suggest domestic work still falls mostly to women - leading to resentment and burnout. This week we're hearing from Indonesia and Croatia about projects helping change that. In rural Indonesia we visit the island of Rote - and hear how men there are overturning centuries-long attitudes to male and female roles and learning how to cook for their children and look after their homes.In Croatia we meet the men taking part in the ‘Superdads' programme where they discover that cleaning and doing chores brings them closer to their families. It's run by Status M – the only NGO in the country tackling gender-based violence by talking to men about masculinity.People Fixing The World from the BBC is about brilliant solutions to the world's problems. We release a new edition every Tuesday. We'd love you to let us know what you think and to hear about your own solutions. You can contact us on WhatsApp by messaging +44 8000 321721 or email peoplefixingtheworld@bbc.co.uk. And please leave us a review on your chosen podcast provider.Presenter: Myra Anubi Reporter/producer: Claire Bowes Indonesia reporter: Ade Mardiyati Croatia producer: Barbara Matejčić Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound mix: Hal Haines(Image: Members of the Arungi NGO group with participants of the household equality workshop on the island of Rote, Indonesia)

Hey, Family Brand community! Have you ever had one of those moments where nothing is necessarily wrong... but something just feels off? That's exactly where we found ourselves not too long ago. On the surface, life was full of good things—work, activities, commitments, opportunities—but somehow we looked around and realized we didn't actually have much time left to simply be a family. That realization eventually led us to create one of our favorite Family Brand exercises: Take Back Your Family's Time. The truth is, your calendar will always fill itself if you let it. We learned that the hard way. We had said yes to so many good opportunities that there wasn't much room left for the best things—the conversations around the dinner table, family traditions, slow evenings together, or simply doing the things we genuinely love as a family. Sometimes the problem isn't that we're filling our lives with bad things. It's that we're filling them with so many good things that there's no space left for what matters most. One of the first things we did was ask a simple question: "Our family works when..." We started making a list of the moments when we feel the most connected. Maybe it's eating meals together, camping, turning off devices in the evenings, going to church, reading together, or having a nightly family check-in. Every family will have different answers, but identifying those rhythms gave us clarity about what we wanted to protect. From there, we took an honest look at where our time was actually going. It wasn't always easy, but it gave us permission to say "no" to some things so we could say a much bigger "yes" to our family. As another busy season approaches, this is the perfect time to pause and do your own family time audit. Involve your kids in the conversation—they often have incredible insight into what makes them feel most connected. You might be surprised by what they remember and what they value. The goal isn't to create a perfect schedule. It's to intentionally create a life where your family has room to thrive instead of simply trying to keep up. Hit play to hear the full conversation! In this episode, we walk through the entire Take Back Your Family's Time framework, the questions we ask ourselves every year, and the practical exercise you can use with your own family this week. P.S. We're here to help you build your own Family Brand, one episode at a time. So go ahead, hit play, and let's grow together! Or, if you're ready to dive deeper into our community, follow the links below.   LINKS: All Links Family Brand!  stan.store/familybrand familybrand.com/quiz familybrand.com/retreats.  Episode Minute By Minute: 00:00 Why We Needed to Take Back Our Family's Time 01:19 When Good Things Become Too Much 02:11 The Family Exercise We Shared in Croatia 03:14 The Wake-Up Call Our Family Needed 04:13 Identifying What Your Family Loves Most 05:00 Good vs. Better vs. Best 05:46 The Story That Changed Our Perspective 06:46 Why Every Family Needs a Time Audit 07:46 Rediscovering Family Traditions 08:27 Preparing for a Busy Season 09:00 "Our Family Works When..." 10:00 A Family Tradition That Inspired Us 11:06 Give Yourself Permission to Say No 11:47 Involve Your Kids in the Conversation 00:00 Why We Needed to Take Back Our Family's Time 01:19 When Good Things Become Too Much 02:11 The Family Exercise We Shared in Croatia 03:14 The Wake-Up Call Our Family Needed 04:13 Identifying What Your Family Loves Most 05:00 Good vs. Better vs. Best 05:46 The Story That Changed Our Perspective 06:46 Why Every Family Needs a Time Audit 07:46 Rediscovering Family Traditions 08:27 Preparing for a Busy Season 09:00 "Our Family Works When..." 10:00 A Family Tradition That Inspired Us 11:06 Give Yourself Permission to Say No 11:47 Involve Your Kids in the Conversation    

The sporting countdown is officially on! Seven’s Emma Freedman beams into the studio to preview the network's highly anticipated coverage of the upcoming Commonwealth Games, which kick off next week. C-Bass hangs around to chat about her own iconic Commonwealth Games memories, including a wild post-victory trip where she casually carried her gold medal everywhere while partying on a boat in Croatia. Finally, we unpack the latest global fitness craze after Hailey Bieber publicly declared standard Pilates is officially dead, instead swearing by high-intensity blood flow restriction training bands to get a "crazy muscle pump."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My FIRST Set for MY FIRST TIME in Croatia.

Hey, Family Brand community! We are so glad to be back in the studio. It probably doesn't feel like we've been gone since we recorded a few episodes ahead of time, but after spending the last few weeks traveling through Croatia and Turkey, we're excited to sit down and share some of the biggest lessons we brought home with us. Every trip has a way of changing us, and this one was no exception. Our first stop was Croatia, where we hosted another Family Brand cruise with our good friend Antony and the Solomori team. If Croatia has been sitting on your travel bucket list, consider this your sign to move it to the top. It's absolutely beautiful, but what impacted us most wasn't just the scenery—it was the culture. Everywhere we went, we saw families making time for one another, preserving traditions, sharing stories, and simply slowing down. Meals weren't rushed. Conversations stretched for hours. We even learned a Croatian word that quickly became the theme of our trip: pomalo—which simply means take it easy, slow down, don't rush. It became a reminder that maybe we're not meant to race through life quite as fast as we often do. Then we landed in Turkey, and talk about a complete shift. Everything felt unfamiliar—in the best possible way. From hearing the call to prayer echo across Istanbul to visiting beautiful mosques, trying a traditional Turkish bath, navigating a language barrier, and experiencing a culture completely different from our own, we found ourselves having conversations as a family that we never would have had otherwise. It challenged some assumptions, expanded our understanding of another faith and culture, and reminded us how valuable it is to step outside what's comfortable. We left with an even greater appreciation for the kindness we experienced everywhere we went and for how much there is to learn simply by being curious. By the time we made it home, each of us had something different we were bringing back. For some of us, it was a renewed commitment to slow down and prioritize family. For others, it was a deeper appreciation for home, or even a desire to start reading physical books again instead of always listening to audiobooks. More than anything, this trip reminded us that growth doesn't just happen through travel—it happens anytime we're willing to be open to new people, different perspectives, and meaningful conversations. Whether your next adventure is across the world or simply across town, we hope it stretches you in all the best ways. Hit play to hear the full conversation! We dive much deeper into the stories, the laughs, the culture, and the lessons that simply can't all fit into a blog post. P.S. We're here to help you build your own Family Brand, one episode at a time. So go ahead, hit play, and let's grow together! Or, if you're ready to dive even deeper into our community, follow the links below. LINKS: All Links Family Brand! stan.store/familybrand familybrand.com/quiz familybrand.com/retreats.  Episode Minute By Minute: 00:00 Back in the Studio After Three Weeks Away 00:41 Our Family Trip Through Croatia and Turkey 01:03 The Family Brand Cruise Through Croatia 02:18 Why Croatia Should Move Up Your Travel List 03:05 From Croatia's Coast to Istanbul, Turkey 04:13 A Croatian Village Where Everyone Knows Your Family 06:06 Preserving Family Stories and Traditions 07:15 What Strong Families and Croatian Culture Have in Common 09:28 Pomalo: Slow Down, Relax, and Don't Rush 10:33 Experiencing Istanbul and Turkish Culture 11:26 What Turkey Taught Us About Faith and Perspective 12:30 Stepping Outside Our Comfort Zone as a Family 13:12 Helping Our Kids Experience a Different Way of Life 15:00 What Each of Us Brought Home From the Trip 15:27 Travel, Curiosity, and Learning From Other People 16:21 Slowing Down and Prioritizing Family 17:05 Rediscovering the Joy of Reading 18:13 Here's to the Rest of Summer  

Full Text of Readings Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 394 The Saint of the day is Saint Camillus de Lellis Saint Camillus de Lellis' Story Humanly speaking, Camillus was not a likely candidate for sainthood. His mother died when he was a child, his father neglected him, and he grew up with an excessive love for gambling. At 17, he was afflicted with a disease of his leg that remained with him for life. In Rome he entered the San Giacomo Hospital for Incurables as both patient and servant, but was dismissed for quarrelsomeness after nine months. He served in the Venetian army for three years. Then, in the winter of 1574, when he was 24, Camillus de Lellis gambled away everything he had—savings, weapons, literally down to his shirt. He accepted work at the Capuchin friary at Manfredonia, and was one day so moved by a sermon of the superior that he began a conversion that changed his life. He entered the Capuchin novitiate, but was dismissed because of the apparently incurable sore on his leg. After another stint of service at San Giacomo, he came back to the Capuchins, only to be dismissed again, for the same reason. Again, back at San Giacomo, his dedication was rewarded by his being made superintendent. Camillus de Lellis devoted the rest of his life to the care of the sick. Along with Saint John of God he has been named patron of hospitals, nurses, and the sick. With the advice of his friend Saint Philip Neri, he studied for the priesthood and was ordained at the age of 34. Contrary to the advice of his friend, Camillus left San Giacomo and founded a congregation of his own. As superior, he devoted much of his own time to the care of the sick. Charity was his first concern, but the physical aspects of the hospital also received his diligent attention. Camillus insisted on cleanliness and the technical competence of those who served the sick. The members of his community bound themselves to serve prisoners and persons infected by the plague as well as those dying in private homes. Some of his men were with troops fighting in Hungary and Croatia in 1595, forming the first recorded military field ambulance. In Naples, he and his men went onto the galleys that had plague and were not allowed to land. He discovered that there were people being buried alive, and ordered his brothers to continue the prayers for the dying 15 minutes after apparent death. Camillus de Lellis himself suffered the disease of his leg through his life. In his last illness, he left his own bed to see if other patients in the hospital needed help. Reflection Saints are created by God. Parents must indeed nurture the faith in their children; husbands and wives must cooperate to deepen their baptismal grace; friends must support each other. But all human effort is only the dispensing of divine power. We must all try as if everything depended on us. But only the power of God can fulfill the plan of God—to make us like himself.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

In 2016, The International Football Association Board (IFAB), which oversees the laws of the game, approved trials for video referees. This edition marks the third time that VAR has been used in World Cups starting with the 2018 World Cup in Russia. This World Cup has also seen numerous instances where lovers of the game have been up in arms regarding the interventions of VAR. Nevertheless, the Round of 16 match between Portugal and Croatia may be one of the best advocates for the usage of VAR in football. The decision to disallow Gvardiol's equaliser would have been impossible with the naked eye. In this episode of In Focus, we take a look at how the usage of VAR has impacted football and the reasons why everyone on and off the pitch have divided opinions regarding its use. The conversation also explores the various technologies that have been implemented in the ongoing 2026 FIFA World Cup and as well as the controversies surrounding the same. Guest: Anirudh Velamuri, Principal Correspondent, The Hindu Host: Rohan Pillay A. Producer: Jude Weston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

North Macedonia has waited 21 years at the EU's door. Zoran Dimitrovski and Linas Kojala ask what delay now costs Europe. Look at a map and the unresolved logic is striking. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia are almost entirely surrounded by EU and NATO members. These countries are not on some distant European frontier. They form an enclave within the Union's own geography. In 2003, at the Thessaloniki summit, the EU promised the Western Balkans a European future. More than two decades later, Croatia remains the last country to have joined, back in 2013. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, enlargement has shifted from a slow technical process to an urgent geopolitical question: what happens when Europe leaves a space inside its own borders unfilled? My guests brought two unusually powerful perspectives to that question. Zoran Dimitrovski, North Macedonia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, spent 35 years as a journalist before entering government. He edited some of his country's leading newspapers, reported from Washington, wrote more than 1,500 articles and investigations, and continues to teach critical thinking and analytical writing. Alongside him was Linas Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center in Vilnius and a lecturer at Vilnius University. A Fulbright scholar with studies at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, Kojala has written about Lithuania's own journey into the European Union and has been ranked among his country's most influential public figures. Twenty-one years at the front door North Macedonia became an EU candidate in 2005, around the same time as Croatia. Yet it still has not opened substantive accession negotiations. The country first faced a long dispute with Greece over its name, eventually resolved through the Prespa Agreement and the adoption of the name North Macedonia. That opened the way into NATO. A second dispute then emerged with neighbouring Bulgaria, involving language, identity, history and the recognition of a Bulgarian community within North Macedonia's constitution. Zoran Dimitrovski did not deny the work still required within his own country. North Macedonia must continue aligning its laws with the EU, strengthening the judiciary and fighting corruption. His argument was that these shortcomings were not the principal reason the country had been stopped. This describes one of the demands that, in Dimitrovski's view, reach beyond the Copenhagen criteria governing democratic institutions, human rights, the rule of law and a functioning market economy. There is, however, responsibility on both sides of the border and both sides of the accession table. The European Parliament's latest assessment expresses regret at North Macedonia's lack of progress, calling for the constitutional amendments, stronger cross-party cooperation and deeper reforms. Yet that same resolution warns that bilateral disputes over language, culture and national identity should not be used to obstruct accession. This is the uncomfortable heart of the story: the EU must remain demanding enough for membership to retain meaning, while remaining fair enough for its promises to retain credibility. The rules were written for a different Europe Kojala argued that the enlargement machinery itself must adapt to a radically altered security landscape. The process still requires unanimity at critical stages, allowing one member state to hold up another country's progress. Under normal circumstances, such caution might be defensible. These, he stressed, are not normal circumstances. The EU's decision-making can be painfully slow because 27 governments must agree on decisions touching sovereignty, money and national interest. Kojala compared it to 27 friends attempting to choose a restaurant, except that several of them may not be friends and the decisions are monumental. The central question is therefore whether procedures devised 20 years ago are still adequate for a Europe facing war, cyber-attacks, sabotage, disinformation and growing competition from authoritarian powers. Railways, bridges and the architecture of security EU enlargement may sound abstract, but it rapidly becomes concrete. It is about railway lines, bridges, roads, energy systems and digital networks. Dimitrovski pointed to Corridors VIII and X, which cross North Macedonia and connect the Adriatic, Black and Aegean Seas with wider Europe. These routes matter for trade and daily life, but also for NATO's ability to move personnel and equipment across the continent. A bridge too weak to carry military vehicles is simultaneously an infrastructure problem, an economic weakness and a security vulnerability. Kojala offered a useful challenge to the language of cost. Security spending is often discussed as money disappearing from productive use. Yet roads, schools, housing, communications and transport capacity remain in the communities where they are built. The same is true of enlargement: investment in the Western Balkans is not charity at Europe's edge. It is investment in the resilience of the continent as a whole. A vacuum rarely stays empty Russia remains an influential force in Serbia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Chinese lending and infrastructure investment have expanded across the region. Dimitrovski was careful not to suggest that the Western Balkans would simply abandon Europe for Moscow or Beijing. His warning was more subtle. Prolonged uncertainty can produce weaker institutions, frustrated populations and a region increasingly exposed to financial pressure, political manipulation and disinformation. Europe therefore faces a choice that is larger than whether another flag appears outside the institutions in Brussels. It must decide whether the Western Balkans are genuinely part of its future, and demonstrate that belief through fair conditions, credible timelines and visible results. Kojala described the European Union as something close to a “boring miracle”: cumbersome, imperfect and endlessly predicted to collapse, yet remarkably capable of adapting and surviving. That miracle now requires another act of political imagination. The Western Balkans have spent more than 20 years hearing that their future lies inside the European Union. Europe may now need to ask a harder question of itself: how long can a promise remain credible before waiting becomes its own form of rejection?

Spain and Argentina have officially punched their tickets to the World Cup final in New Jersey! While the control masters of La Roja cruise forward, the defending champions survive an absolute late-game tactical war to break English hearts once again.Welcome back to World Cup Daily #42! Today, Shaq and James Toland return to dissect a breathtaking semifinal clash in Atlanta, tracking the exact structural failures that triggered England's elimination while looking ahead to the ultimate generation-defining final.We break down the touchline systems and late-game collapses unfiltered.⏱️ MID-SHOW HYDRATION BREAK

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, regular programming is temporarily suspended because the World Cup has taken over. No movie this time — instead, Sidey, Dan, Cris and Reegs look ahead to England v Argentina on Wednesday 15 July 2026, and ask the most important question in football: is it actually coming home?What we covered#ICH: the birth of “It's Coming Home” energy and why this World Cup feels different.England's long road from the lows of Euro 2008, Steve McClaren's brolly, Iceland, and the underachieving golden generation.Why the modern England setup has changed: St George's Park, elite player development, the under-21 pipeline, and a squad that actually seems to like each other.Gareth Southgate's legacy: restoring pride and culture, even if tactical caution may have cost England against Italy, Croatia and Spain.Thomas Tuchel's England: more intensity, better defensive structure, set pieces, positive substitutions, and a clearer tactical plan.England's tournament so far: not always dazzling, but resilient, adaptable and capable of raising the level when the opposition demands it.Hydration breaks: cynical advert break, useful tactical reset, and Dan's preferred toilet window.England's attacking identity: direct, vertical, fast and built around Kane's movement, Bellingham's late arrivals, and wide players who can stretch tired full-backs.The “starters and finishers” idea: Madueke as chaos engine, Saka as late-game punishment.Argentina's threat: shithousery, tempo control, physicality, Romero, and the small matter of Lionel Messi.Cris's theory that England win if they keep the tempo high and make Argentina run.Predictions: Cris 3–0 England, Reegs 3–2 England, Sidey/Dan closer to 1–0 or 2–1, possibly after extra time.Sidey's BetBuilder: Gordon to score, Romero booked, England to go through.Key moments / quotesDan opens with the unavoidable: “It's coming home.”Sidey describes it as “a change to regular programming” because the World Cup has taken over.The group revisits the old England problem: club rivalries, players sitting at separate tables, and a golden generation that never really became a team.Cris backs the development pathway argument, noting how promoting from within helped bypass old rivalries.Dan gives Southgate credit for putting pride back into the shirt, even if he was not always convinced by him as a manager.Reegs frames Tuchel's England as reflecting “some of the best things about English football”: intensity, defensive security and set pieces.Cris says England are not Spain, France or Brazil in terms of central artistry — they are more direct, more vertical, more “crash bang wallop”.The group agrees Messi is still the great unknown: maybe the old days are gone, but nobody wants to be the team that finds out they are not.Sidey's gambling-adjacent closing thought: Gordon goal, Romero yellow, England through.VerdictConfidence is high, but nobody is fully relaxed because England are England and Argentina are Argentina. The dads are backing England to go through, but with varying degrees of emotional self-protection.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

A top ploughman is all at sea, with his tractor and the gear he needs for the world champs, a little off course. Southlander Mark Dillon, a top competitor in his field, is off to the world ploughing championship in Croatia in September. His gear is being shipped and was supposed to arrive ahead of the competition - but there's been delays and now it's a race to get it there in time. Mark Dillon spoke to Lisa Owen.

Medical missionaries are often called upon to provide care that is beyond the scope of their training and previous experience. This interactive case presentation looks at the realities of clinical decision-making in a critically ill snakebitten patient, and offers suggestions on how to navigate similar challenging situations.

What are the best FIFA World Cup 2026 kits, and why do so many modern football shirts look worse than their vintage predecessors? What is the difference between a bootleg and a knockoff? When does a garment become vintage, true vintage, or archive fashion? Why does fashion feel like it is in a down cycle—and why are Leviticus, Obsession, Backrooms, and Longlegs part of the same cultural conversation?Sol and Michael return for an episode about sports fandom, fanaticism, horror movies, and “integrated fashion”: the idea that clothing increasingly absorbs the hobbies, communities, media, politics, and rituals people build their lives around. Starting with food influencers, perfume storytelling, and a fit check featuring Keep Earth jeans, vintage U.S. Open golf tees, a 1999 Slipknot shirt, Iron Heart denim chaps, raw denim, Grailed, and Self Edge, they examine how collector knowledge, age, scarcity, and internet language reshape what counts as vintage menswear or archive fashion.The pair then break down bootleg versus knockoff culture through New York Knicks victory shirts, anime football jerseys from Mexico, Goku and Neon Genesis Evangelion kits, Grateful Dead lot tees, rare Daft Punk bootlegs, vintage movie T-shirts, Liquid Blue blanks, and Lithuania's legendary 1992 Olympic basketball uniforms. They ask why fan-made merchandise can carry more cultural meaning than officially licensed sportswear, how Fanatics and heat-pressed jerseys changed sports merch, and why vintage football shirts now function as streetwear, collectibles, and fashion history.Then comes a full World Cup kit review. Sol and Michael debate the best 2026 FIFA World Cup jerseys, praise DR Congo and Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), criticize the USMNT flag-based kit, and revisit iconic soccer shirts including the USA 1994 denim kit, Japan's 1998 flame goalkeeper jersey, Mexico 1998, England 1990, Chile 1998, Croatia 1998, Germany 1994, Jamaica 1998, and Nigeria 2018. They also discuss collars, national identity, heritage design, team arrival fits, tournament dress codes, Wimbledon whites, and Andre Agassi's acid-wash Nike tennis style.From there, the conversation moves into Paris Men's Fashion Week and fashion's current down cycle: Balenciaga after Demna, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens x adidas SS27 inflatable air-conditioned sportswear, latex and fetish aesthetics, Meta smart glasses, privacy, AI surveillance, and influencer culture. The hosts examine 424 casting Clavicular, Woah Vicky, online lolcow culture, fashion-media ragebait, and the widening gap between viral runway moments and serious editorial fashion writing and research. They also connect World Cup politics to Iran and the United States, debate fashion's political silence, and review Zohran Mamdani's soccer style.Finally, Sol reviews the new era of horror movies, including Leviticus, Obsession, Backrooms, Longlegs, Cuckoo, Talk to Me, It Follows, Hereditary, Midsommar, The Lighthouse, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Cloverfield, and The Blair Witch Project. Why are low-budget, internet-native, character-driven horror films connecting now? Is Longlegs a great supernatural crime procedural with a weak ending? Is Leviticus one of the best horror movies of 2026? And why does horror merchandise feel like the next archive-fashion obsession?We hope you enjoy just as much as we did recording.Lots of love,Sol TIMESTAMPS:0:00 — Best World Cup Kits, Bootlegs and Horror Movies1:11 — Pair of Kings Podcast Intro1:32 — Food Influencers, PerfumeTok and Lifestyle Marketing5:11 — What Counts as Vintage, True Vintage or Archive Fashion?8:57 — Fit Check: Keep Earth Jeans, U.S. Open Tees and Fanatics15:03 — Vintage Slipknot, Iron Heart Chaps and Raw Denim23:09 — Knicks Fanaticism and Fair-Weather Fandom27:13 — Knicks Bootleg Shirts and Fan-Made Sports Merch29:35 — Bootleg vs Knockoff Fashion Explained30:25 — Mexico's Anime Football Jersey Bootlegs31:48 — Grateful Dead Lot Shirts and Bootleg T-Shirt History33:12 — Lithuania 1992 Olympic Basketball Merch35:16 — Vintage T-Shirts in Thailand and Rare Merch Blanks37:14 — Daft Punk Bootleg Tees37:57 — World Cup 2026 Kit Review Begins41:43 — DR Congo and Côte d'Ivoire: Best Kits of 202643:29 — Best Vintage World Cup Jerseys Ever49:00 — National Identity and the Perfect USA Soccer Kit51:42 — Wimbledon Dress Codes and Andre Agassi Style54:11 — Balenciaga, Demna and Oversized Fashion56:37 — Why Fashion Feels Boring in 202658:50 — Rick Owens x adidas SS27 and Inflatable Fashion1:00:51 — Meta Smart Glasses, Privacy and AI Surveillance1:04:14 — Vinted Conspiracies and Internet Panic1:08:45 — How Horror Movies Changed After Found Footage1:10:43 — Leviticus, Obsession, It Follows and A24 Horror1:12:36 — Cuckoo and Longlegs Review1:13:27 — Longlegs: Great Setup, Weak Ending1:16:52 — Leviticus and Backrooms Review1:17:11 — Toy Story 5, iPads and Screen Culture1:19:44 — World Cup Politics, Iran and the United States1:21:52 — Why Fashion Brands Avoid Political Commentary1:24:13 — Zohran Mamdani's World Cup Style1:26:03 — 424, Clavicular and Ragebait Runway Casting1:27:09 — Lolcow Culture, Woah Vicky and Fashion Media1:31:23 — Fashion Algorithms vs Editorial Research1:32:44 — Song of the Week: Meat Loaf and Sisqó1:36:57 — Shaolin Soccer and Chrome Hearts---Episode Tags: Pair of Kings podcast, fashion podcast, integrated fashion, World Cup 2026 kits, best World Cup jerseys, vintage football shirts, vintage soccer jerseys, football shirt fashion, blokecore, bootleg vs knockoff, bootleg T-shirts, archive fashion, vintage menswear, vintage tees, sports merchandise, Fanatics jerseys, Grateful Dead lot shirts, Lithuania 1992 basketball, Japan 1998 jersey, USA 1994 denim kit, Mexico 1998 kit, Nigeria 2018 kit, DR Congo kit, Côte d'Ivoire kit, Rick Owens adidas, Paris Fashion Week menswear, Balenciaga, Demna, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Pharrell Louis Vuitton, Meta smart glasses privacy, 424 Clavicular, fashion media, Leviticus review, Obsession movie, Backrooms movie, Longlegs review, best horror movies 2026Sol Thompson and Michael Smith explore the world and subcultures of fashion, interviewing creators, personalities, and industry insiders to highlight the new vanguard of the fashion world. Subscribe for weekly uploads of the podcast, and don't forgot to follow us on our social channels for additional content, and join our discord to access what we've dubbed “the happiest place in fashion”.Message us with Business Inquiries at pairofkingspod@gmail.comSubscribe to get early access to podcasts and videos, and participate in exclusive giveaways for $4 a monthLinks:InstagramTikTokTwitter/XSol's Substack (One Size Fits All)Sol's InstagramMichael's InstagramMichael's TikTok

Danny Howells has resisted the gravitational pull of fleeting trends, staying true to a creative compass that is the hallmark of a true artist. 

What a treat: an exclusive mix from one of the most beloved artists in our scene. 

 Listen to the full mix via link in bio. 

 Danny Howells will perform at Balance Croatia 2026. @user-175274758 ________________________________________________ BALANCE CROATIA 2026 FULL FOUR DAY FESTIVAL TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT LIMITED DAY FESTIVAL TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT Waitlist for resale tickets are now open. Balance Croatia 2026 Thu 6th Aug - Mon 10th Aug 2026 The Garden Resort, Tisno ________________________________________________ BALANCE CROATIA FESTIVAL LAUNCH PARTY *****SOLD OUT***** Barbarellas Discotheque, Pirovac, Croatia feat. John Digweed & Danny Howells Thursday August 6th 2026 (Friday August 7th morning finish) 12:00am - 5:00am _________________________________________________ Head to www.balancecroatia.com for more info. IG: www.instagram.com/balancecroatia

Send us Fan MailDobar dan!In todays lesson we talk about the roller coaster of emotions that we like to call the World Cup! Uncle Mike and Tony D will embark on a journey that will help you understand how you might be feeling in Hrvatski.DJ MOE brings you a Super Slatko Report all about a new reptile he encountered on his most recent Croatian adventure. Get to know a little bit about the Croatia's Blavor, a misunderstood new friend of the pod.An exciting pod awaits!Hvala, bog.LLC_TeamPod cast links -Let's Learn Croatian the App!https://studio.com/lets-learn-croatianVisit our LLC website: https://www.letslearncroatian.com/NEW BOOK ALERT- Croatia Explained by DJ MOE!This is an affiliate link, if you buy, we may earn a small commission.https://amzn.to/4svEhjHCheck out our LLC Link Tree, lots of amazing ways to support the LLC Pod via our handpicked affiliate links! https://linktr.ee/MaliMomentoLLC?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=830b9f1d-ec9d-483b-bf35-25d070ee2600We have a YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/LetsLearnCroatianLLC Merch Store: https://www.letslearncroatian.com/llc-storeKeep the content flowing, donate to the LLC: https://www.letslearncroatian.com/llc-supporters-pageBuy the LLC a Cup of Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/infoKX Collaborate with LLC: https://www.letslearncroatian.com/become-a-sponsorDo you FaceBook, we do: https://www.facebook.com/llcpod/?__tn__=-UC*FWe even do Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/llcpod/?hl=enTeeDee's Soaps!https://www.teedeessoaps.comBOOK!Check out my book, Croatia, Explained, for travelers who want more than just nice views and a few good meals. So before you take off this summer, make sure you're not just showing up… you're showing up prepared.Croatia, Explained. Available now on Amazon—link in the description.This is an affiliate link, if you buy, we may earn a small commission.https://amzn.to/4svEhjH LLC APPThe wait is over, the Let's Learn Croatian App is finally here! All our content now at your finger tips. This is a 100% personalized, Ai immersive language experience to get you speaking Croatian quickly and confidently. Sign up today and see where the journey takes you.https://studio.com/lets-learn-croatianSupport the show

Last day on the boat, and Venice and Florence, Italy loom. Reflecting on stunning times in Montenegro and Croatia while diving into sports. The World Cup comes to the crescendo, baseball at the All-Star break and the Royals draft and current woes, Wimbledon, and The Open Championship. It's all rolled into one batch of insights and smiles!

GET HEIRLOOM SEEDS & NON GMO SURVIVAL FOOD HERE: https://heavensharvest.com/wam USE Code WAM to save 25% plus free shipping! USE Code WAM50 for 50% off on select items like the #10 cans & MRE packs! Pledge here! Just a dollar a month can help keep us alive! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2652072&ty=h&u=2652072 EXCLUSIVE replays of hour plus long live shows are available here at $5 a month or more! BUY GOLD HERE: https://firstnationalbullion.com/schedule-consult/ Avoid CBDCs! GET 10% OFF ON SHILAJIT FROM DR. KAUFMAN WHEN YOU USE CODE WAM10 HERE: https://medauthentica.com/discount/WAM10?redirect=/products/authentica-shilajit%3Fsca_ref=10867124.wrNV3jkYSaMg9 HELP SUPPORT US AS WE DOCUMENT HISTORY HERE: https://gogetfunding.com/help-keep-wam-alive/# Josh Sigurdson reports on the news of a "Super El Niño" facing many major agricultural hubs worldwide simultaneously. As the Strait of Hormuz is closed and the supply chain breaks down, isn't it convenient that we also see a major probability of an el niño turning into a "Super El Niño?" This also has a 97% probability of carrying on into the Spring. As major weather events sweep the world from the Venezuelan Earthquake to the flash floods in Kentucky and Tennessee, wildfires in Colorado and British Colombia, heatwave conditions spark wildfires in Spain as well as Croatia, floods hit several African countries, a typhoon hits Taiwan and China, a monsoon inundates India, flooding hits Manitoba and a 7.8 earthquake also hits Philippines, one must ask why all at once? What is actually happening? Hugo Chavez claimed in 2010 that the US government was using weapons like HAARP to cause earthquakes worldwide which they will eventually use on Iran in a time of war. HAARP is definitely something we should be looking at as people reported "northern lights" type effects around the waters of Venezuela just before the earthquake. Whistleblowers have also come forward about seismic weapons in Antarctica used by the US military. On top of this is cloud seeding which could lead to mass inundations in some places as droughts plague other parts of the world. With the governments of the world manufacturing supply chain disruptions with war as well as climate policies involving the selling off of huge percentages of farm land including in The Netherlands which of course is the 2nd top agricultural export country in the world, we need to be asking questions. This is "the perfect storm." With these weather events, rations under the guise of emergency orders could very well be on our doorsteps eventually. The combination of all of these already existing shortages and high inflation with further destructive weather events puts the state in the perfect place to take control utilizing rationing on digital IDs. They say this themselves at the WEF. We aren't just theorizing here. We are just listening to what these psychopaths in power say they want to do... Prepare yourselves and stay tuned for more from WAM! GET YOUR WAV WATCH HERE: https://buy.wavwatch.com/WAM Use Code WAM to save $100 and purchase amazing healing frequency technology! Get Your SUPER-SUPPLIMENTS HERE: https://vni.life/wam Use Code WAM15 & Save 15%! Life changing formulas you can't find anywhere else! Get local, healthy, pasture raised meat delivered to your door here: https://wildpastures.com/promos/save-20-for-life/bonus15?oid=6&affid=321 USE THE LINK & get 20% off for life and $15 off your first box! DITCH YOUR DOCTOR! https://www.livelongerformula.com/wam Get a natural health practitioner and work with Christian Yordanov! Mention WAM and get a FREE masterclass! You will ALSO get a FREE metabolic function assessment! GET YOUR APRICOT SEEDS at the life-saving Richardson Nutritional Center HERE: https://rncstore.com/r?id=bg8qc1 Use code JOSH to save money! PayPal: ancientwonderstelevision@gmail.com FIND OUR CoinTree page here: https://cointr.ee/joshsigurdson PURCHASE MERECHANDISE HERE: https://world-alternative-media.creator-spring.com/ JOIN US on SubscribeStar here: https://www.subscribestar.com/world-alternative-media For subscriber only content! BITCOIN ADDRESS: 18d1WEnYYhBRgZVbeyLr6UfiJhrQygcgNU World Alternative Media 2026

(Rec: 19/7/2018) England fever, Croatia president erotic hobbling, more unsavoury anecdotes, and some other stuff. Join the Iron Filings Society: https://www.patreon.com/topflighttimemachine and on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. Get a 7-day full access free trial and pay for 10 months up front for the price of 12 if you like a bargain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest is Kurt Johnson Co-author of The Moon Tavern, A Culinary Love Story With Recipes. The Moon Tavern takes the reader on a romantic and culinary journey through the Islands of Croatia, where dark family secrets are revealed, quirky friends and relatives are found, and love is discovered.Vesna, or Ves, is a cookbook writer from Minneapolis who travels to the remote, exotic island of Lastovo off Croatia's Mediterranean coast to reconnect with her biological grandmother. She'd been adopted as a young child after her parents died in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Ves is also fleeing a frayed relationship with her live-in partner, Reed.In Lastovo, she meets Dinko, a single, handsome, and wealthy vineyard owner, and his cute daughter Mia. With his help with the translation, Ves discovers her biological family's history and the dark secrets of what happened during the war. Romance, travel, and cooking ensue. She ultimately learns what matters most to her: simplicity in life, closeness with family, and someone to share love with. And, of course, food!Stephanie [00:00:00]:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space and other spaces. All the spaces of all the fun things. Kurt is my spouse, Kurt Johnson, and also the co author of the Moon Tavern, a culinary romance with recipes. It is a fiction book that is available on your bookshelf now. Welcome to the podcast, Kurt.Kurt Johnson [00:00:22]:Hi, thanks for having me.Stephanie [00:00:24]:Thanks for having us. The idea that we should work on a book together. I am, as many of you listening know, a cookbook writer and my husband is a fiction writer. And somewhere along the way, we decided that maybe it would be good to collaborate together. Kurt, was it you or me that had the idea first? I think it was you.Kurt Johnson [00:00:42]:Yeah, probably. I was kind of done with my past book writing about Las Vegas and looking for something different. And we'd been traveling a lot, so going to Croatia, going to Italy, going out west, going to Turkey. So I wanted to incorporate travel with a novel, and I also wanted to incorporate food. And so I thought this would be a lot of fun. Since we're traveling together, we have those shared experiences and you have the food experience and the food writing experience. So I thought it'd be a fun collaboration. And I've always liked the idea of love stories.Kurt Johnson [00:01:18]:Even my thriller books in Las Vegas had kind of a love story element. And it adds a dimension to a novel that, I don't know, makes it cohesive, makes it pull together in an emotional arc that's kind of fulfilling in the end.Stephanie [00:01:33]:Do you think you're a romantic at heart, or what is it about romances that are fun to write for you?Kurt Johnson [00:01:39]:Maybe I'm a romance at heart. I may be more stoic than that, though. I just. I like the idea of seeing people get together, seeing people enjoy the same interests and finding people that can fall in love. Of course, that's always the fun part. The hard part is once you get married and move on from there and have to deal with kids and daily life and work and all the other things that go with living life. And that's not that much fun to write.Stephanie [00:02:07]:Yeah, exactly. We as a couple, I think I can speak for me and you maybe on this one. We've always had great experiences traveling. We are good traveling companions. We like the spirit of adventure. Did you know that Croatia would be the spot for the first fiction endeavor?Kurt Johnson [00:02:24]:Yeah, that was a given since we'd been there five times and four times running a sailboat and visiting the islands. And as you know, Stephanie, I'm just enamored with those islands, I think they're so beautiful. And there was one island we discovered out there, Lastovo, which is the furthest island out. So a lot of the sailors and tourists just never get there. They stay closer to shore. So, you know, going out there the first time, this beautiful bay of Zachlopedia, where, you know, it's a, it's a protective cove which is beautiful turquoise water. And then taking the dinghy in, and then you walk up this path, I think it's about a two mile hike. And then you go over this ridge and this 16th, 15th century town opens up.Kurt Johnson [00:03:10]:You know, at one point maybe it had 10,000 residents. And, and it, it, when we first saw it, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, it was abandoned. So it was a ghost town of 15th century buildings and churches and apartments in this beautiful valley of lush green foliage. So that's very picturesque. We had an incredible meal there of just simple anchovies and blitfa. And for you, for you people out there that don't know, blitfa is ubiquitous in Croatia. And it's, it's just spring potatoes with Swiss chard, but it's served with everything.Stephanie [00:03:52]:It is served with everything. And they sometimes have spinach, sometimes have like another type of green, but it's sort of like the potatoes are cooked till they're pretty soft, and then it's kind of mashed in a little bit. So it's not fully a mashed potato and it's not fully a roasted potato. It's sort of a combination of both. But it is good.Kurt Johnson [00:04:12]:Yeah, so, yeah, that's so, you know, it seemed such an exotic place, the island of Lastovo in Croatia, that it was a natural to place it there.Stephanie [00:04:23]:Can you tell a little bit of just an introduction of the story, like what people will find when they crack open the book?Kurt Johnson [00:04:30]:Sure. It's about Vesna, who is. Has a breakup with her live in boyfriend, and they'd had a restaurant. She was a chef, a cookbook authority, and had a restaurant, not unlike my dear wife Stephanie. And she has a breakup and she leaves Minneapolis to go to Croatia to uncover her. Her heritage. She had been adopted from Croatia, specifically Dubrovnik, when her parents died in the Serb bombing of Dubrovnik in 1991. So she was adopted out of there and raised in Minnesota.Kurt Johnson [00:05:05]:So then she goes to Croatia and rediscovers her dark family secrets and meets Dinko Radek, who is a winery owner, and, you know, romance ensues. But she has a life still back in Minneapolis that she has to go back to and resolve.Stephanie [00:05:24]:When we talked about putting this first concept together, you know, I see the world through food. Like, literally everything in sort of my life is framed by a meal, an experience, just the way that I see the world. It's always around food, celebrations. And so did you know that that would work for this Croatia book? Because I didn't. When you first brought it up, I was like, I can't be a Croatian grandma here. And writing recipes about what at the time I perceived as, like, dumplings.Kurt Johnson [00:05:53]:Yeah, I wasn't sure either, frankly. You know, so each chapter, there's 25 chapters, and each chapter in it has a description of cooking. And it's all Croatia cooking, Croatia recipes. You know, all food we at over the years where we were there. And then the idea of tagging on recipes was just kind of bringing it home. Like, here's the Croatia experience. Now here's how Stephanie would bring that back to the real world, which is here in the United States.Stephanie [00:06:21]:We have talked about doing a series of books. What is it about this genre that you think lends itself to other titles and other characters?Kurt Johnson [00:06:29]:Well, you know, it's an adventure book on one level, and there's always new places to visit. So the next book is based in Panza, Italy, where we've been a couple times. And it's this beautiful island off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean. And, you know, Italian food. You go to Italy and what you remember is the pizza in Naples or the. The pasta in Rome and. And the busteca up in the hills. So, you know, a way to experience a place is.Kurt Johnson [00:07:04]:Is through food. And I like writing about new settings. You know, it. It's not as interesting writing about Minnesota,Stephanie [00:07:11]:but you've written a lot about Las Vegas. You've had how many books about Las Vegas? Three.Kurt Johnson [00:07:16]:Yeah, three. You know, two of the. Of kind of a thriller in. Two thrillers in a series, and then a book about RVing that ends up in. In Las Vegas. And Las Vegas is a interesting place, and I lived there for five years running nightclubs and restaurants. And so two of the books are Underbelly of Las Vegas, which I was a part of in the nightclub scene back in the late 80s. So that's just flat out fun to write about.Kurt Johnson [00:07:39]:And Las Vegas is such a weirdo place that it's fun to bring that to life.Stephanie [00:07:45]:It's interesting to hear you talk about that. The way you choose your stories is about place, because the first book, the Barrens, that you wrote with our Daughter Ellie, inspired by her experiences as a canoe camper in the tundra. That's also based in Place, too. Place is sort of what starts you on these journeys. It seems like, yeah, you know something,Kurt Johnson [00:08:07]:you threw me a curveball because I never really thought about it. But you're exactly right.Stephanie [00:08:12]:All.Kurt Johnson [00:08:12]:All these books start off with a setting, with a place, and then, you know, the plots revolve around. Around that. And there's just so many. So many different. There's a finite number of, really, plots you can choose from. It's kind of like a piano keyboard has all the. The notes that you want to make up a. A music piece the same way with plot structures.Kurt Johnson [00:08:34]:And so to take it to the next level, you really have to search out characters, and the characters are in a setting, so those two are inexplicably, Inextricably. Inextricably linked. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the two go hand in hand. So character and place really can set a novel apart.Stephanie [00:08:59]:Can you think of other books that you've written or. Excuse me. No, not that you've written, that you've read. Where Place sort of started you off on this adventure?Kurt Johnson [00:09:07]:Yeah, probably. I really love Beautiful Ruins.Stephanie [00:09:11]:Jess Walters.Kurt Johnson [00:09:13]:Walters, yeah. And that starts off in Italy, kind of near Cinque de Terre. And it's kind of the poor version of Cinque de Terre, where the tourists don't go. And it was such a fascinating story. And then they bring that all back to Hollywood in America, and it just works so well. But what really captures your imagination is the description of this little seaside community. Before the whole plot takes over, IStephanie [00:09:41]:kind of think about that book. The Embarrassment of Mangoes.Kurt Johnson [00:09:44]:Yeah.Stephanie [00:09:44]:When you and I first started sailing and going on these adventures, we read that book. It was about a couple that buys a boat and sails through the Caribbean, and she is discovering spices and fruits and vegetables and things that she's never eaten before. And I just loved that book. It was really what got me into sailing and thinking about how to make that our life and whether or not, you know, we could buy a boat and do that. And that boat really had a huge setting of place. Can you think of, like. I don't know. When I think of other books, there's very few books that I think about character first.Stephanie [00:10:19]:I usually always think about the place. Maybe that's just something.Kurt Johnson [00:10:22]:Or the plot, too. Yeah, they're all just linked together. And you don't think about. Well, you were saying you don't think about character as much.Stephanie [00:10:31]:Not really.Kurt Johnson [00:10:32]:Yeah, it's funny. I think, you know, the best books people say are character driven, but they're inexplicable. What's the word again?Stephanie [00:10:41]:Inextricably.Kurt Johnson [00:10:43]:Inextricably. Trouble with that. Linked. So, you know, you pick a place and you pick a plot and then you build these characters. The characters have to build around that plot and so they kind of naturally flow. And, and I, I think they, if they're well written and honest, you shouldn't think of them. You know, they're interesting characters and you'll say, you know, this is Rabbit and the Rabbit series. And you'll know, but you won't say, oh, that's just a great character.Kurt Johnson [00:11:10]:I, I, I don't know that I certainly, you know, I'm probably deep into it and I look at the craft a lot so I can see where somebody has really spent some time to develop an honest character or where, you know, the narrative voice comes through and, and a character comes to life through this first person narrative voice. So I see that a lot moreStephanie [00:11:30]:people have a real, like they can't believe you can write a book. Like the idea of the literal act of sitting down and writing and how that works. People fantasize about writing it, but then very few people do. What was it that got you over the hump from thinking about writing it to actually sitting down and doing it?Kurt Johnson [00:11:47]:Well, selling our business and all of a sudden being able to free up time. Because for me, novel writing and I think was it Chrisham talked about, you know, writing at 5 in the morning before he goes to work at 7. I just couldn't do that. You know, I just, I'm very focused on one thing and, and so I needed to free up my time from work in order to get going. And then it was, can you put together, you know, a thousand or fifteen hundred words every day so that it links up into a novel and have that, not only that, that discipline, but also have the creative juices to produce scenes almost every day because, you know, like a, a good novel is created from 50 scenes. So I went from, you know, writing a memoir that I probably won't publish just to see if I can get, you know, a thousand words every day and put this together to then writing Las Vegas turnaround. And there I, I, I really just copied a lot of plot structures that I saw that I liked. And so it was easier for me to set up main characters, set up tertiary characters, subplots, because I had a blueprint from somebody else.Kurt Johnson [00:12:56]:And then, and then once, you know, you Keep writing. You get muscle memory for it and it becomes more, more natural and actually more fun because it becomes more organic. You'll follow characters through a town and they'll meet somebody and all of a sudden that person becomes a character in their universe and they say something and all of a sudden that takes off and you have to follow it. Now, you know, the woman's gonna fall in love with a guy at the end. But getting there is the fun part. And now I can do that a lot more organically.Stephanie [00:13:27]:If you are talking to any aspiring novel writers, what kind of advice do you have for them to get started?Kurt Johnson [00:13:34]:Well, you know, you gotta lower your expectations just because publishing is so hard, you know.Stephanie [00:13:39]:Can you elaborate on that?Kurt Johnson [00:13:41]:Well, you know, there's maybe two or three or 400 agents, most of them in New York City and they're all trying to make a buck. And it's hard to make a buck off a debut writer. It helps if you're MFA and you're writing in a genre because, you know, let's say 70% of the books are read by women and 70% of those are romances. And then men, the other 30%, probably 80% of what they read are, you know, thrillers or mysteries. So if you can pick a genre, that always helps. But yeah, it, you have to be more thoughtful about it. And I think, I think so many first time writers, you know, once they get the discipline and put, put the, the words on a page, they write that first personal novel, you know, and I wrote my memoir and it's, it's really 90% of those, they, you know, people have the, they aspire for the great American novel and it's too personal, it's too close to home. They can't break out from the reality of their lives to have fun with the plot and make things happen.Kurt Johnson [00:14:45]:So a lot of times these books, nothing happens. They're deeply emotional books where nothing happens and they're, they're excruciatingly boring. So you gotta get past that phase and then you gotta look at it as a, as a craft. And, you know, a big chunk of it's art, of course, whatever you wanna call that, you know, shedding light on the human experience. But a big chunk is craft. And I don't think you can get to the craft for most people in that first book. So you gotta keep writing, you know, and realize that the first couple books may not get published. So, you know, the barons got published.Kurt Johnson [00:15:21]:That was one, two, that was my third, fourth book, you know, and the, and two, the, the first three, two of them were duds that will never be published.Stephanie [00:15:31]:Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, it's good to chat with you about the book. We are in the marketing process of the book. I feel like books come in three waves. One is the idea that you're thinking about it. The second, the actual writing of it. And then the third is actual the marketing of it.Stephanie [00:15:48]:What do you think's the hardest part?Kurt Johnson [00:15:49]:Well, I mean, it's. The hardest part's finding an agent and finding a publisher. Then if you self publish, the hardest part is marketing. And at least it is for me because writing is so natural and fun for me. But I think for most people, you know, the writing's a hard part. And, and you know, like the Minnesota writer o', Brien, he hates writing, so he forces himself. Tim o'. Brien.Kurt Johnson [00:16:12]:So he forces himself to get those books out there. So probably that's the hardest part for him.Stephanie [00:16:17]:We had, I had a cookbook, two cookbooks out and I had a publisher, but they didn't publish this book because it was a fiction book. I think some people just assume like, oh, well, they've already had books out, but we self published this book. Why did we make that decision from your standpoint?Kurt Johnson [00:16:33]:Well, we couldn't get an A list agent or a New York publisher. There's just not, it comes off as almost a debut book and it's hard for them to make any money. So if you can't get an A lister, then you're, you know, stuck with boutique publishing companies and others and, and they just don't support the marketing of your book. And I've self published books in the past, so I know how to do it. I know how to put a professional product out there. And, and we can, you know, both of us are marketers and, and Stephanie has a large platform, so we can do a lot of our own marketing or, or outsource it, you know, but still we retain most of the profits. So when we do the marketing, we can reinvested or keep those profits.Stephanie [00:17:17]:Yeah, I, when you say profits, it sounds like there's a lot there. I'd like to, I mean, I mean,Kurt Johnson [00:17:22]:maybe, maybe we broke it even at this point, but then now we're looking at a marketing PR firm that's going to set us back another $5,000. But you know, if, if these books succeed and somebody makes a lot of money, it's the, it's the third, you know, book that's going to put them over the top. It's not the first.Stephanie [00:17:40]:I have this idea too that we're going to write these books and then sooner or later someone's going to turn them into a T series because it's going to be like the White Lotus where each season is a different location and a different cast of characters, but sort of the general premise is sort of the same.Kurt Johnson [00:17:56]:I hope so. You know, I hope an A list agent comes along and, and frees us from our servitude or whatever. And, but, and yeah, you know, there's, there's plenty of stories of self published authors that, that get deals or even boutique. Boutique authors that get deals. So you know, we can dream.Stephanie [00:18:16]:One thing that I'd like the listener to hear is what their part is in this because we've. I was leaving the coffee shop today. We're in Ely. That is the vacation backgrounds. But.Kurt Johnson [00:18:25]:Right.Stephanie [00:18:25]:I was leaving the coffee shop today and a woman stopped me and said, Stephanie, I had the opportunity to read the Moon Tavern. It's so good. I loved it so much. And she's telling me about it and telling her friend. And I have that experience a lot where people have really, really enjoyed this book. And I just want the listener to know that leaving reviews on Goodreads or Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever you bought the book or if you can' find a book, asking for it at your local bookseller. Cause they can always order it when you're self published. The more buzz you can create about these books, the better chance that someone will hear about it, someone will buy it and eventually a publisher, if they hear about a book and they like it, then they may pick it up.Stephanie [00:19:03]:So I think if you like what you're reading and you want to see more of this type of work in the world and books that you like, that's something that you can do to help us out.Kurt Johnson [00:19:13]:Yes, a 5 on Amazon or top rating on any other Goodreads is good too. Yeah, it's, it's all, it's all good. So yes, those, those help a lot. Just because the more reviews you can get and the more five star reviews you get, the more people will pick up the book, the more buzz you'll get. So yeah, so it helps us immeasurably.Stephanie [00:19:35]:Another thing before we wrap up here, someone asked me about the Cover of the book. Do you want to talk about how you picked the artwork?Kurt Johnson [00:19:41]:Yeah, I was pretty much online Xee Reider, she's in St. Paul and she's a muralist mostly. And I really liked the look that she had. So I reached out to her, and she did the original artwork, and then each chapter ends with a recipe, and there's a pen and ink drawing, and she did those. And I really think that adds another level to the book. And I love a beautiful cover.Stephanie [00:20:10]:Yeah, the cover is really nice. She did a great job. All right, well, that is it for this episode of the podcast. Just want to chat with you and give people a little background. Thanks for being a guest. Stephanie Hansen's @StephaniesDish Newsletter 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 stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Kurt Johnson Co-author of The Moon Tavern, A Culinary Love Story With Recipes. The Moon Tavern takes the reader on a romantic and culinary journey through the Islands of Croatia, where dark family secrets are revealed, quirky friends and relatives are found, and love is discovered.Vesna, or Ves, is a cookbook writer from Minneapolis who travels to the remote, exotic island of Lastovo off Croatia's Mediterranean coast to reconnect with her biological grandmother. She'd been adopted as a young child after her parents died in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Ves is also fleeing a frayed relationship with her live-in partner, Reed.In Lastovo, she meets Dinko, a single, handsome, and wealthy vineyard owner, and his cute daughter Mia. With his help with the translation, Ves discovers her biological family's history and the dark secrets of what happened during the war. Romance, travel, and cooking ensue. She ultimately learns what matters most to her: simplicity in life, closeness with family, and someone to share love with. And, of course, food!Stephanie [00:00:00]:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space and other spaces. All the spaces of all the fun things. Kurt is my spouse, Kurt Johnson, and also the co author of the Moon Tavern, a culinary romance with recipes. It is a fiction book that is available on your bookshelf now. Welcome to the podcast, Kurt.Kurt Johnson [00:00:22]:Hi, thanks for having me.Stephanie [00:00:24]:Thanks for having us. The idea that we should work on a book together. I am, as many of you listening know, a cookbook writer and my husband is a fiction writer. And somewhere along the way, we decided that maybe it would be good to collaborate together. Kurt, was it you or me that had the idea first? I think it was you.Kurt Johnson [00:00:42]:Yeah, probably. I was kind of done with my past book writing about Las Vegas and looking for something different. And we'd been traveling a lot, so going to Croatia, going to Italy, going out west, going to Turkey. So I wanted to incorporate travel with a novel, and I also wanted to incorporate food. And so I thought this would be a lot of fun. Since we're traveling together, we have those shared experiences and you have the food experience and the food writing experience. So I thought it'd be a fun collaboration. And I've always liked the idea of love stories.Kurt Johnson [00:01:18]:Even my thriller books in Las Vegas had kind of a love story element. And it adds a dimension to a novel that, I don't know, makes it cohesive, makes it pull together in an emotional arc that's kind of fulfilling in the end.Stephanie [00:01:33]:Do you think you're a romantic at heart, or what is it about romances that are fun to write for you?Kurt Johnson [00:01:39]:Maybe I'm a romance at heart. I may be more stoic than that, though. I just. I like the idea of seeing people get together, seeing people enjoy the same interests and finding people that can fall in love. Of course, that's always the fun part. The hard part is once you get married and move on from there and have to deal with kids and daily life and work and all the other things that go with living life. And that's not that much fun to write.Stephanie [00:02:07]:Yeah, exactly. We as a couple, I think I can speak for me and you maybe on this one. We've always had great experiences traveling. We are good traveling companions. We like the spirit of adventure. Did you know that Croatia would be the spot for the first fiction endeavor?Kurt Johnson [00:02:24]:Yeah, that was a given since we'd been there five times and four times running a sailboat and visiting the islands. And as you know, Stephanie, I'm just enamored with those islands, I think they're so beautiful. And there was one island we discovered out there, Lastovo, which is the furthest island out. So a lot of the sailors and tourists just never get there. They stay closer to shore. So, you know, going out there the first time, this beautiful bay of Zachlopedia, where, you know, it's a, it's a protective cove which is beautiful turquoise water. And then taking the dinghy in, and then you walk up this path, I think it's about a two mile hike. And then you go over this ridge and this 16th, 15th century town opens up.Kurt Johnson [00:03:10]:You know, at one point maybe it had 10,000 residents. And, and it, it, when we first saw it, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, it was abandoned. So it was a ghost town of 15th century buildings and churches and apartments in this beautiful valley of lush green foliage. So that's very picturesque. We had an incredible meal there of just simple anchovies and blitfa. And for you, for you people out there that don't know, blitfa is ubiquitous in Croatia. And it's, it's just spring potatoes with Swiss chard, but it's served with everything.Stephanie [00:03:52]:It is served with everything. And they sometimes have spinach, sometimes have like another type of green, but it's sort of like the potatoes are cooked till they're pretty soft, and then it's kind of mashed in a little bit. So it's not fully a mashed potato and it's not fully a roasted potato. It's sort of a combination of both. But it is good.Kurt Johnson [00:04:12]:Yeah, so, yeah, that's so, you know, it seemed such an exotic place, the island of Lastovo in Croatia, that it was a natural to place it there.Stephanie [00:04:23]:Can you tell a little bit of just an introduction of the story, like what people will find when they crack open the book?Kurt Johnson [00:04:30]:Sure. It's about Vesna, who is. Has a breakup with her live in boyfriend, and they'd had a restaurant. She was a chef, a cookbook authority, and had a restaurant, not unlike my dear wife Stephanie. And she has a breakup and she leaves Minneapolis to go to Croatia to uncover her. Her heritage. She had been adopted from Croatia, specifically Dubrovnik, when her parents died in the Serb bombing of Dubrovnik in 1991. So she was adopted out of there and raised in Minnesota.Kurt Johnson [00:05:05]:So then she goes to Croatia and rediscovers her dark family secrets and meets Dinko Radek, who is a winery owner, and, you know, romance ensues. But she has a life still back in Minneapolis that she has to go back to and resolve.Stephanie [00:05:24]:When we talked about putting this first concept together, you know, I see the world through food. Like, literally everything in sort of my life is framed by a meal, an experience, just the way that I see the world. It's always around food, celebrations. And so did you know that that would work for this Croatia book? Because I didn't. When you first brought it up, I was like, I can't be a Croatian grandma here. And writing recipes about what at the time I perceived as, like, dumplings.Kurt Johnson [00:05:53]:Yeah, I wasn't sure either, frankly. You know, so each chapter, there's 25 chapters, and each chapter in it has a description of cooking. And it's all Croatia cooking, Croatia recipes. You know, all food we at over the years where we were there. And then the idea of tagging on recipes was just kind of bringing it home. Like, here's the Croatia experience. Now here's how Stephanie would bring that back to the real world, which is here in the United States.Stephanie [00:06:21]:We have talked about doing a series of books. What is it about this genre that you think lends itself to other titles and other characters?Kurt Johnson [00:06:29]:Well, you know, it's an adventure book on one level, and there's always new places to visit. So the next book is based in Panza, Italy, where we've been a couple times. And it's this beautiful island off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean. And, you know, Italian food. You go to Italy and what you remember is the pizza in Naples or the. The pasta in Rome and. And the busteca up in the hills. So, you know, a way to experience a place is.Kurt Johnson [00:07:04]:Is through food. And I like writing about new settings. You know, it. It's not as interesting writing about Minnesota,Stephanie [00:07:11]:but you've written a lot about Las Vegas. You've had how many books about Las Vegas? Three.Kurt Johnson [00:07:16]:Yeah, three. You know, two of the. Of kind of a thriller in. Two thrillers in a series, and then a book about RVing that ends up in. In Las Vegas. And Las Vegas is a interesting place, and I lived there for five years running nightclubs and restaurants. And so two of the books are Underbelly of Las Vegas, which I was a part of in the nightclub scene back in the late 80s. So that's just flat out fun to write about.Kurt Johnson [00:07:39]:And Las Vegas is such a weirdo place that it's fun to bring that to life.Stephanie [00:07:45]:It's interesting to hear you talk about that. The way you choose your stories is about place, because the first book, the Barrens, that you wrote with our Daughter Ellie, inspired by her experiences as a canoe camper in the tundra. That's also based in Place, too. Place is sort of what starts you on these journeys. It seems like, yeah, you know something,Kurt Johnson [00:08:07]:you threw me a curveball because I never really thought about it. But you're exactly right.Stephanie [00:08:12]:All.Kurt Johnson [00:08:12]:All these books start off with a setting, with a place, and then, you know, the plots revolve around. Around that. And there's just so many. So many different. There's a finite number of, really, plots you can choose from. It's kind of like a piano keyboard has all the. The notes that you want to make up a. A music piece the same way with plot structures.Kurt Johnson [00:08:34]:And so to take it to the next level, you really have to search out characters, and the characters are in a setting, so those two are inexplicably, Inextricably. Inextricably linked. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the two go hand in hand. So character and place really can set a novel apart.Stephanie [00:08:59]:Can you think of other books that you've written or. Excuse me. No, not that you've written, that you've read. Where Place sort of started you off on this adventure?Kurt Johnson [00:09:07]:Yeah, probably. I really love Beautiful Ruins.Stephanie [00:09:11]:Jess Walters.Kurt Johnson [00:09:13]:Walters, yeah. And that starts off in Italy, kind of near Cinque de Terre. And it's kind of the poor version of Cinque de Terre, where the tourists don't go. And it was such a fascinating story. And then they bring that all back to Hollywood in America, and it just works so well. But what really captures your imagination is the description of this little seaside community. Before the whole plot takes over, IStephanie [00:09:41]:kind of think about that book. The Embarrassment of Mangoes.Kurt Johnson [00:09:44]:Yeah.Stephanie [00:09:44]:When you and I first started sailing and going on these adventures, we read that book. It was about a couple that buys a boat and sails through the Caribbean, and she is discovering spices and fruits and vegetables and things that she's never eaten before. And I just loved that book. It was really what got me into sailing and thinking about how to make that our life and whether or not, you know, we could buy a boat and do that. And that boat really had a huge setting of place. Can you think of, like. I don't know. When I think of other books, there's very few books that I think about character first.Stephanie [00:10:19]:I usually always think about the place. Maybe that's just something.Kurt Johnson [00:10:22]:Or the plot, too. Yeah, they're all just linked together. And you don't think about. Well, you were saying you don't think about character as much.Stephanie [00:10:31]:Not really.Kurt Johnson [00:10:32]:Yeah, it's funny. I think, you know, the best books people say are character driven, but they're inexplicable. What's the word again?Stephanie [00:10:41]:Inextricably.Kurt Johnson [00:10:43]:Inextricably. Trouble with that. Linked. So, you know, you pick a place and you pick a plot and then you build these characters. The characters have to build around that plot and so they kind of naturally flow. And, and I, I think they, if they're well written and honest, you shouldn't think of them. You know, they're interesting characters and you'll say, you know, this is Rabbit and the Rabbit series. And you'll know, but you won't say, oh, that's just a great character.Kurt Johnson [00:11:10]:I, I, I don't know that I certainly, you know, I'm probably deep into it and I look at the craft a lot so I can see where somebody has really spent some time to develop an honest character or where, you know, the narrative voice comes through and, and a character comes to life through this first person narrative voice. So I see that a lot moreStephanie [00:11:30]:people have a real, like they can't believe you can write a book. Like the idea of the literal act of sitting down and writing and how that works. People fantasize about writing it, but then very few people do. What was it that got you over the hump from thinking about writing it to actually sitting down and doing it?Kurt Johnson [00:11:47]:Well, selling our business and all of a sudden being able to free up time. Because for me, novel writing and I think was it Chrisham talked about, you know, writing at 5 in the morning before he goes to work at 7. I just couldn't do that. You know, I just, I'm very focused on one thing and, and so I needed to free up my time from work in order to get going. And then it was, can you put together, you know, a thousand or fifteen hundred words every day so that it links up into a novel and have that, not only that, that discipline, but also have the creative juices to produce scenes almost every day because, you know, like a, a good novel is created from 50 scenes. So I went from, you know, writing a memoir that I probably won't publish just to see if I can get, you know, a thousand words every day and put this together to then writing Las Vegas turnaround. And there I, I, I really just copied a lot of plot structures that I saw that I liked. And so it was easier for me to set up main characters, set up tertiary characters, subplots, because I had a blueprint from somebody else.Kurt Johnson [00:12:56]:And then, and then once, you know, you Keep writing. You get muscle memory for it and it becomes more, more natural and actually more fun because it becomes more organic. You'll follow characters through a town and they'll meet somebody and all of a sudden that person becomes a character in their universe and they say something and all of a sudden that takes off and you have to follow it. Now, you know, the woman's gonna fall in love with a guy at the end. But getting there is the fun part. And now I can do that a lot more organically.Stephanie [00:13:27]:If you are talking to any aspiring novel writers, what kind of advice do you have for them to get started?Kurt Johnson [00:13:34]:Well, you know, you gotta lower your expectations just because publishing is so hard, you know.Stephanie [00:13:39]:Can you elaborate on that?Kurt Johnson [00:13:41]:Well, you know, there's maybe two or three or 400 agents, most of them in New York City and they're all trying to make a buck. And it's hard to make a buck off a debut writer. It helps if you're MFA and you're writing in a genre because, you know, let's say 70% of the books are read by women and 70% of those are romances. And then men, the other 30%, probably 80% of what they read are, you know, thrillers or mysteries. So if you can pick a genre, that always helps. But yeah, it, you have to be more thoughtful about it. And I think, I think so many first time writers, you know, once they get the discipline and put, put the, the words on a page, they write that first personal novel, you know, and I wrote my memoir and it's, it's really 90% of those, they, you know, people have the, they aspire for the great American novel and it's too personal, it's too close to home. They can't break out from the reality of their lives to have fun with the plot and make things happen.Kurt Johnson [00:14:45]:So a lot of times these books, nothing happens. They're deeply emotional books where nothing happens and they're, they're excruciatingly boring. So you gotta get past that phase and then you gotta look at it as a, as a craft. And, you know, a big chunk of it's art, of course, whatever you wanna call that, you know, shedding light on the human experience. But a big chunk is craft. And I don't think you can get to the craft for most people in that first book. So you gotta keep writing, you know, and realize that the first couple books may not get published. So, you know, the barons got published.Kurt Johnson [00:15:21]:That was one, two, that was my third, fourth book, you know, and the, and two, the, the first three, two of them were duds that will never be published.Stephanie [00:15:31]:Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, it's good to chat with you about the book. We are in the marketing process of the book. I feel like books come in three waves. One is the idea that you're thinking about it. The second, the actual writing of it. And then the third is actual the marketing of it.Stephanie [00:15:48]:What do you think's the hardest part?Kurt Johnson [00:15:49]:Well, I mean, it's. The hardest part's finding an agent and finding a publisher. Then if you self publish, the hardest part is marketing. And at least it is for me because writing is so natural and fun for me. But I think for most people, you know, the writing's a hard part. And, and you know, like the Minnesota writer o', Brien, he hates writing, so he forces himself. Tim o'. Brien.Kurt Johnson [00:16:12]:So he forces himself to get those books out there. So probably that's the hardest part for him.Stephanie [00:16:17]:We had, I had a cookbook, two cookbooks out and I had a publisher, but they didn't publish this book because it was a fiction book. I think some people just assume like, oh, well, they've already had books out, but we self published this book. Why did we make that decision from your standpoint?Kurt Johnson [00:16:33]:Well, we couldn't get an A list agent or a New York publisher. There's just not, it comes off as almost a debut book and it's hard for them to make any money. So if you can't get an A lister, then you're, you know, stuck with boutique publishing companies and others and, and they just don't support the marketing of your book. And I've self published books in the past, so I know how to do it. I know how to put a professional product out there. And, and we can, you know, both of us are marketers and, and Stephanie has a large platform, so we can do a lot of our own marketing or, or outsource it, you know, but still we retain most of the profits. So when we do the marketing, we can reinvested or keep those profits.Stephanie [00:17:17]:Yeah, I, when you say profits, it sounds like there's a lot there. I'd like to, I mean, I mean,Kurt Johnson [00:17:22]:maybe, maybe we broke it even at this point, but then now we're looking at a marketing PR firm that's going to set us back another $5,000. But you know, if, if these books succeed and somebody makes a lot of money, it's the, it's the third, you know, book that's going to put them over the top. It's not the first.Stephanie [00:17:40]:I have this idea too that we're going to write these books and then sooner or later someone's going to turn them into a T series because it's going to be like the White Lotus where each season is a different location and a different cast of characters, but sort of the general premise is sort of the same.Kurt Johnson [00:17:56]:I hope so. You know, I hope an A list agent comes along and, and frees us from our servitude or whatever. And, but, and yeah, you know, there's, there's plenty of stories of self published authors that, that get deals or even boutique. Boutique authors that get deals. So you know, we can dream.Stephanie [00:18:16]:One thing that I'd like the listener to hear is what their part is in this because we've. I was leaving the coffee shop today. We're in Ely. That is the vacation backgrounds. But.Kurt Johnson [00:18:25]:Right.Stephanie [00:18:25]:I was leaving the coffee shop today and a woman stopped me and said, Stephanie, I had the opportunity to read the Moon Tavern. It's so good. I loved it so much. And she's telling me about it and telling her friend. And I have that experience a lot where people have really, really enjoyed this book. And I just want the listener to know that leaving reviews on Goodreads or Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever you bought the book or if you can' find a book, asking for it at your local bookseller. Cause they can always order it when you're self published. The more buzz you can create about these books, the better chance that someone will hear about it, someone will buy it and eventually a publisher, if they hear about a book and they like it, then they may pick it up.Stephanie [00:19:03]:So I think if you like what you're reading and you want to see more of this type of work in the world and books that you like, that's something that you can do to help us out.Kurt Johnson [00:19:13]:Yes, a 5 on Amazon or top rating on any other Goodreads is good too. Yeah, it's, it's all, it's all good. So yes, those, those help a lot. Just because the more reviews you can get and the more five star reviews you get, the more people will pick up the book, the more buzz you'll get. So yeah, so it helps us immeasurably.Stephanie [00:19:35]:Another thing before we wrap up here, someone asked me about the Cover of the book. Do you want to talk about how you picked the artwork?Kurt Johnson [00:19:41]:Yeah, I was pretty much online Xee Reider, she's in St. Paul and she's a muralist mostly. And I really liked the look that she had. So I reached out to her, and she did the original artwork, and then each chapter ends with a recipe, and there's a pen and ink drawing, and she did those. And I really think that adds another level to the book. And I love a beautiful cover.Stephanie [00:20:10]:Yeah, the cover is really nice. She did a great job. All right, well, that is it for this episode of the podcast. Just want to chat with you and give people a little background. Thanks for being a guest. Stephanie Hansen's @StephaniesDish Newsletter 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 stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

After three years in France, Kim is reflecting on the American habits she did not fully notice until she had enough distance to see them clearly.In this episode, she talks about rushing through the day, measuring life by productivity, feeling pressure to “keep busy,” overthinking parenting, buying too much, delaying rest, and treating pleasure like something that has to be earned. France has not magically cured any of these habits, but it has helped her question the fears, assumptions, and expectations that shaped so much of how she lived before.She also shares a summer travel chat about where people in France and Europe actually go on vacation, from Greek islands to Malta, Italy, Croatia, and Turkey.Resources:Don't forget to subscribe, rate & review and follow us on Instagram @coucou.pod 

Today’s Nations and Devotions features a prayer for the nation of Croatia by one of the newest chaplains to Soccer Chaplains United, Ben Bost. Ben is the inaugural volunteer chaplain to AC Boise, a team which has just begun playing in USL League 1. Ben offers a reflection based on Psalm 1 and Soccer Psalm 1 about the importance of training and practicing — not only in football, but in faith and in life. Today’s special hashtag is #croatia for the Nations and Devotions sticker challenge. Make sure to use #soccerchaplainsunited and #soccerpsalmsworldcup with your social media posts. Join us again tomorrow for another special day and time of prayer throughout the World Cup! From the Touchline is a short-feature podcast with Rev Brad Kenney, Founder and Executive Director of Soccer Chaplains United and Volunteer Chaplain to the Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer. Rev Brad and occasional guests touch on various issues around the topics of faith, family, and football (soccer). Also, don’t forget that you can listen in our app, SoccrChapUtd, in the Apple and Google store.

In the final episode of their World Cup retrospective series, Simon Scott is joined by James Hepworth and Jack Hoban to look back on the two most recent FIFA World Cups: Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022. The trio revisit England's unforgettable run to the semi-finals in Russia, Croatia's remarkable journey to the final, France's emergence as the dominant force of a new generation, and the arrival of stars such as Kylian Mbappé on football's biggest stage. They also discuss Germany's shock group-stage exits, iconic matches including Spain vs Portugal and France vs Argentina, and the atmosphere surrounding the last traditional summer World Cup. The conversation then turns to the unique winter World Cup in Qatar, reflecting on the tournament's unusual feel, Argentina's dramatic path to glory, Saudi Arabia's stunning upset over the eventual champions, and the fiery quarter-final between Argentina and the Netherlands. The episode culminates with a discussion of the extraordinary 2022 World Cup Final between Argentina and France, Lionel Messi's crowning achievement, Kylian Mbappé's hat-trick heroics, and where the tournament ranks among the greatest football spectacles ever seen. The series concludes with predictions for the future and anticipation for the next chapter in World Cup history.⚽ Subscribe now to hear future episodes.

Not a Supporter yet? For the price of a coffee a month you get ad-free shows, a weekly Applied Science show, access to our Discourse and Discord communities, and participation in our listener research studies — join the Real Science of Sport here.Show notesIn this week's Spotlight, Ross and Gareth take on the news:(00:02:00) Football World Cup: England survived altitude and Mexico, and Ross's numbers explain how — less total running, fewer sprints, the game deliberately slowed down. It's a collective pacing strategy dictated by physiology, not just tactics. Plus VAR is amplifying the chaos rather than ending it (Argentina's late smash-and-grab over Egypt, a sensor in the ball denying Croatia), and six African teams knocked out in the dying minutes.(00:28:00) Tour de France: our first read on the opening stages, and why the new team time trial format, where the rider's individual time counted, added genuine tactical intrigue.(00:31:00) The story that troubled us most: riders starting stages very sick in 40°C heat. After De Lie and Uijtdebroeks pushed on while ill, we discuss the incentives in elite high performance sport that put team doctors is unenviable and often compromised positions, and whether, as with concussion in rugby, sports governing bodies should step in to alleviate the conflicts faced by medics?(00:39:00) The science of pre-cooling: why INEOS sat in a row with their forearms in cold water. Ross explains the AVAs, the skin's heat-dumping shortcut, and why the water mustn't be too cold or you shut the whole thing down.(00:53:00) Record watch: Josh Kerr's unusual race-free build-up and his 3:42 fixation, Keely Hodgkinson's choppy season, and Faith Kipyegon's first 1500m/mile defeat in five years.(00:58:00) A cracking paper spotted by listener Steve O'Hale: 870,000 Berlin finishers show men are twice as likely to hit the wall as women. And, counter-intuitively, the faster the men, the more likely they are to blow up, relative to women. Ego or physiology? We dig in.(01:08:00) And finally: a 10-year-old tennis prodigy, homeschooled and training seven days a week. A feel-good story, or early specialisation and survivorship bias dressed up as one? Plus Wimbledon heads for it's 9th straight first time winner on the women's side.LinksOur football World Cup thread, for Supporters Club members, containing all the Mexico-England analysis and more discussion on the tournamentMovistar under fire as Uijtdebroeks races on while illThe Stanford Glove - researchers thought they'd found a way to 'hack' cooling with a Zoolander like vacuum gloveBBC article on Josh Kerr's 3:42 target preparationsKerr on the importance of psychology in his preparationThe Nature paper on men vs women pacing strategies in the marathon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Special Edition on Spill with Me Jenny D. I'm so excited to have Kelly Rodavich and Jason Capps from Jasons Journeys Tours on my show again.  It's time to pack your bags and discover why traveling with Jason's Journeys is about so much more than seeing new places..it's about creating lifelong memories, one incredible destination at a time. Jason Capps is the Owner/Founder of Jasons Journeys which was designed to have small group tours of the most spectacular places and experiences Italy has to offer. Join us for an experience like no other. Jason is joining Kelly and I via zoom from Tuscany Italy. In this episode, Jason & Kelly recap recent trips and reveal upcoming small-group journeys to Italy, Croatia, and Argentina. They discuss authentic experiences—food, wine, local makers, and personalized itineraries—and explain how their boutique tours prioritize connection, comfort, and local expertise. Listeners will learn about fall openings and next-year trips, special experiences like Sardinian shepherd visits and Tuscan wine retreats, and how to register or get more information at Jason's Journeys. If you are ready to take your dream trip with Jason an expert Chef and Kelly a travel agent with Viaggio Travel Consulting then sign up today. Link below. https://jasonsjourneys.com/ All episodes are available on all the major Audio Platforms as well as Jenny D's YouTube page. Make sure to Subscribe and Follow. http://www.youtube.com/@Spillwithmejennyd If you would like to be a guest or sponsor on Spill with Me Jenny D. Show please fill out the disclaimer at https://www.spillwithmejennyd.com/tell-your-story or email spillwithmejennyd@gmail.com Don't Forget to Subscribe & Follow. Thank you to our Community Partners! Note: "The views and conversations in this podcast are intended solely for informational and educational purposes. They do not constitute professional advice, and listeners are encouraged to seek their own guidance for any specific concerns." "Music Credit: Theme song, written and performed by Mark Ferrari"    markferrarimusic.com      

Balance Croatia returns with its official 2026 compilation, a sweeping snapshot of the contemporary progressive house landscape featuring more than 30 established names and rising artists from across the global scene. Here is Mix 2 featuring a selection of tracks from the This is Balance Croatia 2026 compilation. Stream Mix 1 here: on.soundcloud.com/sF1XnIsXyqODkkqX5I Mix 2 Tracklisting 0:00:00 Cristina Tosio - Landing 0:04:41 Carina Lawrence - Celestial 0:08:35 GMJ & Matter - Verticality 0:12:33 Dowden - Night Emeralds 0:18:01 Stereo Underground - La Cumbre 0:22:38 Tonaco, Kebin van Reeken - Chroma 0:28:06 Emi Galvan - Reborn 0:32:40 Mike Rish - R33 0:37:51 D-Nox, Andre Moret - Breath 0:42:48 Cid Inc. & Dmitry Molosh - Aquamarine 0:48:40 Kasey Taylor & Gai Barone - Spiral 0:54:22 Powel - Entropy of Contact 0:60:37 Lloyd Barwood - The Quest Mix 2 mixed by @walter-juan ============================================================ Follow us: IG: www.instagram.com/balance_series FB: facebook.com/balanceseriesmusic

A house built on a history of war, death, and dark magic—what lurks within the walls of 63 Maple Street may be more than just restless spirits.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/63MapleStreetREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yck2wx6xLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:Book: “The Haunting of 63 Maple Street” by Jordan Quinn Farkas: https://amzn.to/3w2XimyBlog post: “Our Humble Haunted Home” from ParanormalHauntings.blog: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5x4y29w4(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 22, 2024Weird Darkness digs into the decades-long haunting of a single working-class home in Belišće, Croatia, tracing how war, buried cemeteries, black magick, and strange lights in the sky converge on one address. The account comes from Jordan Quinn Farkas, who moved to Belišće in 2017 and settled into a house his wife had owned since 2010 on a street locals still call Maple Street, a corner of Slavonia near the Hungarian border founded by the wealthy Jewish Gutmann family around their massive Slavonian Oak sawmill. The ground itself carries a grim record: Communist party members captured and killed the Jewish factory owner in 1945, a Yugoslav "working camp" operated on the town's edge for a single year of killings and starvation, and the Homeland War of the early 1990s drove residents into basements and bomb shelters. Farkas counts more than a dozen deaths on the street since 2017, including two suicides and a neighbor who vanished near the Drava river around Halloween and surfaced miles downstream, a landfill dumped over both an old Jewish cemetery and an even older Celtic one within a few hundred yards, and Roman and Celtic coins dating to roughly 300 AD dug from his own yard. Inside the house, the activity sorts room by room: a lobby where a wardrobe bangs from within and a strawberry-blonde female apparition — believed to be a deceased teenage friend of his wife — walks past the window until a welcoming ritual quiets her; a living room where a bathroom light switch flips itself on despite rewiring done twice, doors open and slam, and a voice recorder captured EVPs of footsteps and toggling switches; a kitchen where he and his wife heard a dragon-like screech and two heavy wingbeats overhead one night around 2 a.m., which they connect to the Croatian Zmaj or Pozoj of regional folklore; a master bedroom where a phantom smoker's residual haunting appeared as swirling smoke and laughing voices over an overnight video call, tied to the original owners' chain-smoking daughter Iva; a kid's room where his son Ivan babbles and laughs at an unseen presence an old man's ghost once shown to a girl named Stella occupied; and an attic where sounds of two creatures wrestling gave way to running "cement boots" footsteps too small to be an adult. Outside, the haunting takes on the shape of a deliberate campaign, with witch's eggs — light and hollow, a Balkan curse object — rolling from an old drainpipe more than once, black roosters and chickens left dead and scattered in feathers, three crow wings severed as cleanly as by a laser, a knotted cord of knot magick hidden in an oak cabinet, and a leather satchel of dust, a small bone, and adult teeth, all of it unfolding alongside a UFO sighting in which a solid cream-colored light outran three fighter jets over the Drava the night after Farkas dreamed of a shuttle landing in his side yard.

What if the difference between a life that feels alive and one that feels flat comes down to a single skill: learning to read frequency? In this episode of Why Isn't Everyone Doing This?, Emily Fletcher sits down with Rebecca Campbell, author, oracle deck creator, musician, and ceremonialist who now lives in Glastonbury, one of the most potent sacred sites on the planet, where she tends ancient wells and leads pilgrimages. Emily and Rebecca met on a boat in Croatia last summer, and Emily admits she judged Rebecca on sight, until Rebecca opened an unplanned prayer portal on the top deck and blew the whole group's hearts open. This conversation goes deep into what frequency actually is, how the body already knows the difference between resonance and dissonance, and an almost-forgotten Irish tradition called keening, a three-day, three-night grief ritual so powerful it was eventually made illegal. Rebecca traces her own path from a teenage encounter with a grieving mother to a spontaneous ceremony that revealed her connection to what she calls the ancient grandmothers of the earth, and shares the harrowing birth story that nearly took her life and cracked her open to the gates between the seen and the unseen for good. In this episode, they explore: What frequency really is, and why the body already knows resonance from dissonance Keening, the ancient Irish grief ritual, and why it was eventually outlawed Why grief and rage are life force, not something to bypass or suppress Rebecca's teenage encounter with a grieving mother that initiated her spiritual path The spontaneous ceremony that connected her to the ancient grandmothers of the earth Why water is older than the earth itself, and what that means for frequency and memory Isis and her twin sister Nephthys, the goddess of the unmanifest Rebecca's near-death experience after childbirth, and the mother in the next hospital bed Why the collective purge so many people are feeling right now is part of the awakening, not a step backward The new timeline bubbling up, and the third frequency that bridges the seen and the unseen Key Moments 00:00 – Emily and Rebecca open in ceremony before the interview begins 02:04 – Welcome to Why Isn't Everyone Bridging the Seen and the Unseen Realms 03:41 – How Emily and Rebecca met on a boat in Croatia 09:20 – Why the same dream can arrive through more than one person at once 11:22 – What frequency actually means, explained through the body's senses 13:26 – Keening: the ancient Irish grief ritual, and why it was made illegal 19:44 – Grief and rage as compost, not something to lock away 24:03 – Rebecca's teenage awakening and the woman named Anna 27:14 – The spontaneous ceremony and the ancient grandmothers of the earth 30:59 – Why water is older than the earth 34:05 – Emily's own experience in the Hathor temple at Dendera 35:02 – Isis and Nephthys, goddess of the unmanifest 38:35 – Rebecca's near-death experience after giving birth 40:08 – The mother in the next hospital bed and the gates of life 44:06 – Ancestral purging as part of the awakening, not a setback 45:07 – The new timeline and the third frequency bridging seen and unseen ✨ Magic Maker is officially open for registration. Three days. Totally free. Jul 16, 21 & 23. Join Emily live for three days of activations, tools and community designed to help you access the field, dissolve your invisible cages and become a frequency match for what you're calling in.

It's the final three games of the Round of 32. This is Morning Cupdate, brought to you by The Home Depot.In today's show, we reflect on a dramatic finish in Portugal vs Croatia, a comprehensive win for Spain against Austria, and Switzerland breezing past Algeria. Then we look forward to the final Round of 32 games: Australia vs Egypt, Argentina vs Cape Verde, and Colombia vs Ghana. Betty takes on Producer Kippo in Morning Cupdate vs The Night Cup, and we reveal Thomas Tuchel's secrets to propel England to success in Mexico City. Tune into Night Cup tonight for the recap on all the day's action: https://mibcourage.co/4woPdSBDaily previews and recaps of the biggest matches of the summer, delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe to the Men in Blazers Newsletter now: https://mibcourage.co/4y3Oh7PSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rog, Rory, and Humphrey Ker are back on the bus to break down another day of footballing drama, including Portugal's stunning defeat of Croatia behind goals from Cristiano Ronaldo and Gonçalo Ramos. Is Ronaldo....back? Then, Spain makes light work of Austria, behind an impressive performance from Mikel Oyarzabal. Does Spain still have a higher gear to go into? Plus, USMNT legend Clint Dempsey joins the show to react to the American's Round of 32 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina. How does this squad stack up against Belgium? And after Folarin Balogun's red card, which striker will take his number 9 spot?Get the “Free Balo” Cup Tee here: https://mibcourage.co/3RfYmxRCheck out the Deuce “YDKWIFD” Collection—a nod to Clint Dempsey's roots: https://mibcourage.co/4v7tdKUDaily previews and recaps of the biggest matches of the summer, delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe to the Men in Blazers Newsletter now: https://mibcourage.co/4vEd5S9See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hernán Gil, a 43-year-old security guard, was found alive under the rubble of a collapsed building more than a week after Venezuela's devastating twin earthquakes. The country's interim President, Delcy Rodriguez, said nearly 2600 people are now known to have been killed. She stressed that rescue efforts are still ongoing. Also: The World Health Organisation says it has begun trials to find a treatment for the current strain of Ebola that is spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo; a BBC investigation discovers that the tech giant Meta is running paid advertisements on Instagram in India promoting child sexual abuse material; and a dramatic finish sees Portugal beat Croatia to progress to the last 16 of the football World Cup. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk Photo: Rescue workers attend to Hernán Alberto Gil Flores after he was pulled from the rubble eight days after he was trapped by twin earthquakes that struck Catia La Mar, Venezuela. Credit: Fernando Vergara/AP Photo

First Take begins with more examination on the stunning Jaylen Brown trade! Why haven't we heard from Jayson Tatum? Is this a sign of their fractured relationship? Then, Roger Bennett joins to dish on Croatia's controversial offsides, Ronaldo, and VAR! Next, as Lebron's free agency saga rolls on, David Dennis Jr. tells us why the Lakers may actually be better off without King James! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Archie Rhind-Tutt and Jonathan Wilson as Cristiano Ronaldo breaks his World Cup knockout duck in a dramatic win over Croatia. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/footballweeklypod. Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FootballWeeklyPodcast

For our collective sins, Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugal bros have made it to the round of 16. Cheers Snicko.Luke tells Marcus and Pete why he simply cannot fathom the idea that Croatia's Igor Matanović touched the ball on its way to Joško Gvardiol. Plus, a much-needed update on Danny Murphy's cat, Pete shouts at Andy Brassell, and an in-depth analysis of streakers.Get your Football Ramble x Admiral kit here.Find us on Bluesky, X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: show@footballramble.com.Sign up to the Football Ramble Patreon for ad-free shows for just $5 per month: https://www.patreon.com/footballramble.***Please take the time to rate us on your podcast app. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** The Football Ramble, the original and best football podcast. Brand new podcasts every single weekday throughout the Premier League season and every day throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup.No cliches. No ex-pros like Peter Crouch or The Rest is Football. Just the funniest football conversation out there. Your guardian for the season, daily not weekly. Stick to the Ramble, totally. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The FC crew look back on Portugal's exhilarating 2-1 comeback win against Croatia in the Round of 32. Plus, the guys breakdown Spain's convincing 3-0 win against Austria, setting up a Portugal vs Spain matchup in the Round of 16. Also, was Folarin Balogun's red card the right position, how will the USMNT adjust without him against Belgium. Lastly, Switzerland advances after a 2-0 win against Algeria. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The FC crew react to Portugal's win over Croatia in the World Cup Round of 32, with a controversial goal taken away from Croatia deep in added time. Also, a recap of Spain's dominance as they defeat Austria, and a preview of Portugal vs Spain in the Round of 16. Then, a preview of the rest of today's action including Lionel Messi and Argentina taking on the Cinderella story of Cape Verde, and tonight's match between Colombia and Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gab Marcotti and Julien Laurens break down Portugal's dramatic 2-1 win over Croatia in the Round of 32. They then go on to discuss some of the biggest stories in World Football. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chris Mack reacts to the late game controversy surrounding Portugal and Croatia last night.

Chris Mack opens Friday's show with the top five headlines in sports today, including last night's Portugal vs. Croatia controversy. Plus, Chris Mack reacts to audio from Rich Paul & Max Kellerman's podcast about LeBron James' free agency.

(0:00) Portugal beats Croatia 2-1, Spain beats AUstria 3-0 (27:27) Would LeBron have been a good fit on the Knicks? (39:06) Faith restored in Portugal? (46:17) Title Pie (01:07:52) Should Lakers fans be happy? (01:17:54) Brazil or England on Upset Alert? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alexi Lalas and David Mosse are back with a new episode of State of the Union! We start the show breaking down the INSANE match between Portugal and Croatia that saw Cristiano Ronaldo's side send Luka Modrić and co. home. Ronaldo bagged his first ever KO stage goal in the World Cup and Croatia had an equalizer ruled out deep into stoppage time. Alexi and Mosse reflect on Modrić's career as this was surely his last World Cup appearance and look forward to the match between Portugal and Spain set up after Spain's 3-0 win over Austria. Then we preview the USA's match vs Belgium in the Round of 16 and discuss how Ricardo Pepi will fill Folarin Balogun's shoes at striker. We preview the next slate of the matches, the last of the Round of 32, before ending with Alexi's Moment of the Day. Presented by Zillow #Zillow 2:52: Portugal eliminates Croatia7:18: Appreciating Luka Modrić9:43: Spain dominates Austria14:10: Looking ahead to USA vs Belgium19:54: Previewing the next slate of games22:49: Alexi's Moment of the Day Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

World Cup winner and Spain's record goalscorer, David Villa, joins Rick Edwards to reflect on Spain's impressive 2-0 win over Austria and explains why he believes they can go all the way at this World Cup.The former Spain striker also discusses Mikel Oyarzabal's importance to this team, shares memories of playing alongside Lionel Messi and reveals what it takes to win football's biggest prize.With Lloyd Griffith away in Las Vegas, Guillem Balague and Dion Dublin join Rick to analyse Spain's latest statement victory and debate the dramatic finish to Portugal's clash with Croatia after a late equaliser was ruled out by VAR.TIMECODES: 0'00 - Guillem Balague alongside Rick 1'53 - David Villa on Mikel Oyarzabal 4'33 - David Villa on Golden Boot 6'09 - On what it was like to play with Lionel Messi 7'22 - What does he think on this Spain team? 8'50 - A word on England “I believe in them” 9'20 - On the new ball for strikers 17'40 - Dion joins to recap the Spain game & Portugal v Croatia madness

Shannon Sharpe, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and Iso Joe Johnson react to Portugal sneaking by Croatia to Round of 16, Spain cruises past Austria into Round of 16 and Jaylen Brown speaks out on getting traded from Celtics! Subscribe to Nightcap presented by PrizePicks so you don’t miss out on any new drops! Download the PrizePicks app today and use code SHANNON to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup! Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/NI... 00:00 - Introduction04:09 - Portugal defeats Croatia19:50 - Spain defeats Austria27:39 - Jaylen Brown took to Twitch to address the trade (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #ClubSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The USMNT progress to the Round of 16 with a 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is Morning Cupdate, brought to you by The Home Depot.In today's show, we reflect on the USMNT's 2-0 win against Bosnia and Herzegovina, their first knockout victory since 2002. We also look back at England's win against DR Congo, and Belgium's comeback victory against Senegal. Then we preview Friday's games: Spain vs Austria, Portugal vs Croatia, and Switzerland vs Algeria. Betty takes on Rory Smith in Morning Cupdate vs The Night Cup, and we reflect on the tournament's record-breaking moments. Join our Twitch Watchalong with Rog, Rory, and special guests today, July 2, for the Spain-Austria match: https://mibcourage.co/4y5VcxwSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Scott Rizzuto and Anthony Stalter are back on The Spread Zone heading into a packed 4th of July Weekend.The guys break down the FIFA World Cup knockout stage, including a highly anticipated matchup between the US vs Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium vs Senegal, Portugal vs Croatia, Argentina vs Cape Verde, and more.Then it's time for some football. Taking a look at big NFL future plays including win totals on the Baltimore Ravens, Las Vegas Raiders, Houston Texans, and Washington Commanders. Plus the guys picks to take home the hardware and the quickly approaching college football season.And to top it all off an American tradition like no other: Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. The real questions: How much will Joey Chestnut win by? And can he beat his already jaw dropping records.LEGAL DISCLAIMERWe provide information about sports betting for entertainment purposes only. Please confirm gambling regulations in your state of residence. To participate in sports gaming, you must be 21 years of age or older and be physically present in a state where sports betting is legal. If you or someone you know has a sports betting or gambling problem, please call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www.ncpgambling.org for more information and further assistance.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Amy Phillips and Emily Dorezas share a quick Love Island catch-up from Emily's outdoor watch-party, then recap Real Housewives of Atlanta's Scotland trip for Phaedra's birthday and leave them reminiscent for “The Traitors”. Amy shares about her upbringing and Emily shares a skunk story. They react to a oddly edited season, focusing on Angela's escalating lies about Shamea including Crashout George. They agree that the last scene was the best when they were in the robes and have an emotional group prayer moment around Kelly's legal headlines and Drew's vulnerability. Switching to Below Deck Med in Croatia, they discuss Josef's drunken volatility and vulnerability, Nathan diffusing him, the charter tip, Jen and Luke hooking up and fallout with Joy. They praise the elaborate escape room/blind tasting event led by Aesha and the crew before closing.HERS puts your health and goals first. forhers.com/dramaHONEYLOVE Get 20% OFF Honeylove by going to https://www.honeylove.com/DRAMA Promo Code: DRAMATo watch this recap on video, listen to bonus episodes, get ad free listening, and exclusive content, go to: http://Patreon.com/dramadarlingFor more Drama, Darling, and exclusive content, subscribe to: http://Patreon.com/dramadarling Follow Amy Phillips on Instagram: Instagram.com/meetamyphillips Follow Drama, Darling on Instagram: Instagram.com/dramadarlingshow Amy on TikTok tiktok.com/@realamyphillips Email Drama, Darling with YOUR comments, questions and drama:  DramaDarlingz@gmail.com Drama Darling Shop https://drama-darling-shop.printify.me/