Podcast appearances and mentions of dick whittington

Actor and writer ANTHONY SPARGO gives us the five tracks he will meet in Hell! (Oh no he doesn't! Oh yes he does!)Pantomime season is almost upon on us in the UK, and so it's fitting that we plucked a panto legend from the queue of damned souls this week. Anthony has appeared in ten pantomimes, writing four of them - his Dick Whittington won 'Best Script' at the 2025 UK Pantomime Awards. We got to hear about how panto works, and why Anthony's pantos at Greenwich Theatre are a little different to all the others... We also found time to talk about some of Anthony's other work, including his time operating a dalek on Doctor Who during David Tennant's time in the part.Anthony's new panto, Peter Pan, is at the Greenwich Theatre from November 28th to January 11th. Get your tickets here.BUY US A COFFEE! If you just want to be nice/bribe your way out of Hell then you can tip us over at https://www.ko-fi.com/hellishpodFIND US ON SPOTIFY! To hear the songs on Felix's Infernal Playlist in full, as well as the Ultimate Infernal Playlist which combines the choices of every damned soul we've met so far. https://tinyurl.com/hellishpodBECOME A PATREON SUPPORTER! https://www.patreon.com/hellishpod to access episodes early and ad free, where you will find out which artists our guests will meet in Hell. (Though not Felix - we had a tech issue which meant we ran out of time to do that bit!) You'll also get our two pilot episodes, a bunch of advent calendar extras, and some other stuff depending which tier you pick.FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA for Alex's fiendishly impossible weekly picture quiz and loads more...Instagram: www.instagram.com/hellish_podBlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/hellishpod.comThreads: https://www.threads.net/@hellish_podFacebook: www.facebook.com/hellishpodcastTikTok: www.tiktok.com/hellishpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From couvre feu to Cockney – how St Mary-le-Bow's bells became the sound that shaped London's identity. Once they told Londoners to bank their fires; centuries later, they told Dick Whittington to turn again. These were the curfew bells, the comeback bells, the heartbeat of a city that never stops ringing.

What does it take to keep your voice—and your purpose—strong through every season of life? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with my friend Bill Ratner, one of Hollywood's most recognized voice actors, best known as Flint from GI Joe. Bill's voice has carried him through radio, animation, and narration, but what stands out most is how he's used that same voice to serve others through storytelling, teaching, and grief counseling. Together, we explore the heart behind his work—from bringing animated heroes to life to standing on The Moth stage and helping people find healing through poetry. Bill shares lessons from his own journey, including losing both parents early, finding family in unexpected places, and discovering how creative expression can rebuild what life breaks down. We also reflect on 9/11, preparedness, and the quiet confidence that comes from trusting your training—whether you're a first responder, a performer, or just navigating the unknown. This conversation isn't just about performance; it's about presence. It's about using your story, your craft, and your compassion to keep moving forward—unstoppable, one voice at a time. Highlights: 00:31 – Hear the Flint voice and what it takes to bring animated characters to life. 06:57 – Learn why an uneven college path still led to a lifelong acting career. 11:50 – Understand how GI Joe became a team and a toy phenomenon that shaped culture. 15:58 – See how comics and cartoons boosted classroom literacy when used well. 17:06 – Pick up simple ways parents can spark reading through shared stories. 19:29 – Discover how early, honest conversations about death can model resilience. 24:09 – Learn to critique ads and media like a pro to sharpen your own performance. 36:19 – Follow the pivot from radio to voiceover and why specialization pays. 47:48 – Hear practical editing approaches and accessible tools that keep shows tight. 49:38 – Learn how The Moth builds storytelling chops through timed, judged practice. 55:21 – See how poetry—and poetry therapy—support grief work with students. 59:39 – Take notes on memoir writing, emotional management, and one-person shows. About the Guest: Bill Ratner is one of America's best known voice actors and author of poetry collections Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake (Slow Lightning Lit 2024,) Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press 2021,) To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press 2021,) and the non-fiction book Parenting For The Digital Age: The Truth Behind Media's Effect On Children and What To Do About It (Familius Books 2014.) He is a 9-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM, 2-time winner of Best of The Hollywood Fringe Extension Award for Solo Performance, Best of the Net Poetry Nominee 2023 (Lascaux Review,) and New Millennium "America One Year From Now" Writing Award Finalist. His writing appears in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press,) Missouri Review (audio,) Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals. He is the voice of "Flint" in the TV cartoon G.I. Joe, "Donnell Udina" in the computer game Mass Effect, the voice of Air Disasters on Smithsonian Channel, NewsNation, and network TV affiliates across the country. He is a committee chair for his union, SAG-AFTRA, teaches Voiceovers for SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Media Awareness for Los Angeles Unified School District, and is a trained grief counsellor. Member: Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA, National Storytelling Network • https://billratner.com • @billratner Ways to connect with Bill: https://soundcloud.com/bill-ratner https://www.instagram.com/billratner/ https://twitter.com/billratner https://www.threads.net/@billratner https://billratner.tumblr.com https://www.youtube.com/@billratner/videos https://www.facebook.com/billratner.voiceover.author https://bsky.app/profile/bilorat.bsky.social 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 subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . 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 on a gracious hello to you, wherever you may be, I am your host. Mike hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to have a voice actor, person, Bill Ratner, who you want to know who Bill Radnor is, go back and watch the old GI Joe cartoons and listen to the voice of Flint.   Bill Ratner ** 01:42 All right. Lady Jay, you better get your battle gear on, because Cobra is on their way. And I can't bring up the Lacher threat weapon system. We got to get out of here. Yo, Joe,   Michael Hingson ** 01:52 there you go. I rest my case Well, Bill, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Bill Ratner ** 02:00 We can't rest now. Michael, we've just begun. No, we've just begun.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 We got to keep going here. Well, I'm really glad that you're here. Bill is another person who we inveigled to get on unstoppable mindset with the help of Walden Hughes. And so that means we can talk about Walden all we want today. Bill just saying, oh goodness. And I got a lot to say. Let me tell you perfect, perfect. Bring it on. So we are really grateful to Walden, although I hope he's not listening. We don't want to give him a big head. But no, seriously, we're really grateful. Ah, good point.   Bill Ratner ** 02:38 But his posture, oddly enough, is perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 Well, there you go. What do you do? He practiced. Well, anyway, we're glad you're here. Tell us about the early bill, growing up and all that stuff. It's always fun to start a good beginning.   Bill Ratner ** 02:54 Well, I was a very lucky little boy. I was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1947 to two lovely people, professionals, both with master's degree out at University of Chicago. My mother was a social worker. My father had an MBA in business. He was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. So I had the joy of living in a better home and living in a garden.   Michael Hingson ** 03:21 My mother. How long were you in Des Moines?   Bill Ratner ** 03:24 Five and a half years left before my sixth birthday. My dad got a fancy job at an ad agency in Minneapolis, and had a big brother named Pete and big handsome, curly haired boy with green eyes. And moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was was brought up there.   Michael Hingson ** 03:45 Wow. So you went to school there and and chased the girls and all that stuff.   Bill Ratner ** 03:54 I went to school there at Blake School for Boys in Hopkins, Minnesota. Couldn't chase the girls day school, but the girls we are allowed to dance with certainly not chase. Michael was at woodhue dancing school, the Northrop girls from Northrop girls school and the Blake boys were put together in eighth grade and taught the Cha Cha Cha, the waltz, the Charleston, and we danced together, and the girls wore white gloves, and we sniffed their perfume, and we all learned how to be lovers when we were 45   Michael Hingson ** 04:37 There you are. Well, as long as you learned at some point, that's a good start.   Bill Ratner ** 04:44 It's a weird generation. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 04:46 I've been to Des Moines before. I was born in Chicago, but moved out to California when I was five, but I did some work with the National Federation of the Blind in the mid 19. 1970s 1976 into 1978 so spent time at the Iowa Commission for the Blind in Des Moines, which became a top agency for the Blind in well, the late 50s into the to the 60s and so on. So   Bill Ratner ** 05:15 both my parents are from Chicago. My father from the south side of Chicago, 44th and Kenzie, which was a Irish, Polish, Italian, Jewish, Ukrainian neighborhood. And my mother from Glencoe, which was a middle class suburb above Northwestern University in Evanston.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 I Where were you born? 57th and union, north, south side, no, South   Bill Ratner ** 05:42 57th union is that? Is that west of Kenzie?   Michael Hingson ** 05:46 You know, I don't remember the geography well enough to know, but I know that it was, I think, Mount Sinai Hospital where I was born. But it was, it's, it's, it's a pretty tough neighborhood today. So I understand,   Bill Ratner ** 06:00 yeah, yeah, my it was tough, then it's tough now,   Michael Hingson ** 06:03 yeah, I think it's tougher, supposedly, than it was. But we lived there for five years, and then we we moved to California, and I remember some things about Chicago. I remember walking down to the local candy store most days, and had no problem doing that. My parents were told they should shut me away at a home somewhere, because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything. And my parents said, You guys are you're totally wrong. And they brought me up with that attitude. So, you   Bill Ratner ** 06:32 know who said that the school says school so that   Michael Hingson ** 06:35 doctors doctors when they discovered I was blind with the   Bill Ratner ** 06:38 kid, goodness gracious, horrified.   Michael Hingson ** 06:44 Well, my parents said absolutely not, and they brought me up, and they actually worked with other parents of premature kids who became blind, and when kindergarten started in for us in in the age of four, they actually had a special kindergarten class for blind kids at the Perry School, which is where I went. And so I did that for a year, learn braille and some other things. Then we moved to California, but yeah, and I go back to Chicago every so often. And when I do nowadays, they I one of my favorite places to migrate in Chicago is Garrett Popcorn.   Bill Ratner ** 07:21 Ah, yes, with caramel corn, regular corn, the   Michael Hingson ** 07:25 Chicago blend, which is a mixture, yeah, the Chicago blend is cheese corn, well, as it is with caramel corn, and they put much other mozzarella on it as well. It's really good.   Bill Ratner ** 07:39 Yeah, so we're on the air. Michael, what do you call your what do you call your program? Here I am your new friend, and I can't even announce your program because I don't know   Michael Hingson ** 07:48 the name, unstoppable mindset. This   Bill Ratner ** 07:51 is unstoppable mindset.   Michael Hingson ** 07:56 We're back. Well, we're back already. We're fast. So you, you, you moved off elsewhere, out of Des Moines and all that. And where did you go to college?   Bill Ratner ** 08:09 Well, this is like, why did you this is, this is a bit like talking about the Vietnam War. Looking back on my college career is like looking back on the Vietnam War series, a series of delusions and defeats. By the time I the time i for college, by the time I was applying for college, I was an orphan, orphan, having been born to fabulous parents who died too young of natural causes. So my grades in high school were my mediocre. I couldn't get into the Ivy Leagues. I got into the big 10 schools. My stepmother said, you're going to Michigan State in East Lansing because your cousin Eddie became a successful realtor. And Michigan State was known as mu u it was the most successful, largest agriculture college and university in the country. Kids from South Asia, China, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America all over the world came to Michigan State to study agricultural sciences, children of rich farmers all over the world and middle class farmers all over the world, and a huge police science department. Part of the campus was fenced off, and the young cadets, 1819, 20 years old, would practice on the rest of the student body, uniformed with hats and all right, excuse me, young man, we're just going to get some pizza at eight o'clock on Friday night. Stand against your car. Hands in your car. I said, Are you guys practicing again? Shut up and spread your legs. So that was that was Michigan State, and even though both my parents had master's degrees, I just found all the diversions available in the 1960s to be too interesting, and was not invited. Return after my sophomore year, and in order to flunk out of a big 10 University, and they're fine universities, all of them, you have to be either really determined or not so smart, not really capable of doing that level of study in undergraduate school. And I'd like to think that I was determined. I used to show up for my exams with a little blue book, and the only thing I would write is due to lack of knowledge, I am unable to complete this exam, sign Bill ranter and get up early and hand it in and go off. And so what was, what was left for a young man like that was the theater I'd seen the great Zero Mostel when I was 14 years old and on stage live, he looked just like my father, and he was funny, and if I Were a rich man, and that's the grade zero must tell. Yeah, and it took about five, no, it took about six, seven years to percolate inside my bread and my brain. In high school, I didn't want to do theater. The cheerleaders and guys who I had didn't happen to be friends with or doing theater. I took my girlfriends to see plays, but when I was 21 I started acting, and I've been an actor ever since. I'm a committee chair on the screen actors guild in Hollywood and Screen Actors Guild AFTRA, and work as a voice actor and collect my pensions and God bless the union.   Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Well, hey, as long as it works and you're making progress, you know you're still with it, right?   Bill Ratner ** 11:53 That's the that's the point. There's no accounting for taste in my business. Michael, you work for a few different broadcast entities at my age. And it's, you know, it's younger people. It's 18 to 3418 years to 34 years old is the ideal demographic for advertisers, Ford, Motor Company, Dove soap, Betty, Crocker, cake mixes and cereals, every conceivable product that sold online or sold on television and radio. This is my this is my meat, and I don't work for religion. However, if a religious organization calls, I call and say, I I'm not, not qualified or not have my divinity degree in order to sell your church to the public?   Michael Hingson ** 12:46 Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I can understand that. But you, you obviously do a lot, and as we talked about, you were Flint and GI Joe, which is kind of cool.   Bill Ratner ** 13:01 Flynn GI Joe was very cool. Hasbro Corporation, which was based in Providence, Rhode Island, had a huge success with GI Joe, the figure. The figure was about 11 and a half inches tall, like a Barbie, and was at first, was introduced to the public after the Korean War. There is a comic book that was that was also published about GI Joe. He was an individual figure. He was a figure, a sort of mythic cartoon figure during World War Two, GI Joe, generic American soldier, fighting man and but the Vietnam war dragged on for a long time, and the American buying public or buying kids toys got tired of GI Joe, got tired of a military figure in their household and stopped buying. And when Nixon ended the Vietnam War, or allotted to finish in 1974 Hasbro was in the tank. It's got its stock was cheap, and executives are getting nervous. And then came the Great George Lucas in Star Wars, who shrank all these action figures down from 11 and a half inches to three and a half inches, and went to China and had Chinese game and toy makers make Star Wars toys, and began to earn billions and billions dollars. And so Hasbro said, let's turn GI Joe into into a team. And the team began with flint and Lady J and Scarlett and Duke and Destro and cover commander, and grew to 85 different characters, because Hasbro and the toy maker partners could create 85 different sets of toys and action figures. So I was actor in this show and had a good time, and also a purveyor of a billion dollar industry of American toys. And the good news about these toys is I was at a conference where we signed autographs the voice actors, and we have supper with fans and so on. And I was sitting next to a 30 year old kid and his parents. And this kid was so knowledgeable about pop culture and every conceivable children's show and animated show that had ever been on the screen or on television. I turned to his mother and sort of being a wise acre, said, So ma'am, how do you feel about your 30 year old still playing with GI Joe action figures? And she said, Well, he and I both teach English in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania school system, and last year, the literacy level of my ninth graders was 50% 50% of those kids could not read in ninth grade. So I asked the principal if I could borrow my son's GI Joe, action figures, comic books and VHS tapes, recordings of the shows from TV. And he said, Sure, whatever you want to try. And so she did, and she played the video tapes, and these kids were thrilled. They'd never seen a GI Joe cartoon in class before. Passed out the comic books, let him read comics. And then she said, Okay, you guys. And passed out notebooks and pens and pencils, and said, I want you guys to make up some some shows, some GI Joe shows. And so they said, Yeah, we're ready. All right, Cobra, you better get into the barber shop, because the barber bill is no longer there and the fire engines are in the way. And wait a minute, there's a dog in the street. And so they're making this up, using their imagination, doing their schoolwork, by coming up with scenarios, imaginary fam fan fiction for GI Joe and she raised the literacy level in her classroom by 50% that year, by the end of that year, so, so that was the only story that I've ever heard about the sort of the efficacy of GI Joe, other than, you know, kids play with them. Do they? Are they shooting each other all the time? I certainly hope not. I hope not. Are they using the action figures? Do they strip their guns off and put them in a little, you know, stub over by the side and and have them do physical battle with each other, or have them hump the woods, or have them climb the stairs, or have them search the trees. Who knows what kids do? Same with same with girls and and Barbies. Barbie has been a source of fun and creativity for lots of girls, and the source of of worry and bother to a lot of parents as   Michael Hingson ** 17:54 well. Well, at the same time, though, when kids start to react and relate to some of these things. It's, it's pretty cool. I mean, look what's happened with the whole Harry Potter movement and craze. Harry Potter has probably done more in the last 20 or 25 years to promote reading for kids than most anything else, and   Bill Ratner ** 18:17 that's because it's such a good series of books. I read them to my daughters, yeah. And the quality of writing. She was a brilliant writer, not only just the stories and the storytelling, which is fun to watch in the movies, and you know, it's great for a parent to read. If there are any parents listening, I don't care how old your kids are. I don't care if they're 15. Offer to read to them. The 15 year old might, of course, say mom, but anybody younger than that might say either, all right, fine, which is, which means you better do it or read, read a book. To me, sure, it's fun for the parent, fun for the kid, and it makes the child a completely different kind of thinker and worker and earner.   Michael Hingson ** 19:05 Well, also the people who they got to read the books for the recordings Stephen Fry and in the US here, Jim Dale did such an incredible job as well. I've, I've read the whole Harry Potter series more than once, because I just enjoy them, and I enjoy listening to the the voices. They do such a good job. Yeah. And of course, for me, one of the interesting stories that I know about Jim Dale reading Harry Potter was since it was published by Scholastic he was actually scheduled to do a reading from one of the Harry from the new Harry Potter book that was coming out in 2001 on September 11, he was going to be at Scholastic reading. And of course, that didn't happen because of of everything that did occur. So I don't know whether I'm. I'm assuming at some point a little bit later, he did, but still he was scheduled to be there and read. But it they are there. They've done so much to help promote reading, and a lot of those kinds of cartoons and so on. Have done some of that, which is, which is pretty good. So it's good to, you know, to see that continue to happen. Well, so you've written several books on poetry and so on, and I know that you you've mentioned more than once grief and loss. How come those words keep coming up?   Bill Ratner ** 20:40 Well, I had an unusual childhood. Again. I mentioned earlier how, what a lucky kid I was. My parents were happy, educated, good people, not abusers. You know, I don't have a I don't have horror stories to tell about my mother or my father, until my mother grew sick with breast cancer and and it took about a year and a half or two years to die when I was seven years old. The good news is, because she was a sensitive, educated social worker, as she was actually dying, she arranged a death counseling session with me and my older brother and the Unitarian minister who was also a death counselor, and whom she was seeing to talk about, you know, what it was like to be dying of breast cancer with two young kids. And at this session, which was sort of surprised me, I was second grade, came home from school. In the living room was my mother and my brother looking a little nervous, and Dr Carl storm from the Unitarian Church, and she said, you know, Dr storm from church, but he's also my therapist. And we talk about my illness and how I feel, and we talk about how much I love you boys, and talk about how I worry about Daddy. And this is what one does when one is in crisis. That was a moment that was not traumatic for me. It's a moment I recalled hundreds of times, and one that has been a guiding light through my life. My mother's death was very difficult for my older brother, who was 13 who grew up in World War Two without without my father, it was just him and my mother when he was off in the Pacific fighting in World War Two. And then I was born after the war. And the loss of a mother in a family is like the bottom dropping out of a family. But luckily, my dad met a woman he worked with a highly placed advertising executive, which was unusual for a female in the 1950s and she became our stepmother a year later, and we had some very lovely, warm family years with her extended family and our extended family and all of us together until my brother got sick, came down with kidney disease a couple of years before kidney dialysis was invented, and a couple of years before kidney transplants were done, died at 19. Had been the captain of the swimming team at our high school, but did a year in college out in California and died on Halloween of 1960 my father was 51 years old. His eldest son had died. He had lost his wife six years earlier. He was working too hard in the advertising industry, successful man and dropped out of a heart attack 14th birthday. Gosh, I found him unconscious on the floor of our master bathroom in our house. So my life changed. I My life has taught me many, many things. It's taught me how the defense system works in trauma. It's taught me the resilience of a child. It's taught me the kindness of strangers. It's taught me the sadness of loss.   Michael Hingson ** 24:09 Well, you, you seem to come through all of it pretty well. Well, thank you. A question behind that, just an observation, but, but you do seem to, you know, obviously, cope with all of it and do pretty well. So you, you've always liked to be involved in acting and so on. How did you actually end up deciding to be a voice actor?   Bill Ratner ** 24:39 Well, my dad, after he was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines for Meredith publishing, got offered a fancy job as executive vice president of the flower and mix division for Campbell within advertising and later at General Mills Corporation. From Betty Crocker brand, and would bring me to work all the time, and would sit with me, and we'd watch the wonderful old westerns that were on prime time television, rawhide and Gunsmoke and the Virginian and sure   Michael Hingson ** 25:15 and all those. Yeah, during   Bill Ratner ** 25:17 the commercials, my father would make fun of the commercials. Oh, look at that guy. And number one, son, that's lousy acting. Number two, listen to that copy. It's the dumbest ad copy I've ever seen. The jingles and and then he would say, No, that's a good commercial, right there. And he wasn't always negative. He would he was just a good critic of advertising. So at a very young age, starting, you know, when we watch television, I think the first television ever, he bought us when I was five years old, I was around one of the most educated, active, funny, animated television critics I could hope to have in my life as a 56789, 1011, 12 year old. And so when I was 12, I became one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of radio stations with my friends John Waterhouse and John Barstow and Steve gray and Bill Connors in South Minneapolis. I named my five watt night kit am transmitter after my sixth grade teacher, Bob close this is wclo stereo radio. And when I was in sixth grade, I built myself a switch box, and I had a turntable and I had an intercom, and I wired my house for sound, as did all the other boys in the in the B, O, R, S, and that's brotherhood of radio stations. And we were guests on each other's shows, and we were obsessed, and we would go to the shopping malls whenever a local DJ was making an appearance and torture him and ask him dumb questions and listen obsessively to American am radio. And at the time for am radio, not FM like today, or internet on your little radio tuner, all the big old grandma and grandpa radios, the wooden ones, were AM, for amplitude modulated. You could get stations at night, once the sun went down and the later it got, the ionosphere would lift and the am radio signals would bounce higher and farther. And in Minneapolis, at age six and seven, I was able to to listen to stations out of Mexico and Texas and Chicago, and was absolutely fascinated with with what was being put out. And I would, I would switch my brother when I was about eight years old, gave me a transistor radio, which I hid under my bed covers. And at night, would turn on and listen for, who knows, hours at a time, and just tuning the dial and tuning the dial from country to rock and roll to hit parade to news to commercials to to agric agriculture reports to cow crossings in Kansas and grain harvesting and cheese making in Wisconsin, and on and on and on that made up the great medium of radio that was handing its power and its business over to television, just as I was growing As a child. Fast, fascinating transition   Michael Hingson ** 28:18 and well, but as it was transitioning, how did that affect you?   Bill Ratner ** 28:26 It made television the romantic, exciting, dynamic medium. It made radio seem a little limited and antiquated, and although I listened for environment and wasn't able to drag a television set under my covers. Yeah, and television became memorable with with everything from actual world war two battle footage being shown because there wasn't enough programming to 1930s Warner Brothers gangster movies with James Cagney, Edward G   Michael Hingson ** 29:01 Robinson and yeah   Bill Ratner ** 29:02 to all the sitcoms, Leave It to Beaver and television cartoons and on and on and on. And the most memorable elements to me were the personalities, and some of whom were invisible. Five years old, I was watching a Kids program after school, after kindergarten. We'll be back with more funny puppets, marionettes after this message and the first words that came on from an invisible voice of this D baritone voice, this commercial message will be 60 seconds long, Chrysler Dodge for 1954 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I watched hypnotized, hypnotized as a 1953 dodge drove across the screen with a happy family of four waving out the window. And at the end of the commercial, I ran into the kitchen said, Mom, mom, I know what a minute. Is, and it was said, it had suddenly come into my brain in one of those very rare and memorable moments in a person's life where your brain actually speaks to you in its own private language and says, Here is something very new and very true, that 60 seconds is in fact a minute. When someone says, See you in five minutes, they mean five times that, five times as long as that. Chrysler commercial, five times 60. That's 300 seconds. And she said, Did you learn it that that on T in kindergarten? And I said, No, I learned it from kangaroo Bob on TV, his announcer, oh, kangaroo Bob, no, but this guy was invisible. And so at five years of age, I was aware of the existence of the practice of the sound, of the magic of the seemingly unlimited access to facts, figures, products, brand names that these voices had and would say on the air in This sort of majestic, patriarchal way,   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 and just think 20 years later, then you had James Earl Jones,   Bill Ratner ** 31:26 the great dame. James Earl Jones, father was a star on stage at that time the 1950s James Earl Jones came of age in the 60s and became Broadway and off Broadway star.   Michael Hingson ** 31:38 I got to see him in Othello. He was playing Othello. What a powerful performance. It was   Bill Ratner ** 31:43 wonderful performer. Yeah, yeah. I got to see him as Big Daddy in Canada, Hot Tin Roof, ah, live and in person, he got front row seats for me and my family.   Michael Hingson ** 31:53 Yeah, we weren't in the front row, but we saw it. We saw it on on Broadway,   Bill Ratner ** 31:58 the closest I ever got to James Earl Jones. He and I had the same voice over agent, woman named Rita vinari of southern Barth and benare company. And I came into the agency to audition for Doritos, and I hear this magnificent voice coming from behind a closed voiceover booth, saying, with a with a Spanish accent, Doritos. I thought that's James Earl Jones. Why is he saying burritos? And he came out, and he bowed to me, nodded and smiled, and I said, hello and and the agent probably in the booth and shut the door. And she said, I said, that was James Earl Jones. What a voice. What she said, Oh, he's such a nice man. And she said, but I couldn't. I was too embarrassed. I was too afraid to stop him from saying, Doritos. And it turns out he didn't get the gig. So it is some other voice actor got it because he didn't say, had he said Doritos with the agent froze it froze up. That was as close as I ever got to did you get the gig? Oh goodness no,   Michael Hingson ** 33:01 no, you didn't, huh? Oh, well, well, yeah. I mean, it was a very, it was, it was wonderful. It was James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer played Iago. Oh, goodness, oh, I know. What a what a combination. Well, so you, you did a lot of voiceover stuff. What did you do regarding radio moving forward? Or did you just go completely out of that and you were in TV? Or did you have any opportunity   Bill Ratner ** 33:33 for me to go back at age 15, my brother and father, who were big supporters of my radio. My dad would read my W, C, l, o, newsletter and need an initial, an excellent journalism son and my brother would bring his teenage friends up. He'd play the elderly brothers, man, you got an Elvis record, and I did. And you know, they were, they were big supporters for me as a 13 year old, but when I turned 14, and had lost my brother and my father, I lost my enthusiasm and put all of my radio equipment in a box intended to play with it later. Never, ever, ever did again. And when I was about 30 years old and I'd done years of acting in the theater, having a great time doing fun plays and small theaters in Minneapolis and South Dakota and and Oakland, California and San Francisco. I needed money, so I looked in the want ads and saw a job for telephone sales, and I thought, Well, I used to love the telephone. I used to make phony phone calls to people all the time. Used to call funeral homes. Hi Carson, funeral I help you. Yes, I'm calling to tell you that you have a you have a dark green slate tile. Roof, isn't that correct? Yes. Well, there's, there's a corpse on your roof. Lady for goodness sake, bring it down and we laugh and we record it and and so I thought, Well, gee, I used to have a lot of fun with the phone. And so I called the number of telephone sales and got hired to sell magazine subscriptions and dinner tickets to Union dinners and all kinds of things. And then I saw a new job at a radio station, suburban radio station out in Walnut Creek, California, a lovely Metro BART train ride. And so I got on the BART train, rode out there and walked in for the interview, and was told I was going to be selling small advertising packages on radio for the station on the phone. And so I called barber shops and beauty shops and gas stations in the area, and one guy picked up the phone and said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you on the radio right now? And I said, No, I'm just I'm in the sales room. Well, maybe you should be. And he slams the phone on me. He didn't want to talk to me anymore. It wasn't interested in buying advertising. I thought, gee. And I told somebody at the station, and they said, Well, you want to be in the radio? And he went, Yeah, I was on the radio when I was 13. And it just so happened that an older fellow was retiring from the 10am to 2pm slot. K I S King, kiss 99 and KD FM, Pittsburgh, California. And it was a beautiful music station. It was a music station. Remember, old enough will remember music that used to play in elevators that was like violin music, the Percy faith orchestra playing a Rolling Stone song here in the elevator. Yes, well, that's exactly what we played. And it would have been harder to get a job at the local rock stations because, you know, they were popular places. And so I applied for the job, and   Michael Hingson ** 37:06 could have lost your voice a lot sooner, and it would have been a lot harder if you had had to do Wolfman Jack. But that's another story.   Bill Ratner ** 37:13 Yeah, I used to listen to Wolf Man Jack. I worked in a studio in Hollywood. He became a studio. Yeah, big time.   Michael Hingson ** 37:22 Anyway, so you you got to work at the muzack station, got   Bill Ratner ** 37:27 to work at the muzack station, and I was moving to Los Angeles to go to a bigger market, to attempt to penetrate a bigger broadcast market. And one of the sales guys, a very nice guy named Ralph pizzella said, Well, when you get to La you should study with a friend of mine down to pie Troy, he teaches voiceovers. I said, What are voice overs? He said, You know that CVS Pharmacy commercial just carted up and did 75 tags, available in San Fernando, available in San Clemente, available in Los Angeles, available in Pasadena. And I said, Yeah. He said, Well, you didn't get paid any extra. You got paid your $165 a week. The guy who did that commercial for the ad agency got paid probably 300 bucks, plus extra for the tags, that's voiceovers. And I thought, why? There's an idea, what a concept. So he gave me the name and number of old friend acquaintance of his who he'd known in radio, named Don DiPietro, alias Johnny rabbit, who worked for the Dick Clark organization, had a big rock and roll station there. He'd come to LA was doing voiceovers and teaching voiceover classes in a little second story storefront out of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. So I signed up for his class, and he was an experienced guy, and he liked me, and we all had fun, and I realized I was beginning to study like an actor at 1818, who goes to New York or goes to Los Angeles or Chicago or Atlanta or St Louis to act in the big theaters, and starts acting classes and realizes, oh my goodness, these people are truly professionals. I don't know how to do what they do. And so for six years, I took voice over classes, probably 4050, nights a year, and from disc jockeys, from ex show hosts, from actors, from animated cartoon voices, and put enough time in to get a degree in neurology in medical school. And worked my way up in radio in Los Angeles and had a morning show, a lovely show with a wonderful news man named Phil Reed, and we talked about things and reviewed movies and and played a lot of music. And then I realized, wait a minute, I'm earning three times the money in voiceovers as I am on the radio, and I have to get up at 430 in the morning to be on the radio. Uh, and a wonderful guy who was Johnny Carson's staff announcer named Jack angel said, You're not still on radio, are you? And I said, Well, yeah, I'm working in the morning. And Ka big, get out of there. Man, quit. Quit. And I thought, well, how can I quit? I've always wanted to be a radio announcer. And then there was another wonderful guy on the old am station, kmpc, sweet Dick Whittington. Whittington, right? And he said at a seminar that I went to at a union voice over training class, when you wake up at four in the morning and you swing your legs over the bed and your shoes hit the floor, and you put your head in your hands, and you say to yourself, I don't want to do this anymore. That's when you quit radio. Well, that hadn't happened to me. I was just getting up early to write some comedy segments and on and on and on, and then I was driving around town all day doing auditions and rented an ex girlfriend's second bedroom so that I could nap by myself during the day, when I had an hour in and I would as I would fall asleep, I'd picture myself every single day I'm in a dark voiceover studio, a microphone Is before me, a music stand is before the microphone, and on it is a piece of paper with advertising copy on it. On the other side of the large piece of glass of the recording booth are three individuals, my employers, I begin to read, and somehow the text leaps off the page, streams into my eyes, letter for letter, word for word, into a part of my back brain that I don't understand and can't describe. It is processed in my semi conscious mind with the help of voice over training and hope and faith, and comes out my mouth, goes into the microphone, is recorded in the digital recorder, and those three men, like little monkeys, lean forward and say, Wow, how do you do that? That was my daily creative visualization. Michael, that was my daily fantasy. And I had learned that from from Dale Carnegie, and I had learned that from Olympic athletes on NBC TV in the 60s and 70s, when the announcer would say, this young man you're seeing practicing his high jump is actually standing there. He's standing stationary, and the bouncing of the head is he's actually rehearsing in his mind running and running and leaping over the seven feet two inch bar and falling into the sawdust. And now he's doing it again, and you could just barely see the man nodding his head on camera at the exact rhythm that he would be running the 25 yards toward the high bar and leaping, and he raised his head up during the imaginary lead that he was visualizing, and then he actually jumped the seven foot two inches. That's how I learned about creative visualization from NBC sports on TV.   Michael Hingson ** 43:23 Channel Four in Los Angeles. There you go. Well, so you you broke into voice over, and that's what you did.   Bill Ratner ** 43:38 That's what I did, darn it, I ain't stopping now, there's a wonderful old actor named Bill Irwin. There two Bill Irwin's one is a younger actor in his 50s or 60s, a brilliant actor from Broadway to film and TV. There's an older William Irwin. They also named Bill Irwin, who's probably in his 90s now. And I went to a premiere of a film, and he was always showing up in these films as The senile stock broker who answers the phone upside down, or the senile board member who always asks inappropriate questions. And I went up to him and I said, you know, I see you in everything, man. I'm 85 years old. Some friends and associates of mine tell me I should slow down. I only got cast in movies and TV when I was 65 I ain't slowing down. If I tried to slow down at 85 I'd have to stop That's my philosophy. My hero is the great Don Pardo, the late great   Michael Hingson ** 44:42 for Saturday Night Live and Jeopardy   Bill Ratner ** 44:45 lives starring Bill Murray, Gilder Radner, and   Michael Hingson ** 44:49 he died for Jeopardy before that,   Bill Ratner ** 44:52 yeah, died at 92 with I picture him, whether it probably not, with a microphone and. His hand in his in his soundproof booth, in his in his garage, and I believe he lived in Arizona, although the show was aired and taped in New York, New York, right where he worked for for decades as a successful announcer. So that's the story.   Michael Hingson ** 45:16 Michael. Well, you know, I miss, very frankly, some of the the the days of radio back in the 60s and 70s and so on. We had, in LA what you mentioned, Dick Whittington, Dick whittinghill on kmpc, Gary Owens, you know, so many people who were such wonderful announcers and doing some wonderful things, and radio just isn't the same anymore. It's gone. It's   Bill Ratner ** 45:47 gone to Tiktok and YouTube. And the truth is, I'm not gonna whine about Tiktok or YouTube, because some of the most creative moments on camera are being done on Tiktok and YouTube by young quote influencers who hire themselves out to advertisers, everything from lipstick. You know,   Speaker 1 ** 46:09 when I went to a party last night was just wild and but this makeup look, watch me apply this lip remover and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, I have no lip.   Bill Ratner ** 46:20 You know, these are the people with the voices. These are the new voices. And then, of course, the faces. And so I would really advise before, before people who, in fact, use the internet. If you use the internet, you can't complain if you use the internet, if you go to Facebook or Instagram, or you get collect your email or Google, this or that, which most of us do, it's handy. You can't complain about tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. You can't complain about tick tock or YouTube, because it's what the younger generation is using, and it's what the younger generation advertisers and advertising executives and creators and musicians and actors are using to parade before us, as Gary Owens did, as Marlon Brando did, as Sarah Bernhardt did in the 19 so as all as you do, Michael, you're a parader. You're the head of the parade. You've been in on your own float for years. I read your your bio. I don't even know why you want to waste a minute talking to me for goodness sakes.   Michael Hingson ** 47:26 You know, the one thing about podcasts that I like over radio, and I did radio at kuci for seven years when I was in school, what I really like about podcasts is they're not and this is also would be true for Tiktok and YouTube. Primarily Tiktok, I would would say it isn't as structured. So if we don't finish in 60 minutes, and we finish in 61 minutes, no one's gonna shoot us.   Bill Ratner ** 47:53 Well, I beg to differ with you. Now. I'm gonna start a fight with you. Michael, yeah, we need conflict in this script. Is that it The Tick Tock is very structured. Six. No,   Michael Hingson ** 48:03 no, I understand that. I'm talking about podcasts,   Bill Ratner ** 48:07 though, but there's a problem. We gotta Tone It Up. We gotta pick it up. We gotta there's a lot of and I listen to what are otherwise really bright, wonderful personalities on screen, celebrities who have podcasts and the car sucks, and then I had meatballs for dinner, haha. And you know what my wife said? Why? You know? And there's just too much of that. And,   Michael Hingson ** 48:32 oh, I understand, yeah. I mean, it's like, like anything, but I'm just saying that's one of the reasons I love podcasting. So it's my way of continuing what I used to do in radio and having a lot of fun doing it   Bill Ratner ** 48:43 all right, let me ask you. Let me ask you a technical and editorial question. Let me ask you an artistic question. An artist, can you edit this podcast? Yeah. Are you? Do you plan to Nope.   Michael Hingson ** 48:56 I think conversations are conversations, but there is a but, I mean,   Bill Ratner ** 49:01 there have been starts and stops and I answer a question, and there's a long pause, and then, yeah, we can do you edit that stuff   Michael Hingson ** 49:08 out. We do, we do, edit some of that out. And I have somebody that that that does a lot of it, because I'm doing more podcasts, and also I travel and speak, but I can edit. There's a program called Reaper, which is really a very sophisticated   Bill Ratner ** 49:26 close up spaces. You   Michael Hingson ** 49:28 can close up spaces with it, yes, but the neat thing about Reaper is that somebody has written scripts to make it incredibly accessible for blind people using screen readers.   Bill Ratner ** 49:40 What does it do? What does it do? Give me the elevator pitch.   Michael Hingson ** 49:46 You've seen some of the the programs that people use, like computer vision and other things to do editing of videos and so on. Yeah.   Bill Ratner ** 49:55 Yeah. Even Apple. Apple edit. What is it called? Apple? Garage Band. No, that's audio. What's that   Michael Hingson ** 50:03 audio? Oh,   Bill Ratner ** 50:06 quick time is quick   Michael Hingson ** 50:07 time. But whether it's video or audio, the point is that Reaper allows me to do all of that. I can edit audio. I can insert, I can remove pauses. I can do anything with Reaper that anyone else can do editing audio, because it's been made completely accessible.   Bill Ratner ** 50:27 That's great. That's good. That's nice. Oh, it is. It's cool.   Michael Hingson ** 50:31 So so if I want, I can edit this and just have my questions and then silence when you're talking.   Bill Ratner ** 50:38 That might be best. Ladies and gentlemen, here's Bill Ratner,   Michael Hingson ** 50:46 yep, exactly, exactly. Now you have won the moth stories. Slam, what? Tell me about my story. Slam, you've won it nine times.   Bill Ratner ** 51:00 The Moth was started by a writer, a novelist who had lived in the South and moved to New York City, successful novelist named George Dawes green. And the inception of the moth, which many people listening are familiar with from the Moth Radio Hour. It was, I believe, either late 90s or early 2000s when he'd been in New York for a while and was was publishing as a fiction writer, and threw a party, and decided, instead of going to one of these dumb, boring parties or the same drinks being served and same cigarettes being smoked out in the veranda and the same orders. I'm going to ask people to bring a five minute story, a personal story, nature, a true story. You don't have to have one to get into the party, but I encourage you to. And so you know, the 3040, 50 people showed up, many of whom had stories, and they had a few drinks, and they had hors d'oeuvres. And then he said, Okay, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. It's time for and then I picked names out of a hat, and person after person after person stood up in a very unusual setting, which was almost never done at parties. You How often do you see that happen? Suddenly, the room falls silent, and someone with permission being having been asked by the host to tell a personal story, some funny, some tragic, some complex, some embarrassing, some racy, some wild, some action filled. And afterward, the feedback he got from his friends was, this is the most amazing experience I've ever had in my life. And someone said, you need to do this. And he said, Well, you people left a lot of cigarette butts and beer cans around my apartment. And they said, well, let's do it at a coffee shop. Let's do it at a church basement. So slowly but surely, the moth storytelling, story slams, which were designed after the old poetry slams in the 50s and 60s, where they were judged contests like, like a dance contest. Everybody's familiar with dance contests? Well, there were, then came poetry contests with people singing and, you know, and singing and really energetically, really reading. There then came storytelling contests with people standing on a stage before a silent audience, telling a hopefully interesting, riveting story, beginning middle, end in five minutes. And so a coffee house was found. A monthly calendar was set up. Then came the internet. Then it was so popular standing room only that they had to open yet another and another, and today, some 20 years later, 20 some years later, from Austin, Texas to San Francisco, California to Minneapolis, Minnesota to New York City to Los Angeles. There are moth story slams available on online for you to schedule yourself to go live and in person at the moth.org as in the moth with wings. Friend of mine, I was in New York. He said, You can't believe it. This writer guy, a writer friend of mine who I had read, kind of an avant garde, strange, funny writer was was hosting something called the moth in New York, and we were texting each other. He said, Well, I want to go. The theme was show business. I was going to talk to my Uncle Bobby, who was the bell boy. And I Love Lucy. I'll tell a story. And I texted him that day. He said, Oh man, I'm so sorry. I had the day wrong. It's next week. Next week, I'm going to be back home. And so he said, Well, I think there's a moth in Los Angeles. So about 15 years ago, I searched it down and what? Went to a small Korean barbecue that had a tiny little stage that originally was for Korean musicians, and it was now being used for everything from stand up comedy to evenings of rock and roll to now moth storytelling once a month. And I think the theme was first time. And so I got up and told a silly story and didn't win first prize. They have judges that volunteer judges a table of three judges scoring, you like, at a swim meet or a track beat or, you know, and our gymnastics meet. So this is all sort of familiar territory for everybody, except it's storytelling and not high jumping or pull ups. And I kept going back. I was addicted to it. I would write a story and I'd memorize it, and I'd show up and try to make it four minutes and 50 seconds and try to make it sound like I was really telling a story and not reading from a script. And wish I wasn't, because I would throw the script away, and I knew the stories well enough. And then they created a radio show. And then I began to win slams and compete in the grand slams. And then I started submitting these 750 word, you know, two and a half page stories. Literary magazines got a few published and found a whole new way to spend my time and not make much   Michael Hingson ** 56:25 money. Then you went into poetry.   Bill Ratner ** 56:29 Then I got so bored with my prose writing that I took a poetry course from a wonderful guy in LA called Jack grapes, who had been an actor and a football player and come to Hollywood and did some TV, episodics and and some some episodic TV, and taught poetry. It was a poet in the schools, and I took his class of adults and got a poem published. And thought, wait a minute, these aren't even 750 words. They're like 75 words. I mean, you could write a 10,000 word poem if you want, but some people have, yeah, and it was complex, and there was so much to read and so much to learn and so much that was interesting and odd. And a daughter of a friend of mine is a poet, said, Mommy, are you going to read me one of those little word movies before I go to sleep?   Michael Hingson ** 57:23 A little word movie, word movie out of the   Bill Ratner ** 57:27 mouths of babes. Yeah, and so, so and I perform. You know, last night, I was in Orange County at a organization called ugly mug Cafe, and a bunch of us poets read from an anthology that was published, and we sold our books, and heard other young poets who were absolutely marvelous and and it's, you know, it's not for everybody, but it's one of the things I do.   Michael Hingson ** 57:54 Well, you sent me pictures of book covers, so they're going to be in the show notes. And I hope people will will go out and get them   Bill Ratner ** 58:01 cool. One of the one of the things that I did with poetry, in addition to wanting to get published and wanting to read before people, is wanting to see if there is a way. Because poetry was, was very satisfying, emotionally to me, intellectually very challenging and satisfying at times. And emotionally challenging and very satisfying at times, writing about things personal, writing about nature, writing about friends, writing about stories that I received some training from the National Association for poetry therapy. Poetry therapy is being used like art therapy, right? And have conducted some sessions and and participated in many and ended up working with eighth graders of kids who had lost someone to death in the past year of their lives. This is before covid in the public schools in Los Angeles. And so there's a lot of that kind of work that is being done by constable people, by writers, by poets, by playwrights,   Michael Hingson ** 59:09 and you became a grief counselor,   Bill Ratner ** 59:13 yes, and don't do that full time, because I do voiceovers full time, right? Write poetry and a grand. Am an active grandparent, but I do the occasional poetry session around around grief poetry.   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 So you're a grandparent, so you've had kids and all that. Yes, sir, well, that's is your wife still with us? Yes?   Bill Ratner ** 59:40 Oh, great, yeah, she's an artist and an art educator. Well, that   Michael Hingson ** 59:46 so the two of you can criticize each other's works, then, just   Bill Ratner ** 59:52 saying, we're actually pretty kind to each other. I Yeah, we have a lot of we have a lot of outside criticism. Them. So, yeah, you don't need to do it internally. We don't rely on it. What do you think of this although, although, more than occasionally, each of us will say, What do you think of this poem, honey? Or what do you think of this painting, honey? And my the favorite, favorite thing that my wife says that always thrills me and makes me very happy to be with her is, I'll come down and she's beginning a new work of a new piece of art for an exhibition somewhere. I'll say, what? Tell me about what's, what's going on with that, and she'll go, you know, I have no idea, but it'll tell me what to do.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:33 Yeah, it's, it's like a lot of authors talk about the fact that their characters write the stories right, which, which makes a lot of sense. So with all that you've done, are you writing a memoir? By any chance, I   Bill Ratner ** 1:00:46 am writing a memoir, and writing has been interesting. I've been doing it for many years. I got it was my graduate thesis from University of California Riverside Palm Desert.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:57 My wife was a UC Riverside graduate. Oh, hi. Well, they   Bill Ratner ** 1:01:01 have a low residency program where you go for 10 days in January, 10 days in June. The rest of it's online, which a lot of universities are doing, low residency programs for people who work and I got an MFA in creative writing nonfiction, had a book called parenting for the digital age, the truth about media's effect on children. And was halfway through it, the publisher liked it, but they said you got to double the length. So I went back to school to try to figure out how to double the length. And was was able to do it, and decided to move on to personal memoir and personal storytelling, such as goes on at the moth but a little more personal than that. Some of the material that I was reading in the memoir section of a bookstore was very, very personal and was very helpful to read about people who've gone through particular issues in their childhood. Mine not being physical abuse or sexual abuse, mine being death and loss, which is different. And so that became a focus of my graduate thesis, and many people were urging me to write a memoir. Someone said, you need to do a one man show. So I entered the Hollywood fringe and did a one man show and got good reviews and had a good time and did another one man show the next year and and so on. So But writing memoir as anybody knows, and they're probably listeners who are either taking memoir courses online or who may be actively writing memoirs or short memoir pieces, as everybody knows it, can put you through moods from absolutely ecstatic, oh my gosh, I got this done. I got this story told, and someone liked it, to oh my gosh, I'm so depressed I don't understand why. Oh, wait a minute, I was writing about such and such today. Yeah. So that's the challenge for the memoir is for the personal storyteller, it's also, you know, and it's more of a challenge than it is for the reader, unless it's bad writing and the reader can't stand that. For me as a reader, I'm fascinated by people's difficult stories, if they're well   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:24 told well, I know that when in 2002 I was advised to write a book about the World Trade Center experiences and all, and it took eight years to kind of pull it all together. And then I met a woman who actually I collaborated with, Susie Florey, and we wrote thunder dog. And her agent became my agent, who loved the proposal that we sent and actually got a contract within a week. So thunder dog came out in 2011 was a New York Times bestseller, and very blessed by that, and we're working toward the day that it will become a movie still, but it'll happen. And then I wrote a children's version of it, well, not a children's version of the book, but a children's book about me growing up in Roselle, growing up the guide dog who was with me in the World Trade Center, and that's been on Amazon. We self published it. Then last year, we published a new book called Live like a guide dog, which is all about controlling fear and teaching people lessons that I learned prior to September 11. That helped me focus and remain calm.   Bill Ratner ** 1:04:23 What happened to you on September 11,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:27 I was in the World Trade Center. I worked on the 78th floor of Tower One.   Bill Ratner ** 1:04:32 And what happened? I mean, what happened to you?   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:36 Um, nothing that day. I mean, well, I got out. How did you get out? Down the stairs? That was the only way to go. So, so the real story is not doing it, but why it worked. And the real issue is that I spent a lot of time when I first went into the World Trade Center, learning all I could about what to do in an emergency, talking to police, port authorities. Security people, emergency preparedness people, and also just walking around the world trade center and learning the whole place, because I ran an office for a company, and I wasn't going to rely on someone else to, like, lead me around if we're going to go to lunch somewhere and take people out before we negotiated contracts. So I needed to know all of that, and I learned all I could, also realizing that if there ever was an emergency, I might be the only one in the office, or we might be in an area where people couldn't read the signs to know what to do anyway. And so I had to take the responsibility of learning all that, which I did. And then when the planes hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, we get we had some guests in the office. Got them out, and then another colleague, who was in from our corporate office, and I and my guide dog, Roselle, went to the stairs, and we started down. And   Bill Ratner ** 1:05:54 so, so what floor did the plane strike?   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:58 It struck and the NOR and the North Tower, between floors 93 and 99 so I just say 96 okay, and you were 20 floors down, 78 floors 78 so we were 18 floors below, and   Bill Ratner ** 1:06:09 at the moment of impact, what did you think?   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:13 Had no idea we heard a muffled kind of explosion, because the plane hit on the other side of the building, 18 floors above us. There was no way to know what was going on. Did you feel? Did you feel? Oh, the building literally tipped, probably about 20 feet. It kept tipping. And then we actually said goodbye to each other, and then the building came back upright. And then we went,   Bill Ratner ** 1:06:34 really you so you thought you were going to die?   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:38 David, my colleague who was with me, as I said, he was from our California office, and he was there to help with some seminars we were going to be doing. We actually were saying goodbye to each other because we thought we were about to take a 78 floor plunge to the street, when the building stopped tipping and it came back. Designed to do that by the architect. It was designed to do that, which is the point, the point.   Bill Ratner ** 1:07:02 Goodness, gracious. And then did you know how to get to the stairway?   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:04 Oh, absolutely. And did you do it with your friend? Yeah, the first thing we did, the first thing we did is I got him to get we had some guests, and I said, get him to the stairs. Don't let him take the elevators, because I knew he had seen fire above us, but that's all we knew. And but I said, don't take the elevators. Don't let them take elevators. Get them to the stairs and then come back and we'll leave. So he did all that, and then he came back, and we went to the stairs and started down.   Bill Ratner ** 1:07:33 Wow. Could you smell anything?   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:36 We smelled burning jet fuel fumes on the way down. And that's how we figured out an airplane must have hit the building, but we had no idea what happened. We didn't know what happened until the until both towers had collapsed, and I actually talked to my wife, and she's the one who told us how to aircraft have been crashed into the towers, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth, at that time, was still missing over Pennsylvania. Wow. So you'll have to go pick up a copy of thunder dog. Goodness. Good. Thunder dog. The name of the book is Thunder dog, and the book I wrote last year is called Live like a guide dog. It's le

If you love great storytelling, you'll connect with this conversation. I sit down with Walden Hughes, a man whose Unstoppable passion has kept Old Time Radio alive for decades. As the voice behind YESTERDAY USA and a driving force with REPS, Walden has dedicated his life to preserving the art, sound, and soul of classic radio. We talk about what made those early shows so timeless, the craft of the actors, the power of imagination, and how simple audio could create entire worlds. Walden also shares how modern technology, archives, and community support are bringing these programs to new audiences. This conversation is about more than nostalgia. It's about keeping storytelling alive. Walden reminds us that great radio never fades and that imagination will always be Unstoppable. Highlights: 00:10 – Discover why Old Time Radio still captures the imagination of listeners today. 01:19 – Hear how the end of an era shaped the way we think about storytelling. 02:32 – Learn what made the performances and production of classic radio so unique. 04:25 – Explore how legendary shows left a lasting influence on modern audio. 05:16 – Gain insight into what separates timeless audio drama from today's versions. 08:32 – Find out how passion and purpose can turn nostalgia into something new. 12:15 – Uncover the community that keeps classic radio alive for new generations. 16:20 – See how creativity and teamwork sustain live radio productions. 24:48 – Learn how dedication and innovation keep 24/7 classic broadcasts running. 33:57 – Understand how listener support helps preserve the magic of radio history. 37:38 – Reflect on why live storytelling still holds a special kind of energy. 41:35 – Hear how new technology is shaping the future of audio storytelling. 46:26 – Discover how preservation groups bring lost performances back to life. 50:29 – Explore the process of restoring and protecting rare audio archives. 55:31 – Learn why authenticity and care matter in preserving sound for the future.     About the Guest: From a young age, Walden Hughes developed a lifelong love for radio and history. Appearing in documentaries on “Beep Baseball,” he went on to collect more than 50,000 old-time radio shows and produce hundreds of live nostalgic broadcasts. His work celebrates radio's golden era through events, celebrity interviews, and re-creations performed nationwide. His deep family roots reach back to early American history — from a Mayflower ancestor to relatives who served in major U.S. wars — shaping his respect for storytelling and legacy. With degrees in economics, political science, and an MBA in finance, he built a successful career in investments before turning his passion into purpose. As general manager and producer for Yesterday USA and longtime board member of SPERDVAC, he's preserved classic entertainment for future generations. Honored with awards like the Herb Ellis and Dick Beals Awards, he continues to consult for icons like Kitty Kallen and the Sinatra family, keeping the voices of radios past alive for audiences today.   Ways to connect with Walden:   Cell:  714/454-3281 Email:  waldenhughes@yesterdayusa.com or www.yesterdayusa.com Live shows are Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights beginning at 7:30 PDT.     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 subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   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 ** 01:20 Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Wherever you are listening from, we're really glad you're here, and we are going to have a guest who we've had on before we get to have him on again, and we're going to grill him really good. I want you to remember that a few weeks ago, we talked to Walden Hughes. And Walden is a collector of old radio shows. He's been very involved with organizations that help promote the hobby of old radio shows, and old rate Old Time Radio, as I do, and I thought it would be kind of fun to have him back, because there are a number of events coming up that I think are very relevant to talk about, and so we're going to do that. So Walden, welcome back to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Michael, been such a long time, and glad you invited me back. Well, I know it's been so long well, so tell me, let's, let's go back again. You know, radio people talk about the golden days of radio, or the time of old radio. When do we think that? When do we say that officially ended, although I think it went beyond   Walden Hughes ** 02:29 it. I though I jumped 30th, 1962, I'm, yeah, I I think the style changed a little bit, I'm probably a romantic somewhat. I love the style of old time radio. I love how it sound. Yeah, I think in in the 3040s and 50s, the studios and the theater that they use sounded great for radio, and it disturbed me, and I bet you have the same feeling, Michael, that when you get new production and new the new studio, it just doesn't sound right. I feel the equilibrium is not quite the way. I love old time radio. I think Old Time Radio A prime web. I think a lot of new productions out there that, you know, release their podcasts and things on a weekly basis. I think they're handicapped. They just don't have the budget to really create and build a studio the way I think it should be, that if they have, it sound just natural and just right.   Michael Hingson ** 03:43 And I think that's part of it, but I think the other part of it is that people today don't seem to know how to act and create the same kind of environment with their voice that Old Time Radio actors did in the 30s, 40s and 50s and into into the early 60s, even we had Carl Amari on several weeks ago. And of course, one of the things that Carl did was, did complete recreations of all of the Twilight Zone shows. And even some of those are, are they sound sort of forced? Some of the actors sound forced, and they they haven't really learned how to sound natural in radio like some of the older actors do.   Walden Hughes ** 04:34 Yeah, and I know Bob we call did it for a bike I get thrown off when he generally way. Did have the highway stars remote end, and he had a Stock Company of Chicago after, and I could hear the equilibrium just not quite right. That bothers me. I don't know if the average person picks up on that, and you're right. I don't know if. Is it the style of acting that they teach in film and TV? It needs a radio acting different in a lot of ways, and you got it as you point. It's got to be realistic into the environment. And actors don't get that for radio,   Michael Hingson ** 05:25 yeah, and you talked about the last day for you of real radio was September 30, 1962 and we should probably explain why that is   Walden Hughes ** 05:36 diet throughout the CBS your Troy John and suspense as the two main keys of old time radio. And that was the last day of old time radio out of New York. And I hardcore Lacher sister. Think that's one radio Shane died per se   Michael Hingson ** 05:58 Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel were gone, right,   Walden Hughes ** 06:01 and the soap operas ended in November 2560 I like soap operas. I know a lot of people do not, but there's something can't there's something campy about it that I like. I would, I would like, I prefer to listen to somebody also proper than do some of the new production and make sure the acting style,   Michael Hingson ** 06:27 but I think there's a lot to do with it that that makes that the case. And I think you're absolutely right that so many things are different, but at the same time, radio did sort of continue. And there was, there were some good shows zero hour, the Hollywood radio theater that Rod Serling did later. And of course, NPR did Star Wars.   Walden Hughes ** 06:58 And I like that I did.   Michael Hingson ** 07:02 Yeah, I think that was done pretty well. And what do you think of CBS mystery theater? Honestly, CBS mystery theater, I thought that generally, CBS mystery theater had some good actors, and they did a pretty good job. I I can't complain too much about that, and it was on for a long time.   Walden Hughes ** 07:18 But what do you think of the script, though?   Michael Hingson ** 07:22 Well, part of the problem for me and CBS mystery theater is, and I'm sure it was a cost issue. There weren't very many people in most of the scripts. There was like two or three or so and and that was a problem. But I think that that the scripts suffered because there weren't more people in the scripts to really make it again sound pretty natural. I think that was a problem.   Walden Hughes ** 07:52 Yeah, Hyman Brown really knew how to crank it out. I think it has a good, solid B production, you know, the scripts. And I think the scripts are quite hampered. You couldn't, actually couldn't knock the actors. I thought the actors were Mercedes McCambridge and all those were terrific actors, but you're right. Sam dam wrote a lot of them, yeah, and things like that. But I   Michael Hingson ** 08:21 think, I think they would have been nicer to have more people in the scripts. But I understand that, that that probably was more difficult to do just because of union and scale and the cost. But gee, I think it would have made a big difference in the shows. But Hyman Brown really knew, as you said, How to crank them   Walden Hughes ** 08:39 out. Yeah, that's why, in some ways, I think the series, radio theater, the way 70 is a it's a terrific series. Didn't have the financial backing to make it last longer than the two years I was   Michael Hingson ** 08:52 on. Now, one show I really liked on in PR later was alien world, which I thought was good. I'd never heard any of them, so they were good, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm very happy with alien worlds. There were some actors from radio and in early television and so on. Hans con read, for example, was on some, yeah, I thought alien worlds went really well. I guess we're gonna have to get you some and get you to lose, Okay, interesting.   Walden Hughes ** 09:21 I just got done taking a eight week course on entrepreneurship for disabled people, and my idea is to pitch that we should be doing audio theater as a podcast. I think if it's big enough, it attracts national sponsors. And if you look at the numbers, everybody podcasting, 135 million people in the USA download a podcast once a week. Revenue, $2.46 billion yeah. Worldwide, 5 billion people download a podcast once a week. Revenue, three. $4 billion and so she had a well known he had a podcast with well known stars. I think she could get that 1% in that market, and then you can generate between the 24 to 40 million, $40 million in revenue a year. That would easily sure be a good financial model, and that's what I'm pitching. But when I went to the court, they asked me what to analyze, what's wrong with my what obstacles I have. And one of the things I put down is besides the studio we talked about and the acting, which a really good actor, actress, everybody, like a Beverly Washburn can pick up a script and knock it out of the park right away. Most actors are not able to do that. That's a real gift, as Michael was pointing out. But the other thing most scripts are written for film and TV, which is a verbal which is a eye medium, and a radio script is written for the ear, and I have produced enough the ear is faster than the eye. If you take like a TV script and a book and read it out loud, the mind wander. It has to have a faster pace for the ear. And I don't think more people notice that when they're analyzing a script,   Michael Hingson ** 11:31 yeah, but you you're sort of treading around the edges of something else. I think that is fascinating, that we can start to talk about one of the things that has occurred some over the past few years, and whether it be with a podcast or even just with the mechanisms we're using today, is there are some attempts to recreate some of the old radio shows and and you and I have both Well, we Have to get you acting in one of those shows, Walden. But I have, I've acted in the shows Walden works behind the scenes, and there are a number of people who have been involved with him. And you really can tell some of the good actors who performed in old radio as you said, Beverly Washburn, Carolyn Grimes and others. Carolyn, of course, is Zuzu from It's A Wonderful Life, and by the way, she's going to be coming on unstoppable mindset in the not too distant future. But, but the point is that you can tell those people because they've done it, and they're very comfortable with it, and they know how to make it come across really well. So for example, you're the president of the radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound. Now you're down here in Southern California. How did you work out being the president of reps?   Walden Hughes ** 13:01 Why my closest friends a hobby, Brian Haygood, and Brian's been one of the big movers and shakers of reps over the years. And when the founder, Mike Sprague, decided to step down, they were looking for new people to run showcase back in 2007 so Brian asked me, because I'm the one that has the contacts, you know, I'm the one booking guests for y USA rep, I'm sure the go to person with contacts and phone numbers, everybody. And so I just wound up doing the CO produced showcase back in 2007 with Brian. So that's been one of the things I wound up doing.   13:50 I produce   Walden Hughes ** 13:52 almost 30 923, or four days events of All Time Radio around the country. So tell us about showcase, showcase. It will be September 18, 19/20, 21st is a big event for us, for reps, and we got funding thanks to Ford culture and the state of Washington to do this. And it's free. You can go to reps online.org, and RSVP and come. And people that you get to see this time around are Beverly Washburn from Star Trek, when the bear ministry shows, yeah, when, when the bear man a good, solid voice actress, and also is a coach. Carolyn Grimes, as you mentioned, Margaret O'Brien, of course, you know Margaret from Oscar war winner from meet me in St Louis, Gigi Perot, and she goes back to the 40s and 50s. And did the belly hunting TV show, Tommy cook and Lacher Riley, a radio show. Ivan Kirk. Troy. Bobby Benson. Bill Owen, who you had on ABC TV announcer, author of The Big broadcast, Ron cocking. He and his great wife, Gloria Macmillan ran acting school for children.   Michael Hingson ** 15:15 Bill Ratner Miller, of course, is famous for radio.   Walden Hughes ** 15:18 Right arm is Brooks. Bill Ratner from GI Joe. Bill Johnson, who does Bob Hope around the country. John provoke to Timmy Lacher. Chuck Daugherty, the announcer for second announcer for Sergeant president of the Yukon King and discover the Beach Boys. David Osman from fire sign theater. Phil prosper from fire sign theater. John Iman, who was from the TV show Lacher. And there was Larry Albert and John Jensen, the big band Lacher. John Laurie gasping, and Dan Murphy used to be the program director ki Xi out in Seattle. And so that's gonna be a great weekend. We'll produce close to it, I think, 1819 radio recreation that's still negotiating. And we have several interviews and panel. It's all free. So you can go to repsonline.org, and that's one of our two major events, the other major events at the Christmas show in December, the first week in December. I'm hoping Mike can make it up that   Michael Hingson ** 16:31 weekend, I was hoping to be able to come to the Showcase. And one of my favorite shows, and Walden and I had talked about doing it, is Richard diamond private detective. And I actually asked to be cast as Richard diamond, but then a speaking engagement came up. So unfortunately, rather than being in Washington, I am going to be in Minnesota, I'm sorry, in Pennsylvania, speaking. So I won't be able to be there, but we'll do Richard diamond. That's gonna be a fun show one of these days. We'll do it.   Walden Hughes ** 17:06 We'll put we put it aside. So when Mike can can do it, we can do it so but no, really blessed to have the financial grants to keep audio theater live on a nonprofit basis, and that that that's a great board, and cannot every group's had that financial abilities right now to do that, and it's so expensive around the country to do it, terms of airfare, hotel commitments and Just meeting room costs, I mean, for people who may or may not know, when you go to a hotel a live event now, a lot of hotels expect that that meeting room needs to generate at least $10,000 of income per day. That that's a lot of money. And so we have a place that doesn't, that doesn't do that, and we're able to produce that. And so rep definitely focus on the live, live audio theater part, and also has a large library, like 33,000 shows I heard where we have so people can download, and we're also aggressively buying discs and things to add to the library. And I remember spur back I part of and I'll tell you some of the latest news and that when we talk to that topic, but it's just old time radio is in really good   Michael Hingson ** 18:41 shape at the moment. You mentioned Larry Albert, and most people won't know, but Larry Albert's been in radio for what, 40 years, and has played Detective Harry Niles that whole time, and he's also Dr Watson on Sherlock Holmes again, there are some really good professionals out there, which is cool, yeah, yeah, who understand and know how to talk in a way that really draws people in, which is what it's all about,   Walden Hughes ** 19:15 absolutely. And considering Larry and a co founder, they run all vacations, sure, the after of imagination theater. Sure they carry the banner up in Seattle, and it's pretty amazing what they're able to produce.   Michael Hingson ** 19:32 Yeah. Now, in addition to the Showcase and the Christmas show that reps is going to be doing, reps also does some other shows, don't they, during the year for like veterans and others up in the Seattle area, Tulsa, right?   Walden Hughes ** 19:46 We I thought that idea down here at spur back in 2017 the Long Beach Veterans Hospital, they still have the original theme. Leader, Mike, that Jack Benny and Bob Hope did their shows in front of the Vets at Long Beach. And I know you and I have radio shows from the Long Beach Veterans Hospital. Yes, and the stage is still there. It's the biggest stage I've ever seen. Mike, the seating area is mobile, so that way they can bring patients in who are wheelchairs or whatever, or in bed. They still have the 1940 film projectors and booth up above that they want to run movies in there, and it's just a remarkable feeling to be on stage that Bob Hope and and Jack Bailey did a show, and then the famous broadcast were Ralph Edward consequences, yeah, the Hubert Smith, who was A patient at the hospital and and so in 2017 we did. It's a Wonderful Life. And we had a gigantic crowd. I think it was almost 200 people came to that. And I was for the public and people inside the hospital. And it was, it was a exciting event to have deluxe version of It's a Wonderful Life, which was the 70th anniversary of the broadcast, right? And so I decided to take that concept and take up to Seattle and start performing shows inside the VA hospital system in Seattle. It took a while. It's hard, it's hard to get into the VA, VA system to put on shows, because you got to talk to the right people, and you gotta get a hold of PR and not always easy. So I found the right contacts, and then the state awards, and then has a grant for for veterans or veteran family member to be in shows, and so we're able to get some funding from the state for that so, and then we will also encourage them to come to showcase in September so. But no, that's that's another program we got going for that,   Michael Hingson ** 22:20 someone who I unfortunately never did get to meet, although I heard a lot of his shows, and he helped continue to bring memories of radio to especially the military. Was Frank brazzi, who was around for quite a while, and then he he was also on yesterday USA, a lot. Wasn't he sure where he's   Walden Hughes ** 22:46 from, from 1993 until 2018 so he had a good 25 year run on why USA, Frank and I co host the Friday night show for many years, until he passed away in 2018 show from 2000 to 2018 Frank was amazing guy. He was. He owned his own radio station in South Carolina, South Carolina Island. When he was 19, he had to form the first tape course in Hollywood show Bob Hope would hire him, and he would record all Bob stuff at Paramount Studio and sit to radio station and travel with Bob to record his radio Show. He also was Jim Hawthorne producer for television, Frank wound up developing board games a pass out sold 6 million copies in the new wedding the dating game. He had a company that got gift for game shows on television. He also set up a brother in a company to monitor when commercials were run on TV. Frank also produced record albums every day. He had Walter Winchell record the life of Alex joelson. Met with Jimmy Durante, had Jimmy Durante do an album, Eddie Cantor and so frank is one of these great entrepreneurs that was able to make a lot of money and spend a lot of it on his love for radio. He was the substitute for little beaver, for example, on Red Rider so and he loved doing the show the golden days of radio, which started in 1949 and from 1967 on, it was part of the Armed Forces Radio Service, which was put on 400 stations. And I'm the, I'm the care caregiver, caretaker of. All that items. So I have all the shows and getting them transferred and play them on y USA and Frank wanted to make sure his entire collection was available to collectors. So we want to make sure things were copied and things like that for people to enjoy. But no big part of old time radio, in a lot of ways, not behind the scene a little bit. You know, wasn't a big name person during the golden days of radio, but afterwards, wound up being a major person that carried the fire Troy, full time radio.   Michael Hingson ** 25:35 I know we talked about a little bit, but talk to us about yesterday, USA, that has been around quite a while, and in general, for those who don't know, yesterday, USA is an internet radio station, actually two, if you will. There's a red and a blue network of yesterday USA, and they both stations broadcast to old radio 24 hours a day, although conversations and up to date conversations are interspersed, it still primarily is a a vehicle for playing old radio shows, right?   Walden Hughes ** 26:13 Yeah, been around since 1983 founded by its start. Yeah. Founded by Bill Bragg, Bill started the largest communication museum in the world back in 1979 in Dallas, Texas, and he had a film exchanger. And there was a TV station called a nostalgia channel, and it had these films of old TV shows, but they didn't have the media to transfer it, and so they contacted Bill. Bill agreed to transfer the film. He asked what it is exchanged for him. They said, we can give you an audio channel on satellite. And they gave that to him. And so he tried to decide what to do. So he started a broadcast Old Time Radio over satellite, and he was over the big C span satellite   Speaker 1 ** 27:12 until Oh into the 2005   Walden Hughes ** 27:16 era or so. Wound up being the audio shop carrier for WGN got it high in 2000 at the third most popular internet broadcast site in the world, behind the BBC and CNN around the Lacher saw around 44 that's not too bad, with 15,000 stations online.   Michael Hingson ** 27:41 I remember, I remember it was probably like 1998 or so, maybe 97 we were living in New Jersey, and I was doing something on my computer. And I don't even remember how I discovered it, but suddenly I found yesterday, USA, and at that time, yesterday, USA was one channel, and people could become DJs, if you will, and play old radio shows. You could have an hour and a half slot. And every other week you updated your broadcast, and they put on your shows at different times during the the two week period. But it was a wave that, again, a lot of people got an opportunity to listen to radio, and I'm sure it was very popular.   Walden Hughes ** 28:32 Yeah, yeah, if they'll to Lacher show, we don't, we don't get 40,000 to 60,000 listening hours a month, with it a lot, because a lot, maybe some people might listen to seven minutes, some might people listen to a half hour and all that accumulative, it's almost 60,000 hours a month. So that's a lot of hours that people are accessing in it, there's something nice about being alive. I don't know what you think Mike, but doing something live is pretty special, and that's, that's the nice thing about what yesterday USA can provide, and we can talk, take calls, and then, you know, in the old days, you have more and more people talk about Old Time Radio. No doubting, but a lot of new people don't have those memories, so we we might do some other things to keep it interesting for people to talk about, but it's still the heart and soul. Is still old time radio in a lot of ways, and we're definitely the fiber, I think for new people to find old time radio.   29:43 How did you get involved with it?   Walden Hughes ** 29:47 I became aware of it in the early 80s when sperback mentioned it in the news trailer, so I knew it's out there. And I called, and Bill returned my call. I said, I would like my cable TV. A company to play it, and I contacted my cable TV. They couldn't get to that channel that was on the satellite, so they put big band music on those dead on the community board. And so at the same time as you about 1998 I had a good enough computer with a good enough sound card I could pick up yesterday, USA. I was aware of it. It started on the internet in 1996 I started to listen, and then I would sort of call in around 2000 they would ask a question Bill and Mike and not really know the answer, so I will quickly call and give the answer, then leave. Eventually, they realized that I knew kitty Cowan, the big band, singer of the 40s and 50s. They asked me to bring on and do the interview, which we did September 17 of 2000 and then they asked, Could I do interviews on a regular basis? And so when a kiddie friend who I knew, Tess Russell, who was Gene Autry's Girl Friday, who ran kmpc for the audience, that was the station with the stars down the road, easy listening music,   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 golden broadcasting, and that was the station Gene Autry owned, yep.   Walden Hughes ** 31:26 And I think everybody in the music business but the old touch rush all favor. So she she hooked up, she signed up. She gave me set book 17 guests for me, right away from Joe staff or the Troy Martin to Pat Boone Patti Page, who wrote them all out. So I had a major start, and then I started to contact people via letters, celebrities and things. And I think it's a really good batting average. Mike, I had a success rate of 20% Wow. Wish it was a person that didn't I had no contact with that I could turn into a guess. I always thought I was a pretty good batting average. Yeah, and I got Margaret Truman that way. I mean, she called me, said, Wong, I forgot I did this radio show with Jimmy Stewart. She did jackpot, you know, the screen director of Playhouse. And we talked about her time on The Big Show with Tallulah Bankhead. They said, a big help with Fred Allen to her. She we talked about she hosted a show, NBC show called weekday with what the weekday version of monitor was, Mike Wallace. And she talks about how Mike had a terrible temper, and if he got upset with the engineer, she has to grab his jacket and pull him back in his chair just to try to cool them off. And so we had a great time with Margaret O'Brien, Margaret Truman, but, but I always thought that would a pretty good bat Navy getting 20% and in those days, in early 2000 a lot of celebrities would be were willing to interact with the through the website, with you, and so I did that. So I booked hundreds of celebrity interviews over the years, and so it's been a, I think, an important part what I do is trying to preserve people's memories, right that way we have the recordings.   Michael Hingson ** 33:43 And so how long was Bill with yesterday, USA.   Walden Hughes ** 33:49 I passed away in 2019 so Bill from 83 to 2019, to us, 10 years or so of his wife, though he had   Michael Hingson ** 34:05 Alzheimer's and dementia, and so you could tell he was he was sounding older, yeah, and   Walden Hughes ** 34:11 he wasn't behind the scene. He was really erratic in a lot of ways. So Kim, Kim and I wound up his wife, and I wound up running the station for the last 10 years, behind the scene, okay, Bill wasn't able to do it, and so I would be the one handling the interaction with the public and handling the just jockeys, and Kim would do the automation system and do the paperwork. So she and I pretty much ran the station.   34:43 And now you do   Walden Hughes ** 34:45 it, I do it, yeah, and so I think Bill always had in mind that I'd be the one running the station in a lot of ways. And think to the listeners, we've been able to pay the bills enough to keep it. Going, I would love to generate more income for it.   Michael Hingson ** 35:03 Well, tell us about that. How are you doing the income generation? And so most of it is through   Walden Hughes ** 35:09 a live auction that we have in November this year, will be on Saturday, November 22 and people donate gift cards or items, and people bid on it, or people donate, and that money we basically use to help pay the monthly bills, which are power bills and phone bills and things like that, and so, which is a remarkable thing. Not every internet radio station has a big enough fan base to cover the cost, and so all the internet stations you see out there, everybody, the owners, sort of really have to pull money out of their own pocket. But why USA been around long enough, it has enough loyal following that our listenership really kicks in. I mean, we built a brand new studio here with the with the audience donating the funds, which is pretty remarkable. You know, to do that,   Michael Hingson ** 36:16 yeah, you got the new board in, and it's working and all that. And that's, a good thing. It really is. Well, I have been a listener since I discovered y USA. When we moved out to California for a while, I wasn't quite as active of a listener, but I still worked at it as I could. But then we moved down here, and then after Karen passed, was easier to get a lot more directly involved. And so I know I contribute to the auction every year, and I'm gonna do it again this year.   Walden Hughes ** 36:49 So would you, when you were after what you knew, why you said, Did you did you come with your question still quite a bit when you were working and traveling all the time over the years.   Michael Hingson ** 37:01 Oh, yeah, yeah, oh, I did a lot of times, and still, do I listen to some internet radio stations? Why USA among them when I travel, just because when I go to a new hotel, sometimes I can make the TV work, and sometimes I can't, but also sometimes finding the stations that I want to listen to is a little bit more of a challenge, whereas I can just use my my smartphone, my iPhone, and I've got a number of stations programmed in the only time I have had A little bit of a challenge with some of that is when I travel outside the US, sometimes I can't get direct access to some of the stations because of copyright laws. They don't they don't allow them to be broadcast out of the US, but mostly even there, I'm able to do it. But I do like to listen to old radio when I travel, typically, not on an airplane, but when I when I land, yes, yeah.   Walden Hughes ** 38:08 I think that's one thing that they ended up taking over. I think a lot of people grew up listening to the radio. Enjoy the uniqueness of radio station had. I don't know if you see that today, but I think the internet have replaced that.   Michael Hingson ** 38:24 Well, somewhat, I've seen some articles that basically say that there is a lot more shortwave listening and actual radio listening to radio stations than there is through the internet, but there is an awful lot of listening to the radio stations through the internet as well, but people do still like to listen to radio.   Walden Hughes ** 38:50 What do you think podcast? How you think podcasts fit in? I mean, you'd be hosting your own show. How you think that fit into the overall consumer questioning habit?   Michael Hingson ** 38:59 Well, I think then, what's going on with podcasts is that, like with anything, there are some really good ones. There are a lot of people who just do do something, and it's not necessarily really great quality. They think they're doing great, and they maybe are, but, but I think that overall, podcasting is something that people listen to when they're running, when they're walking, when they're doing exercising, when they're doing something else, running on a treadmill or whatever, a lot More than listening to a radio program that probably requires a little bit more concentration. But make no mistake about it, podcasts are here to stay, and podcasts are very dominant in in a lot of ways, because people do listen to them   Walden Hughes ** 39:56 a niche audience. So you find you find your audience who. Are looking for that particular topic, and so they tune into that their favorite podcast that they knew there really might be covering that topic.   Michael Hingson ** 40:07 Sure, there is some of that. But going back to what you were talking about earlier, if you get some good audio drama, and I know that there are some good podcasts out there that that do some things with good drama, that will draw in a wider audience, and that gets to be more like radio and and I think people like radio. People like what they used to listen to, kids so much today, don't but, well, they never heard old they never heard radio. But by the same token, good acting and good drama and good podcasts will draw people in just like it always has been with radio.   Walden Hughes ** 40:54 What I'm also noticing like the day the disc jockeys are, they somewhat gone. I mean, we grew up in an era where you had well known hosts that were terrific Dick jockey that kept you entertained. And I make it, I don't listen to too much because, for example, everybody the easy listening big band era, pretty much not in LA in the La radio market right now, right and I missed it.   Michael Hingson ** 41:23 I miss it too. And I agree with you, I think that we're not seeing the level of really good radio hosts that we used to there are some on podcasts. But again, it is different than it used to be. And I think some podcasts will continue to do well and and we will see how others go as as time passes, but I think that we don't see a Gary Owens on television on radio anymore. We don't see Jim Lang or Dick Whittington and whitting Hill and all those people, we don't see any of that like we used to. And so even Sirius XM isn't providing as much of that as as it used to.   Walden Hughes ** 42:20 And so what do you think AI is going to fit? I was listening to, I'm a sport fan, and Mike is a sport fan, so I like listening to ESPN and Fox Sports Radio.   Michael Hingson ** 42:32 And I was listening to a discussion over the weekend that they are, they are working some of the immediate it to replace the play by play announcer they're working with. Ai, can I figure eventually that can be a caution. It to do away with all announcers. I'm not sure that's going to happen, because I don't know. It doesn't seem like it could. I'm not sure that that will happen. I think that even if you look at the discussions about audible and other organizations providing AI voices to read books, what people say, and I'm sure over time, this will change a little bit, but and I'll get back to the button in a moment, people Say, I would much rather have a human narrated book than an AI narrated book, and the reason is, is because AI hasn't captured the human voice. Yet you may have somebody who sounds like an individual person to a degree, but you don't have the same pauses, the same intonations, the same kind of thing with AI that you do with humans. Now, will that get better over time? Sure, it will. But will it get it to be as good as humans? I think that's got a long way to go yet, and I don't think that you're going to see AI really replacing people in that regard. I think AI's got a lot that it can do, but I actually had somebody on the podcast last year, and one of the things that he said is, AI will never replace anyone. People will replace people with AI, maybe, although that may or may not be a good thing, but nobody has to be replaced because of AI, because you can always give them other jobs to do. So for example, one of the discussions that this gentleman and I had were was about having AI when you have autonomous vehicles and you have trucks that can drive themselves, and so you can ship things from place to place, keep the driver in the truck anyway. And instead of the driver driving the vehicle, the driver can be given other tasks to do, so that you still keep that person busy. And you you become more efficient. And so you let i. I do the things that it can do, but there are just so many things that AI isn't going to do that I don't think that AI is ever going to replace humans. The whole point is that we make leaps that AI is not going to be able to do.   Walden Hughes ** 45:15 Yeah, I think a good example in the audio book field, a really great reader can give you emotion and play the characters and make it realistic. And I don't know AI ever going to reach that point to bring emotions and feelings into a reading of story   Michael Hingson ** 45:32 not the same way. And as I said, I've been involved or listened and watched discussions where people say, for example, I might use AI to read a non fiction book because I'm not really paying so much attention to the reader and I'm just getting the information. But when it comes to reading a fiction book, and when it comes to really wanting to focus on the reader, I don't want AI is what I constantly hear. I want a person, and I understand that,   Walden Hughes ** 46:00 yeah, I think what you'll see AI, especially, take over the drive thru when people go to a fast food place. I can see AI replacing the interaction and trying to get those things corrected. I can see that   Michael Hingson ** 46:14 maybe, maybe, I mean, you know some of that to a degree, but I think that people are still going to rule out in the end, for quite a while. Well, you know, in talking about all the different radio organizations, I know we talked about a little bit last night last time, but tell me about spurt back.   Walden Hughes ** 46:36 Yeah, I can give you some new updates. Spoke actually been around to 1974   Michael Hingson ** 46:42 I remember when spurred back began a person who I knew, who was a listener to my radio program, Jerry Hindi, guess, was involved with with all of that. My problem with attending spurred back meetings was that it was they were way too far away from me at UC Irvine to be able to do it, but I joined by mail for a while, and, and, and that was pretty good. But by the same token, you know, it was there,   Walden Hughes ** 47:11 it was there. And spur back. Have honored over 500 people who worked in the golden days of radio. A lot of district donated. They had the meetings in the conventions now we're evolving very quickly this year into more preservation work. So we have bought over $10,000 in computers here recently. We bought and we donated, actually, we won a prize, although the first Lacher disk turntables from Japan, which is over a $10,000 turntable, we'll be using that to help dub disc. And the board is just voted in. It's going to increase the board to at least 11 people next year who will have a carryover of the seven board member and we want to have no new board members. So maybe you and I can talk about that Mike for you to be on for next year, because we'll be definitely expanding the board with 11 one. So I think it'd be really strong in the preservation stuff, because perfect got 20 to 30,000 deaths that need to get out there. And with all your new equipment, it's amazing how full time radio sounds so good today terms of the new technology, and compare where I started collecting the 70 and I ran into a lot of even commercial stuff really muddy in those days. Mike, I bet you did too, and it's a remarkable difference. Spur back is planning to be at the Troy Boston festival next April, what does spread back? Stand for the society to preserve and encourage radio drama, variety and comedy. And you can go to spur back.com Join. You can go to repsonlect.org to join. And we then mentioned yesterday, USA. Yesterday usa.com or.net and can go there and listen away and participate in the auction, which will be coming up November 22 Yeah, very important to do as well. But anyway, I really think full time radio is in a really good spot. Mike. I think if it was for the internet, I don't know if we would find all the young people who are interested in it. I think it then it been a double edged sword. It knocked out a lot of dealers. You know, they used to make money selling their tapes and CDs and everything, and I bought a lot. I know you did too over the years, but those days are pretty. Pretty much done, and but if found a lot of new younger people to find the stations or find podcast and they get to learn about yesterday USA and Old Time Radio, and all the different radio ones more and all the different internet station are playing it until they can expose and I don't think that would have happened before the internet, so I think it'll always have it created a whole new listenership.   Michael Hingson ** 50:30 I am still amazed at some of the things that I hear. I remember once when somebody found a whole bunch of old Petri wine sponsored Sherlock Holmes with basil, Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. They were horrible quality. Was it Chris who   Walden Hughes ** 50:50 found? Yep, Chris one best founded me up and found me a bookstore.   Michael Hingson ** 50:55 And the quality wasn't wasn't good at all, but they were remastered, and they sound incredible. They do how they do it, because I'd love to be able to do that with shows that I have, and like to remaster them.   Walden Hughes ** 51:13 Yeah, what happened was, you know, they were two writers, green and Boucher, Lacher, Lacher, right, and Boucher was a famous bachelor Khan. The famous mystery convention is named after him. And Dennis Green was an actor on radio, and he was also a historian. He knew, like all everything about Sherlock Holmes. And so they created the new venture who saw a comb based upon maybe a scene from a previous right story and gets expanded upon it. And so when it when one of them passed away, the collection wound up in a bookstore in Berkeley, California, and crystal investor found out. And so there became a buying group led by John tough fellow, Kenny Greenwald, Dick Millen, Joey brewing and others, got in a bidding war with the Library of Congress, and they outbid and won. They paid $15,000 for the sets of Sherlock, Holmes and so and Shirley Boone was an NBC audio engineer and chief film engineer. He really knew how to dub, and so they they did a terrific job. And then they decided to put out a record album on their own with the first two episodes. And then after that, they decided to market it to Simon Schuster, and they decided to do small vignettes. They could copyright the vignette. These were quite three minutes introduction, so they would get Ben Wright, who wanted to always Sherlock Holmes and Peggy Webber in order to reminisce and or create little scenes to set up the stories that way they could copyright that part. They couldn't copyright the show because they fell in the public domain, right? But they wound up paying the estates of everybody anyway. But that's what how they all came out, and they were hoping to do Gunsmoke. We talked to Kenny Greenwald and others, but that never, that never came off and but that's part of the remarkable thing that Karl Marx done. He's been able to get into CBS, and I think he's working on NBC, and he licensed them, so he'll be able to get into the vault and get more stuff out for all of it to enjoy. And that's an amazing thing that Carl drives for the hobby is to get new stuff out there. It's been locked away for all these years.   Michael Hingson ** 53:53 I am just amazed at the high quality. I'd love to learn more about audio engineering to be able to do that, because I have a lot of recording I'd love to make a lot better than they are.   Walden Hughes ** 54:05 Yeah, Jerry Henry used to use a software called Diamond Cut, ah, and I would the those originally was used for the Edison solder records. And the guy who issued this, Joe, they developed the software. And that's where Joe, hi, who did so much transfer work, that was the program he wound up using to create good sound,   Michael Hingson ** 54:32 yeah, and, and did a lot of it,   Walden Hughes ** 54:36 yep, see there, see, there was a software, everybody, I think original is hardware. And I think originally almost was a $50,000 piece of equipment, harder before 2000 now it's gone to software base and a couple $1,000 that's another way. That's another program that people use to clean disk. Now. Crackles and pop out of the recording.   Michael Hingson ** 55:02 So but it's not just the snap crackle and pop. It's getting the the real fidelity back, the lows and the highs and all that you said, what was the one he used? Diamond Cut. Diamond Cut, yeah. Diamond Cut, yeah. But yeah. It's just amazing. The kinds of things that happen, like with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and and others.   Walden Hughes ** 55:23 But you also have good ears for that. Because, yeah, I remember about 2025, years ago, it was serious. XM. Everybody has this stereo sound, I know, if you're shooting, has a certain ambiance about it. And there were companies that were taking old time radio and creating that same effect, and that could bug me. I was so used to listen to old radio show in an analog feel about it. And they when they try to put false stereo in a recording, yeah, oh my gosh. It just didn't sound right. And so they've gotten away from that pill, a lot of new dubbing. They do don't have that. So it sounds terrific now, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:15 sounds a lot better. What do you think is the future of the hobby?   Walden Hughes ** 56:19 I think more and more stuff are coming out. A lot of stuff that were with agreements to hold on to the material have disappeared, because a lot of it is passing from generation to generation. And so I think over the next 10 years, you see so much more stuff coming out. In some ways, that's sort of what you John Larry and I do. We collect almost everything, just because you got to make sure it's captured for the for the next generation, even though we might not be listening to it. There's so much stuff we don't listen to do everything. But I think we're, we're short of the wide billions of old time radio so we try to capture all of it and preserve it on hard drives, yeah, but eventually it'll go to future generations. But I really think more and more stuff are coming out. I think with the yesterday USA, more and more people will find it. And I'm hoping, with creating new audio theater, I would like to reproduce the great radio scripts we have no recordings for, like one man, family, I love, a mystery, all those things. That's sort of what I want to do, is one of my goals. And I think be great to hear stories that we've all collected, that we wonder about, and to get audio production behind some of these scripts. And I think it's in very good shape. It will all come down to money, Michael, as you know, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 57:58 but I also think that it's important that we, as we're recreating the shows, that while we can, we have people who understand what we really need for actors who are going to be recreating the shows, are able to find the right people to do it, train them how to do it. I think that's so important.   Walden Hughes ** 58:19 I think so. I think, I think you find a lot of young people who like theater, who are not necessarily radio fan, if they came, if the radio fan, like Brian Henderson and people like that, they become really good actor because they love to listen to the shows ahead of time. Yeah. Beverly Washburn does the same. She likes hearing the original performances that way. She get field for me to the show. And I think you and I think Larry does it that way. And you might not necessarily want to copy everything, but you got a benchmark to work from, and you sort of know what, with the intent when   Michael Hingson ** 59:01 you say Larry, which Larry? Larry Gasman,   Walden Hughes ** 59:03 great, yeah. And I think that's a great help to study and listen how people did it, because I think a lot of old time radio, it's like the prime rib. It was the best of the best of all time of radio drama, and it's a great way to learn the craft, by listening to it and absorbing it.   Michael Hingson ** 59:30 Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe learn more about yesterday, USA or reps and just talk with you about radio, how do they do that, they can give me a   Walden Hughes ** 59:41 call at 714-545-2071, that's my studio number for the radio stations. Lot of times I can, I'll pick it up and talk to on air, off air. They can always drop me an email Walden shoes at yesterday. Us. Dot com and happy the answer, you can always call my cell phone at 714-454-3281,   Walden Hughes ** 1:00:11 you can chase me down at over, at reps, at reps online.org. You know, get forward to me or spur vac at S, P, E, O, D, V, A, c.com, or you can even get hold of Michael Henson and Mike.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:26 You can always get a hold of me. And people know how to do that, and I will get them in touch with you as well, you bet. So I'm glad to do that. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this. This is a little bit different than a lot of the podcast that we've done. But it is, it is so important to really talk about some of these kinds of concepts, and to talk about old radio and what it what it still adds and contributes to today. So I hope that you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me. Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear from you. Wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value that a lot, and I hope that you'll go listen to YESTERDAY usa.com, or.net then again, in both, there's the red and the blue Network, or repsonline.com, and we, we have a lot of fun. Every so often we do trivia contests, and we'll take hours and and gentlemen in New Jersey and his wife, Johnny and Helen Holmes, come on and run the trivia, and it's a lot of fun, and you're welcome to add your answers to the trivia questions, and you can come on in here and learn how to even do it through the chat.   Walden Hughes ** 1:01:51 But my kids watch this every Friday night on, why USA too?   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:56 Yeah, I get to be on every Friday night, and that's a lot of fun. Yeah. So we'd love to hear from you, and we'd love you to to help us further enhance the whole concept of old radio show. So I want to thank you again. And if you know of other people who ought to be on the podcast, Walt, and of course, you as well as you know, please introduce us. We're always looking for more people to talk to us about whatever they want to talk about. So I want to again. Thank you all and for being here. And Walden, thank you for being here as well.   Walden Hughes ** 1:02:27 All right, Mike, I'll be talking a little while.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:33 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. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Morgan Brind from the Derby Arena 2025 pantomime "Dick Whittington.https://www.visitderby.co.uk/events/dick-whittington

Wendi Peters from the Derby Arena 2025 pantomime "Dick Whittington.https://www.visitderby.co.uk/events/dick-whittington

Join us at Bradgate Park in Leicester with Jules Acton, author, former podcast guest and Trust ambassador, while our regular host Adam enjoys a summer holiday. We meet senior park ranger Matt who gives us a tour as he explains his role in caring for the site and its amazing trees. We've come to the park to see one in particular: a magnificent 830-year-old oak. It's in the running for Tree of the Year 2025. This year's contest celebrates our cultural connections with trees, shining a light on those that are local landmarks, sources of passion, inspiration and creativity. Find out what makes Bradgate Park's oldest oak special and vote for your favourite by 19 September.   Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.  Jules: Good morning. I'm Jules Acton. I'm an ambassador for the Woodland Trust. I've been in this job for 10 years this month and it's been a fantastic 10 years. I've loved every day because I get to meet some amazing trees and woods and even more than that, I also get to meet lots of amazing people who love trees and woods and who are inspired by them. So Woodland Trust members, other supporters, staff and volunteers. And I think one of the reasons people love trees so much is not just for the fact they provide all the wonderful services they they store our carbon, they provide fresh air, they can help filter pollution. But they're also absolutely entwined in our culture. And that's been taking place over hundreds and thousands of years. So our, particularly our native tree species tree species are absolutely embedded in our culture, and every old tree has a story to tell. Now, the reason we're here today is that we're going to talk about Tree of the Year and the theme of the Tree of the Year is culture and the way trees are embedded in culture. Ten magnificent trees have been chosen by a panel of experts. Each has a wonderful story to tell, and members of the public can go and vote for their favourite tree on the Woodland Trust website.  We are here in Bradgate Park car park. It is a golden morning and we're surrounded by trees. I can see oak trees, hawthorns, birches, hazels. It's absolutely gorgeous with the dappled sunlight falling down on us through the leaves. We're here to meet a particularly special tree. It's Bradgate Park's oldest oak tree, and it's about 20 minutes walk from the car park. So I see my colleague Natasha. She's over there waiting at the edge of the car park, waiting for Matt. Hello Natasha.  Natasha: Hello. Ohh hi!  Jules: Can you tell us a bit about your role, Natasha and what you do at the Woodland Trust?  Natasha: Yeah, I'm a social media officer, so I just help create and schedule all social media content, jump on whenever there's an opportunity like today.  Jules: And today you're going to be helping with the recording.  Natasha: Yeah, getting a few clips behind the scenes of how we record the podcast so we can share that and a few bits for our website as well and YouTube.  Jules: Thanks Natasha. Now I think we have just seen somebody drive up who might well be Matt. He's he's appeared in a very groovy looking buggy. And here we go. I believe this is Matt. Hello.   Matt: Good morning, Jules.   Jules: Hello, Matt, hi, lovely to meet you.  Matt: Nice to meet you. Welcome to Bradgate Park.  Jules: Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your role, Matt?  Matt: So yeah so I've I've worked at Bradgate Park for just over 20 years now and main sort of roles on on the site are woodland management and caring for the ancient trees that we've got that that are of European importance. And I also get quite involved with the drystone walls and repairing them. I lead a a group of volunteers on a Thursday and as we go across the site, I'm sure I can show you some of the work that we've been doing.  Jules: Oh brilliant, and you're going to particularly show us a very special tree, I believe.  Matt: Yes, I believe we might be able to find that. Yeah, the tree is approximately 830 years old. It predates the Magna Carta and I'd certainly like to take you to the tree and tell you a bit more about it.  Jules: All right. We're just getting ready to go and all around us are people enjoying the park, there are some people walking up hills. There are lots of dogs. There's one very cute little brown dog that's having a little dip in, in a little stream, a little brook, really at the edge of the park and it's already quite a warm day, so I think it's having a nice little cool down.  We're back en route towards the special tree with the beautiful drystone wall to our right and across to the left are, well there's a tree, there's a plantation, and then there's also a sort of a bit of a wood pasture environment would you call it Matt, with some native trees dotted around in the landscape?  Matt: Yeah, very much so. So this is Hallgates Valley. We're looking across to Dale Spinney. The park itself is 830 acres, of which spinneys represent about 10% of the parkland area, so it's quite a large proportion. All the spinneys were planted on the, on the hilltops across the park, that's that's not just by chance. And they were created around about 1830s-40s by the 6th early of Stamford and and now we see the spinneys that we've got here today so you've got quite a mature, mature standard trees. Quite a lot are softwood, but then we've got a mixture of hardwoods in there. We certainly replant hardwoods in the spinneys.  Jules: How would you define a spinney as opposed to, you know, other kinds of woods?  Matt: Nice easy question *laughs*. I would I would say you've obviously got different names of woodlands and you know we're, we're, we're in Charnwood Forest, but a a forest isn't just trees, it's clearings. And I would say a copse is a small woodland. I would say the spinney is is probably like slightly larger than that and then you go up towards a wood. I could be totally wrong! *both laugh*  Jules: I like it though. So Matt you say, you've you've been here 20 years.   Matt: Yeah, 22.  Jules: 22. So you obviously love it. And what is it that keeps you here?  Matt: I was born in Leicester and came here as a young child playing and you know to end up working here as a job, it's certainly a nice place to be coming to and huge, beautiful surroundings, fresh air and and then I've I've just got a real passion for particularly the a lot of the heritage crafts that we keep alive on the estate. So yes, we go down and we manage the woodlands, but we're actually carrying out coppicing operations and that, they go back to the Stone Age and and then other work on the site for instance drystone walling, which we're approaching a gap now that we've been repairing and is obviously another heritage craft, and for me, I I just think it's really important that we're passing on these skills, heritage crafts on to the next sort of generation.  Jules: That that's brilliant. And do you do you train sort of volunteers or or is it staff members in in this kind of thing?  Matt: I've trained up to Level 2 in walling. That's something I I went up to Derbyshire to do. We've actually got another chap on site now, Leon. He's, he was in the armed forces and and and Leon is doing his levels in walling as well. I believe he's already got Level 1 and 2. He's working towards his 3, we might be able to pop and see him in a bit, but I guess the focus should be trees today *laughs*.  Jules: Yeah, well if we have time, that'd be great. See how we go.  Matt: This is certainly a large gap of wall that we've been doing on the estate. We've got 17 miles of drystone wall to maintain. The deer park itself goes back to 1241, but it's, the boundaries changed slightly over over the years and the largest extent of the deer park was probably around about 1550 and that would have, certain parts of the boundary are drystone wall and and that's obviously what what we're left with today and we need to maintain that. Not only does it keep the deer inside the park, which is obviously beneficial for a deer park, it's fantastic habitat for various, you know, sort of reptiles to live in and adders, grass snakes, things like that.  Jules: Fantastic, so we're looking at at one of the drystone walls and it's I'd say about shoulder height, would you say and it's a grey sort of almost sort of slaty looking stone actually, do you, can you tell us what kind of the stone it is?  Matt: Yeah so on on this side of the park, it's it's it's it's a little bit more slaty towards Newtown Linford, that's that's more of a granite, the walling that we do on the, that we we do on the park is is called random coursed walling. So yes, as we build the wall up, you start with the larger stones at the bottom and as the as the wall tapers up, it angles in, that's called the batter of the wall, you can see the frame we've got and that that we're working to, we've got the building lines in. So this one is 80 centimetres at the bottom, tapering up to 40 centimetres at the top. Originally this was actually a lime mortar wall and a lot of walls on the park are lime mortar, but it is possible to rebuild dry, but we do a mix a mixture of both on the estate.  Jules: That's great and it's just lovely to see these heritage practices being kept alive and you mentioned the coppicing as well, which is absolutely very much part of woodland culture going back centuries. I believe it goes back to the Vikings, maybe even earlier, I don't know if you know anything about the history of it, Matt?  Matt: Yeah, well, certainly the Stone Age coppicing going back, going back to the Stone Age, it's the process of cutting the tree down to ground level. Not all trees will coppice, certainly oak will. That's where Copt Oak gets the name from, coppiced oak. Hazel is the primary tree species that we are coppicing, certainly in Swithland Woods and we've got a management plan in place. We've we've just come to the end of a 10-year management plan that was supported by, there's a lady called Liz Sharkey who comes up with a great plan for us. We're just starting in, in November will be the next 10-year plan and the intention of that is to create the most diverse habitat that Swithland Woods is and it will create a mosaic of habitats, different age stands within the structure of the woodland and and part of that will be coppicing rotation and that will open up and the the the floor of the woodland, let light in and that will benefit bluebells and wood anemone and all the related bird species and invertebrates.  Jules: This is all music to our Woodland Trust ears. Thank you, Matt. Shall we continue on our little tour?  Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will turn this very loud... *banging*  Jules: *laughs* I'm not actually sure how to get out the car, but ohh, OK, yeah, yeah. Natasha's on it. Thanks Natasha. OK, so we are walking up to not the tree we're here to see, but we couldn't resist this one because it's really special and it's a gnarly oak tree, kind of growing out of what looks like a big craggy load of rocks. Yeah, Matt, could you tell us a bit more about this tree?  Matt: Yes, I can. So it's English oak and some of the, it's growing out of granite and some of the rocks on the park are actually some of the oldest rocks, certainly in Britain and and the world, 560-million-year-old rocks that we've got on the park and it's all part part of the designation, actually, of the park, it's a SSSI, geological interest in the park and also the veteran trees are also part of that designation and we have just become a National Nature Reserve as well, Bradgate Park.  Jules: Well, congratulations! Could you just explain the SSSI to us just so people understand what the abbreviation means?  Matt: It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest, so there's many layers to Bradgate Park, people might just want to come have a nice walk, enjoy the views, and people that might be more interested in the geology of the park, so we get a lot of people that are coming out and looking at the rocks and looking for fossils and they're able to from that age, the rocks on the park and then other designations that we've got are related to the ancient trees and and that all forms a a bigger picture that makes the park so important that it has to be protected.  Jules: Fantastic. And one of the things that I've just noticed on both this very old oak tree and also on the rocks are, there's a lot of lichens. They're gorgeous. So they're sort of just splattered with them, some of them just look like, like, little sort of paint splats, don't they? They are different colours, we've got white ones, green ones on the rocks, I'm looking at, sort of greyish ones. Some are crusty, some are very flat, which is I think the nature of lichens. Do you know much about the lichens?  Matt: I certainly know that we need to keep the lichens exposed to the sunlight, so we have to clear bracken so they're not getting shaded out. They take a long time to form and I certainly know that they need good clean air. So that is a good sign, if you're seeing lichens, you're in a good place as a human being.  Jules: Yeah, absolutely. And and one of the things about oak trees as well is because they, they're long-lived trees, they provide particularly important habitat for lichens, cause some, many lichens are really, really slow growing, so they need a very slow, you know, stable habitat, so whether it be the rocks or or the very old tree and you'll get different species associated with the different environments as well.  Matt: Yeah, exactly right. And and you can see as well as the being lichens on the rock, you look up into the oak tree and in to the, up the, into the crown of the tree and we are seeing lichens on on the oak tree.  Jules: Yeah. Aed one of the other things about lichens is that they are also embedded in our culture as well, so we use them to to make dyes, some people cook with them, so again, a bit like bit like the oak trees and and other native trees, they're really entwined in our cultural history. This isn't the tree we're here to see, but it's absolutely marvellous! So I, gosh, I hope this becomes, goes on the Tree of the Year shortlist at some point because it deserves it!  Matt: Well, it's nice to have more than one entry.   Jules: Yeah, that would be good, wouldn't it?  Matt: I guess it would in in increase the chances of winning, but seeing as it's the first time you've come to the park, Jules, I thought you may as well see this.  Jules: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it. It looks quite elephantine from this, elephantine I should say, from this angle with this sort of like this great, long limb sticking out, it's almost like a trunk isn't it and up into the into the blue.  Matt: It certainly is, and I think that's certainly going to be the word of the day. I'm not, I'm not certainly going to try and trump that!   Jules: OK, yeah, let's, let's, let's try and use it again, in the next stop! *both laugh* OK. We're going back to the car now the the buggy, the T, TVA. No, the, what is it?  Matt: The ATV *both laugh* As we go back towards the ATV, we can see a absolutely stunning tower on a hill. It's gorgeous. It's kind of like, well it looks like it's in a fairytale to me. Could you tell us a bit about that?  Matt: So Old John Tower was, they started building it 1784 and and it is a folly and it was somewhere that the Greys, the owners, the Earls of Stamford could entertain guests and around the base of the tower, the rear is the remnants of an old racetrack, at the side of the tower, there's an old stable block and the Greys were certainly great horse fanciers and they entered racehorses into various events and along the the the old racetrack there's still remnants of old furlong markers and they were able to entertain the guests, stand up on the the roof of the of the tower and get an idea of of how good the how well the horses were performing.  Jules: Brilliant. And and the the Greys being the family of Lady Jane Grey, is that right?   Matt: Yes, that's right yeah.  Jules: OK. So it's it's absolutely stunning. It looks like the sort of, yeah, if you're drawing a scene in a fairytale, you'd be drawing a little turrety round tower on top of a hill, wouldn't you? And there'd be probably Rapunzel at the top, letting down her hair. On this occasion we've got a, on this occasion we've got a a very fit looking person who's just run a ring around the bottom of the tower and is now running towards us, obviously making use of this wonderful environment to to keep up their fantastic fitness. Right. OK. Now we are going back to the vehicle. And I think is next stop the the tree, our destination?  Matt: Yes it certainly is.  Jules: OK, OK, brilliant. I think I've actually worked out how to get in this time, which is ohh no, Matt's letting me in, thank you, what a gent, thank you. Right, we are now out of the vehicle and we are walking towards the special tree. And how long, how much of a walk is it from here?  Matt: So I can see it already and I'd say we're only about 200 yards away from it.  Jules: *laughs* Ohh, I still haven't seen it!  Matt: I'm I'm I'm deliberately walking in a way that it's going to appear.  Jules: Oh he's hiding it from us.   Matt: Yeah. There we go, fallow deer.  Jules: Ohh, there's ohh my goodness two fallow deer. The beautiful spotty backs, sort of trotting away. And then they've stopped and have given, they're looking at us. They're not too shy, actually are they?  Matt: No, no, they're not.  Jules: They look just like double Bambi. They're very beautiful.  Matt: You'll you'll you'll notice on all the trees, and there's about a dozen smaller oak trees that we planted, and these are about 30 years old now. Again, you can see how we've we've literally topped the smaller trees and and that's because we don't want to leave these trees just to get huge a. and maidens and straight and tall. So we want these to be stunted and more open grown. And so we've cut the tops off and and thinned them slightly. And then, again, we're hoping that that will make them longer lived.  Jules: Yeah, yeah. And of course, the oak trees love a lot of light, don't they? And these have got quite a lot of light and space around them.   Matt: Yes.   Jules: Ohh, I can see it now. Oh my goodness. What a beast. How fantastic. So it does, so it's the Bradgate Park's oldest oak, isn't it, so does it have a name, another name beyond that?  Matt: I think people people give it various names but it's just ‘the oldest tree in the park' *laughs*  Jules: Yeah, yeah.  Matt: Trying, I suppose for many years we've tried to keep it a bit bit sort of secret. That's probably for the benefit of the tree and certainly, the fact that it's within a spinney, people aren't walking up to it, and that's helped the tree. I feel that it's in a, it's obviously found some good growing conditions and despite the general habitat of the park being poor, upland soil, shallow, it's found some incredible growing conditions here it's been sheltered so that it's not being exposed to too much, too much wind force. And also it's it's nice and open so as the, as you know sort of from midday to right through into the evening, it's gonna get plenty of light as well. So there's I think there's been a number of factors that have certainly helped to prolong the life of the tree.  Jules: Yes, absolutely. Wow, it is a stunner. So just to try and describe this tree, it it's immensely tall. It's probably about the size of a, what about the height of a house would you say?   Matt: Yeah it's a good, good 45 feet.  Jules: Yeah. And it's got a very gnarly bole. I call it a bole rather than a trunk because it's really big, broad, and it's kind of split into two, kind of more than two. And it's got some dead branches coming out the middle. It's got one gorgeous, great, long, twisted limb reaching out. And it's that that's they're they're propped up, but it's kind of snaking, isn't it, ooh, it's elephantine that's what it is! Yeah, let's use our favourite word of the day.  Matt: I'd I'd say it's definitely elephantine *both laugh*  Jules: Yeah. And you can see kind of, it looks like there's faces everywhere, aren't there? It's like in that they've dead bit of branch there, you can see like a sort of twisted sort of face and a great long nose. And ohh it's, what a beautiful beast. So Matt, could you tell us a bit about its cultural connection to human beings?  Matt: Well, it certainly, it it was aged back in 2014 by a tree consultancy called Bosky and we we obtained a grant funding to tag and map many, many trees across the estate of this, being one of them, and it was it was aged at 818 back then, which puts us at around about the 830 mark now. In terms of relations to humans, it predates the Magna Carta and one of the most notable former residents of Bradgate Park obviously being Lady Jane, when she was a child living on the park, the tree would have already been quite a mighty oak of about 300 years.  Jules: Gosh, so, so Lady Jane Grey would have known this tree.   Matt: Yes, yeah.  Jules: She would probably sat underneath it.  Matt: Which is somewhat remarkable.  Jules: Yeah. Maybe had a little picnic under here. *Matt laughs* That's what I would have done. Fantastic. And it's wonderful that you're protecting it and actually, despite this sort of really craggy bole, it's it's looking in pretty good health, isn't it, it's got loads of leaves all around. Are you feeling sort of confident about its its future given given how it is?  Matt: Well, certainly, yeah you you've you've pointed out the props and these props have been in place supporting certainly this this limb. If we walk around the other side of the tree, you can you can get a bit more of an impression as to what the props are actually achieving for the tree and in due course, and I believe we'll we'll probably upgrade these props, which are basically telegraph posts with Land Rover tyres that have been cut, which is certainly an effective way of doing things, but we have evolved the propping techniques that are now, you can see the tree in the distance over there by the compound that's called the Pheasant Garden. And there's a there's an oak tree there that supported by a prop and that is manufactured using metal, sort of steel work and then there's a cup section that's manufactured and then that that's a more sympathetic way of actually supporting that bough.  Jules: Yeah, yes.  Matt: Regarding, you know the actual cover of the foliage, like you say, totally agree that it's it's still got reasonable foliage cover, certainly certain things that we do have to watch out for is shade. And that is partly why we've cut the tops off the trees around it. But also you can see where we've got a bit of interference here with this Scots pine at the back.  Jules: Oh yes, it's actually actually touching I think, almost touching.  Matt: So that is something that we would look to keep keep in check. So this Scots pine, as as lovely as it is, that Scots pine is more like 70 years old, and we wouldn't want that to be shading out so that's something we'll we'll probably climb up there and just cut that, cut the limb off off the Scots pine and stop that, because you can see if we just leave that doing what it's doing, it's going to start shading out and it's really important that we keep the living mass of this tree, so there's a balance there between the living mass and the dead mass of the tree, the static mass. And it's that balance as a ratio for the tree, you know, if you, if you look at a younger tree there, you can say that almost almost 100% of of the of the crown of that tree is alive. Whereas you look at this tree and you start thinking maybe 50%. So the closer that ratio between the living mass and the dead mass is, the closer that gets more like to a one to one, then the the tree will will then gradually just just just be going into decline. So you know, the tree will not live forever but I'm pretty confident it's going to outlive us guys *laughs*  Jules: Yes. It's an amazing thought, isn't it? And it's obviously very loved and and and I think the importance is is not just about the tree itself, is it? So really ancient oaks like this, they support enormous numbers of species, some of which only live on ancient oaks. So that's why we need to protect this tree as much as we possibly can and also bring on those veteran oaks of the future that you you, you're, you're that you're you're doing just that, aren't you, here in the park. Absolutely vital.   Matt: Yeah, very much so, very much so. As we've driven across the park, we've seen various planting that's been supported by the Tree Council. And like you say, that has, that certainly has been planting more oak trees, but then also other nectar bearing species, rowan, blackthorn, hawthorn, gorse. And these are all important, like you say for the deadwood insects that, that, that live within the ancient oak tree and and then as the tree gets older it then develops more veteran features and those crags, holes are very important roosting habitats for, certainly for owls and bats.  Jules: Yeah. And so oak trees in the UK collectively support more than 2,300 species, some of which are completely reliant on oak trees. They couldn't survive without oak trees, and one of the things we were talking about earlier as we drove up was the fact that there are, you know, some, some beetles, for example, some longhorn beetles, for example, they spend their lives as larvae living in deadwood. But then the adults, they need nectar when they grow up, so again, it's really important to have those nectar sources nearby isn't it?  Matt: Yeah. So very, very much is. Yeah. And that's what we're looking to do on the park we are we are planting those, those supporting plants.  Jules: Fantastic. Wonderful. This incredible tree that we're standing in front of is one of the ten contenders in this year's Tree of the Year competition and the theme of this year's competition is culture and the the the the history and culture associated with trees in our world. Ancient oaks are absolutely threaded in our culture. I'm particularly interested in them, I wrote a book about about oak trees called Oaklore, and one of the things that I talked about was the way that the oak tree intertwines with our lives with with lots of different species, but also with human lives and with our culture. There were so many stories associated with the oak tree. One of my favourites is the story of Charles II and the Boscobel Oak. So before Charles II was, became king he was fighting the parliamentarians and he took a terrible drubbing at a battle. And he needed to escape. And he escaped to Boscobel House. And he was with this soldier called Colonel Careless, and this soldier suggested that they hide in the oak tree overnight rather than the house. And they did. And even though the parliamentarian troops were were wandering nearby, they didn't find the king and his soldiers, and they escaped. And eventually they returned and that led to the restoration of the monarchy. The thing I like about this story is the cultural links then go on and on. Because at that point, a day of national celebration was declared throughout the land, and that was 29 May and that became Oak Apple Day and everybody would party and if the best people at the party, the coolest people at the party, they waved oak branches and wore oak leaves and and if you were super cool, you had lots of oak apples on your, so little galls on your oak branches. And if you didn't have little symbols of oaks, then others were apparently within their rights to take a bunch of nettles and and and attacked you with nettles, which wasn't so nice. So it was also called Nettle Day. It was also known as Pinch Bum Day and Maids Ruin Day. The story goes on, but the other sort of fun cultural connection to that is it also came, it also brought about lots of pubs called the Royal Oak, and the last time I looked there were about 400 oak trees, 400 sorry pubs called the Royal Oak throughout the land, so the cultural tales just go on and on. And that's just the oak tree. But all of our native trees have some fantastic stories associated with them in. In fact every old tree has a story to tell. It's like us, like every older person, we've all got a story, a history to tell. Yeah. OK.  Matt: So yeah, we're just walking back from the oldest tree now, and we're just sort of musing over just that connection that human, humans have got to trees. I think it's the fact that an oak tree can sort of live centuries and really, that puts our lifetimes somewhat in perspective. And the fact that an oak tree can just go from the tiniest of acorns to a huge mass of of timber and that is just really fantastic, how you could you could cut open a tree and see all those different tree rings, those years of growth and then just sort of put that in context, what was happening was, was it Dick Whittington that was the Lord Mayor of London for the last time, was it was it the Battle of Agincourt, was it the Magna Carta? And and it's for people like you that actually write books about it, Jules, that can say it a lot better than me *both laugh*  Jules: No that was brilliant and we're not gonna cut this one in half though are we, Matt?   Matt: No, we're certainly not. And the fact that it's hollow, we just can't see those rings anymore.  Jules: No. Thank you. Brilliant. Right. This is our final leg on our walk and we're now in a polytunnel and it's really warm because the sun's beating down outside and it smells gorgeous and and we are surrounded by lots of little trees. Matt, can you tell us a little bit about these?  Matt: So the polytunnel was funded by the Tree Council and it's just very important that we're growing on oaks for the future from acorns that have been collected on site. So they've got the genetic continuity of the long-lived oak trees and hopefully they'll grow and carry on into long into the future.  Jules: And are they, is it a a mix of acorns from all different trees in in here or is it, or is, are you, are you taking them from specific trees?  Matt: It's yeah, it's a bit of a mix. Sometimes, you know, where where we can and where they're viable, if we if we get to the acorns from a veteran tree before the deer, then that's certainly something that we we're looking to grow on. So generally that's what we're that's that's where we'll try and harvest them from that, we've put a frame down before with a bit of a grill, so we can collect the acorns, but then they don't get eaten and that's certainly quite a good technique. And and then we we we grow on from the old trees where we can, yes.  Jules: They're really lovely. So we've got really tiny little trees with, some of them have got like, you know, about 5 or 6 leaves. And then they go up to sort of above our just above our heads. And I think what always strikes me is the, the the diversity in in leaf shape and colour that you that you see all around you. So even the same place within within oak trees, it's incredible, the different shapes and sizes you get, isn't it?  Matt: Yeah, it really is. And you know, look, looking some of the some of the oaks have been collected from Swithland Woods as well. And and where you've got a stalked leaf, that is a sessile oak.   Jules: Ah yes.  Matt: And and where you've got a a leaf that's coming off that isn't stalked, that is an English oak, but but that will have a stalked acorn.  Jules: Yes. So that's the the key way to tell the difference isn't. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. I love it. The Bradgate Park oak is one of ten iconic trees across the UK in the running for the Tree of the Year competition. Other examples include the Tree of Peace and Unity in County Antrim. That's an iconic lime tree, I say a lime tree, it's actually two lime trees which are fused together so that the trunk has become bound as one and it's, they've become inseparable and as such they've become a symbol of harmony and hope. So newly married couples sit beneath that tree for a blessing and it became a particular symbol of peace and reconciliation when Tony Blair, David Trimble and John Hume met here in 1998 at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Another example is the Argyle Street Ash in Glasgow. This tree is growing right next to some historic flats and it's seen as a symbol of local resilience. It has survived all kinds of things, including Victorian industry, the Clydeside Blitz, recent development and so far, ash dieback. One of its cultural connections is that it was featured in a 1935 book by James Cowan. The book was called From Glasgow's Treasure Chest and in it he describes the tree as ‘quite the most graceful ash I have seen'. Well, that's enough of me. Meanwhile, thank you so much to Matt and Natasha. It's been great fun talking trees with you.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Listen back to Tony's full review!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A bumper chapter where the Story of London follows the tale of the city as it deals with the aftermath of the death of Henry V; a tale of the city's economy starting to be reborn; why it came within an inch of seeing a pitch battle on London bridge between residents north of the river and those from Southwalk; whose side it picked in the growing partisan politics of the new regency; and above all, we look at the legacy of Dick Whittington, the three-and-one-half times mayor of the city, whose legacy transformed the city and remains to this day.

Content Warning: Child Death and Familial Death. Timestamps to skip: 1:01:00 - 01:12:52 .We spend some time in StarClan today. Considering fears, meeting new friends and old, and getting a really, REALLY hard riddle. Jaypaw could probably figure it out if grandpa wasn't busy trying to lose another life.Book: Warriors, Series 3: Power of Three #5: Long ShadowsSupport us on Ko-fi! WCWITCast Ko-fiFollow us on BlueSky! WCWITCastFollow us on Instagram! WCWITCastCat Fact Sources:Whittington Stone - WikipediaYoutube - OLD STORIES FROM ENGLAND | Dick Whittington - Jules MarrinerWhittington StoneDick Whittington. The Whittington stone, London | The Whitti… | FlickrPurr-n-Fur UK | The Tale of Dick Whittington and his CatThe Story of Dick WhittingtonWHITTINGTON, Richard (d.1423), of LondonRichard Whittington - WikipediaThe Real Dick Whittington - LondonA trip to Highgate in search of a famous cat (and other animals). – Symbols & SecretsAdditional Episode Sources: (CW: Child and Familial Death)Arkansas Democrat GazetteCybils Award WebsiteMusic:The following music was used for this media project:Happy Boy Theme by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3855-happy-boy-themeLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This transformative podcast work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. Warrior Cats: What is That? is not endorsed or supported by Harper Collins and/or Working Partners. All views are our own.

The Story returns with an episode that examines one of London's loveliest folklore tales- the tale of Dick Whittington and his cat; beloved of pantomimes and children's books, This week we peer behind the scenes to look at the actual events in London behind the elevation of this man to Mayor of the City… and the dangerous political climate he found himself in.A tale of an increasingly erratic king, members of the royal family being smothered to death with a mattress, a shocking wedding, show trials in Westminster, a royal posse racing across the English countryside in the middle of the night and more; welcome to the harsh truth behind the myth.

Welcome to Campfire Classics, a Literary Comedy Podcast!! After three weeks away, Heather is back! Which means all of those euphemistic jokes (alliterative or otherwise) that you've been missing are back.  With a vengeance. Like, a big one... Ken picked the story for Heather to read. It's by previous a new author in the Campfire Classics catalogue name Flora Annie Steel. She's the daughter of a wealthy English family during the height of the British Empire, so  naturally we're all holding our breath just hoping she doesn't write anything socially problematic. Your hosts skate through pretty easily on their vocabulary, but discuss the under-the-bed dirty mag stash, reference the 1993 film Boxing Helena, and try to make up for all the missed innuendos of the last three weeks. "Dick Whittington and His Cat" was published 1918. Email us at 5050artsproduction@gmail.com. Remember to tell five friends to check out Campfire Classics. Like, subscribe, leave a review. Now sit back, light a fire (or even a candle), grab a drink, and enjoy.

In this episode Neil chats with several members of the cast and production team from Stage-Ed's 2024 Gaiety Theatre Pantomime Dick Whittington which opens this Friday evening, 20th December.

Michelle Ford chats with telly legend Basil Brush and comedienne/panto fairy Hilary O'Neill join Michelle for laughs, sauciness and a chat about Dick Whittington at Theatre Royal Windsor.

Recorded for release W/C 2nd Dec This week Danny Rice tells us about the new Wolverhampton branch of Andy's Man Club, we meet the Principal cast of Dick Whittington the Walsall Arena Panto and the Principals from Stafford Gatehouse's Panto Jack and the Beanstalk as we are joined by Mark Rhode, Davis Phips-Davis, Wink Taylor, Wendy Abrahams, Theo the Mouse and Ollie Hart-Bradford.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

If you're coming to the Audio-Described performance of Dick Whittington and his Cat on Sun 8 Dec at 1pm, or any of the other performances during the run, and want to hear what the characters will sound like before your visit, have a listen here.

Join hosts Bobby and Steffan for a magical new episode with the delightful Chloe-Jo Byrnes, who will soon be enchanting audiences as Fairy Daffodil in Dick Whittington in Newport!

The tenth Manx Bard, Jordanne Kennaugh, talks to H about her inspiration and thoughts for the year ahead, some of the cast of this year's panto "Dick Whittington" drop into the studio to cook up some mayhem and a challenge ahead of European Folk Day

Send us a fan message! DICK WHITTINGTON AND HIS CATA story from England Adapted and read by Rehannah Mian. This is the story of how a poor boy turned misfortune into fortune... with the help of a cat.   MAGICAL STORYBOOK YOUTUBE CHANNEL We now have a YouTube channel that you can find by clicking here YOUTUBE   We'd love it if you visited and subscribed for free to our channel! FREE READ-ALONG BOOKS! Learning to read is fun with our free downloadable read-along books. You can follow the words while you listen to your favourite Magical Storybook: English Nanny Bedtime Stories by clicking here -> FREE DOWNLOADABLE READ-ALONG BOOKS.The music:All music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/1. Midnight Meeting by Kevin MacLeod2. Poison Apple by Quincas Moreira3. Wholesome by Kevin MacLeod4. Heart of Nowhere by Kevin MacLeod5. Folkround by Kevin MacLeod 6. Dark Star by Kevin MacLeod7. Mirage by Chris HaugenSupport the Show.

Whilst taking a hiatus from her run as Anne Boleyn in Six, Laura Dawn Pyatt is currently part of the ensemble of 42 Balloons by Jack Godfrey.Laura first joined the cast of 42 Balloons when the musical had a concert run in the West End at the Vaudeville Theatre. The show is now receiving its fully staged premiere at The Lowry in Salford and Laura is reprising her performance for this new iteration of its journey. 42 Balloons is inspired by the highly improbable true story of how Larry, and his partner Carol Van Deusen, convinced their friends and family to help Larry achieve his dream of flying. Featuring an 80s pop-inspired score, 42 Balloons questions how far you would go to make your dreams come true; is the sky actually the limit, and what happens if it doesn't all go to plan?Laura joined Six The Musical's UK & International tour cast in April 2023, starring as Anne Boleyn. She has taken a break from the show to do 42 Balloons and is set to return to the company to finish off her run later in the year. Some of Laura's other theatre credits include performing with Bat Out Of Hell at the Big Night of Musicals (AO Arena Manchester), playing Claire in Ordinary Days directed by Julie Atherton (Cockpit Theatre), Dick Whittington and Jack & The Beanstalk (Royal & Derngate) and Eliza in Brass (Bernie Grant Arts Centre). Laura has worked as a choreographer, performed in concerts, appeared on screen and been part of many other projects. Recorded during a break from rehearsals, in this episode Laura discusses what it's like to be back in 42 Balloons, conquering her confidence with Six, navigating her career after leaving drama school without an agent and lots more. 42 Balloons runs at The Lowry in Salford 18th April - 19th May 2024. Visit www.42balloons.com for info and tickets. Hosted by Andrew Tomlins  @AndrewTomlins32  Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.  46s Film Making 46s: Filmmakers talk origins, challenges, budgets, and profits.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with writer (and director and playwright and author and podcaster) Ken Levine about the business of writing and directing situation comedies.LINKSA Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12Another Free Film Book: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/Ken Levine's Website: http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/Albert's Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcastTRANSCRIPTWas being a writer always a goal?Ken Levine: I don't know if it was always a goal. It was something that I always did. Honestly, I did not get a lot of encouragement in high school. I was a cartoonist. I still am. And I was a cartoonist on the school newspaper. And I said, “Well, I also want to write. You know, can I cover sports or do a humor column or something?”And they said, “You're the cartoonist, just stick to cartoons.” And I said, “Well, I really want to write. And if you won't let me write, then I'm going to quit the paper.” And they said, “Then fine, quit the paper.” So, that's how much my cartoons were even valued. They called your bluff on that one, I guess. Ken Levine: They called my bluff, yeah.Just as a little tangent—just because I'm a big fan of your cartoons—did you have a couple of cartoonist heroes when you were growing up? Guys that you looked at and went, that's the kind of writing I want to do?Ken Levine: Well, my cartoonist heroes were more due to their cartooning than anything. Al Hirschfeld, who did the caricatures of the New York Times, was my god. And Mort Drucker would be another. Jack Davis. A lot of those Mad magazine guys. Originally, I wanted to be in radio. I mean, I really loved radio. And a lot of my comic influences early on were disc jockeys, you know. Bob and Ray and Dan Ingram and Dick Whittington. So, radio was a goal. I got out of college and became a Top 40-disc jockey.Let me back up. When I was in college, I got a job as an intern at KMPC in L.A. We're the big, full-service radio station. They had the Angels and the Rams and the Bruins and, you know, they were big music personalities. And their afternoon drive time jock was Gary Owens, who was on Laugh In at the time. You know, “From beautiful downtown Burbank.”And I would write comedy material for Gary, for him to use on the air. I never charged him for it. I mean, I was just so thrilled that someone of the caliber of Gary Owens would use my material on the radio. And one day I get a call to appear in George Schlatter's office. George Schlatter was the producer of Laugh In. And this is when Laugh In was getting 50 shares. And I'm like, what does George Schlatter want with me? So, I go to the meeting obviously. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, Gary submitted my comedy material to him. And George Schlatter offered me a job as a writer on Laugh In. And it's funny, we laughed about it because George is still around and he was a guest on my podcast, and I talked about this.And I said, “Can I do this part time or from home?” And he goes, “What? No, this is a job. You come to the office every day. We're paying you a lot of money to write the number one show in America.” And I said, “I would lose my 2S deferment and I would wind up drafted in Vietnam.” So I couldn't take it. I had to turn down Laugh In. So, I was almost a writer six years before I actually broke in.Okay. So how did you end up then meeting up with David Isaacs?Ken Levine: Like I said, I became a disc jockey out of college. My draft number was four. And like I said, I was at KMPC and one of our disc jockeys, Roger Carroll, was one of the main AFRTS disc jockeys. I shopped around looking, is there a decent reserve unit I could join that would keep me out of the army? And I saw that there was an armed forces radio reserve unit in LA. And through Roger, he helped pull some strings and got me in the unit. You know, it's like one of those things where you get a call saying, “Okay, there's an opening in the unit, but you got to go down to Torrance and sign up for it tomorrow.” And so, you don't have time to think, “Boy, do I want to risk this? Is there a way I can get a medical thing?” And it's six years. It's a six-year commitment. Go.So that's what I did. I got into that unit. And we were at summer camp three years later and somebody new to the unit was David Isaacs. And we met and started talking and we both kind of had desires to be writers. And when summer camp ended, I was at the time working as a disc jockey in San Bernardino. I got fired, which was a frequent occurrence. And I came back home to live with my parents in LA. I called David and I said, “Hey, remember me from the army? I want to try writing a script. You want to try writing it with me?” And he said, “Okay.” And so, we got together and decided to partner up and we wrote a pilot. But we didn't know anything. We had no clue what we were doing. And I had to literally go to a bookstore in Hollywood and on a remainder table were TV scripts. And so, for two dollars I bought a copy of an episode of The Odd Couple and looked at that.Oh, Interior Madison Apartment Day. That's what that is. This is the format, and this is how long they are. So, David and I wrote a pilot about two kids in college, which was the sum total of our life experience back then. We were both 23. And it didn't go anywhere, obviously, but we had a good time doing it. And we then learned the way to break in is to write spec scripts from existing shows.So that's what we did. And eventually we broke in. So, had you written anything with him before that or seen any of his writing? What was it that made you think this is the guy?Ken Levine: No, no. He just seemed like a funny guy. Neither of us had written anything. Neither of us had any writing samples for the other. No, we just sat down together and just tried doing it. It probably was a help that we were both starting from the same place, which was nowhere. You know, it's just kind of one of those happy accidents where you go on a blind date, and it turns out to be your wife.How many years did you guys write together?Ken Levine: Well, we're still writing together, if somebody would hire us. Fifty years.Congratulations. Ken Levine: October of 73 is when we started. And I'm trying to remember, was it The Tony Randall Show or The Jeffersons where you sold your first script? Ken Levine: The Jeffersons. And how did that happen? Ken Levine: Well, we had written a spec Mary Tyler Moore and a spec Rhoda, and another spec pilot. Which was better but didn't go anywhere.And one day my mom is playing golf with a guy who says he's the story editor of The Jeffersons, a new show that just came on. My mom says, “Oh, well, my son is a great young writer.” And he's like, “Oh Christ.” And he says, “All right, well just have him call me.” So, I called him, and the guy says, “You have a script?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “All right, send the script. If I like the script, we'll talk.” And I sent off our Mary Tyler Moore Show, and I got a letter back saying, “Oh, this is a really good script. Make an appointment, come on in and pitch stories.” And we pitched stories, and they bought one. And so that's how we got our assignment. Thinking back, is there one moment that you felt like was really pivotal that officially launched you guys? Ken Levine: Yeah, doing that first MASH episode. We had done The Jeffersons, we had done episodes of Joe and Sons, which was a terrible show on CBS. We had done some stories for Barney Miller, but Danny Arnold always cut us off before we got to script. We did a backup script for a pilot that didn't go. And then we got MASH And our first episode of MASH, which is the one where the gas heater blows up and Hawkeye is temporarily blind. And that script was like our golden ticket. It's a very memorable episode. Ken Levine: Oh, thank you. I remember it.I spoke with—I don't know if you know her—April Smith, and she said she learned everything she learned about writing in a room from Gene Reynolds. Where did you learn about writing in a room? Ken Levine: Well, I don't know about writing in a room from Gene, because we never worked in a room, really, with Gene. But, I learned more about storytelling, and more about story construction, from Gene Reynolds, than everybody else combined. I've been very lucky to have a lot of great mentors along the way, or to work with, you know, really talented writers and smart enough to just shut up and listen and learn from them. But if I had to pick one true mentor, it would be Gene Reynolds. I cannot say enough about Gene Reynolds. I owe my career to Gene Reynolds. What was his special gift? Ken Levine: First of all, he was very much a gentleman. So, when he would give you notes, if he didn't like a joke, he wouldn't go, “Jesus, guys, what the fuck?” He would go, “And, um, you might take another look at this. You might take another look at that joke.” Okay. Gene had a great story sense that was combined with a real humanity. It had to be more than just funny. It had to be grounded. There had to be, like I said, some humanity to it and the humanity and nice moments and things had to be earned. And he was very clever in constructing stories where things were set up and then got paid off in a somewhat surprising way. You know, look for inventive, different ways of finding a solution. It's why to me, storytelling is always so hard, because each time you tell a story, you want it to be different. You don't want to just keep retelling the same story over and over again. And Gene would look at a thing and go, “Is there a better way of conveying this? Is there something more interesting that Hawkeye could do once he learns this information?” You could give Gene an outline, and everyone can go, “Okay, well, this doesn't work.” Gene could go, “This doesn't work, and here's why. And here's how you can fix it. If Radar knows this, and then HotLips does this, then you could do a fun thing where it's a thing and…. And you're going like, man, he just, you know, just solved it. Just, just solved it. I thank him for that. He was very tough on story, which I took from him. And again, there's the humanity aspect of it, which normally you think, well, okay, that's just part of it. But when I see shows today—and I know I'm going to sound like an old guy, “get off my lawn”—but when I see shows today, like White Lotusand a lot of these other shows that are just mean spirited, where the laughs are coming from watching horrible people do horrible things to each other. And, look, comedy changes and, you know, society changes, et cetera. But to me, there has to be some heart to it. There has to be some, some humanity. And that was so drummed into me by Gene. Gene also talked about the value of research, which I have learned a lot.You know, you go off to write a project about whatever. You're going to do a pilot about the Department of Motor Vehicles. You sort of know a lot about the Department of Motor Vehicles. You've stood in the lines and everything. Gene would say, “Go there. Talk to those people. What is that job really like?What do they really do? And immerse yourself in that world.” And that's what I've always done since. Jim Brooks, who worked with Gene on Room 222, would say the same thing, that he learned the value of research from Gene. And when Jim Brooks did Broadcast News, he spent a tremendous amount of time in newsrooms, talking to those people, getting a sense of authenticity. It requires work, it requires a lot of extra legwork, but it makes the scripts richer and more authentic. And it's worth putting in the time and effort. I just had Michael Conley on as a guest on my podcast. And one of the things I asked him—he does the Bosch books and The Lincoln Lawyer and he's my favorite mystery writer—and I said, “So with all the detectives out there, what's so special about yours and your books?”And he said, “The authenticity.” He spent years on the crime beat at The Los Angeles Times and really got to know the inside working of the LAPD. There is an authenticity to his books that you don't get with a lot. It makes a difference. Research pays off. Okay, one more TV question. What inspired your move into directing? Ken Levine: I'd been a writer for many, many years. A lot of those years I was on staff of a show, and years when I wasn't on staff on a show—since I'm a good joke guy—I would get a job as a consultant on a show. Meaning, I would work one night a week, which was always rewrite night.What a great gig.Ken Levine: It was a great gig. You worked long hours, but it was a great gig. And at the time the pay was ridiculous. There was one season I was on four shows. So, I was working basically four nights till two, three o'clock in the morning. And it got to the point where I would go down to the stage and I would kind of dread going down to the stage, because all I was worried about was, “Okay, let this not be a train wreck. Okay, let this be in good shape, so that I can go home at 10 or 11 or 12.”And I thought to myself, “There's something wrong here. You get into the business, you should want to be on the stage.” So, I thought, be a director and be on the stage and play all day with the actors. And then when it comes time for rewriting, “Good luck guys. You go to the room and rewrite, and I'll go to a Laker game.” So that was my motivation. It should be fun. If you're in television and you're in multi-camera shows, you should look forward to going down to the stage. And if you don't, then it's time to change things around. So, that was my motivation. Did you feel like you had any advantages as a director because of your background in writing and your understanding of scene construction?Ken Levine: Yes. Number one: The writing served me very well. I was talking to Jim Burrows once, who is the Mozart of TV comedy directors.And I was asking him about shots and this and that. And he said, “Look, if the story works, you can have one camera and just shoot the master of the whole show and it'll work. And if the story doesn't work, you can have all the camera angles and cutting you want. It's not gonna save it.” So yes, it was a big help to me, having that experience, being able to say to the actors, “Okay, I see what's wrong here. You need help with the script. You need a few more lines before you can get this angry. Okay. The reason why you're having trouble here is you have to go from zero to 70 in two lines. And you need help here.”And I was also able—this is something Jimmy did and no other director I know of other than me would do the same thing—and that is, we would go back to the writer's room after the run through and I would sit with the guys while we discussed what was wrong and what needed to be fixed. And I would kind of help them along that line as much as I could, which proved to be very helpful.And also, it was very helpful because you go down to the stage the next morning and you have your table reading. And you're able to say to the cast, “Okay, this is what they did last night. These were the problems. This is how they addressed it.” And there were certain things where actors would go, “Where's my joke?” And you're able to say, “The script was long. It was not you. You did a good job with the joke. The script was really long. It's a joke that was easily liftable as opposed to something that was more integral to moving the story forward. That's why you lost the joke.” So, it helped in communication. Also, by that time I had been a showrunner. So, I was used to coming down to the stage, and if I saw something I didn't like—with blocking or something—I'd go, “Wait a minute, why is she here and she over there? This is a private conversation. Put them together. Why are they standing back there in the corner? Why did you put them at this table? The audience can't see them over here. You put them over here at this front table, and then we can have background and you can have some depth and geography.” And stuff like that.So, I have that aspect. I also spent a lot of time editing these shows. So, I would work with the editor, and I'd say, “Okay, go to the wide shot where we see the full costume.” And he goes, “We don't have it.” “Wait, what? It's a costume joke. He comes in dressed like Mr. Pickwick and you only have it up to here?” So, as a director, I go, “Okay, this is what I need to make this joke.” And also reaction shots are so important. You know, when the director is directing a multi camera show—which is like directing Rubik's cube—you have a camera coordinator who works with you, making sure that all the shots are rights. And so, he'll go down the script and it's like, “Okay, Kelsey's line. All right, we have Kelsey on camera A, and then his line we have on camera C, and then Roz we have here.” And he's making sure that everything is covered. But I also want reaction shots. They aren't in the script, but I know when Sam says this, you're going to want to cut to Diane's reaction to it. So, I had that going in my head.And also knowing like, “Okay, this show is running a little long. I suspect that they may cut this section of a scene.” So, when I block it and when I set my cameras, do it in such a way where you can make that lift. Don't have somebody cross the stage during that section, because then if you lift it, the guy pops onto the other side of the room. Don't just have a master, so that there's nothing to cut away to. So, there's like all kinds of things that are going through your head, besides just directing the actors, that my experience was able to help me with.Well, you said Rubik's Cube, and that's what it sounds like: a Rubik's Cube on stage. Ken Levine: You've got five, six people on stage, and you have four cameras. You want to get a master and singles and reaction shots, and two shots. And it's all happening fluidly while the scene is going on. And then when somebody moves around the couch, then the cameras have to move, and are you covered? And those guys are amazing, the camera people in LA, if you're nice to them. I remember there was an episode of Becker that I was directing, and it was in the diner. And somebody had to go way upstage in the corner to the coat rack. And so, as I'm camera blocking that scene. I'm saying, “All right, I'm going to have to do a pickup. Fred, I'm going to have to send you way up the line to give me Ted in the corner there.”And he said, “I can get there.” And I go, “Fred, you have like a line and a half, because I've got you on Reggie. And then they cut away to Bob saying, ‘I looked at my lunch pail and I didn't have anything.' That's all the time you got. You got three seconds to get up there and frame it and do it.”And he says, “I get it. I can get it for you.” And for them, that was kind of part of the fun, was sort of the challenge. If they like you. If they don't like you, good luck.

The tale of Dick Whittington (and his cat) is one that has flowered through folklore and onto the stage, becoming a pantomime staple several centuries after London's most popular medieval mayor left his mark on the capital. The original rags to riches story, a young boy eaves his home in the country in search of fortune and his place in the world, naturally he heads for London, where he is told, the streets are paved with gold! But who was Dick Whittington, and why do we still tell stories of this man several hundred years after his death? Listen now to find out the facts behind the fable... Hosted by Katie Charlwood  Part of the Airwave Media Network - www.airwavemedia.com Listen to me guest on Shite Talk History with Kevin & Jason Wishlist Wishlist Donate at:  Patreon  Tip Jar Follow me on… Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook Business Enquiries: katie@whodidwhatnowpod.com Looking to Advertise, Contact: advertising@airwavemedia.com Fan Mail: Who Did What Now Podcast C/O TAG 11 Market Square Lettekenny Co. Donegal F92 R8W2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past 200 years, Dick Whittington has become one of Britain's best-loved pantomime heroes. Yet, as today's long read explores, the real-life story that inspired Dick's rags to riches tale is even more remarkable than the fiction. Based on his interview with author Michael McCarthy, Jon Bauckham considers how this fascinating medieval merchant morphed into an icon of the stage.  HistoryExtra Long Reads brings you the best articles from BBC History Magazine, direct to your ears. Today's feature originally appeared in the October 2023 issue, and has been voiced in partnership with the RNIB. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~Hello everyone, and welcome to bedtime stories with 安澜. In this segment, I'm going to be telling you some famous stories from Britain and many other countries. So get comfortable and let me take you on a journey far away, The story of Dick Whittington. Long ago, a poor little boy lived on the streets in torn and dirty clothes. He never saw or knew his parents or his birthplace. He called himself Dick Whittington. One fine day, he met a man driving a wagon who was on his way to London. Dick asked if he could join him on his journey. The kind man agreed but did not ask him to pay. Little Dick was very excited to see London and imagined that its streets were made of gold. However, to his utter disappointment, London was covered in dirt and there was no sign of gold. Dick was soon all by himself. He had gone days without food or money. He was cold and starving. He begged for food, work, and money but no one showed him any kindness. Out of exhaustion and hunger, he collapsed one day at the door of a kind merchant Mr. Fitzwarren. The cook at his place was a cruel woman who told Dick to leave or she would pour hot water on him. Mr Fitzwarren, who had just returned from the London Exchange, took pity on the boy and brought him in. He ordered his servants to provide him with food and drink and the cook to let him work in the kitchen as her helper. Just when little Whittington hoped for brighter days, the servants mocked him and the cook beat him. When the kind merchant's daughter, Miss Alice, found out about it, she felt sorry for him and ordered everyone to be nice to Dick. Dick Whittington slept in a bed in a tiny attic room that was full of rats and mice. They troubled him enough to prevent him from having a good sleep. A gentleman once visited Mr Fitzwarren who rewarded Whittington with a penny in return for brushing his shoes. Whittington set out with that penny to buy something for himself. On the way, he saw a woman with a cat. He wanted to buy the cat from her but the price was too high. He explained his situation and said, “A penny is all I have.” The good woman allowed him to have the cat for a penny. He named her Miss Puss and hid her in his attic room. She soon got rid of all the rats and mice and helped him sleep peacefully. Soon afterwards, it was time for Mr Fitzwarren's ship to set sail on a voyage. As per custom, the master ordered each servant to send something of their own for trade so they could possibly earn a fortune. Poor Whittington had nothing to offer but Miss Puss whom he unwillingly gave for the voyage.Dick Whittington's troubles were far from over. The cruel cook continued beating him and laughing at him for sending his cat on the voyage. Fed up with the situation, the poor boy fled from the house. While deciding which direction to continue his journey away from London, he heard St. Mary-le-Bow church's bells ringing.

A young boy's legendary rise from crushing poverty to London's highest office combines fact, folklore and a fearless feline heroine. It's a “Man's Best Friend” story, if a clever cat wrote it, instead of just knocking the pen off the desk...again and again.

So many questions... so little time with THE icon... THE Diva... THE Goddess... THE one and only Sinitta! (SAY WHAT?! *I would faint but I still don't believe it!*) This week, Britain's Got Fashun, Dahling, as this heavenly artist joins AW for a kiki about all things Mama Sin. But first, it's a Slaughter on 10th Avenue with Mick Ronson, before we let down our HAIR for the original broaday cast. Plus, we chat about the Attinis16, Sinitta Podtales, Shock Treatment, Queen Miquel Brown, Queen Amii Stewart, taking back the narrative from the tabloids, working with SAW, and SO-MACHO-MORE in this epic episode!Sinitta's Socials:Twitter: https://twitter.com/sinittaofficialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesinittaofficial/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thesinittaofficialWebsite: https://www.sinitta.com/Sinitta Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EAXAwVqUa6EV1bwVRa1AR?si=9b14ede652814c4b Dick Whittington (2023-24 Pantomime) Tickets: https://www.eshertheatre.com/panto Spencer: https://twitter.com/SpencerSher_Charlie/Tarzan/Hunchback tickets: https://www.tuacahn.org/Juxtaposing Metal with Musicals - joined by iconic guests from the worlds of Music, Broadway, Hollywood, and more! https://www.thetonastontales.com/listen -- https://www.patreon.com/bloomingtheatricals - https://twitter.com/thrashntreasurehttps://linktr.ee/thrashntreasure*****Help support Thrash 'n Treasure and keep us on-air, PLUS go on a fantastical adventure at the same time!Grab your copy of The Tonaston Tales by AW, and use the code TNT20 when you check out for 20% off eBooks and Paperbacks!https://www.thetonastontales.com/bookstore - TNT20 ***** ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Fun Fables are a collection of classic children's audio stories, fairy tales, fables and nursery rhymes that are fun and educational. Perfect for bedtime stories and car trips.  The episodes have all the key elements of the tradition tales but at the same time are unique and add a bit of humour along the way. In this episode: Dick Whittington (otherwise known as Dick Witty) and his cat (otherwise known as Kitty) travel to London expecting to find roads made of gold. Email: hello@funfablespodcast.com Website: www.funfablespodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kinderlingkids Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kinderlingkids/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kinderlingkids Created and produced by: Josh Newth Narrated by: The Narrator Man Published by KinderlingSee omny.fm/listener for privacy information.

Dick Whittington - who died 600 years ago this month - is a familiar name to generations of pantomime goers. But Richard Whittington's real life was far more compelling than the theatrical story suggests. He was a civic reformer, an enemy of corruption, the author of an extraordinary social legacy, who contributed to Henry V's victory at Agincourt, building works at Westminster Abbey, and to London's ceaseless development.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis is joined by biographer Michael McCarthy, to trace Whittington's life - from his arrival in London as a young boy to his death in 1423. This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.We've teamed up with Tripsmiths to provide our History Hit subscribers the opportunity to join Matt Lewis, on a 2 night break to delve into the story of King Richard III. You'll be travelling through 500 years of history to explore his life, death, and rediscovery. Go to historyhit.com/leicester to book now.If you're enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick is joined by performer Dee Tails who performed many creatures and droids for Lucasfilm in recent years including appearing as the troll Falken in Willow, L1 in Rogue One a Star Wars Story, the Pike Quay Tolsite in Solo A Star Wars Story and Slowen Lo in The Last Jedi - just to name a few. He shares his story of how he got to where he is today and the role that Star Wars played in his life.The Streaming Star Wars Network brings content to #StarWars Fans of all ages and generations. With Around the Galaxy, we bring you that magic moment when Star Wars fans meet for the first time. On Podcast of the Whills, we take a deep dive into the canon or a particular aspect of the saga. And our LIVE Friday night call-in talk show, Force Connect, looks at the latest in news and conversation in the Star Wars universe. From #disneyplus content, to comics to news and rumors, Chris, Pete and Nick have you covered! www.StreamingStarWars.comTikTok: @TheSSWNetworkInstagram: @TheSSWNetworkFacebook.com/StreamingStarWarsTwitter: @TheSSWNetwork & @ATGcastPatreon.com/StreamingStarWars (c) 2023 Pete in the Seat StudiosFrom IMDB:Dee Tails is a rising British trained actor who got his start in an RnB Band called MN8 signed to Columbia Records topping the U.K/E.U charts in the 90's, and were also added to the Bad Boys movie soundtrack. They were soon requested by Janet Jackson to join her on her 1995 European tour, while having several tours of their own as Britain's Biggest All Male Black boy band of the 90's.Soon after the huge success of band Dee found himself finally on the West End Stage performing in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Romeo And Juliet. He was also booked to reprise such roles as The Genie Of The Lamp and Dick Whittington's Cat Tommy, in Christmas Theatre Pantomime productions for the Hiss and Boo Company, as his first creature.After landing an exclusive 2011, Nescafé commercial in Cape Town, S. Africa. Dee went on to perform in his first feature film 2015's Art Ache a low budget film where he plays a wing man/best friend role to the lead, creating the humor in those scenes and in less than a year after acting in that film found himself head hunted by Neal Scanlon's CFX Department for an extremely secret 2015, Disney and Lucasfilm project, that went on to become Star Wars The Force Awakens directed by J.J Abrams.Immediately following this Dee was then tracked down by ITV who were interested in him performing on their 2015's big budget new show Jekyll and Hyde, as the reoccurring Harbinger (half man half dog creature) The show ran for one season but in that time his character proved to be a keeper and great for exposition.But Disney and Lucasfilm weren't quite finished with Dee just yet. It was while performing on the set of The Force Awakens and in between takes that caught the attention of both Neal and J.J realizing that they had access to an actor who could perform through whatever suit they threw at him. Which caused them to not only cast him in 2016's Rogue One as L1 where he was originally going to play the main droid K2so (until further development required a bigger name) but then going on to cast him in supporting roles in 2017's The Last Jedi as Slowen Lo and ultimately 2018's Solo, playing his biggest role to date within Star Wars as Quay Tolsite.In 2018 even one of the biggest Games in the world requested Dee to step in and cover a performance of its biggest character Cayde-6 in Destiny 2 Forsaken landing him his first ever gaming performance courtesy of Bungie.It's very clear to see that this versatile up and coming actor is one to watch for, as validated by some of the biggest studios in the world of entertainment and would be a huge asset to any production.

Come check out Dick - was he everything we were led to believe?! Thrice Lord Mayor of London? Surely not... We talk about Dick Whittington in pantomimes and stories, and we think we know him. How much of it is true? Join me and my guest Simon Whitehouse to find out if any of it is accurate! Find Simon - on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bluebadgesimon Although good luck ever getting him to respond to you!! He's so busy! Visit https://www.ladieswholondon.com for more information. Get in touch! Instagram; @ladieswholondonpodcast Email; ladieswholondon@gmail.com Websites; www.ladieswholondon.com Alex's guiding website - www.alexlacey.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you grew up watching pantomimes, then you'll likely be familiar with the story of Richard “Dick” Whittington – the poor country boy who ends up becoming three-times Lord Mayor of London. But did you know that Whittington was a real person? Michael McCarthy tells Jon Bauckham the tale of the wealthy merchant who inspired the tale, and explains why – on the 600th anniversary of his death – he deserves to be remembered today. (Ad) Michael McCarthy is the author of Citizen of London: Richard Whittington – The Boy Who Would Be Mayor (Hurst, 2022). Buy it now from Waterstones: https://go.skimresources.com?id=71026X1535947&xcust=historyextra-social-histboty&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fcitizen-of-london%2Fmichael-mccarthy%2F9781787387911 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The acclaimed theatre, television and film director, Dominic Cooke, chats to us about his new production of Euripides's classic tragedy, ‘Medea', starring Oscar-nominated Sophie Okonedo as Medea, spurned wife of Jason, hellbent on brutal and bloody revenge. Dominic explains why all the male parts are being played by Ben Daniels and tells us why he decided to stage it at Soho Place, the first new purpose built theatre in the West End for 50 years. Most people will know the devastating, bloody climax to the story, and Dominic tells us why he wanted to direct such a harrowing play and elaborates on what Sophie Okonedo brings to the role. We finish this episode with a tribute to Kit Hesketh-Harvey, the brilliant, wickedly funny entertainer, writer who has died suddenly. Kit and McConnel, his regular cabaret act with musician James McConnel, has been delighting and outraging audiences here and abroad for many years. As our guest twice, we celebrate Kit's extraordinary career and treat you to a clip of him talking to Ed and me about the joys – and importance - of pantomime and playing King Rat in Dick Whittington.

Mrs Fitzwarren teaches Dick, Lucky and Alice how to spot a rat.

Bow the Pigeon sings a song to try and stop Dick Whittington leaving London.

Stilton, Turnip and Sprout march and sing to convince everyone that rats are great.

London dances and sing as the excitement builds for Christmas.

From a Norwich workhouse to performing as "The American Voltigeur" - Pablo Fanque, or William Darby as he was born, was a star of 1830s circus in Britain. Nearly a hundred years later one of the names topping the bill was Lillian Leitzel. Kate Holmes is also an aerial performer and she shares her research into female aerialists with John Woolf, author of Black Victorians. Plus the presenter Shahidha Bari is also joined by New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton who compares researching early music hall and pantomime performers with the experience of taking part in a professional panto and by novelist Lianne Dillsworth whose novel Theatre of Marvels imagines a Black British actress who performs at Crillick's Theatre as the "Great Amazonia". Producer: Sofie Vilcins Black Victorians: Hidden in History by John Woolf and Keshia N Abraham is out now. John Woolf has also published The Wonders: : Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age Naomi Paxton made a Sunday Feature for Radio 3 about suffragette theatre and Punch and Judy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008qdl She is now playing the baddie, Queen Rat in Dick Whittington at The Theatre Chipping Norton Lianne Dillsworth's Theatre of Marvels is out now. You can find more programmes on Free Thinking about Victorian life Oskar Jensen and Fern Riddell are amongst Matthew Sweet's guests in a conversation about Victorian Streets https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017v2s Kathryn Hughes talks Victorian Bodies and George Eliot https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088jl64 How the Victorians tried to make us sound the same looks at ideas about accents and reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fng4 Matthew Sweet looks at the career of impresario Philip Astley and 250 years of the circus https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k8gyw How we talk about sex and female bodies, including Saartje Baartman https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f5n6 Swing High short documentary film was directed by Jack Cummings, and was produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1932.

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Peter Noone, Superstar Lead Singer of British Band “Herman's Hermits” About Harvey's guest: Today's special guest, Peter Noone, is a singer-songwriter, musician, actor and radio host who's been entertaining audiences since he was a child actor on “Coronation Street”.   After studying at the Manchester School of Music, where he won the Outstanding Young Musician Award, he became an international superstar at the age of FIFTEEN, as lead singer of the phenomenally popular British pop band, “Herman's Hermits”, selling over 60 million records and 7 gold albums, with 14 gold hit singles including "I'm into Something Good", "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat", "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter", "Silhouettes", "Wonderful World", "I'm Henry the 8th, I Am", "There's a Kind of Hush", "The End of the World", and many more.   “Herman's Hermits” were twice named by Cashbox magazine as "Entertainer of the Year", and they opened the 1970 Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.   Our guest has appeared on hundreds of TV shows including Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, Sonny and Cher, “Laverne and Shirley”, “Quantum Leap”, “Married with Children”, and of course, as “Paddington” on the ever-popular “As the World Turns”.   And he's starred in TV movies including “The Canterville Ghost”, “Pinocchio”, and “Dick Whittington”, as well as a number of feature films including “Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter”, “Hold On!”, “When The Boys Meet The Girls”, “Never Too Young to Rock”, and the unforgettable “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band”.  As a solo artist, he recorded the hit singles, “Oh! You Pretty Things", "Meet Me on the Corner Down at Joe's Cafe", and "I Think I'm Over Getting Over You", as well as his solo album, “One of the Glory Boys”.   He also conquered London's West End AND Broadway, playing the role of the dashing young hero, “Frederic”, in “The Pirates of Penzance”, which he took on tour all over the world.  And when he's not performing concerts before sold-out audiences, he's hosting his own immensely popular show on Sirius XM's 60's Gold station. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ https://www.facebook.com/PeterNooneHH/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBtp_gpEjO8&list=RDEMM2OWP0ie6DKozYtIXg6kJg&start_radio=1https://instagram.com/peternoone #PeterNoone   #HermansHermits   #harveybrownstoneinterviews

“Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.”

Today we're joined by Olivier nominated original Six Queen Jarnéia Richard-Noel (also known as Jaye'J) who is currently starring in the London production of Millennials by Elliot Clay at The Other Palace. Jarnéia originated the role of Catherine of Aaragon in Six The Musical. As part of the original cast, Jarnéia took the musical from its first tour, to a sell out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the West End where she stayed with the show for almost three years at the Arts Theatre, Lyric Theatre and Vaudeville Theatre. Alongside her fellow OG queens, Jarnéia was nominated for the 2019 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical. Earlier this year, Jarnéia and the original West End cast of Six reunited for three sell-out performances at Hampton Court Palace, before shooting a filmed movie of Six at the Vaudeville Theatre. After training at the Urdang Academy, Jarnéia made her professional debut as a singer/dancer for P&O Cruises. After leaving Six, she played Alice in Dick Whittington at the Norwich Theatre Royal before joining the UK tour of Hairspray as a swing for the Dynamites.From six to seven, Jarnéia is part of the girl group SVN alongside the original West End cast of Six. Following the release of multiple singles, SVN recently played their debut headline show at the O2 Academy Islington.In this episode, Jaye'J discusses her path into theatre, her journey with Six and why she's excited to be showing a different side of her talents in Millennials.  Millenials runs at The Other Palace until Sunday 4th September. Hosted by Andrew Tomlins. @AndrewTomlins32  Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.  

Who put the arrow in Harold's eye? Why did Dick Whittington have a cat? Where did the pointed arch come from? These are all questions that the curious and energetic antiquarians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries asked, and often managed to answer.In the third episode of her series looking at the way history was transformed in the Romantic period, Rosemary Hill talks to Roey Sweet about the new breed of multi-disciplinary investigators, who, in the years after the French Revolution, studied everything from woollen threads to tombstones in their efforts to imagine the past.Buy Rosemary Hill's book, Time's Witness, from the London Review Bookshop here: https://lrb.me/hillSubscribe to the LRB and get 79% off the cover price plus a free tote bag: https://lrb.me/history See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you were called to give a gift to a king across the sea what would you choose? Discover the answer with Isabelle Hauser sharing Csenge Zalka telling "The King and the Mit-mit Bird" and Danyda Feldman telling "Dick Whittington". Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/storystorypodcast)

Every year, panto season rolls around again, and amid the usual mixture of fairy tales and family favourites, we often find several versions of Dick Whittington around the country. Unlike Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, Dick Whittington professes to be based on a real person. Indeed, Richard Whittington was a real historical figure. But cats are mysteriously absent from his biography, and the rags-to-riches story from the pantomime is somewhat different in reality. So what is his legend, and why did it become such a popular retelling of a real person's history? Let's find out in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore. Find the images, videos and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/dick-whittington/ Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/ Become a Patron for bonus exclusive episodes at https://patreon.com/bePatron?u=2380595 Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7 Enjoyed this episode and want to show your appreciation? Buy Icy a coffee to say 'thanks' at: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick Tweet Icy at https://twitter.com/IcySedgwick Get extra snippets of folklore on Instagram at https://instagram.com/icysedgwick 'Like' Fabulous Folklore on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabulousfolklore/