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One of the hottest topics discussed in the U.S. today is “artificial intelligence”. Our guest this time, Shayne Halls, has founded a company that helps corporations and companies learn to embrace AI. Shayne teaches his clients that they need not fear AI and rather he shows them how to use it to improve processes and procedures throughout their organizations. After college Shayne ended up going into “talent acquisition” where he carved out a successful career. Being a black man fully supporting difference in all forms, he has helped companies find people not only of different races, sexual orientations, and genders but also he understands and helps companies find qualified persons with disabilities. For the past four years he has explored incorporating AI into his work and, earlier this year, he formed his own company, Manifested Dreams. We spent quite a bit of time during our conversation discussing many aspects of AI and how this revolutionary technology can benefit people throughout the workforce. Shayne is by any definition a visionary and I hope you will find what he has to say to be relevant, timely, and pertinent to you. About the Guest: As the President & CEO of Manifested Dreams, I am deeply committed to empowering corporate professionals and organizations to unlock the full potential of AI technology in their careers and business operations. With over 15 years of experience as a Sr. DEI Specialist, I have honed my expertise in the intersection of diversity, equity, inclusion, and now artificial intelligence, creating a unique vision that drives innovation and fosters an inclusive environment. Throughout my career, I have worked closely with professionals and organizations, providing personalized guidance and strategic insights that enable them to successfully integrate AI into their work processes. My passion for helping others navigate the complex world of AI has led to the founding of Manifested Dreams, where we offer exclusive one-on-one consultations and group sessions, ensuring our clients are equipped with the knowledge and tools to stay ahead of the curve. By joining hands with Manifested Dreams, clients embark on a transformative journey towards growth and success. Our mission is to create a future where AI not only enhances the professional landscape but also contributes to a more equitable and inclusive society. Together, we can shape a brighter tomorrow by leveraging AI responsibly and driving positive change across industries. Ways to connect with Kevin: Twitter - @MnifstdDreams Website - www.manifesteddreams.org About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. Here we are doing another episode. And that is always a lot of fun. You know, I've been doing this now since August of 2021. And I get to enjoy meeting a lot of people and talking about a lot of different subjects. And today our guests, Shayne Halls and I are going to talk about manifested dreams, which is a company that he started dealing with corporations helping organizations grow and using AI which is of course not only a hot topic today, but a very relevant topic to talk about. I've been using AI ever since I actually got my first job working with the National Federation of blind and Ray Kurzweil, Dr. Kurzweil, who developed Omni font optical character recognition software, which included the ability for the machine that he put that on, to learn as it read and grow in confidence. And so this is not a new subject to me, and certainly one I support a lot and looking forward to chatting about it. So Shayne, definitely welcome to unstoppable mindset and glad you're here. And when we really do have you and not just an AI construct, right?   Shayne Halls ** 02:33 Well, you know, you wouldn't know if it was was because AI is that advanced now where you really don't know. No, it is me. For the most part,   Michael Hingson ** 02:44 I remember back in I think it was the 80s Maybe it goes back to the 70s. Even with cassettes. There were commercials that said, Is it live? Or is it Memorex because the audio they said was so good.   Shayne Halls ** 02:58 You listen back on here like yeah, I can hear the recording done. Yeah, that's funny.   Michael Hingson ** 03:03 Yeah. So anyway, well, I'm really glad that you're here and we really appreciate your time. Tell us a little bit about the early Shane growing up in some of that stuff to start the process.   Shayne Halls ** 03:15 Man early Shayne so early. Shayne grew up in the US Virgin Islands in St. Croix. My mother's crucian person born in St. Clair, my dad is Trini personally born in Trinidad. So I'm half crucian, half Trinidad in grew up, Sinclair moved to Charleston, South Carolina, when my mother remarried. And that was quite an experience coming in. So well, it was my first real experience with race in the sense of the constructs of what it is here in state. Because of course growing up in islands, the island is 80% 90% Black. And so everyone from your judges, politicians, police chiefs, store owners, homeless, homeless people, right? Like it doesn't matter, like everyone you see, looks like you and then being moved into Charleston. I was like, oh, it's not like this everywhere.   Michael Hingson ** 04:10 Right. So how old were you when you moved?   Shayne Halls ** 04:14 15 just, yeah, so entering high school or back into my sophomore year in high school. So it was, um, interesting, right, coming into my first bout with racism and, you know, being followed in stores being looked at, looked down upon being spoken to in a condescending manner, a manner in which you can feel what's being said without something being said, right. These are things I'd never experienced before. And I was just I was jarred, I think George's good word jarred by was just like, oh, okay, so this is life outside the island, whatnot. No. So that was that I I left Charleston when I went to college can with North Carolina go to college at St. Augustine University. It's an HBCU here in North Carolina wanted to first find the 1867 was once regarded as the Harvard of South is was a great four years. It's like just loved my experience, they're going to HBCU being able to partake in that life and that culture, you know, see, HBCU is a historically black college and university.   Michael Hingson ** 05:31 Oh, okay. HBCU. Okay, great.   Shayne Halls ** 05:33 And, you know, that was a good transition point for coming out to the real world, you got the chance to I got a chance to be surrounded by intellectuals and leaders of my same demographic background, and then have them prepare me to come into the world, the corporate world and be the best version of myself out here in the world.   Michael Hingson ** 05:53 How did they help you prepare, given the fact that so you're in a historically black college, but at the same time, you needed to prepare to be in a world that wasn't necessarily totally historically black? By any standard? How did they help? Well, they do.   Shayne Halls ** 06:11 The good and bad thing about HBCUs is that we don't get a lot of funding, because a lot of schools are private. But that means that everyone there, the professor's the leaders in school, are usually persons who are successful in their life, and have decided to come back and devote time to the next generation. So a lot of leaders and professionals on HBCU campuses are persons who've already had success in the corporate world had success in the career field, and they come back and they impute those lessons learned on to us. And they put us in situations to be, you know, to hone in on our leadership skills, I can't just count leadership camps I went to, I was a member of the Model UN. My modern school Model UN is a program that's designed for selective college students to participate in United Nations type delegations, and deliberations. And any sort of acts or constructs or contracts or anything that we actually proposed and passed and ratify in the Model UN actually get sent off to the real United Nations. And so participate in Monterey un, which is great, great experience, again, so many leadership, trainings and activities, you just, you get a chance to go out into different conferences across the world and learn and then come back home to your safe place and apply those lessons learned and hone in on what you should have learned, then you can come on to the corporate world and be successful,   Michael Hingson ** 07:48 what kinds of things did you learn doing the Model UN program and so on? I mean, I appreciate what you're saying. And I absolutely believe it. I did not ever participate in that. And maybe it was too early. I don't know. But I appreciate what you're saying. But what what kind of lessons did you learn whether you recognize them right then or after you went back home? Right,   Shayne Halls ** 08:09 exactly right, or when later on in the corporate world, right? When you get something adult, you look back, you're like, oh, okay, so that's what that taught me. I think you learn how to get your idea across without being forceful about it, right? Because in situations where you have to be able to, you got to believe in what you're saying, especially United Nation, right? So you represent a country, no matter you want to work where you are a country, no one knows you, no one knows your real name. No one knows what school you're from, we're soon as you enter the Model UN, you're given a country, that is country, you are for the entire week that you're there. So any thoughts, any ally ships, any sort of, you know, anything we bring to the table must be different perspective of what's best for that country. And so when doing that, you learn how to think about how your idea can benefit you, but then also can be beneficial to others, and then how to convey that to persons in a manner in which they feel like they're actually going to be the ones who are going to be benefiting most from the idea that you come up with, or whatnot. So it's really great in learning how to work in groups and group activities and learning what your strengths are. Because sometimes that people aren't who've that's not for them, like, you know, being group leaders or participating in group activities like that may not be something that is applicable to their future. And that's something they want to do that because it takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of pacifying, anyone who's done any sort of project in any sort of aspect of corporate life, understands that there's going to be so many different attitudes and demeanors and agendas, that you really have to pacify some folks, you have to kind of pull some folks along. We have to, you know, hold some people's hand. It's just you learned a lot of lessons on just how to be a people person, how to enhance those interpersonal skills that people talk about so much.   Michael Hingson ** 10:05 So is it one person per country?   Shayne Halls ** 10:07 Yeah. Unless you are literally dependent on your delegates in the UN. So whatever your delegate number is that you haven't un, they'll get numbers that are available for that country in the Mario.   Michael Hingson ** 10:19 So like the United States might have more than one delegate, or China or whatever. Exactly. So what year did this take place?   Shayne Halls ** 10:27 Man when my model you when I was in school? So I think I didn't borrow you in? Oh, 203.   Michael Hingson ** 10:38 Okay. So a lot of events had happened. And so on what country were you   Shayne Halls ** 10:45 Venezuela, and one, one year number MacArthur   Michael Hingson ** 10:52 strike any good oil deals.   Shayne Halls ** 10:55 As actually came up with a great, this was one of the lessons I learned Matt came up with a great treaty. And I was working with the US, of course, as one of the allies, we work together came up with it, basically spearheaded by, you know, and kind of brought everybody along. And it was one of the best ones that that week. And as you're going through your delegations and your debates and such judges are moving about the room listening to conversations. And the judges were they're listening to us, and they can really like, Hey, was that you? Did you come up with that? And me stealing this? Like, you know, Dougie, man, I was like, No, it was a group effort between me and the United States or whatever. And then the United States got the award in the week more sustained audit. And that was one of the reasons why that bothered me to stay. Yeah, should have been my lessons learned.   Michael Hingson ** 11:52 Well, so. Yeah, things things happen. What did you learn from that? When that occurred,   Shayne Halls ** 11:58 it's okay to speak up for yourself, okay, it's okay to speak up for yourself. You know, you can't expect someone else to toot your horn, you can't expect someone else to praise you that you have to be comfortable with praising yourself and praising the work when you deserve it. When you do good work, when you have done something that's worthy of recognition and get an opportunity to talk about yourself, and not in a braggadocious manner, but in a matter of fact, man, this is what happens, whatever do so don't wait for somebody else to do.   Michael Hingson ** 12:25 There is there's a lot to be said for teamwork and giving team credit and so on. But at the same time, you're right, it's important that what you do gets acknowledged to especially in the context of a team effort.   Shayne Halls ** 12:41 Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's great, you know, when you can talk about the team and give all credit to the team. But if you're gonna be hit the game winning shot, you're not gonna be like, well, you know, I didn't think it was Wilson Wilson designed a great basketball and basketball had a great bounce to it, you know, just fit so well, in my hand, no, you shot the ball, you start winning. So take your credit when you've earned it.   Michael Hingson ** 13:04 Right? Which makes perfect sense. So you graduated What was your degree in   Shayne Halls ** 13:10 political science with a double minor in English and religion? Yes, and so I love to write and my mother was a pastor. And so church in religion was always a part of my life. And I wanted to kind of be more intellectual about religion. So my religion, English happened English, I tell people this, these are my double minors when English turned out to be an accidental minor, where I just took so many English courses and APA in like advanced English classes that by the time I graduated, I had acquired enough credits for it to be a minor, or whatnot. So it wasn't it wasn't an unintentional minor.   Michael Hingson ** 13:52 Well, but it works. Yeah, it   Shayne Halls ** 13:54 worked, right? I really enjoyed everything, writing in workplace, something that is very, you know, soothing to me, and so, never got my studies done everything that I was like working. It was always fun for him. So I did that with the full intention of becoming an attorney. And then my wife and I decided to get married my senior year of college and got married and about a year later, we had our first kid. And so then it was like, okay, at four years law school, but I need to take care of my family. So started working and got into talent acquisition, I was recruited into recruiting and had no idea what recruitment was, what recruiting is what time acquisition was, and jumped into it and it was a world women it was a whirlwind experience. And I started focusing in on di and wanting to be an advocate for persons who are looking to come into companies and persons looking to grow in companies in just made D Ei, the kind of the heartbeat of my town acquisition work, no matter what I was doing want to make sure that there was always equity. And there was equal representation for everyone across the board. And when we talk about diversity, not just talking about skin color, we're talking about cultural backgrounds, educational backgrounds, we're talking about persons with disabilities, non disabilities, talking about gender background, just about everything, and just diversity as a whole, the more diverse the organization is, the more successful successful they can be. So you know that that was an interesting journey, because you meet leaders who are like, Oh, well, everyone looked at my team, my team is so different, they have different races and women and men. I'm like, what you only recruit from the same college, like there's everyone on your team went to the same exact school has the same major, like, that's not diversity, need to have different people on it, right. And so even some of the most well intentioned persons accidentally show their bias, right. And so as my work grew in di, I started taking on more consultation work on helping organizations understand microaggressions biases, how to build cultural teams, how to find out what your your unintentional or your unconscious biases are. And so that's kind of all led me to opening up my own consultation firm manifested dreams in which we speak with organizations regarding their cultural issues and how to address them and how to have di trainings. And then we also do one on one consultation training for persons who are looking to grow their careers and need a little help in trying to integrate AI into it right. And I think that AI is such a part of our lives now that trying to ignore it is gonna turn you into the blockbuster in a world of Netflix, and you want to make sure that you are staying abreast as to how AI is impacting your particular field, your particular career, your particular journey, so that you don't get left behind, you're able to capitalize it and use it to be successful.   Michael Hingson ** 17:10 Yeah. And there's a lot to be said for for those concepts. And it's interesting that you developed a deep interest in that, why do you think that you were so attracted to developing that kind of an interest in really wanting to focus on this whole concept around diversity. And even more important, I think inclusion because one of the things that I tell people all the time is the difficulty with diversity is that it is left disabilities behind when you ask people what this what diversity means. They'll talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation and so on, but they don't mention disabilities. And so that led us to inclusion. And that's why I'm this podcast, we talk about inclusion, diversity in the unexpected where it meets. And the idea is that inclusion can't leave out disabilities, either you are inclusive, or you're not.   Shayne Halls ** 18:04 That's what got me here, I think just marry out events just being in ta having conversations, having leaders talk being in the room and understanding that people aren't aware, right, people in the rooms tend to look around to see themselves in the room, so they feel comfortable. And it's never an awareness, this, it's never something that they are aware of that there's not others in the room, right, because they just feel comfortable with everyone that's there. And to me always being one tunnel position is a field that is probably 7060 70% female one. And so being a male and then a male color. In this field, I am very rare. In this field, I think in my lifetime, my 14 year career, I've maybe come across 10 other black men who are in talent acquisition. And so being here, I'm always aware of the who's not in the room. And then I'm making my point as to not just talking about it, to always try to bounce it and fix it somehow. Try to be a voice for those who aren't represented and use my voice to try to help others get in the room as well.   Michael Hingson ** 19:27 For me personally, it's it's a strange world because having never seen color. It it's always strange to me that people intellectually I understand this, but that people tend to be prejudice and bias based on the color of someone's skin. A lot of that skin feels the same no matter what color you are. So I don't quite see the problem, but I do understand it intellectually. But for me, having never experienced it. I think I've been very fortunate and in reality is I don't care. But unfortunately also too many people do. And that's something that we really need to figure out how we're going to address. And the problem is we've got too many people who refuse to some of whom are supposedly very high up and on, I use the term in quotes, leadership positions. Yeah, and they still continue to be very privatizing.   Shayne Halls ** 20:28 That's one of the biggest things I tell people all the time is that when I'm starting a training, I was like, Look, if you look around the room, there's a couple people in here who don't want to be here, there's gonna be one who don't want change their idea that everyone wants everything to be happy go lucky. Google, it is a false theory that you need to do away with, you have to understand that in every organization, there are leaders who like it exactly the way it is, right? They don't want to have to make accommodations person with disabilities, they don't want to have to put Braille on the walls, they don't want to have to put ramps on and want to put ramps all over the build, they think it's it's not aesthetically pleasing to their eyes or whatever. They don't want wider doorways. They don't want other diverse persons around the leadership table like these people actually exist. And, you know, if you want to be an ally, for persons who aren't included, then you have to speak up when you have an opportunity for it.   Michael Hingson ** 21:21 We visited in San Francisco, a building that Frank Lloyd Wright, designed and built, it was fascinating because a lot of the building was a spiral ramp that took you from the bottom to the to the top or up to some level. I've spent a long time since I've been there now but but the point is that, that he he deliberately made it a ramp as opposed to stairs. And it was a very steep ramp and would not be something that would be condoned by the Americans with Disabilities Act. But I was able to push my wife up the stairs up the ramp, and get her back down. She was in a chair her whole life. So it still was a building we were able to go into and actually be a part of, and that was really pretty cool. Yeah. And this idea of ramps not being pleasing to the eye. As I understand it again, I understand that people again, are locked into well, it's got to be stairs, well, no, it doesn't.   Shayne Halls ** 22:26 It does not I don't know who came up with that answer, I would love for slides to be a thing go there has a slide somewhere, like I'd like to just be able to come down the slide. That'd be great.   Michael Hingson ** 22:36 Yeah, works for me, you know, to keep in mind, though, you gotta get back up. So what you do is you tip the slide, and you go back the other way, that's all there is to it. But I mean, there have to be ways to do that. But it's just the whole concept that we don't like things different than what we want, we have learned not to go out of our comfort zone very well. And we really need to get over that. And that's what it really comes down to is getting out of our comfort zone. And it's something that that we really should do a whole lot more than than we do. Well, I'm curious, you've been in this business now 14 years talent acquisition, you've been dealing a lot with dei and such, what would you say to your younger self just starting out that maybe they didn't know or that you'd want them to know to maybe make their world and as a result the world of other people better?   Shayne Halls ** 23:34 Um, I would think I would tell myself to stand stand be you know, just stand 10 toes down and who you are, right? I think that early in my career, I felt a need to quiet my voice in time who I should have spoken up. And it's living with nothing but regret later on in life like yeah, what if I spoken up on those situations during those opportunities and whatnot. And so my younger self, I would help him get to the idea sooner of just being unapologetically you and not quieting your voice to keep the status quo afloat.   Michael Hingson ** 24:23 I think it's interesting being unapologetically you but not arrogantly unapologetically, you? Right, exactly. Which is really the issue. And there's a lot to be said for that. I'm sorry. Go ahead.   Shayne Halls ** 24:34 No, you're totally right. Yeah, just be yourself. But don't be you know, arrogant. But I think arrogance stems from this belief of you being able to do things that you have not done or tempted to do confidence comes from the knowledge of having done things similar in the past in Concord those things right. And so it is a way to be confident without being arrogant and so you should always be on Patil. Unapologetically confident in who You are the person, but humble enough to know that there are things that you don't know. And your lessons you still got to learn in life.   Michael Hingson ** 25:06 And there's nothing wrong with exploring and learning and growing because of that   Shayne Halls ** 25:12 knowledge. I think that is one most great things that we have the ability doing, like especially now more than ever, we have these phones. And I think we take them for granted because they're just been a phone to us. But they're literally a gateway to the world. And that is not any sort of exaggeration of the truth. There is nothing you cannot learn that you don't have access to in your hand every day. And that language and the culture and background, you can learn anything you want. And the idea of being ignorant in today's society is a willful choice. If you don't know about a culture or background, you don't know how somebody's functioning with a disability. You don't know what type of activities to plan for your company to include the persons with disabilities. And you don't take a few minutes just to look it up on your phone. That's that's just willful ignorance at that point time.   Michael Hingson ** 26:01 Yeah. And it is a choice. It's willful. It's a choice. And it is the kinds of things that lead to what we talked about before, which are the people who just decide that they don't want to have any change. They don't care about anyone else other than what is in their specific comfort zone rather than recognizing the world's a whole lot broader place than that.   Shayne Halls ** 26:23 Exactly. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you feel that the school system teaching other languages as electives helps to contribute to that, because you've seen other countries where like learning another language like English or Spanish webinar is a requirement. Right. And so a lot of people in other countries graduate high school, already fluent in other languages. While here in America, Spanish is always just an elective or French is an elective. Once you get into high school, you're gonna take a couple of courses of it, whatnot. I think that if we taught our kids more about other cultures and demanded they learned other languages along the way, it would help people in general, understand that the world is bigger than your little part. I haven't studied Spanish for three years, four years now. And the more I learn, you can't learn a language without learning the culture of the country at which it's run. And the more you learn about that language, the more you learn about those cultures, it broadens your interest nationally broadens your horizon.   Michael Hingson ** 27:33 But to answer your question, I absolutely believe that we could do more to give everyone in our society, more of a cultural understanding of other people. And we really should do that. When I was in high school, I studied German for three years. And one of the things that we learned along the way was that in Germany, students in high school did take English as a as a course. And it was a requirement and they had to study it and demonstrate their proficiency in it. I think that English was the choice, but there were other languages that they could take, but they absolutely had to learn a second language. And also, of course, there, they were encouraged to study more about the people than just the language, which a lot of people did, because they had to practice it. When I was in college, I took a Euro Japanese, which was a totally different concept. Yeah, I don't remember a lot of it. But if I hear somebody talking, I know they're speaking Japanese or not. And I've also been to Japan twice and had an opportunity, even before going to learn a lot about the culture. And then of course, learned a lot more about the culture being over there. And I think that we should do that. It gets back to the whole issue of banned books and everything else that we deal with today, people are so insistent on, we want to done just our way, and they don't even know what they're really asking for, which is so unfortunate. I continue to be amazed at some of the books that people want to ban in libraries. And then when you get to the point of saying, Have you read it? Well, no, but somebody said that we should do that because it's racist well, but you don't know do you? And I am a firm believer in knowing not just listening to somebody and taking their opinion and just locking yourself into something because of it. We have to be the the people who rule our own fate and we should understand not just listen to other people and then don't do anything about it other than what they said that should be banned. So that's what we should do.   Shayne Halls ** 29:53 I think that you hit the nail on the head. I think one cool things about Japan that was love is that as they make their school kids clean up, at the end of the school days, like they spent, like the last 15 or 20 minutes in school day, cleaning school, that is such like that is like a lesson that just sits in your soul like you, no one's going to come clean up behind the message you make, like you got to clean up your own thing. You got to be responsible for yourself. I think that in itself, I love that about Japanese culture. And then when talking about person banning books, I've seen so many videos of people where they ask them, What is CRT? What does it stand for? Like, what is the lettering stand for? That you're so passionately against? And no one even though I think can even tell you? Like how are you so angry about something that you don't even know what the acronym stands for us. We   Michael Hingson ** 30:39 all know the CRT stands for cathode ray tube. But that's another story. That's exactly what it is. But you know, the whole concept of of critical race and so on. I don't know that I totally understand the theory, although I believe I do. And certainly not opposed to it. But I'm amazed when I hear people talking about banning a book like To Kill a Mockingbird, which was recognized as such a powerful depiction of how black people were treated, even back in the in the 50s, and into the 60s and so on. And it wasn't racist at all, at all. But I've heard people talk about how that has to be taken on libraries because it's racist. And I actually heard a reporter ask someone who said that, have you ever read it? Well, no. Well, then how do you know, you know,   Shayne Halls ** 31:32 I think that, you know, I know who I blame Michael, I blame the participation, trophy generation, right? Because there was a generation where we decided that everyone needed to feel good. Everyone needed to be like, Okay, so we gave everyone participation trophies. And I think that is, if you've ever listened to people talk about their opposing CRT, it is always well, I don't want my kids to feel bad about what happened in the past.   Michael Hingson ** 31:59 And teach them what happened.   Shayne Halls ** 32:02 Like what like, where you want to get rid of books, because you don't want your kid to know that persons with similar cultural backgrounds are themselves performing the most heinous acts ever in history. But what not, but what was interesting is that when it was just about teaching slavery, and having little persons little kids of color, learn that their history was stemmed in being enslaved, that was fine for everyone. But when the history books started to talk more about the person's doing, the enslaving, and the heinousness of those acts, then it was like, well, we can't talk about this part. This person I, like we talked about anymore, let's   Michael Hingson ** 32:57 check the answer is Sure you can. You can teach kids what happened. And then you have the discussions about how do we make sure it never happens? Again,   Shayne Halls ** 33:08 come on, it seems it seems simple. I think we just saw it. But therefore, there's PTA meetings all across this country that obviously show that they that we're not thinking the way they do because they are staunchly against banning it left and right. I mean, states governors, they're just on a rolling, banning this stuff.   Michael Hingson ** 33:28 Yeah, that and all the other things that they're doing the the governors who decide to ship people who come in across the border, who legally are allowed in, and then they ship them somewhere. When is that going to stop? When are we going to recognize that intolerable treatment? And how can we ever elect someone who does that, and of course, there gonna be some people who will disagree with me. But the bottom line is, you don't treat human beings that way.   Shayne Halls ** 33:57 My mind is blown at the idea that we have persons in power positions, who are so arrogant to feel like someone doesn't belong in this country, because they came across an imaginary line that doesn't exist anywhere, except on your piece of paper, and that they don't have the right beer. And then once they get here, we're going to treat them like pawns, and move them about the country. As if they're like games that you're playing on this big political chessboard, whatnot, it is the way we treat immigrants, as if this country was not founded on immigrants is the most hypocritical thing I've seen. In many years of my life. It is it is staunchly mind blowing, how we stand 1010 toes down on the fact that we can't have anyone tonight. Well, how do you think this country was founded? None of us were born here. Like people came here. Like you landed on Plymouth Rock I like that is the story we tell the children like. So immigration is how this country started, let's not do let's not take away the opportunities that were given to our ancestors to somebody else's ancestors. Right. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 35:13 One of the things I think that you are doing in terms of now having found when did you found manifested dream, by the way,   Shayne Halls ** 35:22 this year, January of this year is when I made it special. I've been doing my own thing. I've been doing it doing the work for probably four years now. But I made it official. And we're kind of just operating under a 1099 guideline for last few years. And I was like, model incorporate? Actually, no, do it in to make it real. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 35:43 Make it real. Yeah. Well, and I know that you when we talked about it earlier deal with using artificial intelligence is as a significant part of that. So tell me a little bit about what is AI in terms of what you do?   Shayne Halls ** 35:57 And so AI in terms of just what AI is, in general, is a great question. Because a lot of people don't even understand the idea of, I guess what artificial intelligence really is, you know. So artificial intelligence is basically the idea that it was a field of computer science that kind of focused on just creating systems that are capable of performing repetitive task, right? systems or tasks that don't require extreme amounts of human intelligence. And so we're talking about things from know But same thing on the administrative umbrella. But anyway, so AI has now been able, using machine learning in which these systems recognize speech patterns, they recognize, you know, patterns in the data that has been inputted into the systems, and they were able to perform, you know, human like tasks, these human like, repetitive tasks with large bit of autonomy, right can kind of like, let it go, and let it do its thing. And it's basically the driving force behind many of the digital tools and services that we use today, and we don't even know like, Siri, is a very basic AI, you know, you ask it to do something, and it does like it, that he asked me to make a notation yes can send to me like that AI. That is what artificial intelligence is on its most basic sense. Google itself is AI, right, being able to go into Google asked a question, and spits back a measure. That is a we've all been using a version of machine learning or version of artificial intelligence. But now it's basically like going through puberty, right. And it's become a lot more conscious and a lot more interactive. And it has a deeper understanding of sentiment and emotions and feelings and sarcasm. And so now machine learning and AI has led to another level. And with the growth of AI, it's now become so effective that you can have one person who is proficient within AI, that can do the job of three or four people, right, because if you know the right prompts, or questions or direction to give AI, you can have aI generate code for you. You can have AI, you know, generate reports, you can have aI put to PowerPoint, and AI can do so much if you know what you're doing. So companies are at this point where they are hiring what's called prompt engineers. And these prompt engineers, one company needs replacing three or four people. And so what's happening with that is that diversity numbers are going to be impacted in every aspect, because many administrative jobs are held by women. And so now we're gonna eliminate many admin jobs. We're talking about your most basic entry level jobs on line two manufacturing lines are going to be completely automated at some point in time, so companies are going to be less diverse. And so I want to make sure that as companies start to integrate AI, they do so in a very meaningful manner, that they understand that they still need to care about what diversity looks like in their organizations, even though they may be now upgrading or changing what that organization looks like.   Michael Hingson ** 39:40 Given what you just described, how do you deal with the people who say well AI is going to take away all of our jobs?   Shayne Halls ** 39:47 Well, I mean, is gonna take away a lot of jobs seeing this not would be crazy. I mean, that that I tell everyone, that's like when blockbuster said no Netflix is gonna go But it's just a personal thing. It's not, it's here. Now what you can do is learn AI and how to use AI in your job that you're doing. Right, you don't want to be the person who put your head in the sand, and you never took the time to understand what AI is, and how you can use AI to make your job more proficient, you have access to a system that you can use, that can basically eliminate any sort of repetitive tasks that you do in your day to day. And then you can spend the rest of your time doing and work on the more intellectual side of your job, the more creative side of your job, you can connect, you can use your, you can use your free time, quote, unquote, to better yourself in the company to grow in the company to be more impactful in your company, right. So yes, AI may replace jobs as we see it today. But that does not mean that you cannot use AI, to elevate yourself to another job or to another place within an organization.   Michael Hingson ** 40:56 And the more AI and all of that entails comes into our lives. While it may replace or take away jobs in some senses, the other aspect of it is that there will always be more jobs that are being created. So isn't like jobs are going to go away, it's gonna be different, they will be different. And that gets back to what we talked about before, which is there are a lot of people who don't like difference. But the reality is, that's what it is. And so there will be differences. And we're going to have to recognize that and ought to recognize that and then use that to grow in everything that we do, which makes perfect sense to do.   Shayne Halls ** 41:42 Most definitely, like 30 years ago, there was no IoT jobs, right. So Internet of Things is a job title in corporate America, that Job didn't exist, because the profession as it is now. But that is a very high paying job to just like it is very high thing. And so you just have to understand what's going on, you had a great place in this wave of AI, there was no college degree of AI, prompt engineering right now. Right, this is just like the beginning of the internet, like everything is just the wide open. So you can literally get a system and learn it. And perfect those skills and hone those skills. And yes, no one's going to be able to, you don't have to pay to learn right now it is free, get it use it in master, right? Eventually, schools are gonna start to regulate how you learn these things, and how you master AI. And corporate America is gonna get their hands on AI. And we're not going to have as easy access to it as we do. Now, in some fashion, it's going to be limited, how things tend to go into in, you know, capitalistic societies. So while it's wide open, while anyone has access to while everyone has access to it, embrace it, learn it, learn how to integrate it into your daily life, so you don't get passed over. So you don't, you know, lose your job. But you can transition to a different job with AI.   Michael Hingson ** 43:05 Well, and as AI exists today, it's not yet grossly intelligent at truly being able to learn on its own. And that's one of the things that people have to be able to do is to take the role of teaching. And that's why things improve as well as people enhance AI and so on. And the time will come when even learning oops, be somewhat simulated or stimulated by the actual software. But even so, it still doesn't mean that that's the end of the road in terms of us. What it means is that we need to recognize that there are different things in different applications that that we need to do. I think it's going to be a long time before the intelligence and the ability to have an intellect through a machine is going to grow to the point where it can do what the human brain does.   Shayne Halls ** 44:00 Right? Yeah. Ai learned from us, our input into systems. And it learns very quickly from what we put, it doesn't learn by itself, but it doesn't take long to learn. And once you start typing into your system and asking questions, talking to it, it's learning every second every input you put into it, it's learning. But again, it's only learning because you're putting information into it. And I think that's one of the things that as corporations are instituting AI into their workforces in their environments that they have to make sure they have a set team there whose job is to monitor the inputs going into their AI systems, right the algorithms that are being used, the searches that are being done, because the AI while can be a great unbiased tool to use and performance evaluations, promotions, hiring, recruiting, it can also be taught by it can be taught to, to exclude person because of someone else's Have no preconceived notions or whatnot. So you got to have teams monitoring the AI between you so that it's not being used for nefarious activities.   Michael Hingson ** 45:09 Right, then the other side of it is, is that because it has such rapid and full access to a lot of information, it by definition is going to teach us things as well. And, and that's as it should be. As you know, and as people here know, I work for excessive B, which is a company that makes products to help make the internet more inclusive for persons with disabilities and a accessories. main product that most people know about is an AI widget that sits up in the cloud, and it can look at anyone's website, and it can do a lot to remediate those websites. And people can learn about it by going to access a B ACCE ssip.com. But as enhancements are made to the widget, because somebody says, you know, I tried to use it on this website, but this didn't happen. And what's the problem? If the people had access to be discovered that you right, it's, it's an issue, it should work, they fix it. And then it rolls out to anyone who is using excessive be so that the new thing that the AI, which it has been taught, goes to everyone, and it will continue to grow. And it learns based on looking at all the websites that it deals with. And now they're well over 190,000 websites that use excessively, which is cool, but AI is going to continue to grow. And it will get better. There are things that on my website, excessive B still can't totally do by itself. And there are reasons why like it doesn't necessarily interpret pictures and describe them the way I want them describe. But But I am amazed at how well they can look at a picture like there's a picture of me holding or hugging a yellow Labrador Retriever on my website. And the way I want that branded is it's my kingsun hugging, Roselle excessively doesn't know my Kingston excessively doesn't know Roselle because they're the the restrictions under which you could go off and identify a picture are still in existence. So it can't, for example, just go to Facebook and realize that's my Kingston and then that's Roselle. So it can't do that. But what excessive B does do when it sees that picture is it says man and white dress shirt hugging yellow Labrador Retriever. I'm amazed that it can do that. But it can and and then I can deal with that and and put an alt tag or my web guy can put an alt tag in. And so that's fine. But by the same token, it's amazing how far it has already come and how far it will continue to go. And that's the way it ought to be if it makes our lives more efficient. And we take advantage of it. Why shouldn't we?   Shayne Halls ** 48:03 Why shouldn't die? I think it's fair that people don't like this. We fear what we don't know. You know, and I think a lot of people hear stories of AI. They see movies, you know, they see Terminator they see iRobot you know, they see all these movies and oh my gosh, AI this evil thing. Yeah, it's not. It's not it's here. We're in such infancy stages of AI, that, well, I'm not taking granted this doing yourself a disservice in some capacity. And yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 48:37 exactly right. Of course, you mentioned iRobot and being a little bit prejudiced. I don't think the movie does the original book and stories by Isaac Asimov justice talking about AI. But there, there's a lot that we can learn. And we really need to broaden our horizons and recognize that this is a world where there are so many adventures and you talked about the Internet of Things. You talked about the internet and so on. What a treasure trove. And you talked about the iPhone being a way that we can get to so many things. The internet in general is such a treasure trove of information. And yes, there's a dark side to it, which we don't need to deal with. And we ought to help not happen. But by the same token, there is so much more that the internet has available to us it is just fascinating to go look at sites on the Internet and learn things which I get to do every day and aim a lot of fun doing it.   Shayne Halls ** 49:36 What's crazy is that I remember being a kid and having the Encyclopedia Britannica and just having all these encyclopedias there to use my mom thought I was gonna go look it up. I was gonna go look at it. Got a second please go look it up. My children have encyclopedias in their phones on their tablets. Like there was no more Encyclopedia Britannica like it doesn't They will have like, I don't know, anyone who still has, like those kits that they used to sell on TV on the infomercials or whatnot, right? Yeah, it changes, it changes things, you have all this information that went to a stockpile. And so hundreds of books, it is at the tip of your fingers to find out anything you want to know, you literally can pop up any question in your mind? And you can find the answer for there and on some page somewhere.   Michael Hingson ** 50:27 And the the comment, go look it up, however, is still valid, very valid. And it absolutely makes sense to go look it up.   Shayne Halls ** 50:37 So which is submit really quickly, what used to take me, you know, 20 minutes to look up the answer, like it's fine to me. So I got that don't worry, I know.   Michael Hingson ** 50:46 I, when I'm visiting relatives and all that, and we're talking about anything from sports to whatever. And there's a question, within just seconds people have the answer. They haven't a lot faster than I do, because they're able to manipulate the phone a lot faster than than I can. And so they get the information. But the fact is, it's there, which is so cool.   Shayne Halls ** 51:09 Yeah, there's no more telling those stories off. There was that game two years ago, where NC State scored 90 points against like, no, let's look it up. And states never scored nine points in any game anytime. You can't find stories in what you can't you can't exaggerate things. Yeah, it's there to fact check everyone.   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 Yeah, which is, which is okay. Again, that's dealing with arrogance. And not you don't want to beat people over the head with it when they're wrong. By the same token, you can still say now, let's really go back and look at that. And you know, what really happened, which is so fun.   Shayne Halls ** 51:47 So finally, just sit back and let people tell their stories, you know, you know what, go ahead, but you're not hurt nobody tell your story. Tell your story.   Michael Hingson ** 51:55 Tell your story, your story. So I know that for me, using iPhones, and so on and doing so much. It's still slower than other people. But I believe the AI is going to enhance my experience at doing a lot of the things that I want to do on an iPhone or whatever. Well, what do you what do you see as ways that AI is going to help persons with disabilities   Shayne Halls ** 52:21 think that the AI levels the playing field, right AI, is now able to take away many of the advantages that persons may have had in the past and much easier now. AIS can be your ears, if you are deaf, they ask can be your eyes, if you are blind eye takes away the need to be in the office for those who may be you know, movement disabled, where they can't get to a location every day, you know, you now have remote jobs where you can log in remotely. So using AI in various aspects is allowing more inclusion into the workforce, right. So even when a person may not be able to go to an outing, because of a disability, movement disability, they can use AI, they can use, you know software like zoom or software in which they can log in and interact and still be a part of the team still can feel that level of belonging as if they're there. With AI, being as accessible as it is, it is now in a place to where no one has to feel like they are at a severe disadvantage in trying to participate or be a part of everyone else because of their disability.   Michael Hingson ** 54:00 I would like to see AI and technology in general progress, to allow me to be able to interact and look up information as fast as you can on your iPhone. And that doesn't exist yet. And that's a whole interface issue. The the ideal way to do it is if my brain could talk directly to the phone. Because you can type a whole lot faster by virtue of the fact that even with the gestures that Apple and the Android folks have put into the phone to allow me to interact with it, it's still going to be slower. And it's a little bit more. I don't want to say obtrusive, but it is a little bit more visible to the world. Because when I'm talking with people, they're looking stuff up on their phone while we're talking and that's a little bit harder for me to do it would be fun to be able to have that level of interface access. And I am sure it's coming.   Shayne Halls ** 54:57 I think that that level of interface that Since is not as big and as far as way as we think it, I think we're just like right around the corner. It's weird when you hear stories about people testing our brain implants. Yeah. And so while that sounds scary, until you know that in the past people had brain implants that helped them here now, right like, like, you know, these things are vastly open and very close, we're on the precipice of really having full AI interactions to where even when you've seen stuff, you've seen companies advertise or preview, persons with movement disabilities, getting AI limbs, and the limbs are reading the nerves from the brain and are able to reflect the movement that the brain is triggering, right? Like these things are happening like these, like this. We're like, we're like right there. And it's very cool. And so I think that it's not going to be very much longer, weird disabilities are more of a momentary discomfort rather than a lifetime. sentence, right? Because we've seen so many ocular transplants are happening now, where people who are blind into our lives are being given the ability to see, again, question somebody offered that to you, Mike, would you take it?   Michael Hingson ** 56:46 To actually gain eyesight? It'd be an adventure, I have to think about it, it isn't. It isn't the most crucial thing in my world. And people who can see, well, how could you not? Well, you know, how, and why should I? That's not the issue. The issue is, will it really enhance my life, if I could truly get that back? It's an adventure. And I would probably do it as an adventure, but not as a desperate need, that overwhelms everything. And I think that's the real issue. You know, with with the whole issue of AI, we will continue to see growth. Ray Kurzweil says it's going to be what 920 45, when computers and brains, basically are connected. And so we'll have direct access to all this computer stuff. And we'll see whether that happens in 22 years or not. He believes it will. That's the singularity, and I think time will tell. But we still have a ways to go to get to the point where we've developed that interface. One of the things about sighted people is, you all have spent a lot of time developing technology to help you. Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb, which really covers up your disability if not being able to see in the dark. And since 1879, people have spent a lot of time developing lighting technologies, and stable lighting technologies that make it possible for you to pretty much cover up the disability, of not being able to see in the dark until there's some major power failure, and then you nowadays can run off and try to find your phone and activate a flashlight or whatever. But it still doesn't mean that the disability isn't there. And we haven't progressed to the point of making that level of technological enhancement and advancement available to persons with disabilities, the priority is going to have to be to change that to truly create inclusion. And I think it will at some point, but it's it's still a ways off because it's still not really the priority. But the other side of it is a lot of the technology that would help us and enhance our lives, could also be something that would help other people as well. You know, I'm still amazed that while Apple built voice over the screen reader into the iPhone, that Apple isn't doing more to promote it in things like driving cars. If you get a Tesla, you still have to look at the screen to do so much stuff. Now. Of course, Elon Musk would say yeah, but with the with the ability of the Tesla to cruise down the road and yes, you have to be behind the wheel and so on but you can afford that time to look away. Why should you have to? Why not be able to just consistently stay off of her stay on looking at the road and looking what's going on around you and let a voice and vocal technologies help you more enhance your world. We haven't gotten to the point where we totally deal with that yet.   Shayne Halls ** 59:57 Yeah, I think that is a With a non disabled problem of being able to understand how to use technology, we have to enhance the lives of those who are disabled. Think Like, people tend to pay attention to words relevant to their life, and it takes special people to think about how other people's lives are being impacted. That has nothing to do with them at all. That's the more special people there are in the world, the better we all will be. I think that's definitely a thing where persons with disabilities are going to have to be the ones to make sure that they are not overlooked. And those of persons without disabilities have to be allies to go through our and use our voices to make sure that everyone's getting the equal amount of attention for the things that they need to enhance their lives.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:07 Yeah. So what exactly does manifested dreams do?   Shayne Halls ** 1:01:13 What I was necessary to help you manifest your dreams, right. So if a company wants to be more inclusive, we can come in there and we perform cultural evaluations, we can help you put together various sort of cultural groups, employee resource groups, we can also sit down with persons who are on a on a one on one basis and help them understand their career and what they're doing and how to use AI to help their career growth.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:41 How does AI factor into that?   Shayne Halls ** 1:01:45 AI can be used to make an admin assistant be super proficient her job. And then she can also then use the other time to volunteer for other program projects is going on at work, and be proficient at that too, by using integrating AI into the tasks that she's given. So he or she can grow and excel, and be better the organization, I can help a leader understand where the gaps are within the company who's not really promoting people properly, who has bias in their hiring. AI can be used for someone who is looking to grow as a writer, you can use AI to, to literally, you know, proofread your stuff. If you're a writing user, certainly I program live and proofread. Let it give you suggestions on how to change the tone. AIS AI can be used in many different capacities for whatever your aspect of work life is.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:38 And so what I am assuming manifests and dreams does is it comes in and you teach people how to use these tools, and you get them hopefully comfortable using the tools but you teach them how to use the tools and incorporate them into their processes to make the whole company much more effective and efficient. I'm presuming that that's essentially what you do. Right?   Shayne Halls ** 1:03:02 On. Yeah, but that's exactly what I did. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:05 I'm with you. And I think it's it's cool that that you're doing that it's a great service. If people want to reach out to you and learn more about it and learn more about you and so on. How do they do that?   Shayne Halls ** 1:03:16 You can reach me on med so email address would be my name Shayne. So Shayne  D H S H A Y N E D H. At manifesting dreams that org. I'm on Twitter at MNIFSTD dream to manifest your dreams on Twitter. I G manifested dream manifested underscore dreams and see we're everywhere. So please reach out. Let us come in let us help you unless you know show you how to really take things to the next level.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:52 Well, that is cool. And I think you can help a lot of people realize that this whole concept of artificial intelligence and all the things that we're seeing being developed today can really be an enhancement if we allow that to happen, which is what it's really should be about. Right?   Shayne Halls ** 1:04:13 Exactly. Don't be scared of it. Embrace it.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:16 Yeah. Well, thanks again for being here. And I want to thank you for listening to us today. This has been a fun discussion. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to our podcast, unstoppable mindset. Love it if you would do that. If you'd like to reach out and comment, I would appreciate that you can reach me at Michaelhi m i c h a e l h i at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. And as I said, go off to www.accessibe.com and learn about the products and learn how to maybe make your internet website more usable and inclusive. If you want to We'll explore more podcast episodes. Do that wherever you're listening to us or go to www dot Michaelhingson m i  c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast. And check out all the podcasts. Of course, again, as you're listening, we certainly would appreciate a five star rating wherever you're listening to us. And Shane, both for you and for all of you listening out there if you have any thoughts of anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset. Love to hear that. Please reach out to me, please make introductions. We're always looking for more people to come on and have some more stimulating conversations. So again, Shayne, for you. Thanks very much. We really appreciate you being here. This has been great, hasn't it?   Shayne Halls ** 1:05:44 It has. It's been wonderful. I appreciate the experience and I look forward to talking to you again my friend.   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:53 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much.

On this episode of Dads with Daughters, our guest Mike Stout, known as the Northland Adventurer, shares his journey of fatherhood and his remarkable experiences kayaking the Great Lakes. Mike's story begins with his high anticipation and commitment to being a great father, even planning to write a book about it. Unfortunately, he goes through some tough times and feels like he failed as a parent, which becomes his greatest regret. As a single parent, Mike shares the challenges of raising his children alone and the traumatic experiences they went through. He emphasizes the importance of fathers being active in their children's lives, especially daughters. But it's not just about fatherhood. Mike reflects on his incredible kayaking expeditions, including crossing Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. He paints a vivid picture of the four quarters of the journey, from enthusiasm to doubts and fatigue, and finding moments of gratitude and reflection along the way. Through these experiences, Mike feels a sense of closeness with his deceased loved ones and mentors, as well as God. The episode also highlights resources like the Fatherhood Insider and the Facebook community Dads with Daughters, which provide tools and support for fathers to improve their fatherhood skills. Mike shares his experience as a single father during his children's teenage years and the challenges of not having a partner to lean on. He still feels guilty and wishes he could have done more, despite his children's reassurance that he didn't fail as a father. Now, as his children are adults and he has a granddaughter, Mike reflects on how amazing it is to have a family and the importance of hope during the darkest times. He plans to continue his adventures, not only on Lake Michigan but also in giving back and creating nonprofits. Throughout the episode, Mike shares his journey as a father and his kayaking achievements, inspiring listeners to cherish special moments with their children and pursue personal enjoyment and growth as fathers. If you've enjoyed today's episode of the Dads With Daughters podcast, we invite you to check out the Fatherhood Insider. The Fatherhood Insider is the essential resource for any dad that wants to be the best dad that he can be. We know that no child comes with an instruction manual, and most are figuring it out as they go along. The Fatherhood Insider is full of valuable resources and information that will up your game on fatherhood. Through our extensive course library, interactive forum, step-by-step roadmaps, and more you will engage and learn with experts but more importantly with dads like you. So check it out today! TRANSCRIPT Christopher Lewis [00:00:06]: Welcome to dads with daughters. In this show, we spotlight dads resources and more to help you be the best dad you can be. Christopher Lewis [00:00:16]: Hey, everyone, this is Chris. And welcome back to the Dads with Daughters podcast, where we bring you guests to be active participants in your daughter's lives, raising them to be strong, independent women. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to sit down and talk to you about the journey that you're on in being a father to a daughter. And every dad's journey is just a little bit different. And that's why it's so important for us to talk to other dads, to listen to other dads, to learn from other dads. And that's why every week I love being able to bring you different people, different guests, different dads that have done this fatherhood journey in a little bit different way and that are still doing their fatherhood journey in a little bit different way. And this week, we got another great guest with us. Mike Stout is with us. And Mike is a father of two daughters. Be talking about that, but he's also known as the Northland Adventurer. He has had some really remarkable experiences kayaking the Great Lakes and doing some other really unique things. And we're going to talk about that as well. And I'm really excited to have him here today. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Mike Stout [00:01:28]: Thank you, Mike. Christopher Lewis [00:01:31]: I said that you are a father of two daughters, and one of the things that I love to do is learn a little bit more about you as a dad. So what I would love to do is turn the clock back in time and all the way back to that first moment when you found out that you were going to be a dad to a daughter, what was going through your head? Mike Stout [00:01:50]: Wow. Yeah, it was a blessing. It was a miracle that came true. I'll go back further. When I was in college, at the age of maybe 20 years old, I began looking forward, looking envisioning what would my life be like? And the only thing I thought of and could think of was, I'm going to have two daughters. I envision holding their hands, taking them shopping, spending time, and that was my singular vision, was going to be the father of two girls. So I never envisioned playing baseball or football or tennis or golf. But the son, it was always two girls. And I've been blessed with two girls. So when I first heard that I was going to be a father, I was ecstatic, of course. Couldn't wait. And then when we discovered it was going to be a girl, it was Islam, a blessing, a miracle that came true. I was just ecstatic. Christopher Lewis [00:02:54]: I talked to a lot of dads, and many dads talk about that. There's definitely a fear of being a father, just in general, but especially with dads, with daughters, that sometimes there's that additional fear of raising daughters. Talk to me about what was your biggest fear in raising your daughters. Mike Stout [00:03:13]: I had such high anticipation. I had no fear. I was just excited. I knew if I had the opportunity, I was going to be a great father. And I was so committed, so confident and so sure I was going to be a great father. And being also a corporate executive, I was going to write a book about being exceptional father. I wanted to make sure that every father knew how important it is for them to be active in their children's lives, but in particular their daughters. Unfortunately, things happen in life and we went through some terrible times and I felt that I failed horribly. And it was about when they were in the fourth and 6th grade, I became a full time single parent, so legal and so physical. And what they went through during that time was so traumatic. I felt I failed because I could protect them against those unimaginable difficult times they went through. So it may be my single greatest regret that I can protect them. And being a father, that's our role, to protect our children, in particular our daughters. So it's still tough. Christopher Lewis [00:04:34]: Let's talk a little bit about that because I know that, like you said, it was a tough time. And for you, I guess now your daughters are adults, you raise them and they're out on their own. As they reflect back now and I don't know, have you had those conversations with them about what you had hoped to be as a father, what you tried to be as a father, and what they reflect back to you about? Of course, for you it was a traumatic time and you know, it was a traumatic time for them. But as you talk to them now and they reflect back, do they give you feedback that eases your mind at all? Mike Stout [00:05:10]: In fact, they have during that time when they're young teenagers or preteens, it was tough, it was confusing for them, for all of us. We're all going through it for the first time together. And being a single father, you get the good, the bad and the ugly. Being a single father, you get mostly the bad and the ugly because they have their girlfriends to give the good to. But I don't mind that I was there. That's my role. I'll take it all. But now that they're adults in their mid 20s often talk to them, one in particular, and they reassure me that I did not fail. That they often say it was because of maybe my being always there and being that pillar that they needed to lean into. That they're proud of what I did. And they were proud that I was there for them, as many other fathers perhaps wouldn't. So having them tell me that it's a great relief feel reassured, but I still feel guilty for not having done more and that's just the reality. But having said that, we also have a granddaughter, which is when you have your children, it's amazing, but when you have a grandchild, it's unimaginable. And I feel that despite all the things that we've gone through, we have come all, you know, full circle and we are better off than I could have ever imagined. So there's hope. There's hope for all of us, even those during those most difficult dark times. And hope people hang out of that and believe that. Christopher Lewis [00:06:46]: Appreciate you sharing that, because that was one of the things I was just going to say, is that it sounds more hopeful than not that for all dads that are going through those dark times and there are going to be some dark times for some dads as they go through that experience, there's going to be high and low points. That may not be as catastrophic as I can tell, that the experience that you went through, but there are still going to be highs and lows and that even if you feel like you failed, you may not have failed, but it may take a little bit of time to work your way back. And that's okay. You just keep working your way back. And we have to never give up on our kids. And as I can tell, you never give up on your kids. And that's one of the things and one of the roles that a father has to do. Mike Stout [00:07:31]: Exactly. Never give up. Christopher Lewis [00:07:33]: Now, as you look back at the relationship that you have with your daughters and you think about each of them, I mean, when you have two kids, you have to do different things because they're different people. You have to build unique relationships with each child. As you think back to both of your kids, how did you create those special bonds with each of your children? Mike Stout [00:07:58]: Uniquely, I was lucky because of the age difference. They were typically in different schools, they were in different competitive teams, had different friends. So I could give them the individual time as they were growing up. But they required more of time, more of my time obviously, to tend to both of them. But I had individual relations and experiences with both of them based on their strengths and weaknesses and moments of need. So because of the age difference, it worked out really well. Christopher Lewis [00:08:28]: That definitely helps. And for some dads you have that larger age difference. Other times they might be right on top of one another and then you have to deal with that as well. But it is so important to be able to create that time, create those moments and have those special moments with each of your children because they will remember that. Now, I did mention that you are also known as the Northland Adventurer. And I know that there was a point in time where you made a big change. You said you were in the corporate world, and as you transitioned out of the corporate world, you made some changes to your life to look at things that you enjoyed doing, and you did some new things. So talk to me about this transition and what it means to be the Northland adventurer. Mike Stout [00:09:14]: Yes, it's been quite the journey. The transition was when I became a full time single parent. I did choose between corporate America and being a full time parent. Unfortunately, I had the means and the opportunity. I thought it was an easy decision. Like I mentioned before, when I was in college, that was my single goal vision, to be the best father. So I was dedicated to that. So when I pivoted, I began consulting. And as our children get older, they become stronger and more independent. And then when they have keys to the car, the dad seemed to be less important than ever before. So as it became, young adults became into their own. It was time for me to rediscover myself. What can I do that I will enjoy personally? Help me from a mental, physical and a spiritual perspective. For some reason, living in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, with the lakes and rivers around, the idea of kayaking came to mind. And I picked up the sport of kayaking, and it touched me. I was fortunate to have, not too far where I live, the Minnesota River, the Mississippi River, the St. Croix, the Namicagan, some incredibly large scenic rivers, and being somewhat competitive and always pushing to be better, I picked up the sport and just fell in love with it. It provided the exercise, the serenity, outdoors, water, adventure, all those things that I love. And immediately I began looking for greater challenges, greater distances, more challenging rivers, greater speed. And very early on, I had the idea of crossing Lake Michigan just after I began the sport. And being from West Michigan, having an affinity for the Great Lakes, I've always felt very comfortable, felt there's been a tug back to the lakes. So I didn't tell my daughters that immediately, and I told a few others, and nobody thought that was a good idea. Paddling 50, 60 miles across the great lake as a beginner, kayaker, it's risky, but I was confident in my skills and my enthusiasm. And the first trip was extraordinary. I paddled from the middle of the afternoon, all night long, early morning, under the stars. Just an amazing experience. But being the first time, it was kind of scary and at times overwhelming. Like anything for the first time was an amazing accomplishment. So the next challenge, I thought, well, I'll cross Lake Superior. Knowing how a few thought Lake Michigan was a good idea, I kept that idea to myself. Make a long story short, the next year I journeyed across Lake Superior. It took me 27 and a half hours it was a treacherous paddle. I was lucky to have gotten off alive. I vowed to never return to Lake Superior again if I got off alive. I made it and I've not gone back to Lake Superior. Then the next challenge was to cross Lake Michigan for the second time, then a third time, then three times in a year, and then for a 6th time. So I'm lucky and excited and proud to say I'm the first person to cross Lake Michigan solo unassisted. Not just once, but a record six times. So the Northland adventure has stuck with me because of over the six years I paddled 6000 miles across the upper Midwest, some of the most scenic rivers and lakes, the Great Lakes, and it's been in this amazing journey. Another factor I chose to do this is because my dad died at an early age and he had regrets that he didn't do those things he wished he had. My brother died when he was 55 and I was 51 at the time. And he had great regrets that he didn't do things that he wished he had when he had the health and opportunity. So that was perhaps a driving force that I wanted to do things when I could. I would have no regrets and also perhaps proved to be a role model for others, but also to give my daughter something to boast about. They say, my dad did this, let's talk about that. Christopher Lewis [00:13:46]: So you did these feats. I'm going to say you had these opportunities, you went and crossed these large, vast areas and you did it alone and by yourself. And you did prevail, you did get through, even through Superior. But let me know, as you started to do this, as you continued to do this, what kind of feedback are you getting from your daughters? Mike Stout [00:14:11]: They've been asked that a number of times by reporters and others, and they simply say, well, that's what my dad does. So at first they thought was maybe a little bit aspirational foolish, perhaps they use different adjectives to describe my thoughts, but now it's simply what their dad does. So I'm glad to be able to instill upon them the sense of independence, confidence, to challenge yourself, pursue new goals. And in that, they have both moved to California on their own, never having a job. So we want to go up there and pioneer and create our own path. We feel that we can do this on our own. And hopefully that my example of pioneering and being adventurous has given them a new venue and a new view on life. Christopher Lewis [00:14:59]: Let's talk a little bit about what you've learned along the way. So as you go across these vast distances by yourself, I'm sure there's definitely time not only to reflect and to think and to ponder, but at the same time, when you're going across a place like Lake Superior that is going to challenge you in other ways and threaten your life. You definitely have to reflect in different ways. But as you've done these different things and as you have been challenged in different ways, how has it made you look at life differently? Mike Stout [00:15:39]: Good question. It makes you truly treasure it and fully appreciate every moment. Especially value those times with your family and close to your friends. Crossing Lake Superior, that was all about survival. I just wanted to get off alive and to be able to watch my children grow and my granddaughter grow as well. In crossing Lake Michigan, I've got that down to a pretty fast pace of just over 13 hours. I've become much more strategic in my approach, choosing good windows of opportunity. But when you cross Lake Michigan, there's four distinct quarters. The first quarter is all about the enthusiasm, the excitement of being able to do this again. Get out there in the middle of the lake where all you see for hundreds of square miles, just a sea of blue. The lake takes on the colors of the sky. It's just an incredible, peaceful, tranquil moment. The second quarter, you start getting into the routine, the effort, the exercise, pacing yourself on the time, the energy, the meals, hydration. It becomes a workout. The third quarter, you begin doubting your wisdom. You're getting fatigued and tired, and even though you're enjoying it, you know you're only halfway through. But it's somewhere near the end of the third quarter, the beginning of the fourth, just before you can see the lighthouse on Lake Michigan, you look up and you really begin thinking and thanking God for such a remarkable life. You think about what you've done and what you haven't done, what you wish you could have done differently. But it all goes back to just how much I appreciate the life that I've had. My two daughters and of course, my granddaughter. So when I look up in the sky and look up in the heaven, I begin envisioning. And actually, I can see the faces of my grandparents, my parents. I imagine my mother rolling her eyes and my dad nodding affirmatively, my brother encouraging me. I see the face of my best friend, Jack Hoyle, who just died a few days ago. The close mentor. Pamela kaspari. And they're all cheering exciting, except for mom. Mom's a little bit apprehensive and wonder what I'm doing. You get this amazing closeness with God. I literally envision speaking to and looking at my brother and my parents, grandparents making my way to Pamela, then Jack, and Jack's next to God. And I just want to take another look down that line and take a picture of God. But of course, the picture of the vision disappears when you're out that lake. And that what drives me back to the lake. To do it that 4th, 5th, 6th time and likely a 7th time, is that closeness that I get there and nowhere else. That closeness with family of past friends and family who passed on before. And I just hope others can truly appreciate how lucky we are to have the life that we have and the opportunities, and most importantly, just embrace your friends and family and of course our daughters and our children and grandchildren. You really appreciate what you have through alone. It's all you have is simply yourself and your thoughts at the time. Christopher Lewis [00:19:18]: You've done some things that other people might have only dreamt of or they may have only thought of doing, or maybe never have even thought of doing, have no interest at all in doing. As you think about the future and other goals, other things that you might want to do. Are there white whales out there for you to slay? Are there other lakes that you want to cross? Do you want to do Ontario and Erie as well? Do you want to do other things as you look at the future? Mike Stout [00:19:51]: Well, I really have an affinity for Lake Michigan. I grew up on West Michigan and I'm always being pulled back to that great lake. So I envision doing a 7th paddle. Maybe there'll be more, but it's just because of that closeness I get with my family and friends and god, I don't envision going anywhere else besides Lake Michigan. I could do others, but that'd be more for. Simply the accomplishment saying I've done this, I've done that, but that close I get. The family on Lake Michigan is extraordinarily special. That draws me back. But I do see doing other things of perhaps giving back. And also before I close, my chapter is to create other nonprofits and help build other businesses and leverage my skills in marketing, business development, and entrepreneurialism. So I have plenty to do, plenty to yet to accomplish. Christopher Lewis [00:20:56]: We always finish our interviews with what I like to call our Fatherhood Five, where I ask you five more questions to delve deeper into you as a dad. Are you ready? Mike Stout [00:21:03]: I'm ready. Christopher Lewis [00:21:04]: In one word, what is fatherhood? Mike Stout [00:21:07]: It's a gift. Christopher Lewis [00:21:08]: When was the time that you finally felt like you succeeded at being a father to a daughter? Mike Stout [00:21:12]: When they tell you that they're proud of you, that affirmation is amazing. And when they tell me to forgive myself? Christopher Lewis [00:21:22]: Now, if I was to talk to your daughters, how would they describe you as a dad? Mike Stout [00:21:26]: Hopefully, and I think they would, they would describe me as being affectionate, supportive, there for them, driven, adventurous, and hopefully proud. Christopher Lewis [00:21:37]: What inspires you to be a better dad? Mike Stout [00:21:39]: I'm driven every day to be a better dad. Like I said, when I was in college, that was my goal. My vision was to have two daughters. And whatever I do, whatever I accomplish, be it in business, adventure, sports, my legacy is my two daughters and granddaughter and doing the best that they can for them. Christopher Lewis [00:22:02]: Now, you've given a number of pieces of advice you've talked about your own experience, but what's one piece of advice you'd want to give to every dad? Mike Stout [00:22:10]: Just celebrate those good times as there are many and during those times of doubt, of worry, to know that you're not alone. You too will get through this and seek those friends that are closest to you because they too have gone through difficult times. We are not alone. Christopher Lewis [00:22:30]: If people want to find out more about you, where's the best place for them to go? Mike Stout [00:22:33]: They can go to my website, the Northland Adventurer, and send me an email there. I've got a nonprofit called Michigan Waterways Stewards. They could go there. It's wwwaterwaystwards.org or maybe contact you. Christopher Lewis [00:22:54]: Mike, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your story today. Thank you for getting out there and living that adventurous life. And I can live vicariously through your experiences as well as everyone else can as well. But I truly appreciate you sharing your journey today and I wish you all the best. Mike Stout [00:23:11]: Thank you. Christopher Lewis [00:23:12]: We know that no child comes with an instruction manual and most dads are figuring it out as they go along. And the Fatherhood Insider is full of resources and information that will up your game on Fatherhood. Through our extensive course library, interactive forum, step by step roadmaps and more, you will engage and learn with experts, but more importantly, dads like you. So check it out@fatheringtogether.org. If you are a father of a daughter and have not yet joined the Dads withdaughters Facebook community, there's a link in the notes. Today Dads withdaughters is a program of fathering together. Find out more@fatheringtogether.org. We look forward to having you back for another great guest next week. All geared to helping you raise strong, empowered daughters and be the best dad that you can be. Christopher Lewis [00:24:01]: We're all in the same boat and it's full of tiny screaming passengers. We spend the time we give the lessons we make the meals we buy them present. Bring your AC because those kids are growing fast. The time. Goes by just like a dynamite glass calling astronauts and firemen carpenters and muscle men get out and be the one to now be the best that you can be be the best that you can be you.  

durée : 01:00:45 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - Le compagnonnage à la française serait-il plus moderne que son image un peu vieillotte ? En 1992, le documentaire "Croix de bois, croix de fer, parole de compagnon" nous montre l'actualité de cette tradition ancestrale de transmission qui mène vers l'excellence dans les métiers de l'artisanat.

Here are a few more St. Croix, USVI -  good eats! This past month, we couldn't help ourselves from trying some new spots in St. Croix and visiting some of our island favorites. The last time I visited St. Croix I recorded another podcast on Where to EAT in St. Croix after being introduced to the island. I got a great deal of feedback from locals and my community. So here is a compilation of new eateries and culinary delights on St. Croix that is filled with local eats, sustainable, farm-to-table options.⏱ TIMELINE ⏱1:15 Beachside Cafe@ SandCastle on the Beach2:27 Savant 4:25 AMA at Cane Bay6:07 Ci Bo Né7:10 BrewSTX8:07 Louie & Nachos9:49 Return to Polly's at the Pier10:36 La Reine's Chicken Shack11;49 Return to Tap Deck12:25 DazzledSTX13:49 What's New and Coming14:42 Travel tip for eating out on the Island

This past month we returned to Sand Castle on the Beach in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. I went for some rest, relaxation, restoration and to check in on all my friends. Resort owners, Chris Richardson and Ted Bedwell of Sand Castle on the Beach.  #stcroix #usvirginislands⏱TIMELINE⏱1:00 Grand Tour of the new villas1:35 Dolphin Villa1:57 360 degree Camera of Rooms2:09 Local Artist - Barbara Gelardi2:14 Beachside Cafe & Menu 2:42  Meet Ms. B3:57 What's Included?4:27 GotoStCroix.com https://www.gotostcroix.com/https://www.gotostcroix.com/st-croix-blog/100-things-to-do-st-croix/4:53 When to Visit5:52 How to get to St. Croix6:21 Why choose Sand Castle on the Beach7:37 Interview with Chris & Ted! Join us on a RIVER Cruise through the Duoro Valley in SPRING 2024 in PORTUGAL! CLICK HERE!For More CONTENT:

Ce jeudi, sur Europe 1, Nicolas Bouzou revient sur l'appel aux dons lancé par les associations caritatives comme les Restos du cœur ou la Croix rouge. 

Bienvenue dans LE CLUB, l'émission à 4 voix pour papoter déco...  Retrouvez ici en 18 minutes la chronique de Violaine Belle-Croix qui nous motive avec plein d'arguments, de marques et d'accessoires pour qu'on se mette au vélo !   >> Dans l'épisode entier, vous pourrez aussi entendre Billie Blanket qui nous informe sur tout ce qu'on peut faire quand on est locataire et Marie Farman qui nous parle de la Design Parade, entre Hyères, Toulon et la Villa Noailles qui fête ses 100 ans cette année, c'est par ici ! Si ce podcast vous plait n'hésitez pas  > à vous abonner pour ne pas rater les prochains épisodes > à mettre un commentaire ou 5 étoiles (sous la liste des épisodes, rubrique "Laissez un avis") > à suivre @decodeur__ sur Instagram et à partager l'épisode en Story par exemple  > à découvrir les 100 épisodes déjà en ligne et les différents formats de l'émission > à parler de DECODEUR autour de vous, tout simplement...! Merci beaucoup

Last time we spoke about the Komiatum Offensive in New Guinea. The drive to Lae and Salamaua was raging on New Guinea. Mount Tambu was assaulted and the allies received hellish casualties trying to take it. The legendary Bull Allen saved countless lives during this action, but Mount Tambu simply couldn't be captured. The allies chose to isolate and surround mount Tambu instead. The allies secured took the sugarcane knoll, the timbered knoll and then found a path heading to Komiatum. Nakano ordered his men to hold Komiatum ridge, but their situation became more and more desperate. Allied artillery and aerial bombardment alongside the enveloping maneuvers were taking a toll, the Japanese had suffered 900 casualties since July 23rd. With more men dying minute by minute, Nakano ordered a withdrawal from Komiatum still believing the primary target of the allies was Salamaua. This episode is the Fall of Kiska & Battle of Vella Lavella  Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  So before venturing back to the frigid northern aleutians, we have a lot of action to talk about in the south Pacific. On August 3rd, General Sasaki was forced to order a withdrawal from Munda. General Griswold sent a message over to Admiral Hasley declaring “Our ground forces today wrested Munda from the Japs and present it to you as sole owner”. Halsey in his typical fashion replied “keep ‘em dying”. Despite the blood, sweat and tears taking Munda, as a whole, operation cartwheel had fallen a month behind schedule. As Griswold noted “the months fighting had not been the Americans' finest hour in the Solomon islands campaign”. Halsey would add to it “the smoke of charred reputations still makes me cough”. Now just because Munda had fallen did not mean the work was all done, there was to be cleanup operations of course. General Sasaki ordered his forces to retreat northwards, most were enroute to the Kure 6th farm; the 13th regiment and Sasaki's HQ were going to Bairoko; the 3rd battalion, 23rd regiment and Yokosuka 7th guns were heading to Baanga island. The Americans would be in hot pursuit. General Griswold divided the cleanup operations, giving the 25th division the task of advancing across New Georgia to seize Bairoko Harbor and the Piru Plantation. General Hodge 's 43rd division was given the task of seizing the islands of Arundel and Baanga. General Collins would deploy the 1st battalion, 27th regiment and Colonel Dalton's 161st regiment to advance up the Bairoko trail; the rest of Colonel Douglas Sugg's 27th would advance along the Zieta Trail towards the Piru plantation. General Sasaki learnt on August 6th, the American navy had scored a small but conclusive victory when 6 US destroyers sunk 3 IJN destroyers, the Arashi, Kawakaze and Hagikaze during the Naval battle of Vella Gulf. This of course meant the Japanese reinforcement convoy had failed, thus Sasaki wasted no time ordered a general withdrawal to Kolombangara by the way of Baanga Island. Sasaki needed to give the men more time, so he reinforced the Yano battalion with the 12th company of the 3rd battalion, 23rd regiment who were left to defend the Kure 6th farm. Major Yano Keiji, a veteran of Guadalcanal, selected a rough terrain east and south of Zieta village and the Kure 6th farm to dig in. The Americans would later refer to it as “Zieta Garden”. The garden was to be Yano's first line of defense across the Zieta river. There was a bit of high ground due north of Zieta Village which would have been easier to defend, but he needed his men to protect the trail running to Lulu Channel and Baanga, his only line of communications. The 3rd battalion, 23rd regiment in the meantime were securing Baanga. General Sasaki radioed his plans to the 8th Fleet, but to his surprise was told to hold onto New Georgia until late September for “future operations”. Sasaki was bewildered by this, but understood Admiral Samejima then commanding the 8th fleet was trying to direct a land battle, and obviously he was not experienced in such things. What Sasaki did not know at the time was Samejima was being instructed by General headquarters to do this. On August 7th, the Army and Navy had agreed to pull out of the Central Solomons and would cooperate to bolster Bougainville's defenses. A revisión later on August 13th would instruct Koga, Kusaka and Imamura to hold onto as much of New Georgia as possible while Bougainville was being reinforced. Full evacuation of New Georgia was set for late September to early October, but the actual dates were dependent on the Bougainville progress. On August 8th Sugg's 2nd battalion advanced through a deep ravine going roughly 2 miles up the trail when his men were met with heavy machine gun fire. The Yano battalion was defending the barge supply route through the Lulu channel as their comrades and supplies made their way to Baanga. On August 9th, the 27th began their assault upon the Kure 6th Farm, employing a envelopment maneuver. The Yano battalion was holding them at bay, but gradually the allied forces were confining the Japanese into a smaller and smaller pocket. Meanwhile the 1st battalion was advancing north along the Munda-Bairoko trail where they joined Colonel Liversedge's men. On the 10th, Hodge ordered the 169th regiment to hit Baanga and on the 11th patrols from their 3rd battalion had located the Japanese strongpoint on its southwest tip. By nightfall, the American assault of the Kure 6th Farm forced Colonel Yano to withdraw back across the Zieta River to form a new defensive perimeter. His men performed a fighting withdrawal throughout the night seeing many Japanese scream and throw rocks at the Americans. The usual night time activities that kept the allied forces miserable.  On the 12th the Americans unleashed an artillery bombardment upon the Kure 6th Farm positions not realizing they had already been abandoned. The 89th had fired 2700 rounds, the heaviest concentration of the operation on completely empty positions. The Americans advanced over Yano's old positions, crossed the river and fell upon Yano's new defensive perimeter. On that day General Barker assumed command of the 43rd division as General Hodge returned to his command of the Americal Division. Barker began by sending L Company of the 169th regiment to occupy Baanga. L Company were met with unexpectedly heavy Japanese fire suffering 28 casualties before they were forced to pull back.    Meanwhile on August 13th, Sugg's 3rd battalion with E company managed to launch their main assault against the Yano battalion. They were attempting a envelopment maneuver against Yano's flanks, but heavy resistance saw Yano's right flank repel the attack. On the left there was a marshy plain that hindered the American advance forcing them to go too far left and thus failing to apply enough pressure. Although the assault failed, the unexpected left advance saw some gain. A patrol from H company stumbled across a heavily used trail leading to the Lulu channel. They established a roadblock that night allowing ambush efforts to hit the trail. The roadblock convinced Yano he was soon to be cut off, so he immediately prepared a withdrawal to Baanga.    In the meantime, Barker decided to use Vela Cela island as a launching point for an assault against Maanga. On August the 14th, the 3rd battalion, 169th regiment began occupying the small island before using it as a springboard to land at Baanga. However the Americans quickly found themselves surrounded by a mangrove swamp and the Japanese began tossing counter attacks until night fell.  Yano's forces repelled numerous American attacks from the 3rd battalion throughout the day, afternoon and night. The Japanese threw back one attack led by four marine tanks, which had crossed the river on a bridge engineers built. While doing this his men also began their retreat westwards. H Company met a brief exchange with Yano's men, but Yano decided not to seriously clash with them and withdrew his battalion to Baanga by the 15th.  The 27th occupied Zieta village, making contact with Schultz 3rd battalion, 148th infantry over on Zieta Hill to the north. After this the 27th would advance upon Piru plantation and Sunday Inlet, too which they also ran into mangrove swamps greatly hindering them. The fight for the Zieta area had cost them 168 casualties, the americans were seeing a continuous flow of fierce counterattacks at Baanga, prompting Barker to decided he would reinforce the beachhead with the 2nd battalion 169th regiment and the 1st and 3rd battalions of the 172nd regiment.   At this point General Griswold and Admirals Halsey and Wilkinson were trying to figure out what to do next. Halsey's original plan after the taking of Munda was to attack Kolombangara, but the recent performance of the Japanese defenders made the Americans quite skittish about performing an amphibious invasion. The battle for Munda point was one of the fiercest defenses the Japanese had put up. More than 30,000 troops had been brought over to face 5000 Japanese defenders within their network of entrenchments. As pointed out by the commander in chief of the US Navy planning memorandum “If we are going to require such overwhelming superiority at every point where we attack the Japanese, it is time for radical change in the estimate of the forces that will be required to defeat the Japanese now in the Southwest and Central Pacific.” Munda Point airfield would become a landmark victory because of the 6000 foot runway it would soon provide, alongside taxiways and its capacity as a base of operations. Halsey would later declare its airfield “to be the finest in the south pacific” and the Seabees would be awarded with a citation for their great efforts. Commander Doane would receive a special mention “by virtue of his planning, leadership, industry, and working ‘round the clock' to make serviceable the Munda Airfield on August 14th, 1943, a good four days ahead of the original schedule.” The seabees work was a testament not only to their morale and organization, but also the fact they held superior equipment. Admiral Nimitz would go on the record to state “one of the outstanding features of the war in both the North and South Pacific areas has been the ability of US forces to build and use airfields, on a terrain and with a speed which would have been considered fantastically impossible in our pre-war days.” Overall the Georgia campaign would go on the be an essential component in the strangulation of Rabaul, as pointed out by historian Eliot Morison “The Central Solomons ranks with Guadalcanal and Buna-Gona for intensity of human tribulation. We had Munda and we needed it for the next move, toward Rabaul; but we certainly took it the hard way. The strategy and tactics of the New Georgia campaign were among the least successful of any allied campaign in the Pacific”.   Allied intelligence indicated Kolombangara had roughly 10,000 Japanese defenders, thus Halsey was inclined to seek an alternative method rather than slugging it out. He thought perhaps they could bypass Kolombangara completely and instead land on Vella Lavella. If they managed to pull that off, it would cut off the Japanese supply line to Kolombangara which was basically surviving on fishing boats and barges based out of Buin. Halsey noted “Kolombangara was 35 miles nearer the Shortlands and Kahili. According to coast-watchers, its garrison numbered not more than 250, and its shoreline would offer at least one airstrip.” A reconnaissance carried out back on July 22nd reported very few enemy troops on the island and that it held a feasible airfield site at Barakoma which also had beaches capable for LST's to land at. Thus Halsey approved the plan and Griswold formed the Northern Landing Force, placed under the command of Brigadier General Robert McClure. The force consisted of the recently arrived 35th regiment of the 25th division attached to the 25th cavalry reconnaissance troops, all led by Colonel Everett Brown; the 4th defense battalion, the 58th naval construction battalion and the Naval base group.  To hit Vella Lavella they would require air supremacy and artillery planted upon Piru Plantation and the Enogai-Bairoko area. General Twinnings AirSols had 161 fighters back on July 31st, but by August 18th they would have 129 functioning. Twining had sufficient strength in bombers as the number of light and medium bombers had dropped by less than a dozen, at around 129. For heavy bombers his increased from 48 to 61. It was critical Munda airfields be fully operational by mid august, sothe Seabees of the 73rd and 24th naval construction battalions went to work. Admiral Fitch's plan for Munda airfield called for a 6000 long foot runway with a minimum 8 inch coral surface and taxiways and revetments ready for over 200 fighters by September 25th. Eventually this would also include 48 heavy bombers. The immediate job was the fighter strip as always, you prepare your defenses against air attacks before you bring in the heavy bombers. He had a week to make the field operational. Commander Doane of the 73rd Seabees had two critical assets. The first was Munda was by far the best airfield site in the Solomons. Beneath one to 3 feet of topsoil was solid coral and there was a plentiful supply of live coral which hardened like concrete, great for the surfacing. Second the 73rd was the best equipped battalion yet to arrive to the solomons with D-7 and D-8 bulldozers, ¾ yard power shovels, 8 yard carryalls and 7 ton rollers. Weather was good and the moon was bright for the week permitting night time work without lights. The immediate threat would have been a 12cm of the Yokosuka 7th SNLF at Baanga, but they never fired upon them. Again, wars are won by logistics and it can't be expressed enough what a colossal amount the Seabees did for the Pacific War. By August 14th, Mulcahy flew over to set up his HQ and the VMF-123 and VMF-124 flew into the base with a R4D carrying their gear and personnel. For the incoming invasion P-40s would be coming from Segi while Corsairs would be launched from Munda.  Admiral Kusaka had reformed his 1st Base air force thanks to the arrival of his long-sought reinforcements. In mid July reinforcements arrived to the Solomons in the form of the 201st Kokutai Aerial Bomb group and carrier Division 2's naval bombers from Ryujo. The overall strength of the 1st base air force was now at around 230 aircraft of various types. The land-based bombers would go to Rear Admiral Ueno Keizo's 25th air flotilla over in Rabaul. They were tasked with night bombing raids against Guadalcanal and New Georgia now. Naval fights and bombers would be merged into the 1st combined air attack force, later reformed into the 26th air flotilla led by Rear Admiral Sakamaki Munetake. There job was to destroy any enemy shipping in New Georgia and to conduct interceptions over the Munda-Buin areas. It was understood the Americans held numerical superiority, but the Japanese were willing to take them on hoping their fighting spirit would prevail. Meanwhile, back on the night of August 12th, Admiral Wilkinson deployed an advance party of 14 men led by Captain George Kriner to perform a reconnaissance of Vella Lavella. They would be reinforced by Companies E and G of the 103rd regiment when the scouts found 40 Japanese around Biloa and another 100 5 miles north of Barakoma. They had reached the island secretly using 4 PT boats, though Japanese floatplanes would made to bomb one of them. After the successful arrival of the advance party at Barakoma, F Company of the 103rd landed on August 14th to reinforce the beachhead.  The main invasión force designated Task Force 31 led by Admiral Wilkinson  would consist of 10 destroyers, 5 destroyer transports, 12 LCI's, 3 LST's and two subchasers. At 3:05am  the 1st transport group of the force departed consisting of the destroyer transports with 6 escort destroyers were carrying the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 35th regiment. Captain Ryan led the group aboard Nicholas while Wilkinson was aboard Cony. The second transport group made up of the smaller vessels carried the Seabees and support personally following an hour behind with 4 destroyer escorts led by Captain William Cooke. After the force departed Guadalcanal they were to approach the Gizo Strait around midnight, before beginning to unload in the early hours of august 15th, under the cover of fighters.  However Wilkinson would not be aware his force was spotted by a G3M Betty bomber which reported back to Admiral Samaki who immediately launched a strike force. By 8am, the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 35th regiment had landed. While the 3rd battalion began their unloading process enemy aircraft appeared. 48 Zeros and 6 Vals were intercepted by American fighters. By 9:15 all the troops were landed, now the equipment began to be unloaded. The Japanese launched two waves from Buin, the first appeared at 12:30, made up of 48 Zero's and 11 Vals. They were intercepted leading to no damage being done to the landing forces. 7 Zeros came in low to strafe the beach but were turned away by fire from 65 automatic weapons aboard the LST's. LST's in the past lacked adequate anti aircraft protection, thus 20 20mm guns were borrowed from Guadalcanal and set to use. At 5:30 32 Zero's and 8 Vals showed up but they too were intercepted. By 6pm the LSTs were beginning to retract. The strikes had amounted to 12 men killed on the beach and 40 wounded, it could have been much worse. The Japanese reported losing 9 Zeros and 8 Vals for the day while the Americans would claim to have lost a total of 5 fighters. Without any real land battle the amphibious invasion of Vella Lavella was a resounding success. After darkness settled in, Admiral Ueno's 5th air attack force over in Rabaul launched their final attempt against the American convoys. At 5:30pm, 3 Betty's that had launched out of Vunakanau were spotting the convoy and reporting their movements. They came across the LCI's southeast of Gatukai and the LSTs as they were approaching the Gizo strait. 23 Bettys in 3 Chutai's, one armed with torpedoes the other two with bombs approached. The torpedo armed Betty's attacked the LCI's while the bombers went for the LST's. The American destroyers tossed up a lot of anti aircraft fire as the torpedoes and bombs failed to hit targets. 4 Betty's would be damaged badly for their efforts. The Japanese reaction to the terrible results was to form an unrealistic plan to wipe out the American invasion by sending a single battalion to the island. When the landings became known, officers of the 8th fleet and 17th army formed a conference. They estimated, with accuracy surprisingly, that the landing force was around a brigade in strength. One officer proposed the idea to send a battalion to counterland. General Imamura's HQ calmly pointed out that sending a single battalion against a brigade would be like “pouring water on a hot stone”. The men were desperately more needed for the defense of Bougainville. The Japanese knew they were vastly outnumbered in the Solomons and that the fight for the central solomons was pretty much lost. They believed their only chance to successfully defend the rest of the solomons was to carry out a slow retreat in order to build up forces in Bougainville and Rabaul.  It was decided that two rifle companies of the Miktami battalion and a platoon from the Yokosuka 7th SNLF would be sent to Horaniu on the northeast corner of Vella Lavella. These forces would establish a barge staging base between Kolombangara and the Shortlands. Alongside this Rekata bay would be evacuated and its 7th Kure SNLF would set up a relay base at Choiseul. Imamura nad Kusaka planned to hold Horaniu for as long as possible, trying to establish a new supply route along the west coast of Choiseul.  For the Horaniu operation, Admiral Ijuins destroyer squadron of Sazanami, Shigure, Hamakaze and Isokaze were going to escort 22 barges, supported by 3 torpedo boats and two subchasers. The small armada departed Rabaul on August 17th, but Ijuin's destroyers were spotted quickly by an allied search plane 100 miles out of Rabaul. In fact, Wilkinson was anticipating the Japanese heading for Kolombangara or perhaps Barakoma. He sent 4 destroyers, the Nicholas, O'Bannon, Taylor and Chevalier under Captain Thomas Ryan. Ryan had been an ensign in Yokohama during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, where he saved the love of one Mrs. Slack from the burning Grand Hotel. This earned him the medal of honor making him 1 of 18 men to receive the medal of honor during the interwar period of 1920-1940. Ryans force departed Tulagi while the other American convoy, the 2nd echelon led by Cooke were landing equipment at Barakoma. By nightfall Ryans squadron were coming up the slot while the enemy convoy was being harassed by 4 Avengers. The Avengers failed to score hits, but the anti aircraft gunfire alerted Ryan, as the Japanese were reversing course heading in his direction. At 12:29am on August 18th O'Bannon made radar contact and a few minutes later the Americans could see the Japanese ships. At 12:32 the Japanese spotted Ryans force, prompting Ijuin to order a 45 degree turn northwest to try and lure the enemy away from the convoy. As his ruse succeeded there would be a pretty ineffective long range gun and torpedo duel seeing Hamakaze and Isokaze taking slight damage. Meanwhile the Japanese barges were racing to the coast. Ryan believed he had foiled the reinforcement when he engaged the destroyers . But because Chevalier was facing some mechanical failures and could not keep up speed to chase the Japanese destroyers, Ryan decided to turn back to engage the already landed reinforcements at Horaniu. However they managed to escape north too quickly, thus the Horaniu operation was quite a bit of success, with a lot of luck at play. Now we are shifting over to the frigid north waters of the Aleutians. The fall of Attu and Munda were pivotal moments of the Pacific war that completely changed the course of their respective campaigns. When Munda was taken, the Japanese realized the central solomons were a lost cause and began to move all resources and men they could to Bougainville. When Attu was taken, the Japanese realized the Aleutian islands campaign was a lost cause and decided to evacuate the forces on Kiska. The battle of the pips and miraculous evacuation of Kiska was completed by the end of July. Kiska was pummeled on July 26th and 27th under clear sunny weather. 104 tons of bombs hit Kiska's installation on the 26th in a large attack consisting of 32 B-24's, 24 P-38 lightnings and 38 P-40's. On the 27th it was hit with 22 tons of bombs. On August 1st Lt Bernard O'Donnel conducted the first reconnaissance sweep since the July 27th bombing and observed no Japanese fights, no anti aircraft fire and no ships at harbor. Meanwhile the blockade was being performed by Giffen and Griffen's task force who bombarded Kiska. Intelligence crews working on aerial photographs of the island and its installations noted a number of odd features. Practically all the buildings around 23 in all appeared destroyed, but with rubble patterns suggesting demolition rather than bombing. The Japanese also appeared to have done no repair work on the craters in the north head runway, which was very odd, it was around the clock kind of work for them. All the garrisons trucks seemed to be parked on the beach in clusters and it seemed they were not moving day to day. Some pilots reported a bit of activity, like narrowly missing flak and some vehicles and ships seen moving below, but Kinkaids HQ noted all these reports were coming from green pilots. Experienced fliers were not reporting such things. Radio traffic had vanished, some wondering if the bombing was so tremendous it destroyed all the radios. Generals Butler and DeWitt believed the Green pilots, but Generals Buckner and Holland Smith were very suspicious, pointing out that the Japanese had already carried out a secret massive evacuation at Guadalcanal. In fact Buckner and Smith kept asking Kinkaid to toss some Alaskan scouts ashore in rubber boats at night prior to an invasion to report if the island was abandoned or not. But Kinkaid had the last say in the matter and declined to do so. Kinkaid's decision was to go ahead with a full scale invasion of the island. In his words “if the enemy had evacuated the island, the troop landings would be a good training exercises, a super dress rehearsal, excellent for training purposes”.  On August 12th, Captain George Ruddel, leading a squadron of 4 fighters circled low over the anti aircraft gun positions on Kiska, received no flak so he landed on her North head runway dodging nearly 30 craters. The 3 other fighters followed suit and the pilots performed a tiny expedition for some time. They found no sign of people, just destroyed buildings and abandoned equipment. Nonetheless Ruddels report would not stop Kinkaid, only some scolding for doing something so dangerous. The invasion of Kiska, codenamed operation cottage, was set for August 15th. The invasion force was 30,000 Americans and 5300 Canadians under the overall command of Major General Charles Harrison Corlet. It consisted of Brigadier General Archibald Arnolds 7th division; Buckner's 4th regiment; Colonel Roy Victor Rickards 87th mountain infantry regiment, the 13th Canadian Brigade known as the Greenlight Force which consisted of the Canadian Fusiliers regiment, the 1st Battalion of Winnipeg Grenadiers, the Rocky Mountain Rangers regiment and Le Regiment de Hull led by Major General George Pearkers; there was also Colonel Robert Fredericks 1st Special Service force consisting of 2500 paratroops of elite American-Canadian commandos. Kiska marked the first time Canadian conscripts were sent to a combat zone in WW2. The men were equipped in Arctic gear, trained mostly at Adak, practicing amphibious landings using LCI's and LCT's. The naval forces were commanded by Admiral Rockwell were more than 100 warships strong, with Admiral Baker leading a group to bombard Kiska with over 60 tons on August 14th. The journey to the abandoned island was pretty uneventful. On August 15th, Admiral Rockwell dispatched the transports to gather off Kiska during a period of light fog. Major General Corlett's plan was to stage a diversionary landing using a detachment of Alaskan Scout led by Colonel Verbeck to hit Gertrude Cove which was assumed to be heavily fortified. While this occurred an advance force of the 1st, 2nd and provisional battalions of the 1st regiment, 1st special service force would secure the western side of the island, known as Quisling cove. The main force would land at a beach on the north near the Kiska volcano. Colonel Verbecks scouts and Colonel Robert Fredericks commands were the first to come ashore. They were met by empty machine gun nests as they climbed Lard Hill, Larry Hill and Lawson Hill, interesting names. They investigated caves and ravines only to find destroyed equipment. But perhaps the enemy was simply further up in the hills saving their ammunition to ambush them. During the morning the main force landed on Kiskas northern side whereupon they immediately began climbing some cliffs to reach objectives. In the process each battalion of the 87th mountain regiment captured Robber Hill, Riot Hill and Rose Hill. US Army Lt George Earle recalled this of the unique landscapes of Kiska “At one end was a perfectly shaped steaming volcano, cloudcushioned, well- wrapped […] all around were cliff-walled shores and, when visible, a bright green matting of waist-high tundra scrub and deep lush mosses – a great green sponge of slopes rising to a rocky knife-edge crest nearly eight hundred feet above the shore up in the fog, and zigzagging its ridge-line backbone toward the […] four-thousand foot cone of the volcano”. Lt Earle also noted the incessant rain and fog, Kiska saw roughly 250 days of rain per year on average and held a ton of clouds blotting out sunshine. On the day the allied force landed the island was blanketed with a thick fog. As the allied forces advanced they ran into a variety of booby traps the Japanese had taken a lot of time to leave behind, these included; typical land mines, improvised 155m shells with trigger wires, M-93 mine's laid upside down wired to blocks of TNT, timed bombs, candle bombs, and the classic grenades with trip wire. There was to be several casualties from booby traps. In the fog as timed bombs or other traps went off, allied forces opened fire towards noises believing the enemy was upon them. There was some friendly fire incidents amongst the Americans and Canadians, but not as much that has been perpetuated by quite a few videos on Youtube mind you. Its actually a myth thats been perpetuated in many books, in fact the main source I have been using for the Aleutian islands campaign is guilty of it sad to say. The friendly fire incidents on Kiska was not a large skirmish between American and Canadian forces that resulted in many deaths or wounded, no that was pretty much summed up to booby traps, a lot of them. If you want to know more about this, I did a podcast interview on my youtube channel, the Pacific War channel with Brad St.Croix, a historian focused on Canadian military history. The episode is titled the Canadian experience during the Pacific War, and Brad had a lot of, going to admit, vented anger about debunking this myth haha. Please go check it out, I have to admit of all my podcast episodes it has not received many views and I am sad at this because there's a lot of interesting stuff, like how Canada was going to be part of Operation Downfall. Anyways. The Americans and Canadians suspected the Japanese might be retreating into the interior or hiding in fight pits, so they were tense the entire time, after the stories from Attu who could blame them. The crack of a single rifle fire, would be met with more, but it always died down quickly. Corlett's forces continued to climb uphill towards Link Hill and Ranger Hill in the direction of the main enemy camp at Kiska harbor. They found all the fortifications they came across abandoned. The second wave of the main force were brought over consisted of the 1st regiment, 1st special service force who landed at Little Kiska Island unopposed. By August 18th Corlett was confident the enemy was not on Kiska, but he continued the search nonetheless, into the caves and ravine, until August 22nd. To quote Ian Toll's 2nd book of his pacific war trilogy  “Considering the expenditure of naval ordnance and aerial bombs on an island that had been vacated by the enemy, and the tremendous investment of shipping and troops in a bloodless invasion, the Kiska operation had been slightly farcical. In Pearl Harbor, the news was received in good humor. Nimitz liked to tell visitors how advance elements of the huge invasion force, creeping inland with weapons at the ready, were warmly greeted by a single affable dog that trotted out to beg for food” Indeed the capture of Kiska which ushered the end to the Aleutians campaign, was kind of a enormous blunder when you consider the amount of resources allocated to it. You always have to consider these resources could have been brought to the south pacific, but hindsight is hindsight. After the battle of Attu, the allies expected an absolute bloodbath on Kiska. For Corlett's men, the americans suffered 18 deaths, 170 wounded, the Canadians 4 killed and 4 wounded, 130 men also got trench foot. The destroyer Abner Read struck a Japanese mine on August 18th, suffering 70 dead and 47 wounded to bring the total casualties to 313. Generals Buckner and DeWitt sought an invasion of Paramushiro, but the joint chiefs of staff would gradually reject the idea because it was simply seen to be easier to drive through the central or south pacific to Japan. But I would like to point out, if the south and central pacific campaigns did not go well, the idea of hitting the Japanese home islands from the Aleutians could have been a very real thing. Kinkaid, Butler, Eareckson amongst many others would leave the north pacific to deploy in other theaters. It was only really Buckner who remained, DeWitt returned to the west coast, as did the majority of forces. Wanted a feel good end to this one. So the allied forces on Kiska found more than just booby traps, turns out the Japanese had abandoned a number of dogs on the island, so the allied troops adopted many of them and turned them into unit mascots and pets. Surviving photos of the soldiers and the dogs are abundant and cute. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The amphibious assault of Vella Lavella was a huge success, though now the battle for the small island was on. The farcical battle of Kiska had ushered in the end of the Aleutian islands campaign, birthing a long persisting myth to this very day of an incredible friendly fire battle. 

Michelle and Jordan catch up at the Bell House stage with comedian / writer / friend Mike Yard. Jordan flawlessly impersonates his therapist while also sharing helpful tips, Mike transports the audience from St. Croix to East NY, and Michelle takes a minute when an audience question nearly breaks her.This episode was recorded before the SAG-AFTRA strike. #Noscabbing!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Saints du jour 2023-08-08 Saint Dominique de Guzman et Sainte Marie de la Croix by Radio Maria France

Simply the best bass fisherman in the world today – Jacob WheelerDan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about bass behavior during the post-spawn period. Most of the country is experiencing this tremendous fishing opportunity. Let Dan help you catch your share.Charlie Evans has done it all in the world of fishing from running charities, running tackle companies, operating tournament circuits and competing at the top levels. His passion is bringing kids into the sport. Bravo Mister Evans!

Drew Benton just won the 2023 Marathon Bassmaster Elite event at Lake Murray. The Floridian had the lead after two days of competition and then slipped up and barely made the cut to earn a berth on the final day. Benton proved his toughness by coming back strong and taking the crown on the final day. Drew Benton is a master at the technique of sight fishing which came in handy on Murray. Benton is hovering around the million-dollar mark in career earnings and we are sure his best days are yet to come. Please listen to a great interview with a great guy!Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about new baits versus old baits. Great subject!   Jason Randall is a true authority on the sport of fly fishing. Jason has written a number of books on the subject. Jason's books are not just for practitioners of the sport, they are perfect for anglers who merely have an interest in taking up the sport. Give Jason a listen, please.

The last time he was on our show, Alton Jones, Jr. told us how much he was looking forward to the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour Heavy Hitters event on Bussey Brake Lake and Caney Creek Reservoir in Louisiana. Did he have a vision? Maybe so. Alton Jones, Jr. scored a decisive win in this event, following up his getting a $165,000 check in the same event last year. Alton Jones, Jr. is a tremendous young fisherman who is on a hot streak right now. Please give a listen to one of the nicest guys to ever throw a lure!Dan Johnston from St. Croix is back to discuss what newbies we should be thinking about taking fishing? Whether it's children, adults or people who fished in the past but need some help getting going again. Let's go fishing!Shane Wilson runs the organization called “Fishing's Future.” It is a wonderful organization and Shane Wilson is a great human being who is doing some exceptional things for our sport's future. Give a listen to a great guy!

We are joined by the “Tin man,” John Cox, the busiest angler on the water. Cox just won a big Major League Fishing Tackle Warehouse Invitational event on Lake of the Ozarks. We talk about fishing shallow, forward facing sonar, how he handles his hectic schedule and eating Slurpees with his grandson. The interview was going so well, that my best buddy, Buster the Wonder Dog felt he had to join in the conversation.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us as usual. Has this guy ever done a bad interview? We don't think so.Mike Leonard, Vice President of Government Affairs at the American Sportfishing Association joins us to discuss what that group is doing for us fishermen these days.

This guy is a skyrocket in the world of competitive pro bass fishing. Will Davis Jr. is a Bassmaster Elite Series rookie who earned a spot via the B.A.S.S. Nation competition. From Sylacauga, Alabama, Will Davis, Jr. gained a huge victory less than an hour from his home on Lay Lake, his home lake. Davis shares an in-depth analysis of his shallow-water triumph. Is there a Rookie of the Year award in this young man's future? We wouldn't bet against him!Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to invite all of our listeners to attend the St. Croix Customer Appreciation event in Park Falls, Wisconsin. Head on up to the event and sneak in a little fishing while you are there. Craig Storms runs things in the kayak division for US Angling. Craig joins us to talk about the quickly upcoming World Kayak Championships. Go USA!!!

Justin Lucas would be a great choice if you wanted to make an investment in Las Vegas for who is going to win an Angler of the Year award. Lucas in incredibly consistent and seems to always be in the upper regions of the leaderboard. Justin Lucas talks about the difference between fishing to win and just fishing to cash a check. He talks about beginning his career in California and then moving to Alabama yet learning that upstate New York tops his list of favorite locations. There is an awful lot of great information in this excellent interview with Justin Lucas.Trey McKinney joins us for this week's St. Croix segment. Trey doesn't turn 18 until February, but has been a St. Croix pro staffer since he was 14. Can you believe that? Trey has taken the pro bass fishing world by storm, and we are certain he will grow to be one of the best of all time!Kevin Brannon runs the show over at Reel Guppy Outdoors. He is the CEO of a company focused on family-friendly outdoor adventures, environmental conservancy, stewardship, and responsible recreation. Great job!

Boyd Duckett is one of the driving forces who came up with the concept of Major League Fishing. His dream became a reality and now MLF is the mega-force in the fishing business that it has become. Boyd covers a slew of topics including the upcoming draft for the Major League Fishing's General Tire Team Series events. Season one just concluded and MLF is gearing up for season #2. We can't wait! Please listen to a great interview with the man I call, “the smartest man in professional fishing.”ICAST is coming. St. Croix always has something new to announce that will stun the fishing world at ICAST. Let's see if Dave can get Dan Johnston to spill the beans on what they have planned.    Have you checked out Target Walleye yet? If not, you don't know what you are missing out on. Brett McComas is the man steering the ship at Target Walleye and he is doing a great job. If you have any interest in walleyes at all, this is the site for you!

Always a competitor for an Angler of the Year award, we welcome Patrick Walters to the show. Patrick finished in the money at last week's Bassmaster Elite event on the Sabine River in Texas. The week prior, Patrick scored a huge victory in the National Professional Fishing League tournament on Santee Cooper in North Carolina. We talk about all things fishing and much more with one of the nicest young men in professional bass fishing. Please give Patrick Walters a listenWe welcome the Vice President of Marketing for St. Croix, Mister Jesse Simpkins, to celebrate their 75th Anniversary. Jesse is one of the good guys in our industry and works hard to always give back. Let's hear what Jesse has to talk about.    Jonathan Johns joins us from Bass Brakes. What the heck are Bass Brakes? Many experts are saying that Bass Brakes are the new “must have” tool that fisherman need to add to their arsenals to catch more fish. Please listen to Jonathan explain his remarkable invention.

Adrian Avena scored a huge win on Stage Five of the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour at Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. It was a $100,000 win that pushed his career earnings past $1 million. Avena caught 20 bass weighing a total of over one hundred pounds. Yes, that is an average of over five pounds per fish. Avena talks about his love of saltwater fishing off the coast of his home in New Jersey, his long wait for his first major win and his passion for snacking on Sour Patch Watermelon candy. Listen to a great interview with a great guy and tremendous fisherman.Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us to explain what the thermocline is all about. This is something that a lot of us have a hard time understanding but can be a huge clue to finding fish as the weather continues to warm.He's not KVD, he is DVD. Dave VanDoorn is a tremendous muskie fisherman who donates thousands of hours working with Take a Vet Fishing to take our veterans out for a day of fishing. Great guy!

Bill Siemental is a fishing legend. He catches the big ones and is noted for his tournament success. Bill Siemental can usually be found hanging out in “The Big Bass Zone,” which is also the name of his popular website. Bill is one of the top educators in the world of fishing and it would be nearly impossible to listen to this interview with Bill and not come away with the knowledge to help you catch more and bigger fish. Please give Bill a listen.Our buddy, Dan Johnston from St. Croix is taking the week off but is ably replaced by Alex Smay. Alex is the Regional Sales Manager for the company that makes “The best rods on Earth.” Alex Smay really knows his stuff!Bobby Scott joins us from Rabid Baits, one of the fastest growing bait companies on the market. Rabid's line of revolutionary soft plastics is extraordinary. Let Bobby Scott tell us all how we can catch more fish.

Peter Jackson, nicknamed the Black Prince, (born July 3, 1861, St. Croix, Virgin Islands—died July 13, 1901, Roma, Queensland, Australia), was an outstanding professional boxer. A victim of racial discrimination, he was denied a chance to fight for the world heavyweight championship while in his prime. This second part of Peter Jackson's story documents the difficulties he faced in trying to get his shot at the heavyweight title with famous names such as John L Sullivan and James Corbett drawing the color line and refusing to meet Jackson in the ring. The impact this would have on Jackson is a sad one and would ultimately lead to a decline and eventually his untimely demise. Subscribe https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/career-profiles/id1494210179 We are also available on Player FM, Spotify, Spreaker, and many more podcasting apps Follow us at: https://twitter.com/career_profiles https://www.facebook.com/btrboxingpodcast Become A Patron patreon.com/btrboxingpodcastnetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They call him “The Cowboy!” Joey Cifuentes is fishing on the prestigious Bassmaster Elite circuit for the first time. His runaway victory on Georgia's Lake Seminole last week was only his second Elite event that he has participated in. What an incredible start! Is the Rookie of the Year award a possibility? Dare he even dream about the possibility of winning the Angler of the Year? Joey talks about the special friendship he has developed with his traveling partner, the legendary Larry “The General” Nixon. Listen to Joey Cifuentes talk about his career rise from being a co-angler to becoming a winner in FLW to fishing the Bassmaster Opens to qualify for the Elites. Joey Cifuentes is going places.  Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us to talk one of the most important questions that faces every fisherman. When you are having a tough time getting bites, how long do you give it before you decide to make a move?  Illinois' Clayton Yantis represents The Fallen Outdoors, a group that organizes hunting and fishing trips for veterans of every generation and all branches of the military. Clayton is a great guy representing a great organization.

Peter Jackson, nicknamed the Black Prince, (born July 3, 1861, St. Croix, Virgin Islands—died July 13, 1901, Roma, Queensland, Australia), was an outstanding professional boxer. A victim of racial discrimination, he was denied a chance to fight for the world heavyweight championship while in his prime. This second part of Peter Jackson's story documents the difficulties he faced in trying to get his shot at the heavyweight title with famous names such as John L Sullivan and James Corbett drawing the color line and refusing to meet Jackson in the ring. The impact this would have on Jackson is a sad one and would ultimately lead to a decline and eventually his untimely demise. Subscribe https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/career-profiles/id1494210179 We are also available on Player FM, Spotify, Spreaker, and many more podcasting apps Follow us at: https://twitter.com/career_profiles https://www.facebook.com/btrboxingpodcast Become A Patron patreon.com/btrboxingpodcastnetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Soukup is a giant of a man who looks like he'd be just as comfortable in a WWE ring with The Rock as he would be in a boat chasing bass. John Soukup is one of the great young anglers who will be competing on the Bassmaster Elite Series for the first time this year. Soukup's path to the Elites is an extremely interesting one. In addition to competitive fishing, John Soukup owns The Bass Tank, a tremendously successful nationwide electronics dealer. Please listen to a great guy who we think is going to have a lot of success in the coming year.Glenn Young, the National Sales Manager from Z-Man joins us to talk about their new panfish micro-baits and heads.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about reel speeds. No, not real speeds, reel speeds! How fast you retrieve means so much. The right reel speed can make your fishing so much easier and effective.

Oliver Ngy of Big Bass Dreams is a Big Fish Specialist. He is also a big bait specialist. Oliver has an incredible Internet presence and is all over social media. Oliver will be a featured presenter at the huge Chicagoland Fishing Show in Schaumburg, Illinois this week. His presentations are always jam packed and we are fortunate that Oliver joins us to share some of the knowledge he shares in his seminars. This young man is the real deal, so please give Oliver Ngy a listen.Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us to talk about the difference in learning about fishing from reading or the Internet as opposed to learning by actually practicing on the water.AFTCO is a tremendous company that is dedicated to furthering the sport of fishing. Their President, Casey Shedd is with us to discuss many of the things that AFTCO is involved with.

Bill Kutka from Hayward, Wisconsin is a true legend in the world of walleye fishing. A successful tournament angler for over forty years, Bill Kutka was a “Sportsman of the Year” on the In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail. Kutka spends his time guiding for Wisconsin walleyes but will also take clients to Lake Superior for monster smallmouth bass and to Lake Erie, the country's number one destination for catching incomparable walleyes. Please listen to a true fishing legend offer some tips that will increase your own catch rate.Louis Monetti won the Bassmaster College Classic Bracket earning him a berth into the 2023 Bassmaster Classic, as well as paid entry into all nine of 2023's Bassmaster Opens. Monetti also gets to use a fully rigged Toyota Tundra and Nitro boat for a year. This young man is truly living a dream. Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about the many high school and college level competitive fishing programs that exist today and what they bring to the sport.

Gary Klein is the co-creator of Major League Fishing. In four short years, MLF has revolutionized the world of competitive bass fishing. Gary Klein takes time from his busy schedule to discuss some thoughts about today's landscape in pro bass fishing, the recent rule changes in MLF and the upcoming 2023 Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour schedule. Gary Klein is one of the smartest guys in pro fishing, so please give him a listen.Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us to talk about extreme weather. Mother Nature is a cruel trickster who can bedevil us with Saharan heat one day and cold rainstorms the next. What does a fisherman do when confronted with these extreme weather situations? Dan Stefanich is a skilled outdoorsman who has some incredible experience in the world of ice fishing. Dan drops in to update us on the ice fishing scene on the legendary Lake of the Woods.

Texan Larry Walker has just published a new book, “From Minnows to Marlin.” The man has traveled the world in the pursuit of giant swimming monsters. He took time to talk to us while preparing for a repeat fishing trip to French Polynesia. He has fished in more than 45 countries including some too dangerous for most people to think about. He's caught black marlin and bluefin tuna weighing over a thousand pounds each, but his favorite sportfish is the incredibly nasty peacock bass. Larry Walker has caught over 135 largemouth bass that hit the scales at over ten pounds. This man has lived a life one can only dream about. Please listen to him tell his amazing story!Take a Vet Fishing is one of our favorite organizations. Dave VanDoorn spends his time hosting our nation's heroes in his boat for a day of fishing. These veterans certainly deserve the attention and recognition, to say the very least. VanDoorn has a huge heart and is here to explain what his organization is all about.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about tackle organization. Stop putting it off, folks. Dan Johnston will help you to get that chore accomplished.

Chris Lane just won the first Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour event on the Kissimmee Chain near Orlando, Florida. Talk about miracle finishes! Lane caught the winning largemouth with a mere 45-seconds left on the clock! Talk about pressure! Chris, a great guy, talks about Florida fishing, a subject he knows well, as he grew up fishing the area and his family still has a fish camp on the Kissimmee Chain. Lane, a former Bassmaster Classic champion talks about his quest to win his first MLF Redcrest Championship next month on North Carolina's Lake Norman. Please give Chris a listen.Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us to talk about early spring patterns. The weather seems to be  changing for the better and Dan will help you to prepare for your first open water trips of the season.Cat Sero is the Executive Director of Reeling and Healing, an organization for women recovering from and dealing with cancer. They provide wonderful fly-fishing instruction and escapes for these ladies. What a wonderful organization! Listen to Cat tell the story.

He is the Champion! Canada's Jeff Gustafson is the winner of the 2023 Bassmaster Classic! The Classic, commonly called “The Super Bowl of bass fishing,” was won by “Gussy” on the Tennessee River system out of Knoxville.  Gustafson had the tournament lead after the first day of competition, as well as the second day. He ran the table with an incredible performance on the third and final day to claim the top prize. Gustafson is the first Canadian to take home the prize for winning the most prestigious event in the world of professional fishing. Jeff Gustafson is not only a phenomenal fisherman, he is also one of the nicest human beings in the sport. He is loved and respected, not only by his legion of fans, but also by his competitors, as well. Listen to a great guy explain how he beat a field that included dozens of the top anglers in the world of bass fishing.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is taking a rare day off, but his spot is being well-covered by Bassmaster Elite pro, Derek Hudnall. Susan Duke, an author of books for children joins us to talk about, “Tackle Box Troubles - Sammy Spinner - Fish Tale # 1.” Let's get those kids reading and let's get them fishing too!

One of the best fishermen on the planet is on his way home! Our good friend, Bryan Thrift is headed home to North Carolina's Lake Norman to attempt to win the Redcrest Championship, Major League Fishing's number one event. Does home field advantage make a difference? Bryan Thrift explains that theory in addition to his analysis of what the bite at Redcrest will be like. Who will win the Redcrest if not Bryan Thrift? Bryan shares his opinion on that too. Please give Bryan Thrift a listen.Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us and makes a lot of sense, or did I mean to say “scents?” Dan talks about scent as an added trick in trying to catch fish. Ken Duke, the esteemed editor of Fishing Tackle Retailer Magazine is on the show this week to handicap the upcoming Major League Fishing Redcrest Championship at Lake Norman in North Carolina.

This is huge! Bryan Thrift is a great husband, a great father, a great Christian, oh, and by the way, have we told you he is a great fisherman? Well, North Carolina's Bryan Thrift is one of the best bass anglers on the entire planet. Thrift just won Major League Fishing's Redcrest Championship at Charlotte's Lake Norman this past weekend. He picked up the incredible Redcrest trophy, as well as a check for $300,000. Listen to Bryan Thrift explain how he was able to gain a victory in one of the most prestigious events in professional fishing. Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about depth. Where the heck are they? Are they deep? Are they shallow? Are they someplace in between? Dan Johnston will help you figure that out. Brad Fuller, the President of the National Professional Fishing League, joins us to talk about the kickoff of their huge 2023 bass fishing season.

Dakota Ebare is one incredibly hot stick! He started 2023 by winning the first two major events that he entered. Last week, Ebare performed very well in the Major League Fishing Redcrest Championship by finishing 13th out of 40 of the top anglers in the world. Ebare, a former rodeo bull rider who chose bass fishing over the cowboy lifestyle is charging forward and not looking back. Dakota Ebare joins us on his day off between Day 2 and the Knockout Round at the U.S. Air Force Stage Two tournament on the MLF Bass Pro Tour Circuit on Cherokee & Douglas Lakes in Jefferson County, Tennessee. Please listen to this intelligent young man talk about his amazing progression in tournament fishing from being a co-angler to hoisting up tournament trophies and cashing huge checks. Dan Johnston from St. Croix joins us to talk about search baits. They're not just for bass, you know? Bass, walleyes, crappie and bluegills all fall victim to search baits. Listen to Dan Johnston explain how to use them. James Williams is a pro angler and educator. Williams operates www.bass-schools.com where he sets up programs to provide junior high and high school anglers advanced technical instruction, information and technique specific advice to create more advanced anglers in competitive tournament situations.

Keith Poche scored his first Bass Pro Tour win and the top award of $100,000 at the Major League Fishing U.S. Air Force Stage Two event on Tennessee's Cherokee Lake. This smart angler attacked the event in his 18-foot Gator Trax aluminum boat powered by a 90-horsepower motor. The small craft was able to allow Poche to fish “off the grid” where other competitors were unable to get to. Poche is a virtual fishing machine who may be competing in more top-level tournaments than anyone else in professional fishing. Listen to a great guy tell his very unique story.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is with us to talk about top water fishing. Is there any more exciting way to catch fish? We think not. depth. Dan Johnston will help you figure out how to catch then on top water baits. Scott Graves is founder of Special Ops Xcursions, a volunteer nonprofit organization devoted to providing outdoor adventure to active- duty Special Operations Warriors and their families. He is a great guy and he runs a tremendous program.

Anthony Gagliardi just won the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour Stage Three event on Lake Murray in Columbia, South Carolina. In addition to the huge trophy, Anthony scored a cool hundred grand by winning the event on the lake that he grew up on. Many experts think that having the “home water advantage” is more of a detriment, rather than a benefit to a pro angler. Anthony Gagliardi proved that theory is not true. Anthony's hard-fought win came through his ability to push the envelope and do things differently. His versatility is a prime reason for his having won two-and-a-half- million dollars on the pro circuits. Listen to a tremendous fisherman offer some tips that will help every angler who listens to Gagliardi's interview to catch more fish.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is taking another day off, but his spot is well-covered by Ryan Teach, the Brand Manager from our friends at St. Croix. Ryan talks about new product development and other interesting things. Louis Monetti is living the dream! Louis qualified to fish the 2023 Bassmaster Classic due to his excellent performance in the college fishing ranks. How did he do? Pretty darned well. Listen to Louis describe his amazing experience.

A native of Texas, Kelly Jordon has more than $2 million in career winnings. Jordon was one of the originators of the Toyota Texas Bass Classic, and a founding member of Major League Fishing and the Bass Pro Tour. Kelly is respected and admired by his fellow competitors and fans alike. Kelly Jordon is one of the truly good guys in the world of fishing. He just scored a win at the MLF Tackle Warehouse Invitational, Epic Baits Stop 3 at Lake Eufaula Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches. Kelly claimed the top prize of $83,500. Please listen to a great guy share some excellent fishing information.Dan Johnston from St. Croix is back after a short hiatus. Who deserves a little break more than our friend, Dan? He's one of the hardest working guys in the business. Check out what Dan has to say this week!  Trey McKinney is one of the best young sticks in the tournament business. He's fishing the B.A.S.S. Opens in an attempt to qualify for the Elite circuit. He has a 2nd and a 20th place finish in his first two tries. It looks like he has a good chance to achieve his goal. Listen to Trey explain his plan for the season.

Chuck Zodda and Mike Armstrong jump into the quarterly earnings reports from both Apple and Amazon and why those two companies might be heading in different directions. Inflation is cooling. Food inflation could get worse. Joe Boschulte, USVI Commissioner - Department of Tourism, joins the show to chat about the 2023 travel season, the islands' growing connection to major sports teams, and an amazing special promotion going on right now that makes St. Croix more inviting than ever. Nokia is making major strides in dumb phones. Google is offering an on-campus hotel 'special' to help lure workers back to the office.

Mike Armstrong chats with Joe Boschulte, USVI Commissioner - Department of Tourism, about the amazing special promotion going on right now that makes St. Croix the most inviting destination in the Caribbean.

In this Episode Auntie Pam takes on her life journey coming from St. Croix to Owning Multiple Successful Business, Life experiences, Don't take NO for an answer, Do it yourself mentality NoLimitations #LifeUnscripted #SecureLove #InnovationNation #CreateWithPassion #TheOZone PositiveVibesOnly Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Peter Jackson, nicknamed the Black Prince, (born July 3, 1861, St. Croix, Virgin Islands—died July 13, 1901, Roma, Queensland, Australia), was an outstanding professional boxer. A victim of racial discrimination, he was denied a chance to fight for the world heavyweight championship while in his prime. Subscribe https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/career-profiles/id1494210179 We are also available on Player FM, Spotify, Spreaker, and many more podcasting apps Follow us at: https://twitter.com/career_profiles https://www.facebook.com/btrboxingpodcast Become A Patron patreon.com/btrboxingpodcastnetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last time we spoke about the allied drive to Munda and General Sasaki's major counter offensive. General Wing began the drive upon Munda Point, but General Sasaki predicted many of the routes the Americans would take and ordered his forces to create tedious roadblocks and defensive positions to foil their advances. The allied progress was brutally slow, despite having the enormous advantage in artillery, naval and aerial bombardment support. The Japanese pillboxes were proving to be devastating to the allied infantry, requiring tanks to be brought over to New Georgia. When things began to halt, suddenly General Sasaki performed a counter offensive seeing a daring attack directed at the headquarters of the 43rd division. The attack nearly broke the lines of communications, but luckily the Fijian commandos outperformed the japanese at their own game of night fighting. Lastly the IJN suffered terrible losses to allied aircraft collapsing their reinforcement efforts. This episode is the Mysterious Battle of the Pips Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  The battles in New Guinea and New Georgia were particularly bloody, in all honesty things had begun to really escalate when you look at it from a numerical point of view. Over on Green Hell, General Savige had just seized Mubo, the Pimple, Green Hill and Observation hill taking them out of Japanese hands. The Japanese had withdrawn to Komiatum while simultaneously trying to defend the Bobdubi ridge area against Brigadier Hammer's 15th brigade. General Savige, still unaware Salamaua was not the main target and in fact was being used as a deception to cover for Lae, continued his offensive, hoping to drive the enemy north of the Francisco River. Over on the other side, General Nakano's 1st battalion of the 80th regiment had managed to  push Companies B and A off their ambush position on the Bench Cut Track. They were forced to withdraw towards Gwaibolom by July 10th. Meanwhile to the south Major Warfe launched an attack along Goodview junction. Captain Wally Meares of C platoon marched up Stephens Track while Captain John Winterflood's B platoon took Walpoles track. Lt Hugh Egan created a blocking position using just 7 men around 800 meters south of Goodview Junction. The platoons went to work advancing down the steep ridges dislodging Japanese from outposts. Captain Meares platoon were continuing along the Stephens track when they suddenly encountered strong resistance from some Japanese who took a position along the Tambu Saddle which is at a junction between Stephens track and the Mule track. After engaging the Japanese, the platoon was forced to bypass them moving along the Mule track towards the Komiatum track where they ran into more Japanese. Meares men killed 13 Japanese on the Mule track before deciding to withdraw back to the Stephens track and dug in. The Japanese had surprised Warfe's men. The forces they were running into were mainly the 1st and 2nd companies of the 66th battalion along with Araki's HQ staff who had been on the run from Mubo to Komiatum. The Japanese tried to press on with a counter attack aimed at Winterflood's B platoon. The Japanese tossed mortar and machine gun fire, but received terrible losses to the commandos, forced to pull back up Walpole track. The next day Warfe ordered Winterflood's platoon to make a frontal assault, but quickly found themselves pinned down by machine gun fire and during the night received a heavy counter attack that forced them to dig in. The Japanese continued to block the way, covering their withdrawal further east, but all the mayhem prompted General Savige to relieve the commandos by tossing up companies C and B of the 2/5th who adopted the name Bennett force as they were led by Captain Cam Bennett. The rest of the 2/5th marched up the Buigap. Meanwhile General Herring was dealing with a supply issue for the 3rd Australian division. The 3rd division was too far from the coast and thus had been relying on supply via airdrops, which we have seen during this series to not be particularly accurate and quite inadequate. The supply problems mounted more when the decision was made to target Lae as such a campaign required building up reserve dumps. Warfe's men were critically low on supplies; the 58/59th had nearly used up all the supplies they received, being brought up via the Missim Track and from airdrops. Getting further and further away from the source of supplies and with declining carrier capacity, Warfe's men were reaching starvation point. Further back, Companies A and C of the 2/6th battalion got drafted the job of moving the supplies from Mubo to Buigap creek. General Herring considered it extremely difficult, but not impossible to maintain further units in the Salamaua area, if they were closer to the coasts. To solve the problem General Herring designated Tambu Bay as a new coastal base for supplies and it would also help as an artillery position. And thus, the 3rd battalion, 162nd regiment of Major Archibald Roosevelt landed at Nassau Bay back on July 12th commencing with their coastal advance. They were accompanied by Brigadier General Ralph Coane's artillery that had landed prior to them. Yet their advance would begin in an extremely confused and chaotic manner. The question of command was at the core of the issue, General Fuller had decided to separate units such as Archibald Roosevelts from the MacKechnie Force, and thus they were now placed under the command of the Coane Force. General Herring was forced to intervene, placing the Coane Force under General Savige. At the same time, Colonel MacKechnie was relieved of his command because Fuller felt that he had favored the Australians over the Americans. To dig depper into this mess, what occurred was General Savige and Colonel MacKechnie were both unaware that two-thirds of the 162nd regiment had been allocated to the Coane Force when General Herring sent the a confusing message to try and clarify things “all units MACK force are under operational control of 3 Aust Div”. Troubles began at Moten ordered Major Roosevelt to advance north, but Roosevelt had also been told by General Fuller that he was not under Australian command. Thus Roosevelt bluntly replied to Moten “For your information I obey no orders except those from my immediate superior”. Then MacKechnie tried to smooth things over with Moten when he was informed of Fuller's position. He apologized for Roosevelt's message, and tried to speak about how great all the Australian/American cooperation was going. Fuller and Herring then tried to clarify the situation by placing the Coane Force under General Savige, but Fuller also decided to dismiss MacKechnie, mostly because he had relinquished command of his men to the Australians and thus had failed to protect American interests. As I say on my personnel channel, often when talking about China's Warlords in the 1920's, this is some kindergarten bullshit. Back to the action at hand, the Coane Force was being aided by a Papuan company who were scouting ahead of the Americans. They managed to confirm that Tambu Bay and the Dot Inlet were occupied and fortified by the Japanese. A platoon of the 5th Sasebo SNLF and the 3rd battalion, 66th regiment were holding a position on Tambu Bay while the remnants of the 3rd battalion, 102nd regiment were on a ridge overlooking the bay, which would later be named Roosevelt Ridge. On July 18th, Roosevelt led the troops with Companies L and I taking the lead, guided by two Papuan platoons. L Company with a Papuan company advanced along an inland track while K Company likewise did so along the coast. K Companies's Papuan guides hit a Japanese outpost south of Boisi on July 18th. On the morning of the 20th, the Papuan platoon managed to kill four Japanese before K Company helped destroy the outpost. By the 20th they seized Boisi and Roosevelt with the others approached the Tambu bay. Roosevelt had Coane's artillery support, they brought up four 25 pounders of the 2/6th Australian field regiment originally placed at Nassau Bay along with 2 batteries of the 218th American field artillery battalion, 8 75mm guns from north Salus, a battery of the 205th American field artillery battalion and 4 105mm guns. Under the cover the artillery they attacked the enemy, but they were met with heavy mortar fire coming from Roosevelt Ridge. Roosevelt Ridge extended westwards from the sea for nearly 2000 yards, forming kind of bulwark that shielded the northern end of Tambu Bay. Thus Tambu Bay could not be secured unless the ridge was taken first. The Australian broadcasting commission correspondent, Peter Hemery described the ridge like this “a piece of old style razer blade jutting into the sea”. According to some Japanese sources they had this to say of it “The area around Boisi had a lay of land most suitable to the arrest of the enemy advancing northward along the coast” General Nakano had also decided to reinforce the ridge with 250 men of the 1st battalion, 115th regiment, but of course this came at the coast of Salamaua's defense. By this point the bulk of the 102nd regiment was at the Malolo-buang coastal area and the bulk of the 115th regiment, the 2nd Maizuru SNLF, two companies of the 5th Sasebo SNLF and the 14th field artillery regiment were at Salamaua, around 150 men in total. On the other side, after the fall of Mubo Brigadier Moten had the men advance north. The Bennet Force took over Goodview Junction; Companies A and D of the 2/5th advanced to Mount Tambu. Mount Tambu was the highest feature along the route between Mubo and Salamaua. It consisted of a series of razorback ridges covered in dense jungle, ideal for camouflage pillboxes. Its area was defended by roughly 700 Japanese from the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 66th regiment led by Lt Colonel Fukuzo Kimura and Major Sakai Sugiyama. On July 16th, Captain Mick Walter led 60 men of Company A up the steep track leading to the south crest of Mount Tambu. Walter led the men to storm the two forward knolls, taking the Japanese by complete surprise. The two knolls were captured, but during the night the Japanese counterattacked in force. The Japanese crawled up the knolls through some heavy undergrowth before they unleashed mortars and mountain gun fire. Walters men however had captured some Japanese pillboxes upon the two knolls and thus the turn tables. 8 counterattacks were tossed at Walters men, each repulsed with heavy losses, around 39 casualties for the Australians and 350 for the Japanese. The following day, D company came up to help the Australian defenders, bringing much needed mortars. They dug in on a knoll around 300 yards back on the track. Alongside D company also came much needed supplies and an additional platoon to reinforce his men who he deployed on his western flank.  On July 18th, Walter ordered an advance going northwest in an attempt to secure the southern portion of Mount Tambu. The advance was spearheaded by Lance Corporal Jackson who alongside his comrades tossed grenades into a Japanese pillbox. Jackson then stormed inside killing 3 Japanese with this Tommy gun. Alongside Jackson, mortar and mountain gun fire aided Walters men to gain 80 additional yards, securing the southern portion of Mount Tambu. They could advance no further however as it became much more difficult from this position as the Japanese basically were encircling them upon razer back ridge to their north. Walter would write later on “we dug in on the new ground and shortened our perimeter to the narrowing plateau”. For this action the Australians paid with 6 lives, 13 wounded while the Japanese lost 82. At this point Walter had D company with one of his platoon holding the western flank; A company held the northern knoll and two platoons from D company held the eastern knolls. The Japanese had been devastated, losing hundreds of men and allied artillery was becoming a nightmare. Captain Newman's C Company of the 162nd battalion had come to a junction of the Buigap and Bui Eo. From there a reconnaissance patrol found suitable artillery positions northwest of the junction. With the help of native carriers and 80 men of the 2/6th battalion, two guns were hauled over the Buigap track and by July 17th another 4 guns of the American 218th battalion were hauled up from the southern arm of the Bitoi river to Green Hill. From these positions the allies could smash multiple Japanese defensive positions. General Nakano realized Mount Tambu was an essential component of General Muroya's defensive line so he sent the remainder of the 3rd battalion, 66th regiment to reinforce Colonel Araki's men. Then during the early hours of July 19th a large earth tremor startled the Australian defenders. It was the prelude to an assault led by Captain Kunizo Hatsugai's 9th company of the 66th regiment. They had crept up silently managing to get behind the southern knolls then suddenly charged up under the cover of darkness. But the defenders had their guard up and were not taken by surprise. A Bren gunner managed to knock out one of the Japanese raiders machine guns with a lucky hit in the dark. As the Japanese scrambled to try and recover it they were met with fire causing severe casualties. The Japanese surprise attack was a failure, forcing them to withdraw by first light, leaving 21 dead across the knoll. While this raid was occuring, Walters men were also repelling a series of attacks against the Northern Knoll. During these attacks, Walter was injured. Luckily for Walter and his company, they were relieved on the 19th by D Company. Another American unit, C Company of the 1st battalion, 162nd regiment led by Captain Delmar Newman also arrived to take up a position on the southern knolls. Until july 23rd, the Australians limited their actions to patrols. On the 20th, Bennet led a patrol making contact with a strong Japanese position on the Walpole track; Another company led by Morse found a Japanese position in the Goodview area dug within 100 yards of their own. Meanwhile the Japanese also limited their actions to a few patrols proding Mount Tambu for weaknesses.   On July 23rd Moten ordered the 2/5th battalion to attack the remaining Japanese positions on the Tambu Knoll, but it was the most heavily fortified yet. Basically it was like a castle keep, complete with a ravine for a moat, near vertical walls and deep tunnels going through the knoll. Mount Tambu's peak held  10 log reinforce bunkers connected by the tunnels which could shelter half a battalion or so. They also had a chain of weapon pits set up on lower ledges. Later on when investigating the entire system, the allies found weapon pits to be around 4 logs thick, interconnected by crawl trenches. Many of these weapon puts had been carefully sited within the roots of large trees, making them impervious to allied artillery fire. The tunnel entrances were dug into the side of the peak directly behind the defensive positions, allowing the defenders to storm out from their shelters underground within seconds. It was these kind of ingenious defensive works that would be built upon later on in the war to create absolute nightmares for the allies.   Moten had not carried out a thorough reconnaissance of the Japanese positions prior to ordering the attack and thus many of his subordinates elected to make a frontal assault instead of encircling them. D company took the center for the frontal attack while to the left were the 16th platoon led by Sergeant Alvin ‘Hungry' Williams and the 18th platoon led by Lt Bernard Leonads; and A company advanced along a Caffins track heading for the western flank of Mount Tambu to try and cut off the main Japanese supply route going back to Komiatum. 15 minutes before they charged, Australian and American artillery and mortars fired upon Mount Tambu. Two Australian mountain guns fired 90 rounds while the 4 75mm American guns fired 60 per gun from Green hill. D company began their attack around midday, trying to drive a wedge between two lines of pillboxes. Corporal John Smith laid cover fire as Captain Lin Cameron crept forward, getting within 15 yards of the pill boxes on the left side of the track. Cameron counted around 7 pill boxes in two lines of defense going across both sides of the track. The steep slopes on both sides gave little venues of approach, allowing around just a platoon at a time. There was also sharpened bamboo pickets on the left flank, leading Cameron to believe that an attack was expected there.   The Japanese knowingly let two platoons reach their line of forward pillboxes before unleashing hell upon them. The casualties were terrible. As Cameron recounted, “we were within 20 meters of the enemy bunkers before all hell let loose”. One of the men in the forward sections was killed outright, Cameron was wounded, his right elbow was shattered by a machine gun bullet. As he saw his men hesitate, he screamed out “forward! Get stuck into them!” With his right arm now useless and his eyesight dimming, Cameron handed command over to Lt Martin. Despite the horror, the Australians pressed on. Corporal Carey led his depleted platoon forward in a great dash and swept the outer ring of the Japanese pillboxes. On his left were Leonards men who stormed two pillboxes before heavy enfilade fire pinned them down. Then the 17th platoon led by Corporal John Smith charged up Mount Tambu from behind with their bayonets fixed. Smith screamed out “follow me!” as he charged. 3 other men out of the 11 managed to keep up with Smith, but soon Japanese grenades began to rain down on them. The grenades caught them just as they passed a third line of pillboxes. Smith was hit, but he kept charging and when he reached the peak of Mount Tambu with his back to the enemy he screamed “come on boys! come on boys!”. Without additional support and with no indication A company were making progress over on the left flank, the 4 men on the peak were forced to withdraw. The gallant Smith had to be dragged down and would die from severe wounds two days later. Smith was decorated for bravery in Syria in 1941, when he cleared out 3 machine gun nests at a roadblock and despite being wounded during the battle of Wau he still had gas left in the tank for some more.   Scouts had made their way towards the Tambu saddle track and spotted Japanese soldiers, around 125 of them a full company or so. The scouts quickly realized they were outnumbered, thus when the artillery began to open up and Walter's company moved in for the attack across the saddle, no sooner then they started the enemy halted them in their tracks. Walter had no choice but to withdraw around 500 yards south east as the Japanese were too strong. Walter's inability to make progress in the west ultimately ruined the entire attack. Despite the defeat, Companies A and D had done very well against such a heavily fortified position.   Meanwhile, Warfe and his men were marching when they discovered Ambush Knoll had come back under the hands of some Japanese from the 2nd battalion, 66th regiment. On July 15th, Warfes commandos launched an attack, with C Platoon performing a frontal assault along the narrow ridge top track. There were 16 men in the attack and they found themselves face to face with well dug in Japanese. The Japanese were behind a bamboo barricade with some pillboxes scattered about. The platoon got within 50 feet of the main barricade, but the Japanese fire was too much and casualties were mounting quickly. Meanwhile B Platoon was maneuvering around the Japanese eastern flank. At 5:30 B Platoon began attacking the eastern side of the knoll. The men got behind an enemy pillbox covering the track from Orodubi, but the Japanese quickly saw the Australians and began tossing grenades at them. Despite the resistance, B Platoon managed cut off the Japanese supply line to Ambush Knoll. With their supply lines cut the Japanese were forced to withdraw   With Ambush Knoll back under allied control, Brigadier Hammer ordered A company of the 58/59th battalion to depart Gwaibolom and attack Orodubi from its southern flank. Even with the help of the 58/59th company, the commando's yet again failed to dislodge the Japanese. On the night of July 19th, fresh troops of the 1st company, 80th battalion used the light of the full moon to come up the ridge. This became a staging point for them to attack Ambush Knoll, seeing artillery fire beginning in the morning to support their attack. Warfe's commandos were manning the trenches on Ambush Knoll, turning the tables on the Japanese and inflicting heavy casualties upon them. The Japanese were forced to retreat. The next day Warfe reinforced Ambush Knoll with two Vickers guns, which gave the Japanese a nasty surprise when they attacked again. On the 20th, the Japanese opened fire with mortars and artillery before charging the ridge. They managed to get as far as to cut the Australian lines of communication, but were ultimately repealed once again. Over 14 consecutive attacks would be made on the 20th, and even more on the 21st, but it all came to nothing, Warfe's commandos held their ground. Facing such pressure from the Japanese, Hammer still felt the greater weight of their attention was directed at Bobdubi and not towards Tambu, believing it to all be a consequence of Moton's lack of progress. General Savige decided to order Motens 2/6th battalion to take responsibility over Bobdubi ridge. The 2/6th then came across the Japanese rear near the slopes of Ambush Knoll and began harassing them. On the 22nd the Japanese tried yet again to attack Ambush Knoll, but were beaten back firmly, forcing them to finally withdraw to Sugarcane Ridge. By July 23rd, Warfes' exhausted commandos earned a relief by the 2/6th and were sent to relieve A company at Gwaibolom, while A company advanced north. The 2/6th likewise would advance north. But now we are moving away from the troubles of New Guinea and heading back up north to the frigid Aleutians. After the successful seizure of Attu, now Admiral Kinkaid and General Buckner needed to plan the invasion of Kiska. Kiska was the last Japanese bulwark in the Aleutians and held an incredible underground city. There were miles of tunnels, buried ammunition dumps, barracks,  3 hospitals, dental clinics, mess halls, machine shops, warehouses, photo labs, telephone rooms, all shoved and shored with wood. Ventilation pipes connected the maze of caves and tunnels, with Japanese troops wearing great fur lined coats busy at work. The Americans had experienced hell, on Attu, over 2872 Japanese had been killed or committed suicide, just 28 men were captured and it cost 549 american lives, 1148 wounded and nearly another 2000 ill or battered by harsh climate. The American leadership expected Kiska to be another hellscape and did not want to come at it lightly. The 7th division led by Brigadier General Archibald Arnolrd, Buckner's 4th regiment, the 87th Mountain infantry regiment, the 13th Canadian Brigade, consisting of the 6th Canadian division led by Major General George Pearkes, the Canadian Fusiliers regiment, the 1st battalion of Winnipeg grenadiers, the Rocky Mountain rangers regiment and e Regiment de Hull along with the 1st Special Service Force led by Colonel Robert Frederick were to be part of the invasion of Kiska, codenamed Operation Cottage. Unfortunately, the actual invasion will not be happening in this episode, you will actually have to wait  weeks for that one, but I just so happened to have recently done a podcast with a Canadian Military Historian named Brad St.Croix from the Youtube channel OTD Military History, the same gentleman who I interviewed for this series about the battle of Hong Kong. The podcast we recently did was on the Canadian experience of the Pacific War and the battle of Kiska is 1/3rd of it, so if you are, impatient and want to learn some neat stuff about how Canadians had to change their entire military organization and use American equipment for the battle of Kiska, check out my Youtube channel, the Pacific War channel for the full episode.  Now the last time we spoke about Kiska, the Japanese were forced to perform a bit of a miracle to evacuate their boys. After Attu had fallen, Rear Admiral Akiyama Monzo alongside 6000 men were ordered to evacuate Kiska. To try and do this, the Japanese began by sending 13 I-class submarines of the 1st submarine squadron of Rear Admiral Kouda Takeo. Despite these Type C submarines being enormous in size, they could only carry around 150 men per trip, thus it would have took 40 successful journey's to evacuate the entire Kiska garrison. With the US Navy fully decked out with sonar, this was not going to be a walk in the park. The efforts had begun on May 27th and by July, the submarines had managed to get 800 men safely back to Japan, but lost 300 due to american attacks.  Meanwhile Admiral Giffen had a considerable armada to work with consisting of a trio of older battleships; the Mississippi, Idaho and New Mexico, a quintet of cruisers; Louisville, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Wichita and 9 destroyers. He was ordered to bombard Kiska who already had been smashed with aerial attacks all throughout June and early July. On July 6th, Giffen steamed towards Kiska with 4 cruisers and 4 destroyers and bombarded the island for 22nd minutes causing a handful of casualties. It was not all that impressive, but it convinced Admiral Kawase that the Americans were about to invade Kiska at any moment.Admiral Kawase Shiro realized the futility of the submarine effort and was forced to come up with a new plan. Kawase came up with a bold plan, he was going to wait for a night when a thick fog was occurring and would take a surface fleet to sneak over into the Aleutians to assault enemy warships and evacuate all the remaining men on Kiska in a single go. To be blunt, it was a dumb idea. The American warships were equipped with radar that would pick up any surface ship with ease despite any type of fog, but what was about to occur can only be described as spectacular and bizarre.  Rear Admiral Kimura, the victor of the battle of the bismarck sea, would lead the force and he had at his disposal Destroyer Squadron 1: consisting of Yugumo, Kazagumo, Asagumo, Akigumo, Usugumo, Hibiki (one of my favorite whiskeys), Shimakaze, Samidare, Naganami, Wakaba, Hatsushimo and light cruisers Abukuma and Kiso. In close support of these there was also a covering force consisting of heavy cruisers Nachi, Maya, light cruiser Tama and destroyers Nokaze and Namikaze. The large convoy force departed from Paramushiro on July 7th with Takeo's 1st submarine squadron performing reconnaissance. The covering force departed Paramushiro on July 10th and by July 12th the fleet was around 500 miles south of Kiska. When they took up this assembly position, the sailors were in despair to see the fog was quite low. While it did not matter for warships with radar, Kimura knew full well what allied aircraft could do to his forces if they were not better concealed. Thus he elected to wait until the fog reappaered to cover his force. But the weather did not change, the skies remained clear forcing him to head back on July 15th. Meanwhile on Kiska, Rear Admiral Monzo was frantically ordering his troops to lay out a road from the underground base to the harbor piers to help facilitate the impending evacuation. All of the Japanese on Kiska felt an impending doom placed upon them. If the Americans landed first, it was all but over for them. Luckily, Japanese weather stations reported a dense fog would emerge over Kiska by July 25th, and unlike here in Montreal Canada, I guess these weather reporters are accurate. Kimura once again departed Paramushiro on July 22nd, accompanied by Admiral Kawase aboard cruiser Tama. Yet a few days prior, on July 19th, Admiral Kinkaid had ordered Admiral Giffen to bombard Kiska again. This time Giffen took a two pronged naval attack force consisting of battleships Mississippi and Idaho, cruisers Portland, Wichita, San Francisco, Louisville, Santa Fe and destroyers Abner Read, Farragut, Monaghan, Perry, Aylwin, Bache, Hughes, Morris and Mustin. Giffen's force reached Kiska on July 22nd and his ships smashed the island with 424000 lbs of high explosive shells. Just an hour later, a PBY suddenly detached with her radar 7 radar pips southwest of Attu. The PBY maintained contact for around 6 hours before low fuel forced her to return to base. These radar pips alarmed Admiral Kinkaid which was being reported in conjunction with a massive increase in Japanese radio activity on Kiska. Kinkaid believed a major Japanese fleet had just entered Aleutian waters, most likely a reinforcement convoy. Kinkaid immediately ordered Rear Admirals Giffen and Griffin to intercept the suspected enemy. However, by doing this he had also done something extremely favorable for the Japanese, he had left Kiska Harbor open and unguarded. Kinkaid dispatched a quartet of PT boats to try and provide a makeshift blockade, but the terrible weather forced the smaller vessels to return to port as trying to dash over to Kiska would probably see them all sunk. While this was occurring, Kimura's ships were traveling through the dense fog separately. The fog prevented the Americans from intercepting them initially, and having failed to make contact with the enemy, Kinkaid became nervous the Japanese might escape the blockade and ordered the force to return to Kiska at maximum speed on July 25th. The American ships dutifully turned back while Kinkaid sent the Oiler Pecos out to meet them for refueling. By dusk of the 25th, the American ships were around 90 miles from Kiska, when the fog had all but disappeared showing a cloudless sky. Kimura's vessels seeing their fog betray them, all reunited as a single force, now bearing 400 miles south of the American warships. At precisely 12:43am on July 26th the American warships picked up 7 strong radar pips around 15 miles northeast. It was Mississippi's SG radar that first picked them up, the American destroyers were actually unable to detect any pips on their radar due to the curvature of the ocean's surface at such a distance. The New Mexico, Portland, San Francisco and Wichita began picking up the same radar pips. The radar pips zigzagged across the sea surface, changing direction in much the same way ships attempting to evade detection might. The ships were being detected all at different angles, verifying to the Americans there were physical presences of some kind occupying definite points in space. On top of this, the immobile radar signature of Kiska's volcano at a range of 78 miles appeared clearly the entire time, verifying the validity of the pips moving with a fixed landmark. The radar pips converged 22,000 yards ahead of the Americans forcing them to spring into action. Admiral Giffen called for the entire fleet to turn left to intercept the pips on their southerly heading and in the hopes of foiling a possible torpedo attack. All of the American ships turned their guns to fire salvo's into the night. Great flame lances stabbed into the darkness as destroyers launched volleys of torpedoes and radar plotters frantically calculated salvo corrections. For 67 minutes the Americans tracked the 7 radar pips firing wildly at them. At 1:30am the Mississippi's log recorded zig-zags and a 20 degree course change, but not a single sailor saw an enemy ship. Cruisers San Francisco and Santa Fe registered shell splashes, but never an enemy target.  75 miles over on Kiska, the Japanese were watching a spectacle. From their point of view it was like a night-time light show over the horizon. By 2:22am the radar pips thinned, faded and vanished completely. During the morning surface ships and aircraft fanned out looking for wreckage, ships, floating papers, oil slick, anything to indicate something was even out there! The American warships reported no return fire, it was as if they faced ghosts. With a lack of fuel and ammunition, the US ships began refueling on the 28th and resumed their blockade of Kiska. What famously has become known as the battle of the Pips left the US Navy with a mystery that remains unsolved to this very day. The radar equipment was operating at times where there was a cloudless night with no fog, zero reasons for false radar echoes. An Aleutian crab fishing captain named Captain George Fulton may have solved the mystery in 1991 when he managed to duplicate the radar signatures observed during the battle by using his radar on a natural phenomenon common to the area. He presented his findings to the Alaska War Symposium in 1993 in a letter “I […] duplicated the Battle of the Pips using color radar. Sure enough there were blips on the tube and their density changed from red to orange to yellow and finally to black, providing an exact replication of the Battle of the Pips. What you described fits exactly the […] pattern of dense flocks of mutton birds or dusky shearwaters […] As mutton birds fly they veer left and right. This accounts for the zigzagging that was reported on the radar logs” Captain Fulton further went on to say how these huge flocks continue until they see large schools of fish, such as pollack. When the birds see them they begin landing on the sea surface then dive for their prey. This maneuver causes them to vanish from radar screens entirely. In the 1990s Aleutian fishing crews use this trait to locate large concentration of pollack, identifying the blips by their zigzagging motion and cast their nets accordingly. Were the Japanese saved by shearwater birds? Another answer came from the US Navy who officially stated that atmospheric echoes, a sort of phenomena caused the radar pips, that explanation has been highly contested. Its also been speculated that the American radar pips were 7 IJN submarines running reconnaissance. What we do know is Kimura made it to Kiska on the 28th undetected and unharmed while the US warships were enroute miles back. No American ships were anywhere near Kiska on the 28th. Admiral Kimura pulled the ships into Kiska anchorage and evacuated the entire remaining forces on the island, all 5183 men onto 8 vessels all within 55 minutes. The Japanese soldiers made sure to spend their last moments on the island setting up a plethora of booby traps. Four days later Kimura and Kawase were back in Paramushiro, successfully evacuating Kiska without firing a single shot. The Americans had no idea the evacuation occurred. In the words of one disgruntled American Colonel after the Kiska ordeal ““How I hate those bastards but I've got to give them credit for the most masterly evacuation by any army at any time and I'm not forgetting Dunkirk” I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The drive to Lae and Salamaua rages on New Guinea as the American Navy in the frigid northern seas fought perhaps a ghost ship army. Or perhaps some pesky birds looking for tasty pollock saved the entire Japanese garrison on the island of Kiska. 

Peter Jackson, nicknamed the Black Prince, (born July 3, 1861, St. Croix, Virgin Islands—died July 13, 1901, Roma, Queensland, Australia), was an outstanding professional boxer. A victim of racial discrimination, he was denied a chance to fight for the world heavyweight championship while in his prime. Subscribe https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/career-profiles/id1494210179 We are also available on Player FM, Spotify, Spreaker, and many more podcasting apps Follow us at: https://twitter.com/career_profiles https://www.facebook.com/btrboxingpodcast Become A Patron patreon.com/btrboxingpodcastnetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Run, Penance! The retcons are coming for you! (Generation X #40) In which the St. Croix family is constructed largely of retcons; Generation X adjusts surprisingly quickly to a massive status quo shift; Psi-War is coming soon to a podcast near you; Snow White - I mean, Bianca LaNeige - has an intriguing but exceptionally minimal backstory; and if you die in this podcast episode, you die in real life. X-PLAINED: Hellfire Club history Generation X #40-43 MillXnials Mercy General Hospital vs Our Mother of Mercy Hospital Ambiguous psionic overlap Nicole & Claudette & Monet & Marius St. Croix The Downtown Stomp Synch, agreeable and bland (for now) Vincent Adultman The nature of Penance A glacial but effective pace Bianca LaNeige, evil Snow White from space Warpy, Stinky, Spiky, Windy, Greasy, Brainy, and Blurry The Enchanted Forest of Oregon Claremont:Body Swaps::Hama:Getting Stuck In Other Dimensions Jay vs. Accents Terminal Dream Syndrome A surprisingly gruesome fill-in An underrated era for Emma Frost Betty & Veronica, presenting like mandrills Zak the Neutrino Albert & Elsie-Dee (briefly) The Dodsons vs Mike Allred Dr. Bronner's uncredited Marvel career Our coverage of Ultimate X-Men (or lack thereof) Dr. Phil Zimbardo's xplainthexmen study NEXT EPISODE: Queering Wolverine with Dr. Christopher Michael Roman! Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog! Find us on iTunes or Stitcher! Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here! Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

President Joe Biden could potentially face multiple labor strikes within a matter of months or even weeks, threatening his long-term clean energy goals, pro-labor union image, and 2024 political ambitions. POLITICO's Zack Colman takes us inside the president's rocky relationship with Big Labor and the political and climate stakes. Plus, a federal court has overturned EPA's order requiring the troubled St. Croix refinery to undergo a costly, multiyear permitting process to restart operations.   For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy   Zack Colman covers climate change for POLITICO.  Josh Siegel is a congressional energy reporter for POLITICO.  Nirmal Mulaikal is a POLITICO audio host-producer.  Alex Keeney is a senior audio producer at POLITICO.  Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO.  Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO.

Wisconsin's Dale Stroschein is a great guy and one of the nation's best multi-species fishermen. In addition to fishing, Dale and his lovely wife Karen run a beautiful and successful resort called the Sand Bay Beach Resort in Door County Wisconsin on Lake Michigan's Sturgeon Bay. If you seek jumbo walleyes or monster smallies, Dale Stroschein is the man who can teach you how to get them. Please give him a listen.Dan Johnston from St. Croix talks about their exciting new lineup of reels and their winning rod entry in the ICAST New Product Showcase.Jim Crowley is a total outdoorsman who is involved in all aspects of outdoors communications. He is a great guy who always has some great info to pass along to his fans and followers. Please give him a listen. 

“My men never retire. They go forward, or they die!” This is the story of the 15th New York, a.k.a, the 369th, or the Harlem Hellfighters. James “Big Jim” Europe is one of the most talented musicians in the world. His ragtime and early jazz sounds electrify New York City. That's exactly why Colonel William “Big Bill” Hayward, who's just been named commander of New York's newly established Black regiment (the 15th) wants the young machine gun officer to step into his rightly earned celebrity status and lead the regimental band. Unofficially, Jim accepts, and his swinging sounds soon win more recruits. But nothing comes easy for the old 15th. Training in the South, they encounter Jim Crow hostility. Making it to France, they are despondent to find they're designated for manual labor. But as Jim's band rocks concert halls across France, they finally get a chance to go to the front as a part of the French military. These New Yorkers never lose an inch of ground. They win or they die, becoming heroes on both sides of the Atlantic and earning the Croix de Guerre for the entire unit. But it's a tale of heroism that ends on a low note, as the men of the 15th find Jim Crow a tougher foe than the German Kaiser. ___ 3 Ways to dive deeper into History That Doesn't Suck Join our growing Facebook community Get our weekly newsletter, The Revolution Become part of the HTDS Patreon family Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kyle Welcher is in the lead for the Bassmaster Angler of the Year award with only a handful of events to go. AOY is one of the sports most prestigious titles. Can he do it? Kyle gives us his thoughts in a terrific interview.Rick Battalini from Yellow Bird s with us to talk about using planer boards.Dan Johnston from St. Croix talks about lithium versus traditional lead acid batteries.