Podcasts about East Berlin

Friederike Ablang is an award-winning children's illustrator. She was born in East-Berlin and studied photography and design in the United Kingdom and Germany. She has illustrated dozens of picture books and school books. In our conversation we discuss the recent book which she illustrated, O'win and the Moon by Roseanne Baxter Frank, published in March, 2025 by Wonder House Books. We also talk about her process, her journey to success, and her advice for aspiring illustrators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Friederike Ablang is an award-winning children's illustrator. She was born in East-Berlin and studied photography and design in the United Kingdom and Germany. She has illustrated dozens of picture books and school books. In our conversation we discuss the recent book which she illustrated, O'win and the Moon by Roseanne Baxter Frank, published in March, 2025 by Wonder House Books. We also talk about her process, her journey to success, and her advice for aspiring illustrators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we take a look at a topic that combines agriculture and the energy transition: agri-photovoltaics in India. India is considered one of the largest agricultural markets in the world and at the same time a hotspot for solar energy. But how can these two worlds be successfully combined in practice? Which technologies are gaining ground? And which political conditions are accelerating or slowing down the market ramp-up? We discussed this with Tobias Winter, who heads the Indo-German Energy Forum Support Office in India. About Tobias Winter Mr. Tobias Winter was born in East Berlin, Germany and holds a degree in Business Administration of the Rhine-Westphalia Institute of Technology Aachen (RWTH Aachen University). During his career, Mr. Winter has gained professional experience in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and the corresponding legislation in Germany, India, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. He first came to India in 2005 to develop a solar water desalination project with TERI Bangalore. He then worked in Argentina implementing solar energy solutions in the highland region Puna. From 2009 to 2014, he was the Director of the Competence Center in Renewable Energies for the German Chambers Network in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. In 2015, he came back to India, since then leading the Support Office of the Indo-German Energy Forum, to promote cooperation in energy security, energy efficiency, renewable energies, investments in energy projects and collaborative research and development with participation from India and Germany. The Indo-German Energy Forum Support Office has been tasked by Prime Minister Modi and Chancellor Scholz to implement the Indo-German Green Hydrogen Task Force. The Indo-German Energy Forum is part of the Bilateral Energy Partnerships – the central instrument of the energy policy of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. With now more than 30 partner countries, they form a global, steadily growing and valuable network between Germany and strategic partner countries that want to transform their energy systems for a sustainable, economically attractive and secure energy transition. The declared aim of the Bilateral Energy Partnerships is to shape a successful global energy transition that combines security of supply, decarbonization of industry and foreign trade promotion with effective climate protection.

Operaspymaster you may ask? Read on and listen to this episode. In this powerful and multifaceted episode of Unstoppable Mindset, we welcome Kay Sparling, former opera singer, PTSD survivor, and now debut novelist—as she shares her incredible life journey from international stages to the shadowy world of espionage fiction. Kay talks about the creation of her first novel, Mission Thaw, a gripping spy thriller based on her own real-life experiences volunteering with refugees in post-Cold War Europe. Kay and Michael discuss the inspiration behind her protagonist, CIA agent Caitlin Stewart, and how real-world trauma and service led Kay to use fiction as both a vehicle for healing and a call to action on the modern crisis of human trafficking. This is a conversation that transcends genres—music, espionage, activism, and resilience—all converging through the unstoppable spirit of a woman who refuses to stay silent. About the Guest: Kay Sparling was raised in the Midwest. At the age of seven, she began her professional singing career as Gretl in “The Sound of Music” and she continued to perform through high school. After graduation Kay attended University of Kansas and earned a BME in music education and a minor in Vocal Performance. She then attended graduate school in opera voice performance for one year at UMKC Conservatory of Music. She was awarded a grant to finish my graduate studies in Vienna, Austria. From there she won an apprenticeship at the Vienna State Opera. After moving to NYC to complete her second apprenticeship, Kay lived in Germany, Austria, and Italy for many years. In 1999 Kay returned to NYC and continued singing opera and became a cantor for the NYC diocese. After 9/11, she served as a cantor at many of the funeral and memorial masses for the fallen first responders. In 2003, Kay moved from NYC to the upper Midwest and started a conservatory of Music and Theatre where her voice students have been awarded numerous prestigious scholarships and won many competitions. In 2020, the pandemic shut down her conservatory, so she began training to be a legal assistant and now works in workers compensation. Back in 2013, Kay had started writing a journal as a PTSD treatment. She was encouraged to extend the material into a novel. After much training and several drafts, Mission Thaw was published in 2024. Kay is currently writing the second book in the Kaitlyn Stewart Spy Thriller Series. Ways to connect with Kay: Website: https://www.kaysparlingbooks.com X: https://x.com/MissionThaw/missionthaw/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/missionthaw.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/505674375416879 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kay-sparling-8516b638/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/missionthaw/ Litsy: https://www.litsy.com/web/user/Mission%20Thaw 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 ** 01:16 Well, hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I'm your host, Mike hingson, and our guest today is a very fascinating individual. I was just teasing her a little bit about her email address, which is operaspy master@gmail.com I'm telling you, don't cross her. That's all I gotta say. Anyway, we'll, we'll get into all of that. But I really am glad that she is with us. Kay Sparling is a fascinating woman who's had an interesting career. She's written, she's done a number of things. She's used to be an opera, gosh, all sorts of stuff. So anyway, we'll get to all of it and we'll talk about it. I don't want to give it all away. Where would the fun in that be? Kay, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Kay Sparling ** 02:11 Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:13 we're glad you're here. You're from up in Wisconsin. We were going to do this a couple of weeks ago, but you had all the storms, and it stole your internet and your power away, didn't   Kay Sparling ** 02:23 it? It sure did. Yeah, that was a terrible storm we had.   Michael Hingson ** 02:28 Yeah, that's kind of no fun. I remember years ago, I was talking to somebody on the phone. We were doing a sales call, and he said, I might not be able to stay on the phone because we're having a really serious storm, and he said it is possible that the lightning could hit the phone lines, and if it does, it could come in the house. And we talked for a few minutes, and then he said, I'm going to have to hang up, because I just felt a small shock, because the lightning obviously hit the phone line, so we'll have to talk later. And and he was gone. And we did talk later, though he was okay, but still, wow, yeah, there's a lot of crazy weather going on, isn't there? And we were just talking about the, we were just talking about the Canadian wildfires. They're No fun.   Kay Sparling ** 03:15 No, no. Just everywhere is having crazy weather.   Michael Hingson ** 03:20 Well, tell us a little bit about you growing up and all that sort of stuff, and telling me about the the early K   Kay Sparling ** 03:32 Well, growing up, I grew up in a farm community in the in the central Midwest, just you know, right in the middle of the bread basket, you might say, not near where you are now. No no, no further south and in very much agriculture time, I mean skipping ahead. I remember talking to a famous opera conductor when I was an apprentice, and I made some reference, and he goes, Well, how would you know that? And I said, because I grew up on a farm. And he went, Oh, get out here. Nobody makes it, you know, to a major European opera house from a farm. And I went, Well, I did. And later, I asked my mom to send me a picture, because we had had an aerial view taken of our homestead, and it was obvious for miles, all the way around the house and the barn and all, it was just corn fields and soybeans. You know what they showed   Michael Hingson ** 04:40 Illinois, Illinois, and so you showed it to him, yeah,   Kay Sparling ** 04:44 I showed it to him, and he was like, well, doggone, you're not lying. Like, No, I wasn't kidding you. I really did.   Michael Hingson ** 04:51 It shows how good I really am. See how far I progressed.   Kay Sparling ** 04:55 Well, you know, I was one of these kids. I. At five years old, I my parents took me to see sound and music at the theater, and during the intermission. Now I'm five years old, it's pretty late for me, right? But when we're in the concession stand, I tug at my mom's skirt, and I say, Mom, that's what I want to do. And she looks at me kind of funny, and she's kind of funny, and she's kind of confused. Well, what do you want to do work in a theater? You know, a movie theater? No, no, I want to do what those kids are doing on that on the movie screen. And she was like, Well, honey, you know, that's that's really hard to get somewhere like that. So that was when I was five. And then when I was seven, she just, you know, the all the school and the church were telling her, this kid's got a great voice, and they kept giving me solos and stuff. And so when I was seven, she put me in the Sangamon County Fair Little Miss competition. And of course, my talent was singing, so I just sang away. I really can't remember what I sang, but afterwards, a fellow came up to my parents and introduced himself, and he said that he was there, he had family, not, you know, in the area, and that he had grown up there, but since then, he he was in St Louis, and he said, we are, I'm a scout, and I'm looking, I'm an entertainment Scout, and I'm actually looking for, you know, the von trop children. We're going to do a big production, and we'd love to audition your daughter. Well, we were about, think it was an hour and a half away from St Louis, so my parents are like, wow, that'd be quite a commitment. But long story short, I did it, and that started my professional career. I was the youngest Bon Troy. You know, over cradle, yeah. And so it just went from there. And, you know, it was all Broadway, of course, and I did a lot of church singing, you know, it got to be by the time I was, you know, in high school, people were hiring me for weddings, funerals, all that kind of thing. And so I was a Broadway and sacred singer. Went to college. My parents said, you can't depend on a vocal performance degree. What if things don't work out? You have to have something fall back. So I went into vocal music ed at a very, very good school for that, and also music therapy, and, you know, continue being in their shows. And when I when I graduated, continued the Broadway, and one night I was also singing a little bit of jazz in Kansas City, where I was living, someone approached me. She was a voice teacher at the conservatory there, and that conservatory had an apprenticeship with the Kansas City Lyric Opera. And she said I knew you was an undergrad. My husband works where you, where you went to school, and I have been watching you for a long time. And I wish you quit this nonsense of singing Broadway and jazz and rock and everything and get serious, you know, and try opera. So I thought she was crazy to bring that up, but it wasn't the first time it had been brought up. So I have been teaching for a year, and at the end of that school year, I announced everyone I was going to graduate school and I was going to study opera. And so   Michael Hingson ** 08:55 what were you teaching?   Kay Sparling ** 08:57 I was teaching high school choir, okay, at a very big high school, very, very good choir department.   Michael Hingson ** 09:03 Now, by the way, after doing Gretel, did you ever have any other parts as you grew older in Sound of Music?   Kay Sparling ** 09:11 Okay, that's a very cool question. I am one of the few people that I know that can say I have sang every major role in Sound of Music sometime in my life. Ah, okay, because it was so popular when I was Oh, yeah. And as I would grow older, well now you're going to sing, you know, you just kept graduating up. And then pretty soon I sang quite a few Marias. And then after I was an opera singer. During covid, I was asked to sing Mother Superior. Mother Superior. Yeah, literally, have sung, you know, in a decades long career, I've sung every role in Sound of Music.   Michael Hingson ** 09:56 Cool. Well, that's great.   10:00 Yeah, so, so, anyway, so   Michael Hingson ** 10:02 you said that you were going to go study opera,   Kay Sparling ** 10:07 and I did a graduate school, and then I got the chance to get an international grant over to Europe, and so I decided to not finish my masters at that time and go over there and finish it, and most of all, importantly, do my first apprenticeship in Europe. And so I thought that was a great opportunity. They were willing. They were going to willing to pay for everything. And I said I would be a fool to turn this down. Yeah, so off I went, and that's kind of the rest of the story. You know, got a lot of great training, left Europe for a while, moved to New York City, trained best coaches and teachers in the world at the Metropolitan Opera and then, you know, launch my career.   Michael Hingson ** 11:04 So you Wow, you, you've done a number of things, of course, going to Europe and being in Vienna and places like that. Certainly you were in the the right place.   Kay Sparling ** 11:16 Yes, yes, definitely. You know, at that time in the in the middle 80s, United States was we had some great opera houses Iran, but we had very few. And it just wasn't the culture that it was in Europe, in Europe. And so, yes, there was a lot more opportunity there, because there was such a culture established there already.   Michael Hingson ** 11:44 So you went off and you did Europe and saying opera, what were you a soprano? Or what were you that sounds like a way a little high for your voice?   Kay Sparling ** 11:59 Well, you have to remember, I'm a senior citizen now. So this is the way it worked for me, because we're talking decades from the age 27 and I quit singing at 63 so that's a very long time to sing opera. So I started out, as you know, there is a voice kind of category, and each one of those, we use a German word for that. It's called Foch, F, A, C, H, and you know, that is determined by the kind of vocal cords you have, and the kind of training and the literature you're singing, and hopefully that all meshes together if you have good coaches and a good agent and such. And I literally have seen so many different Fox lyric, lyric mezzo, then to, very shortly, lyric soprano, and then for a long time, spinto soprano, which would be the Puccini and a lot of them really popular things. And then I was, I felt I was quite lucky that my voice did have the strength and did mature into a Verdi soprano, which is a dramatic soprano, not many of those around. And so that was, that was an endeavor, but at the same time, that was a leg up. And so most of the time in my career, I sang the bigger Puccini, like, let's say Tosca, and I sang a lot of Verdi. So I was an Italian opera singer. I mostly sang in Italian, not to say that I didn't sing in German or French, but I did very little in comparison to the   Michael Hingson ** 13:56 Italian Well, there's a lot of good Italian opera out there, although mostly I don't understand it, but I don't speak Italian well.   Kay Sparling ** 14:07 The great thing about most houses now is, you know, you can just look at the back of the seat in front of you, and there's the translation, you know, yeah, that   Michael Hingson ** 14:18 doesn't work for me. Being blind, that doesn't work for you. Yeah, that's okay, though, but I like the music, yeah. So how long ago did you quit singing?   Kay Sparling ** 14:32 Um, just about, well, under, just a little under three years ago, okay?   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 And why did you quit? This was the right time,   Kay Sparling ** 14:42 senses or what I had a circumstance, I had to have throat surgery. Now it wasn't on my vocal cords, but it was on my thyroid, and unfortunately, the vocal cord nerve. They had to take out some Cyst On. My right thyroid, and then remove it too. And unfortunately, my vocal cords were damaged at that time, I would have probably be singing still now some you know, I mean, because dramatic sopranos just can go on and on and on. One of my mentors was Birgit Nielsen, famous singer from Sweden, and she was in my grandmother's generation, but she didn't, I went to work with her, and she demonstrated at 77 she could still pop out of high C. And I believe, I believe I would have been able to do that too, but you know, circumstances, you know, changed, but that's okay. Yeah, I had sung a long time, and at least I can speak. So I'm just very happy about that.   Michael Hingson ** 15:51 So when you did quit singing, what did you decide to go do? Or, or, How did, how did you progress from there?   Kay Sparling ** 16:01 Well, I had already made a transition where I had come in 2003 to the Midwest. I came back from New York City, where I lived many, many years, and I started a conservatory of music and acting, and then that kind of grew into a whole conservatory of music. So I was also a part time professor here in Wisconsin, and I taught voice, you know, one on one vocal lessons, so high school and college and graduate school, and so I had this huge studio. So when that happened, I wasn't getting to sing a whole lot, because I was much more focused on my students singing me at that point, especially the older ones, professional ones, and so, you know, I just kept teaching and and then I had started this book that I'm promoting now, and so that gave me more time to get that book finished   Michael Hingson ** 17:10 and published. What's the name of the book?   Kay Sparling ** 17:13 The book is called Mission, thaw.   Michael Hingson ** 17:16 Ah, okay, and what is it about   Kay Sparling ** 17:22 mission thaw is feminist spy thriller set at the very end of the Cold War in the late 80s, and the main protagonist is Caitlin Stewart, who it who has went over there to be an opera singer, and soon after she arrives, is intensely recruited by the CIA. They have a mission. They really, really need a prima donna Mozart soprano, which is what Caitlin was, and she had won a lot of competitions and won a grant to go over there, and so they had been vetting her in graduate school in the United States. And soon as she came to Europe, they they recruited her within a couple weeks of her being there, and she, of course, is totally blindsided by that. When they approach her, she had she she recognized that things were not exactly the way they should be, that people were following her, and she was trying to figure out who, are these people and why are they following me everywhere? Well, it ends up being young CIA agents, and so when the head chief and his, you know, the second chief, approach her, you know, she's not real happy, because she's already felt violated, like her privacy has been violated, and so she wasn't really too wonderful of listening to them and their needs. And so they just sort of apprehend her and and throw her in a car, in a tinted window Mercedes, and off they go to a park to talk to her, right? And so it's all like crazy movie to Caitlin. It's like, what is going on here? And, you know, she can tell they're all Americans, and they have dark suits on, even though it's very, very hot, and dark glasses, you know? So everything is just like a movie. And so when they approach her and tell her about what they need her to do, you know, and this would be in addition to the apprentice she is doing that, you know, she just gets up and says, I'm sorry I didn't come over and be in cloak and dagger. A, you know, ring, I'm getting out of here. And as she's walking away, the chief says, Well, what if you could help bring down the Berlin Wall? Well, now that stops her in her tracks, and she turns around. She goes, What are you kidding? I'm just a, you know, an opera apprentice from the Midwest grew up on a farm. What am I gonna do? Hit a high C and knock it down. I mean, what are you talking about?   Michael Hingson ** 20:28 Hey, Joshua, brought down the wealth of Jericho, after all. Well, yeah, some   Kay Sparling ** 20:34 later, someone tells her that, actually, but, but anyway, they say, well, sit down and we'll explain what we need you to do. And so the the initial job that Caitlin accepts and the CIA to be trained to do is what they call a high profile information gap. She has a wonderful personality. She's really pretty. She's very fashionable, so she can run with the jet set. And usually the jet set in Europe, the opera jet set is also where all the heads of states hang out, too. And at that time, the the Prime Minister was pretty much banking the Vienna State Opera where she was apprenticing. So he ends up being along with many other Western Austrian businessmen in a cartel of human trafficking. Who they are trafficking are all the the different citizens of the countries that USSR let go. You know, when you know just got to be too much. Remember how, oh yeah, we're going to let you go. Okay? And then they would just pull out. And there was no infrastructure. There was nothing. And these poor people didn't have jobs, they didn't have electricity. The Russian mafia was running in there trying to take, you know, take over. It was, it was chaos. And so these poor people were just packing up what they could to carry, and literally, sometimes walking or maybe taking a train into the first Western European country they could get to. And for a lot of them, just because the geographical area that was Austria. And so basically, the Austrians did not want these people, and they were being very unwelcoming and arresting a lot of them, and there was a lot of lot of bad behavior towards these refugees. And so the Catholic church, the Catholic Social Services, the Mennonite Relief Fund, the the UN and the Red Cross started building just tent after tent after tent on the edge of town for these people to stay at. And so the businessmen decide, well, we can traffic these people that have nothing over to the East Germans, who will promise them everything, but will give them nothing. But, you know, death camps, basically, just like in World War Two. So you have work camps, you have factories. They they don't feed these people correctly. They don't they don't give them anything that they promise to them in in the camps. And they say, Okay, be on this train at this time, this night. And then they stop somewhere in between Vienna and East Germany, in a very small train station in the middle of the Alps. And they have these large, you know, basic slave options. And unfortunately, the children in the older people get sent back to the camp because they don't need them or want them. So all the children get displaced from their families, as well as the senior citizens or anyone with a disability. And then, you know, the men and the women that can work are broken up as well, and they're sent to these, you know, they're bought by these owners of these factories and farms, and the beautiful women, of course, are sold to either an individual that's there in East German that just wants to have a sex aid, pretty much. Or even worse, they could be sold to an underground East Berlin men's club. And so terrible, terrible things happen to the women in particular, and the more that Caitlin learns. As she's being trained about what's happening, and she interviews a lot of these women, and she sees the results of what's happened, it, it, it really strengthens her and gives her courage. And that's a good thing, because as time goes through the mission, she ends up having to be much, much more than just a high profile social, you know, information gather. She ends up being a combat agent and so, but that that's in the mission as you read, that that happens gradually and so, what? What I think is really a good relationship in this story, is that the one that trains her, because this is actually both CIA and MI six are working on this, on this mission, thought and the director of the whole mission is an very seasoned mi six agent who everyone considers the best spy in the free world. And Ian Fleming himself this, this is true. Fact. Would go to this man and consult with him when he was writing a new book, to make sure you know that he was what he was saying is, Could this really happen? And that becomes that person, Clive Matthews become praying, Caitlyn, particularly when she has to start changing and, you know, defending herself. And possibly, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 26:38 so he becomes her teacher in   Kay Sparling ** 26:42 every way. Yes. So how   Michael Hingson ** 26:45 much? Gee, lots of questions. First of all, how much of the story is actually   Kay Sparling ** 26:50 true? All this story is true. The   Michael Hingson ** 26:53 whole mission is true. Yes, sir. And so how did you learn about this? What? What caused you to start to decide to write this story?   Kay Sparling ** 27:08 So some of these experiences are my own experiences. And so after I as an opera singer, decided to be a volunteer to help out these refugees. I witnessed a lot, and so many years later, I was being treated for PTSD because of what I'd witnessed there. And then a little bit later in Bosnia in the early 90s, and I was taking music therapy and art therapy, and my psychiatrist thought that it'd be a good idea if also I journaled, you know, the things that I saw. And so I started writing things, and then I turned it in, and they had a person that was an intern that was working with him, and both of them encouraged me. They said, wow, if, if there's more to say about this, you should write a book, cuz this is really, really, really good stuff. And so at one point I thought, Well, why not? I will try. So this book is exactly what happened Caitlin, you know, is a real person, and everyone in the book is real. Of course, I changed the names to protect people and their descriptions, but I, you know, I just interviewed a lot of spies that were involved. So, yes, this is a true story.   Michael Hingson ** 29:06 Did you do most of this? Then, after your singing career, were you writing while the career, while you were singing?   Kay Sparling ** 29:13 I was writing while I was still singing. Yeah, I started the book in 2015 Okay, and because, as I was taking the PTSD treatment and had to put it on the shelf several times, life got in the way. I got my my teaching career just really took off. And then I was still singing quite a bit. And then on top of it, everything kind of ceased in 2018 when my mother moved in with me and she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but Louie body Alzheimer's, which is a very, very rough time, and so I became one of her caretakers. So I quit singing, put that on hold, and I. I had to really, really bring down the number in my studio I was teaching and spend time here at home. And so I would take care of her, but then after she would go to bed, and she'd go to bed much earlier than I wanted to, that's when I write, and that's when I got the lion's share of this book written. Was during that time, it was a great escape from what I was dealing with, believe it or not, you know, even though there's some real graphic things in the book and all it wasn't, it was a nice distraction.   Michael Hingson ** 30:36 Wow, so you, you lived this, needless to say,   Kay Sparling ** 30:41 Yes, I did, and yes.   Michael Hingson ** 30:45 So you've talked a little bit about what happened to these countries after the collapse of the USSR and communism and so on, these eastern companies, companies, countries. Has it changed much over the years.   Kay Sparling ** 31:03 Oh, yeah, for instance, one, you know, I went to Budapest after they were freed, I guess is what usr would say. Stayed in a five star hotel, and we were lucky if we had running water and electricity at the same time. And every time you went down on the streets, all you'd see is lines, you know, I mean, just because there'd be all like, Red Cross, etc, would be there, and they'd have these big trucks they drove in every day, and it just got to be because they had nothing. If you saw a truck, you'd start running towards it and get in line. You didn't care what it was, you know, and it was. And then fights would break out because they wouldn't have enough for everyone. And then, like, you know, maybe someone's walking away with a bag of rice, and some of us knock them over the head and take, you know, and it was very hard, you know, I was a volunteer there, and it was very, very hard to see this, you know, desperation, one story that I'd like to tell, and I put it in the book. I was riding my bike, you know, on a Friday afternoon to get some groceries at the nearest supermarket where my apartment was, and at that time, they still had the European hours, so they were going to close at five o'clock, and they weren't going to open until seven or eight on Monday morning. So you had to make sure you got there to get your weekend supply. So I was on my way, and I was parking my bike, and this woman, refugee woman, runs up and she has two small children with her, and she's carrying a baby, and she's speaking to me in a language I did not know. I do speak several languages, but I don't know Slavic languages and so, but I'm getting the gist of it that she has nothing to eat, neither do her children, and so I'm patting her on the shoulder, and right when I do that, a policeman that was guarding the door of the supermarket came up to me and, like, grabbed me really hard, and told me in German that I was not To speak to them, and I was not to help them, because if you help them, they'll stay. And I said to him in German, I'm an American. I am not Austrian. I am here on a work visa, and I can do whatever the hell I want to do. Well, he didn't like that. And so I just walked away from him, and I went in the store. And so I got up everything I get. Think of the big need, you know, I never had a baby, so I was trying to kind of figure that out, yeah, and I had to figure it out in German, you know, looking at labels now. And so finally I got, I got some stuff, you know, the stuff I needed, and, and, and the stuff that I got for the family, and I checked out, and I'm pushing the cart, you know, towards them. And he runs up beside me and stops me, and he says, I am going to arrest you if you bring that. I told you not to help them. And I said, again, I don't think I'm breaking any laws. And he said, Oh yes, you are. And I said, Well, I didn't read that in the papers. I didn't see it on TV where anyone said. That you cannot help a refugee. And so we're going back and forth. And so, you know, I'm pretty strong, so I just keep pushing it towards it. Well, she's kind of running down the park, and I'm like, wait, wait, you know, because she's getting scared of this guy, you know, he has a gun, he has a nightstick. Of course, she's scared, and so, you know, I would say, No, no, it's okay, because I can't speak for language, right? And so I'm just trying to give her body language and talk. Well, finally she does stop, and I just throw I give the one sack to the little boy, and one second little girl, they just run and and then, you know, I'm talking to her and saying, you know, it's okay, it's okay. And he grabs me, and he turns me around and he spits in my face.   Michael Hingson ** 35:53 Wow. Talk about breaking the law. But anyway, go ahead.   Kay Sparling ** 36:00 Welcome to Austria in the late 80s. You have to understand their Prime Minister Kurt voltheim won on the Nazi ticket. Mm, hmm. At that very time, if you got on a bus and you saw these businessmen going to work, at least 50% of them were reading the Nazi paper. Okay, so we kind of know what, where his affiliations lie. You know, this policeman and, you know, and I was very aware, you know, of of that party being very strong. And so you have to watch yourself when, when you're a foreigner. And I was a foreigner too, just like her. And so after wiping my face, I mean, I really, really wanted to give him a kick or something, yeah, and I do, I do know martial arts, but I was like, no, no, gotta stay cool. And I just told her to run. And she did and caught up with the children, and, you know, kept running. So that was the first experience I had knowing how unwelcome these people were in Austria. Yeah, so I got involved, yeah, I got involved because I was like, this is absolutely not right.   Michael Hingson ** 37:31 And so the book is, in part, to try to bring awareness to all that. I would think   Kay Sparling ** 37:36 absolutely there are, there are bits of it are, they're pretty darn graphic, but it's all true, and it's all documented. Sometimes people about human trafficking, they think, oh, it's not in my backyard. I'm not going to think about that. Well, I live in a very small college town, around 17,000 people, and two months ago, on the front page of this small paper here in town, there were seven men that were arrested for many counts of human trafficking of underage women and prostitution. So guess what, folks, it is in your backyard. If it's in this little town, it's probably in yours too. And we have to be aware before we can do anything. So we have to open our eyes. And I hope this book opens the eyes of the reader to say, Oh, my God, I knew things were bad, but I didn't realize that torture, this kind of thing went on. Well, it does, and I the International Labor Union estimates that 21 million people are being you. You are victims of human trafficking right now, as we speak, throughout the world, that's a lot of people, a lot of people. So most likely, we've all seen some hint of that going on, it didn't register as it at the time. You know, if you're just walked out of a restaurant, and you're walking to your car that's parked on the street, and you happen to go by an alley and there's restaurants on that row, and all of a sudden you see people being kind of shoved out and put in a truck. That's probably human trafficking, you know? And you know, a lot of people don't pay attention, but like, if they stop and think that doesn't look right, and if those people look like they may be from another country, yeah. And all you have to do is call the authorities, you know, and other ways that you can help are by you know, that that you can get involved. Are, you know, donate to all the different organizations that are finding this now.   Michael Hingson ** 40:19 Was the book self published, or do you have a publisher?   Kay Sparling ** 40:25 I self published, but it's more of a hybrid publishing company that's kind of a new thing that's going on, and so I cannot learn all those different facets of publishing a book, right? It just wasn't in my, you know, skill set, and it also wasn't even interesting to me. I don't want to learn how to do graphic illustration. Okay? So what I did is I hired a hybrid company that had all these different departments that dealt with this, and I had complete artistic control, and I was able to negotiate a great deal on my net profits. So I feel that, after looking into the traditional publishing world and not being exactly pleased with it to say the least, I think that was the right business choice for me to make, and I'm very happy I did it.   Michael Hingson ** 41:46 How do you market the book then?   Kay Sparling ** 41:48 Well, that was, that was the tricky part that that publisher did have some marketing they started, but obviously now they agreed it wasn't enough. So at that point, I attended a virtual women's publishing seminar, and I really paid attention to all the companies that were presenting about marketing. And in that time, I felt one that I just was totally drawn to, and so I asked her if we could have a consultation, and we did, and the rest is history. I did hire her team and a publicist, Mickey, who you probably know, and, yeah, it's been going really great. That was the second smart thing I did, was to, you know, hire, hire a publicity.   Michael Hingson ** 42:50 Well, yeah, and marketing is one is a is a tricky thing. It's not the most complicated thing in the world, but you do have to learn it, and you have to be disciplined. So good for you, for for finding someone to help, but you obviously recognize the need to market, which is extremely important, and traditional publishers don't do nearly as much of it as they used to. Of course, there are probably a lot more authors than there used to be too. But still,   Kay Sparling ** 43:19 yeah, their their marketing has changed completely. I remember I had a roommate that became a famous author, and just thinking about when he started, you know, in the 80s, how the industry is completely changed. Mm, hmm, you know. So, yeah, it's, it's really tricky. The whole thing is very tricky. One thing that I also did is one of my graduate students needed a job, and so I've known her since, literally, I've known her since eighth grade. I have been with this student a long time, and she's done very well, but she really is a wiz at the social media. And so she made all my accounts. I think I have 12 altogether, and every time I do something like what I'm doing tonight, soon as it's released, she just puts it out there, everywhere and and I have to thank her from again that that's probably not my skill set.   Michael Hingson ** 44:37 Well, everyone has gifts, right? And the the people who I think are the most successful are the people who recognize that they have gifts. There are other people that have gifts that will augment or enhance what they do. And it's good that you find ways to collaborate. I think collaborating is such an important thing. Oh, yeah. All too many people don't. They think that they can just do it all in and then some people can. I mean, I know that there are some people who can, but a lot of people don't and can't.   Kay Sparling ** 45:12 Well, I've got other things. I've got going, you know, so maybe if I only had to do the book, everything to do with the book, that would be one thing, but I, you know, I have other things I have to have in my life. And so I think that collaboration is also fun, and I'm very good at delegating. I have been very good at delegating for a long time. When I started my school. I also started a theater company, and if you know one thing, it's a three ring circus to produce an opera or a musical, and I've done a lot of them, and yeah, I would have not survived if I didn't learn how to delegate and trust people to do their own thing. So what are you   Michael Hingson ** 45:58 doing today? What are you doing today? Besides writing?   Kay Sparling ** 46:04 Well, during covid, everything got shut down, and I didn't have an income, and I had to do something. And one of, believe it or not, one of my parents, of one of my students, is an attorney for the state of Wisconsin, and she was very worried. I mean, it looked like I might lose my house. I mean, I literally had no income. And so, you know, I was a small business person, and so she offered me very graciously to come work in the department of workers compensation in the legal Bureau at the state of Wisconsin. So I never have done anything like that in my life. I have never sat in a cubicle. I've never sat in front of a computer unless it was in its recording studio or something like that. So it was a crazy thing to have to do in my early 60s, but I'm a single woman, and I had to do it, and and I did, and it put me on solid ground, and that was one reason I couldn't finish the book, because I didn't have to worry about a live cookie. And so I am continuing to do that in so as in the day, that is what I do. I'm a legal assistant, cool.   Michael Hingson ** 47:32 And so when did mission thought get published?   Kay Sparling ** 47:38 Mission thought almost a year ago, in August of 2024 it launched, yes, okay, yeah. And it was very scary for me, you know, because my hybrid publishers up in Canada, and they were telling me, Well, you know, we're going to get you some editorial reviews and we're going to have you be interviewed. And you know, those very first things where my editor at at the publisher had told me it was one of the really a good book, and that was one of the cleanest books she ever had to edit. And so that kind of gave me some confidence. But you understand, look at my background. I I didn't go to school to be a writer. I had never studied writing. I hadn't done any writing up until now, and so to that was my first kind of sigh of relief when the editor at the publisher said it was really a good book, and then I started getting the editorial reviews, and they were all stellar, and they continue to be. And I'm, I'm still a little shocked, you know, because it takes time, I guess, for a person to switch gears and identify themselves as an author. But you know, after a year now, I'm feeling much more comfortable in my shoes about that. But at first it was, it was trying because I was scared and I was worried, you know, what people were going to think about the book, not the story, so much as how it was crafted. But it ends up, well,   Michael Hingson ** 49:15 it ends up being part of the same thing, and yeah, the very fact that they love it that that means a lot. Yeah, so is, is there more in the way of adventures from Caitlin coming up or what's happening?   Kay Sparling ** 49:30 Yeah, this is hopefully a trilogy, um of Caitlin's most important standout missions. And so the second one is set in the early 90s during the Bosnian war. And this time, she cannot use opera as a cover, because obviously in a war zone, there's no opera. And so she has to. To go undercover as either a un volunteer or Red Cross, and this time, her sidekick is not the Clive Matthews. He has actually started a special squad, combat squad that's going in because, of course, we, none of us, were really involved with that war, right? But that's what he's doing. And so, believe it or not, her, her sidekick, so to speak, is a priest that very early, goes on and sees, you know, this absolute ethnic cleansing going on, you know, massacres and and he tries to get the Catholic Church to help, and they're like, no, no, we're not touching that. And so he goes AWOL. And had been friends in Vienna with the CIA during the first book. He goes to the CIA and says, This is what's going on. I saw it with my own eyes. I want to help. And so he becomes Caitlin's sidekick, which is a very interesting relationship. You know, Caitlin, the opera singer, kind of, kind of modern girl, you know, and then you know, the kind of staunch priest. But they find a way to work together, and they have to, because they have to save each other's lives a couple times. And this is my favorite book of the three. And so basically what happens is called Mission impromptu, and I hope to have that finished at the end of this month. And the reason we call it impromptu is because her chief tells her to just get the information and get out, but her and the priest find out that there is a camp of orphaned boys that they are planning to come massacre, and so they they they basically go rogue and don't follow orders and go try to help the boys. Yeah. And then the third book, she has actually moved back to New York, and she's thinking, well, she does retire from the CIA, and it's the summer of 2001 and what happened in September of 2001 911 and so they call her right back in she literally had been retired for about three months.   Michael Hingson ** 52:35 Well, to my knowledge, I never met Caitlin, so I'm just saying Mm hmm, having been in the World Trade Center on September 11, but I don't think I met Caitlin anyway.   Kay Sparling ** 52:43 Go ahead. No, she wasn't in the towers, but no, I was in New York. And yeah, so they called her back right away. And so the third one is going to be called Mission home front, because that's been her home for a very long time. She's been living in New York.   Michael Hingson ** 53:01 Are there plans for Caitlin beyond these three books? I hope so.   Kay Sparling ** 53:08 I think it would be fun for her to retire from the CIA and then move back to the Midwest. And, you know, it turned into a complete fiction. Of course, this is not true stuff, but, you know, like kind of a cozy mystery series, right, where things happen and people can't get anyone to really investigate it, so they come to Caitlin, and then maybe her ex boss, you know, the chief that's also retired, they kind of, you know, gang up and become pi type, you know, right? I'm thinking that might be a fun thing.   Michael Hingson ** 53:46 Now, are mostly books two and three in the mission series. Are they also relatively non fiction?   53:53 Yes, okay,   Michael Hingson ** 53:57 okay, cool, yes. Well, you know, it's, it's pretty fascinating to to hear all of this and to to see it, to hear about it from you, but to see it coming together, that is, that is really pretty cool to you know, to see you experiencing have the book, has mission thought been converted by any chance to audio? Is it available on Audible or   Kay Sparling ** 54:21 anywhere it has not but it is in my plans. It's there's a little bit of choice I have to make do. I use my publisher and hire one of their readers you know to do it, someone you know, that's in equity, that type of thing. Or you know, my publicity, or people are also saying, well, because you're an actor, and, you know, all these accents, it might be nice for you to do to read your own book. Well, the problem is time, you know, just the time to do it, because I'm so busy promoting the book right now. And really. Right writing the second one that you know, I just don't know if I'm going to be able to pull that off, but I have my own records, recording studio in my voice studio downstairs, but it's just and I have all the equipment I have engineers. It's just a matter of me being able to take the time to practice and to get that done. So it's probably going to be, I'll just use their, one of their people, but yes, yeah, it's coming. It's coming. Well, it's,   Michael Hingson ** 55:29 it's tough. I know when we published last year, live like a guide dog, and the publisher, we did it through a traditional publisher, they worked with dreamscape to create an audio version. And I actually auditioned remotely several authors and chose one. But it is hard to really find someone to read the book the way you want it read, because you know what it's like, and so there is merit to you taking the time to read it. But still, as you said, there are a lot of things going on,   Kay Sparling ** 56:09 yeah, and I have read, you know, certain portions of the book, because some podcasts that I've been on asked me to do that, and I and I practiced and that, it went very well. And of course, when people hear that, they're like, Oh, you're the one that has to do this. You know Caitlin. You can speak her, you know her attitudes and all. And then you also know how to throw all those different accents out there, because there's going to be, like, several, there's Dutch, there's German, there's Scottish, high British and Austrian. I mean, yeah, yeah, Austrians speak different than Germans. Mm, hmm,   Michael Hingson ** 56:53 yeah, it's it's a challenge, but it's still something worth considering, because you're going to bring a dimension to it that no one else really can because you wrote it and you really know what you want them to sound like, Yeah, but it's a it's a process. I and I appreciate that, but you've got lots going on, and you have to have an income. I know for me, we started live like a guide dog my latest book when the pandemic began, because I realized that although I had talked about getting out of the World Trade Center and doing so without exhibiting fear, didn't mean that it wasn't there, but I realized that I had learned to control fear, because I learned a lot that I was able to put to use on the Day of the emergency. And so the result of that was that, in fact, the mindset kicked in and I was able to function, but I never taught anyone how to do that. And so the intent of live like a guide dog was to be a way that people could learn how to control fear and not let fear overwhelm or, as I put it, blind them, but rather use fear as a very powerful tool to help you focus and do the things that you really need to do. But it's a choice. People have to learn that they can make that choice and they can control it, which is kind of what really brought the book to to mind. And the result was that we then, then did it. And so it came out last August as well.   Kay Sparling ** 58:27 Oh, well, if you read my book, you'll see Caitlin developing the same skills you were just talking about. She has to overcome fear all the time, because she's never been in these situations before, and yet she has to survive, you know?   Michael Hingson ** 58:44 Yeah, well, and the reality is that most of us take too many things for granted and don't really learn. But if you learn, for example, if there's an emergency, do you know where to go in the case of an emergency? Do you know how to evacuate, not by reading the signs? Do you know? And that's the difference, the people who know have a mindset that will help them be a lot more likely to be able to survive, because they know what all the options are, and if there's a way to get out, they know what they are, rather than relying on signs, which may or may not even be available to you if you're in a smoke filled environment, for example, yeah,   Kay Sparling ** 59:22 yeah, you should know ahead of time. Yeah, you know, I know the state where I work. I I mostly work at home. I'm able to do that, but we do have to go in once a week, and we just changed floors. They've been doing a lot of remodeling, and that was the first thing, you know, the supervisor wanted us to do was walk through all the way for a tornado, fire, etc, and so we did that, you know, and that's smart, because then you're like, you say you're not trying to look at a chart as you're running or whatever,   Michael Hingson ** 59:56 and you may need to do it more than once to make sure you really know it. I know for me. I spent a lot of time walking around the World Trade Center. In fact, I didn't even use my guide dog. I used a cane, because with a cane, I'll find things that the dog would just automatically go around or ignore, like kiosks and other things. But I want to know where all that stuff is, because I want to know what all the shops are down on the first floor. Well, now that that is the case anymore, but it was at the time there was a shopping mall and knowing where everything was, but also knowing where different offices were, knowing who was in which offices, and then knowing the really important things that most people don't know about, like where the Estee Lauder second store was on the 46th floor of tower two. You know, you got to have the important things for wives, and so I learned what that was. Well, it was, it was, those are important things, but you'll learn a lot, and it's real knowledge. Someone, a recent podcast episode that they were on, said something very interesting, and that is that we're always getting information, but information isn't knowing it. Knowledge is really internalizing the information and making it part of our psyche and really getting us to the point where we truly know it and can put it to use. And that is so true. It isn't just getting information. Well, that's great. I know that now, well, no, you don't necessarily know it now, until you internalize it, until you truly make it part of your knowledge. And I think that's something that a lot of people miss. Well, this has been a lot of fun. If people want to reach out to you, is there a way they can do that?   Kay Sparling ** 1:01:40 Yeah, the best thing is my book website, K, Sparling books.com spelled and it would K, a, y, s, p, as in Paul, A, R, L, I N, G, B, O, O, K, s.com.com, okay, and you can email me through there. And all the media that I've been on is in the media section. The editorial reviews are there. There's another thing that my student heats up for me is the website. It's it's really developed. And so lots of information about the book and about me on on there. And one thing I want to mention is, just because of my background and all the all the people that you know, I know, a friend of mine is a composer, and he wrote a song, a theme song, because we do hope that someday we can sell this, you know, yeah, to for movie and, or, you know, Netflix, or something like that. And so he wrote a theme song and theme music. And I just think that's fun. And then I wanted my students saying, saying it. And then, you know, it's with a rock band, but it's, it's very James Bond, the kind of with a little opera, you know, involved too. But, you know, not a lot of authors can say that on their website, they have a theme song for their books.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:16 And where is   Kay Sparling ** 1:03:18 it? It would be under, it's going to be about the author. And there's a nice one of my other students is a graphic artist. She She did a graphic a scene of Caitlin with her ball gown, and she's got her foot up on a stool, and she's putting her pistol in her thigh holster, in I think, you know, it's kind of like a cartoon, and it quotes Caitlin saying, I bet you I'm going to be the only bell at the ball with this accessory pistol. And then right underneath that, that song, you can click it and hear it. We also are on YouTube mission. Thought does have its own YouTube channel, so you can find it there as well.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:05 So well, I want to thank you for being here and for telling us all the stories and especially about mission. I hope people will get it and read it, and I look forward to it coming out in audio at some point. Yes, I'll be lazy and wait for that, I I like to to get books with human readers. You know, I can get the print book and I can play it with a synthetic voice, but I, I really prefer human voices. And I know a lot of people who do AI has not progressed to the point where it really can pull that off.   Kay Sparling ** 1:04:38 Well, no, it cannot. Yeah, I totally agree with you there.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:42 So Well, thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching us today. This has been fun. And as some of you know, if you listen to many of these podcasts, we have a rule on the podcast, you can't come on unless you're going to have fun. So we did have fun. We. You have fun? Yeah. See, there you go. I was gonna ask if you had fun. Of course, yes. So thank you all for listening. Love to hear from you. Love to hear what your thoughts are about today's episode. Feel free to email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, also, please give us a five star rating. We appreciate it. K, I'll appreciate it. And when this goes up, when you hear it, we really value those ratings and reviews very highly. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest and KU as well, love to hear from you. Please introduce us. Kay, you'll have to introduce us to Caitlin, but But seriously, we always are looking for more guests. So if anyone knows of anyone who ought to come on and tell a story, we'd love to hear from you. But again, Kay, I want to thank you one last time. This has been great, and we really appreciate you being here.   Kay Sparling ** 1:05:59 Well, thank you for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:04 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.

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Send us a textA chance encounter with the remains of the Berlin Wall unleashed a flood of unexpected emotions during my vacation in Germany. Walking these streets 35 years after my first visit as a young backpacker, when the city was still divided by concrete and barbed wire, brought history vividly back to life in ways I wasn't prepared for.What does it mean when your neighborhood is suddenly cut in half by armed guards, barbed wire, and bricks laid at gunpoint? How do families cope when they're separated with no means of communication? The resilience of Berliners who lived through the wall's construction reminds us how quickly "normal" can vanish and how humans adapt to unimaginable circumstances. Standing at the spot where I once crossed into East Berlin, I couldn't help but reflect on those who attempted escapes—some successful, many tragically not.This experience has me thinking about modern preparedness challenges. While enjoying the vibrant, unified Berlin of today, with its street festivals and overflowing cafés, I've been contemplating what would happen if a serious situation prevented international travel while abroad. Even a minor air traffic control glitch delayed my flight from Newark—what if something more serious occurred? Do you have backup communication methods when traveling? Could you manage if suddenly cut off from home? These aren't just academic questions for preppers; they're practical considerations for anyone who ventures beyond their comfort zone. I encourage you to travel when possible—whether across the world or just to another state—but always with awareness and contingency plans. The lessons of Berlin's wall continue to teach us about human resilience, the fragility of our connections, and the importance of preparation.Support the showHave a question, suggestion or comment? Please email me at practicalpreppodcast@gmail.com. I will not sell your email address and I will personally respond to you.

A&O Hostels CEO Oliver Winter shares how he built one of Europe's largest hostel brands—and why it's resonating with Gen Z, solo travelers, and digital nomads. From one property in Berlin to 42 locations across Europe, A&O Hostels has become a leader in affordable, sustainable hospitality. In this episode of No Vacancy News, Glenn Haussman and Dr. Suzanne Bagnera talk with Oliver about:  ✅ Why solo travel is booming—especially among women ✅ How A&O achieves an 80% lower CO₂ footprint than competitors  ✅ Converting vacant office buildings into profitable hostels ✅ Building social spaces, work zones, and safety features Gen Z travelers expect ✅ Lessons from growing up in East Berlin and building with freedom in mind 

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 23 Planning Ceremonies.. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.  As Maya, Sarah, & Emily headed into the house, Emily pulling the wheelie bag behind her, all of the luggage taken into the house, as Andy glanced over to look at Phil, as Linda moved over to stand closer to him. "You didn't have to bring her over here yourself Phil," Andy said to him. "You've got plenty of people over at the base for that kind of thing." "Not as many as I used to," he said. "You heard about this Valhalla Shores they've set up over in Pacifica?" Andy nodded. "Yeah, the other Phil called a little earlier today, told me he'd been moved into there. Why, are they taking some of your people?" "Seems like it. Maya was in the last batch of people we were doing serum injections for here in New Eden for the foreseeable future. Me and my team have been retasked, with studying the long term effects of the treatment, and with finding a way to help women survive if their male partner is killed. This thing we've got, it's kept a bunch of us alive, but the last thing I ever intended was for it to be binding men and women together." "Fucking McCallister," Linda grumbled. "Who?" Andy asked. "Don't worry about it," Phil said. "Anyway, they're using the base next to Valhalla Shores to be doing serum induction and pairing now. New Eden's mostly a closed community at this point." "Mostly?" "Nothing's ever truly completely done, so if we get special requests, or emergency needs, we'll add some more people to New Eden, but they want us focused on countering these side effects so badly that even the people who are being moved into Dos Eden are mostly going to be dosed elsewhere. There's a large facility in Oakland that's basically going to be the headquarters for serum induction, even though I told them it would probably be easier for all the Dos Eden people to just be inducted here, but the higher ups are adamant I start working some of this out." "I mean, that's probably for the best, isn't it, Phil? What happens right now if a man dies and he's partnered to multiple women? They just go insane?" "Well, no," Phil said, "but it's not pretty. We have a sort of temporary work around, but I think it's cruel, and it's certainly not anything I want to be advertising." "The hell are you talking about, Phil?" "So fairly early on in the crisis, we had to send some samples out to Washington, so they could see about getting some key people inoculated against the virus. We sent enough that all of Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff could've taken it if they wanted, but almost to a man they refused. The military leaders were a lot smarter about it, though, and many of them decided to have their partners take the treatment, so they would have some level of immunity from DuoHalo. The fact that General Brown, who took over for General Goldfein in August, was so proactive in making sure the top brass at the Air Force were inoculated might just be the defining action that saved this country from extinction." "Once again," Linda said with a sigh, "the black guy has to work three times as hard just to get so much as a thank you." "Well, when I have the privilege of meeting General Brown, I'm going to thank him hard enough for three people, because he's basically the only reason any of us are alive," Phil said. "He sprung into action, and made sure that we were working to get our solution, the only workable solution, out to as many people as possible, as quickly as we could. And he's the person who assigned you to me, Linda, so for that I'll be eternally grateful, because you've saved my life more than a couple of times over the past few months, in more ways than one." "I told you, the sniper was a freebie, so he doesn't count," she said, a hint of flirting layered into her voice. "So that means you only owe me, like, three or four, tops. All the emotional, mental stuff, that's all Audrey's doing. She's the one who takes care of your brain while I take care of the body." "Oh she does her share of body care too," Phil teased back. "I suppose," Linda said with a wink. "Anyway, tell Andy what you needed to." "I'm getting there, Linda, just be cool." "Pssht. Like you know anybody cooler than me." Phil looked back to Andy with a grin and a shrug. "When she's right, she's right. Did Lesser Phil say much about Valhalla Shores?" "Only that they were super strict about their quarantine rules. He was calling to tell me he didn't think he'd be able to do poker for the foreseeable future, because he couldn't come and go any more. He said that if he left the area, he had to spend a week in quarantine before he'd be allowed back in to see the rest of his family. Struck me as sort of an over reach, considering we're all basically immune to DuoHalo, as long as we're having regular contact with our partners, right?" "Theoretically, yeah, although we're still doing a lot of testing on that," he said. "Well, I guess the Air Force is doing that testing, because right now, I'm just focused on making sure we get women the ability to survive the death of their partners." "You said you had a workaround." "Not a good one," Linda interjected. "Agreed," Phil said. "So if a man dies, as long as his body isn't too badly damaged, we can harvest slightly necrotized semen from his corpse, introduce that into one of his partners, and it will act as a sort of a reset function, but the woman needs to be reimprinted almost immediately. As soon as the necrotized semen hits her system, she'll basically be in a state like the one you found Piper in, in a crude, violent frenzy." "Jesus," Andy said, "who the hell knows about this?" "The women who are staffing what few emergency rooms we have open near any induction centers, and the staff of the centers themselves, so we're keeping the loop pretty small on it, at least for the time being. It's given me a starting place on where to work on a reset serum, but I'm still quite a ways from having anything even vaguely useful." "Have you considered trying to get the serum to work on men without the need of the pairing?" Phil shot him an annoyed look. "What a great idea! Why didn't I think of that?" he said, slapping his forehead. "Yes, I fucking thought of that, but it's almost like our serum is actively fighting against pairing with immunization suspensions. We suspect we had someone sabotaging the project from the get go, so it's entirely possible the bastard had this whole thing baked in there for some other reason. God only knows what the sick motherfucker thought he was going to do with it." "If you think you had a saboteur  " "No," Linda interjected, "we know we had one. His ass fled to Russia." "Russia? Seriously?" "It's part of the reason their military and political cabinets are in so much better shape than ours, although they clearly didn't have the infrastructure to mass produce it, considering how horrible the casualties of their population are. While the Russian authorities had plenty for themselves and their generals, their population was hit harder than almost anyone else's, with close to 90% of the Russian male population dead. Putin's not anywhere near as scary when most of his military bases are staffed by corpses, and there's nobody to climb inside of his tanks." "But what about all the women of Russia? With so few men there, there's no way your system would work, would it?" Phil nodded. "I mean, DuoHalo isn't anywhere near as fatal to women as it is to men, so I think the Russian gambit is to just hope enough women survive DuoHalo naturally as to keep the country even vaguely functional, while all the important men have at least a dozen partners each, to ensure they're always completely buffered from the DuoHalo virus. I'm almost wondering if this was what the saboteur had in mind when he started tampering with my serum in its early days, trying to invent something that would enslave women to men. Christ, if he was still here, I'd shoot him myself," the Filipino American man said, scratching the back of his neck. "Get to the point, babe," Linda told him. "Our absence off base raises red flags the longer we're gone, and the last thing we want is them getting suspicious." "Suspicious?" Andy scowled at his good friend for a moment. "Phil, what the hell are you up to?" "You remember when you told me a few years ago that you thought one of your superiors was actively getting in the way of you getting promoted?" "I do remember that," Andy said, "and I also remember you telling me that I was being paranoid and that I should just forget about it." "Yeah, well, maybe I was wrong, okay, and maybe someone's actively trying to keep my project from developing a version of the serum without the sexual side effects." "Phil are you  " "Listen, will you?" Phil said, grabbing his friend's shoulder. "The military has thought overpopulation was a giant problem in the U.S. dating back thirty years, and they had all sorts of contingency plans to reduce the population, not only of our country, but of the entire world. They called it the 'die back' contingency. I know it sounds insane  " "It sounds insane, Phil, because it is insane. Our own government planning mass casualty events across the globe?" "It was all supposed to be theoretical, Andy, whitepapers and proof of concept stuff, but nobody was every supposed to have built anything, but I'm starting to think that's what DuoHalo is, somebody's die back contingency that got loose and got out of control, because the Russians acted way too quickly quarantining their people for them to have just 'gotten lucky.' They knew this was coming, long before anyone else did, so I think it's their fuckup, and they just got lucky that we had something that could counteract it, and so be it if it's got some mad scientist's project woven into it. That just gave them a foothold into getting their hands on it." "Phil, we've known each other a long time, and if there's one thing I know about you, it's that you love your secrets, so if you're telling me all this, there's got to be a very good reason for it. You wouldn't give me a peek behind the velvet rope like this without an extremely important cause. What's going on?" His friend sighed, glancing over at Linda, who simply shrugged, before he looked back at Andy. "I've doled out a lot of favors over the last several months, so now it's time for me to ask one of you, and it's kind of a big one, so if you say no, hey, I get it, but realize I need someone I can trust on this." "Talk to me, Phil." "So you know how we had someone defect to Russia?" "Yeah?" "The Russians had some defect to us." "Seriously?" "It gets funnier," Linda said, a grin on her face. "So the guy who defected from us, the one who we think caused a lot of the mess with the imprinting in our serum, his name was Adam McCallister." "Okay." "The group that defected from Russia? The person who reached out to me on their behalf was Adam's wife, Evie." "Adam and Eve?" Andy asked. "Are you putting me on?" "Wish I was," Phil sighed, leaning his back against the door of his car. "She reached out to me personally with an offer. I get her paired to some rich fella who's going to take care of her, and she's going to help us crack the unpairing/repairing problem." "Phil,” "I'm not asking you to take her, Andy, relax. I was hoping maybe you could reach out to Watkins and see if he'd be willing to take her in." "Nate said he did feel like he owed me a couple still, even with all the money he gave me." "That's not the whole of it, though." "What else,” "So Evie McCallister has with her a pair of men who are imprinted on each other." "Wait, what?" Andy said. "I thought being homosexual was like a giant taboo in Russia." "They certainly frown on it, which is why two of the scientists who were working with Adam McCallister didn't reveal they were gay until they'd devised a work around, a sort of Rosetta Stone for this whole thing. That's what let them flee." "Just give him the short and quick, hon," Linda said to Phil. "Okay, long story short  " "Too late!" both he and Phil said in unison before chuckling. "Right," Phil continued. "So one of the two men has what he describes as 'reassignment sperm,' in that his sperm isn't toxic, even to women who are imprinted already. A small amount of it will essentially reset a woman, but she'll immediately go into the state we've seen with using the necrotized sperm, which is part of the reason I believe Evie when she told me all of this." "You haven't tested it yet?" "I'm getting to that. This guy, Sergei, has a variation of our serum running through his veins, and it might eventually lead to some kind version of the serum where people don't have to be paired to one another, but we are a long way from that right now. He also claims it can pair two men together, which was a large part of the reason he and his boyfriend fled here with Evie McCallister. In Russia, they'd both have been killed, but if he's right, we could, albeit very slowly, at least start getting gay men paired up and resistant to DuoHalo. But I've been keeping this on the down low because I'm worried that if some people on the base found out, they'd try and quash it." "You can't believe that," Andy said." "Wish I didn't, but I do. They're mostly focused on making sure I can get women to survive their partner's death. There hasn't been any push on us trying to get a solution for gay men and women, so now that I may have a partial one here, I'm doing everything I can to validate it quickly and pushed out in front of as many people as possible. It's really not scalable, but at this point, I'll take what I can get, you know?" "So what do you need from me?" "We've got Evie, Sergei and Sergei's boyfriend Andrei stashed in a house over in Dos Eden. Now I can't go over there, because if I do, they're going to know I was there, and I don't want to bring her in until I've validated her claims. Do you have anyone in your family who wouldn't mind fooling around with some other guy for a bit?" "My family's all here by choice, Phil," Andy said. "What about your cook, Jenny?" Linda asked. "Didn't you say she's married to your gardener, and they're both just with you to stay healthy? Think she'd be okay to help you test this all out?" "She doesn't want to leave the family, Linda, even if she's not emotionally invested in me like my partners are." "She wouldn't leave your family, Andy. She'd just be on a very short, temporary loan, and she's not going to have to sleep with anyone she doesn't want to," Phil said. "I can talk to her about it, but lay it out for me how it's all going to work." "You take her over to the house, along with one of your male friends, Eric or Xander, whichever one Jenny wouldn't mind having one evening of fun with. You put a little bit of Sergei's cum on her skin, just to prove it doesn't have any sort of adverse reaction. If it's all good, you have her taste a little bit, and then she should go back to the imprinting state, and you let your friend imprint her. A couple of days later, you do it again, but reimprint her back to you. If Evie's telling the truth, it'll only be a few days and then everything will be back to the way it was. And if she's not, the minute Jenny touches Sergei's semen, she'll have an adverse reaction and she doesn't have to go any further." Phil sighed, shrugging a little. "I need someone I can trust on this, Andy, and I don't know who else to turn to. If you don't think she'll go for it, you don't have to bring it up, and I'll, I'll see if there's anybody else I can ask. I could ask Xander, I guess." "No," Andy sighed, shaking his head. "You ask Xander and he'll feel obligated to try and help you. I'll talk to Jenny and Katie, and I'll let them decide. Fair?" "Fair enough," Phil agreed. "Get blood samples at every stage in between. Take Niko with you, and she'll know how to do it." "What have you got that girl up to behind my back, Phil?" "Oh hell no," his friend laughed. "If you can't get her to tell you, what the hell makes you think I'm gonna tell you? She'd kick my ass if I said anything. You can ask her again." "She'll probably tell me what she told me last time,  I shouldn't worry about it." "It took a long while for Phil to trust me as well, Andy, so I wouldn't worry about it," Linda said with a smile. "You guys are so used to thinking you have to be self reliant, how you need to be tough, that it takes you a while to get used to the idea of having a woman take care of your helpless asses. But you'll learn. You all do eventually." "Well, I feel like I just got scolding by the nuns at Saint Agnes Academy again. How about you, Andy?" Phil chuckled. "I didn't go to Catholic school, Phil, but I know the sentiment. I guess we just have to trust they're doing everything they can to keep us safe." "Even when you're both being a pain in the ass about it," Linda said, just the tiniest undercurrent of genuine annoyance to her voice. "Sorry Linda," they both said in unison. "You're both forgiven, but we really gotta get back to the base, Phil, otherwise Fielder's going to get suspicious, and that's the last thing you want." "She's right," Phil said, giving Andy a hug. "Thanks for even considering it. I know it's nuts, but if you follow the instructions I gave you, worst case scenario is that Jenny gets a rash on her skin for a couple of days." "Like I said, it's their decision, not mine." "Right. Right right right. Anyway, if you decide to do it, I can give you all the instructions when we're over in a couple of days for the party." "God, that is just two days away, isn't it? Crazy how time flies." Phil let go of Andy and headed back to his car. "Stay safe, man. Niko or Lexi with you at all times if you leave this house. And don't tell anyone about this little Evie thing that you don't have to." "I'm gonna tell my family, Phil." Phil shrugged a little bit, opening the door of his car. "If it was me, I would keep it to only the very few who need to know. Anyway, your house, your call. See you in a couple of days, man." He and Linda hopped into their car and drove down the driveway and headed off into the evening air. "That's the difference between you and me, Phil," Andy said to himself. "I'm no good at keeping secrets." He walked inside to find Aisling waiting for him, a warm smile on her face as she slid her arm around his waist and saddled up next to him as they walked to the dining room. "Why the long face, Andy?" "Phil dropped a bit of a heavy thing on me, and it's a lot to think about. I'm not built for this cloak and dagger shit like he is." On the stroll to dinner, Andy explained to her everything that Phil and Linda had told him, as she peppered him with questions along the way. At the end, she suggested he wait until later in the evening to talk to Jenny and Katie about it. When they got to the dining room, Andy was pleased to find nearly everyone there, Lauren and Taylor having texted earlier that they were just going to grab dinner at the training grounds tonight and would be back late. Emily, Sarah and Maya were a couple cocktails in already, but all of them were in that pleasant space between buzzed and tipsy, talking up a storm, and as soon as Andy and Ash walked into the room, Emily immediately ushered them over to make sure that Andy was sitting next to Maya, Ash on the other side of him. Early on, the girls had tried convincing Andy to always sit at the head of the table, and he'd told them exactly what they could do with that idea, so the table seating constantly shuffled, and nobody sat at either end of the table two nights in a row, so that it was clearly established that nobody was more or less important than anyone else. It was a symbolic thing, but Andy was the first to point out that symbols have power, and their subliminal influence should never be underestimated. Dinner gave everyone a chance to take turns grilling Maya, which let Andy just sort of sit and listen. After he'd made the decision of who he would offer spots in his house, he'd talked to each of the girls over Zoom for about an hour, letting them ask him whatever questions they wanted while he'd asked them a few as well. It wasn't enough time to get to truly know each other, but it gave both him and the woman in question a chance to check for any real deal breakers that they might have overlooked, so many of the questions the girl were asking Maya were things Andy already knew the answers to, although she did have one surprise up her sleeve for him. "So what's your favorite of Andy's books," Sarah asked her. "I know you have to have read some of them right now, since I gave you all of them the last time I saw you, a few years ago." Maya tilted her head to one side, a wry grin spreading wide on her face. "You're not going to believe me." "Is it 'The Trouble With Werebears,' because if you say it is, I'm gonna have to shield you from Andy throwing a dinner roll at you," the tall redhead giggled. Maya reached into her satchel and pulled out a book, setting it down on the table. It had dozens of post it notes sticking out from it, and the cover was starting to bend back a little. Andy glanced over and then his eyes widened in surprise. "No! Really?" The book in question was easily the least popular thing he'd ever written, partially because it was so far out of his normal wheelhouse. "I think it's easily your best work, and frankly, I'm surprised nobody's ever tried to make a movie out of it, which was something I wanted to talk to you about." Emily reached over and picked up the book. "'Fatal Alliances?' This isn't a Druid Gunslinger book. I don't know that I've ever seen Sarah reading this." "Oh I read it," Sarah said. "But it's super fucking sad. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fucking hot, and I get why maybe it was too fucking steamy for the mainstream, but it's such a fucking downer ending that it isn't something I wanted to come back to that fucking often, even as great as it is." "What's it about, love?" Emily asked him. Maya decided to answer instead. "It's a Cold War story about two spies, one American and one Soviet, and they're each sort of fatal honey traps. Anyone who either of them has sex with dies within a couple of days, from what looks like natural causes, except that their bodies are generating some kind of sexually transmitted poison. They're considered important assets, the assassins you send when you want no traces left behind. They both witness something they shouldn't one night in East Berlin, and so they flee together. After killing their respective bosses, the two decide they're done with this world, so they have sex with each other, and die in each other's arms a few days later. If you expounded upon the action sequences, fleshed them out a bit more, this could be an excellent fucking movie." She paused for a second. "It could be my excellent fucking movie. Who owns the rights to this, Andy?" Maya asked him, taking the book back from Emily. "Nobody?" he chuckled. "Well, I guess that means I still do. Nobody had that much interest in it, so I didn't worry about it. Hell, I know it's out of print, so I'm a little amazed you got that copy." "I got her everything, Andy," Sarah told him. "And you know me. What I want, I fucking get." "So I have learned," he nodded. "Yeah, I can have my agent draw up a contract to let you get the rights to it." "Soon," Maya said, "before the Druid Gunslinger film makes everyone claw at all your old work." "I barely sold fifty thousand copies of 'Fatal Alliances,' Maya, so I think you're overestimating people's interest in the property." "Believe me, Andy, I know what I'm talking about." Dinner carried on with several conversations going on and Andy drifting in between them. One of the things he'd learned early on as his family grew was that as soon as they had moved into the mansion, the family size had grown too large for there to only be one conversation at the dinner table. He'd also stressed a number of times that the girls shouldn't always stick to their usual cliques and should intermingle, making sure to spend a little time with all the other girls over the course of any given week, and it was starting to settle into cycles. When Jenny was bringing out dessert, Andy grabbed her and asked her and Katie to meet him in his office in a few hours, so he could talk to them about something. Jenny seemed a little nervous and Andy said it wasn't anything bad, and they shouldn't worry. After dinner had wrapped up, the whole family began carrying dishes into the kitchen, refusing to let Jenny and Nicolette clear the table entirely by themselves, as Andy, Maya, Emily and Sarah started walking down the hall towards Maya's room. "So whaddaya think, Maya?" Sarah asked eagerly. It was clear that the relationships between Sarah and Maya and the relationships between Emily and Maya were very different, with Sarah acting almost like Maya's eager little sister, and Emily more like Maya's old friend. "You okay with staying?" "Yeah, I think I can make all this work for me," she said. "Good people, good environment, the dogs seem happy enough, and with the shooting studios in Oakland, Marin and Pleasanton, I can definitely carve out a career here. So sure, why not? I'll pitch in with you lot and call this home." "Marvelous," Emily said, leaning in to kiss Maya on the cheek. "Sarah and I will leave you and Andrew to make your final arrangements, and we will see you tomorrow. Good night!" "Night Maya!" Sarah said, taking a turn to kiss Maya on the cheek, before she and Emily headed back up the hallway towards the stairs, Maya's bedroom on the ground floor so the dogs could easily walk right out into the back yard. Katie had even set up the fenced area so that Maya could simply slide open the deck door in her bedroom and let the dogs run straight out into it unsupervised. "This new world's pretty fuckin' crazy," Maya said, looking up at him as they reached the door to her bedroom. "You must feel like the luckiest man in the world." Andy sighed a little. "I mean, on one hand, sure. On the other, my brother and most of my oldest friends died to DuoHalo over the last few months, so a lot of times, I'm dealing with survivor's guilt, y'know? Why'd I make it and not them?" Maya took his hand in hers, shaking her head at him. "Don't get caught up in your head about it. It's too big for anyone to think about, so you just have to learn to roll with it." "Yeah, thanks. That's what everyone keeps telling me, so I'm doing what I can to not dwell on it too much. Anyway, I'm glad you've decided to join the family, and when you feel like the time is right, just let me know and we can make it official." Maya squeezed his hand a little bit, as if she thought he might be planning to pull away. "Look, I talked to Em and Sares about it while you were talking with your friend, and I decided I want our first time to be like normal people, without all the complications of imprinting tied to it, so I was thinking maybe you could come in, and I could give you a hummer to get over that whole hump, so that when we do bump uglies for the first time, we feel a little more like regular people. That cool?" Andy smiled at her. "Hey, whatever you want, Maya. We don't even have to do the imprinting now if you don't want to." She looked down, unable to look him in the eyes for the moment. "That's just it, Andy. I do want to. And we do kinda have to, because sometime in the middle of dinner, I realized it was getting harder to think clearly, and the one thing I don't ever want is to feel out of control of my own body. So is it cool if we just do this now? I'm sure you've banged, like, five or six people already today,” "Actually, it was a pretty light day today," he chuckled. "I provided for Jenny and Katie this morning, and Ash snuck in while I was writing to have a quickie as a break, to make sure I wasn't sitting all day." "Good," Maya growled at him, as she grabbed his shirt, "then you'll have a nice fat fucking load for me to swallow." She pushed him into her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. The sliding door was open just enough so that the dogs could come and go, and that made it cool inside, the evening November air chilling the room a bit. "How should I do this?" "The minute you get it,you're going to black out, so maybe I should lay down on the bed and you should just  " Maya peeled her tanktop up and over her head, revealing small tan tits with tiny brown nipples atop of them, tossing it aside. "I think I'm the most flat chested girl in this house, so I hope you're okay with that," she said, unbuckling the belt holding up her cargo pants as he crossed the room to her. She must have had some large tattoo on her back, because Andy could see what looked like a portion of a serpent's tail curving around her waist. He turned her head up suddenly and leaned down to press his lips against hers in an intense kiss, feeling her tense up for just a brief second before settling into it, relaxing. "You are absolutely fucking beautiful, Maya, and I don't ever want you to think I'm just okay with you. Got it?" Maya grinned up at him, a softening in her eyes. "Em's right. You are a magnificent and sappy bastard, but that makes you lovable. Can I finish getting naked now, or you wanna make out a bit more first?" "I wanna make out a bit more first," he said, grinning back at her. "Yeah, okay." They locked lips again, but even while they did, Andy could feel Maya's hands unbuttoning his jeans, unzipping them. He was about to shift to help her take them off, but when he did, she pulled back from the kiss, shaking her head. "Leave'em on. I like the idea of feeling like a couple of teenagers trying to get each other off quick before the parents come home." She turned them both and pushed him back onto the bed with enough sudden force that he didn't even see it coming and just fell backwards before she dropped her cargo pants down and stepped out of them, leaving her in just a large pair of cotton panties. She started climbing onto the bed next to him. "It's also that time of the month, and while Em said you aren't squeamish about playing on the field during red tide, not for our first time." Andy moved just a little bit, shifting to brace his shoulders against the pillows at the head of the bed, so he'd be able to watch her. "Whatever makes you comfortable." Maya frowned a little, her eyes narrowing at him. "Take a more active hand in this, would you? I don't even know if you're ready for this." "I don't know if you're ready for this, Maya, but you are gorgeous and I can't wait to feel you sucking my cock." She winked at him, the frown disappearing. "That's the spirit. Now let's see this mythical first contact orgasm," she said, stroking his cock, sitting on her knees alongside him. Maya moved to bend down, placing one hand against the top of the bed as the other brought his cock to her lips, a jewel of opaque white emerging from the tip of his cock to greet her. She leaned down and let her tongue swipe the dollop of precum into her mouth, and suddenly began to shake, her hand letting go of his cock to thrust down atop of the bed, keeping her up on all fours as an intense carnal moan ripped from her lungs, her face obscured from his view by that curtain of green hair. "You motherfucker," Maya eventually spat in between giggles and gasps. "You said it was gonna be strong, not, like, the strongest fucking thing I'd ever fucking felt." "The imprinting one's even stronger, everyone says." "Em said it was like being consumed by an orgasm until she blacked out," Maya said, tossing her hair out of her face to turn her brown eyes up at him. "She wasn't kidding?" "That's in line with how most of  " He was mid sentence when Maya suddenly shoved her face down onto his cock, forcing it into her throat before pulling her head up, her tongue spiraling around the head of his cock before she pushed her head back down onto it again. Over the last several months, he'd gotten more than his fair share of blowjobs, far more than he'd ever thought he would get in his lifetime, and he felt like he'd gotten familiar with most of the rhythms and styles, but there was something hungry about the way Maya was doing it, like she didn't want to pause, didn't want to break, hell, didn't even want to breathe until she got what she wanted. Her hands were gripping onto his hips, as her mouth slurped along the length of his shaft, from tip to base, trying to hold down with it engulfed for as long as she could every so often, no warning given when she was deepthroating or just quickly fucking her face onto his cock. He was along for the ride. Andy could feel himself starting to get close, when Maya popped her head off, one of her hands stroking his cock feverishly while her eyes held his gaze with her own, as he suddenly felt like a deer in the headlights, or a small animal caught under the gaze of a predator, the look on her face having total control of the situation. "You're gonna give me what I want, Andy," she growled at him, licking her lips. "And I'm gonna swallow you down and wake up a new woman, a kept woman, a bonded woman, a woman with a man who makes her cum like a fucking hurricane. You have no idea how hard I'm gonna fuck the shit out of you soon, but for now, you're gonna give me what I want. It's not your fucking cum, it's mine." She looked back down and started thrusting her face onto his cock as quickly and deeply as she could, letting spit drool from her lips all over his balls, filthy 'gluck gluck' sounds coming from the motions, until finally Andy knew his resolve was shot, but he wanted to have one stab at surprising her, so just before his balls drew up, his hands both reached down to grab her head and pushed her face down until her nose was buried in the trimmed pubic hairs of his crotch, and the first load of his cum blasted right against the back of her throat, setting her into a a fit of orgasms, at which point Andy was mostly just holding her head, while she spasmed in time with him, feeling her do her best to swallow it all before he pulled her head off of his shaft and rolled her limp body onto her side, as she whispered that word that haunted him now, "Imprinting." Andy moved to get her beneath the sheets and made sure the dogs were inside the room before he closed the outside door, so that the room would warm up. He would make a point to stop and tell Nicolette to come and open the door in the late morning so the dogs could go back out and do their business even while Maya completed the process. She looked peaceful beneath the sheets. There were a few speckles of his jizz on her cheeks, so he took one of his fingers and wiped them off, sliding the finger into her lips, which she seemed to instinctively suckle on for a moment before he pulled his finger free, having spent long enough in the room that she'd fallen silent. He moved outside of her room, and closed the door behind him, leaning his back against it with a slight smile of relief. That, he figured, would be the last person ever added to his family, if he had anything to say about it. Of course, as Emily had pointed out not so long ago, he really did have very little say about it. Chapter 40 He desperately wanted to get to bed, but there was work to be done before he could sleep, and his brain was still moving a mile a minute. It generally did, but his conversation earlier in the day had been rolling around in circles over and over again. Phil was one of the smartest people he'd ever met, but Andy knew everyone was capable of making mistakes. There was something they were missing about all the information Phil had presented to them. Phil's plan had all the things it should, but there was so much that Phil hadn't had time to tell them. He wasn't sure what he thought he might glean from it, but he decided to let it keep running on cycles in the back of his brain for the rest of the night. He hoped maybe it would just come to him. Different people in his household went to bed at different times, and typically, Piper and Sheridan went to bed not too long after dinner. He glanced at his watch, seeing it was just past 10:30, and he figured they were probably crawling into bed about now, since both were early risers. Niko was probably also heading to bed about now, so she could be up early in the morning, in case Lexi woke up before most of the house was up. Niko tended to be an early riser as well, as did Lauren and Taylor, so they were also probably also turning in for the night. Hannah and Asha were typical college students without classes, so they'd be up past midnight gossiping, and Taylor was probably more than a little sad she couldn't join them, but as she'd told Andy at dinner, she was taking her responsibilities over at 49ers HQ very seriously. Fi and Moira were trying to get adjusted to West Coast time, but the jet lag hadn't fully let go of them yet, so Andy guessed they were probably starting to get ready for bed as well. Em and Sarah kept their own schedules, but since Em planned to talk to her family in the morning, she had likely turned in also, and where Em went, Sarah usually followed, so he was fairly certain they were both snuggling up in bed, bemoaning the lack of him there, but knowing that he would join them when he was ready. Tala and Jade had formed a surprising friendship and had spent most of the day getting the pool house further converted into a workspace for the curvier woman. Jade was used to teaching, so he suspected she probably had also turned in relatively early. Aisling, however, kept her schedule in tune with his, and so he knew she'd be up, and willing to watch a bit of television before turning in for the night. He'd found that she'd never seen Farscape so as of late, they'd been making a point to watch an episode or two before bed every night, and in between they'd chat a little bit about their respective days. He was going to head down to the living room that was furthest from the bedrooms, which had sort of become the default theater room of the house, but found Ash in the kitchen, sneaking herself a pickle from the fridge, so they sat around the kitchen island to have their chat before their nightly television binge. This particular night Andy walked Ash through what Phil had asked of him, and as he talked through it, she asked pointed questions, most of which he didn't have an answer to, but eventually, she asked one that he hadn't even thought of, and it all snapped into sense for him. "So why not just use this Evie as the test case, instead of asking Jenny to do it?" she said to him. "What?" Andy asked, as if it hadn't even occurred to him. "Look, she made it here safely, right?" "Right." "That means she was imprinted, and if Evie's being asked to be imprinted to Nate, that means she was already imprinted to this McCallister prick, and you can use that to analyze her blood and the effect it's having on it. Shit, you could smear a little of McCallister's precum onto her skin at first, check that it causes a rash, then give her a little from the guy who's supposedly a de imprinter, then have Nate imprint her and take her blood again. I mean, if this Evie wants to get out from under her husband, ex husband or whatever, then she's gotta to be willing to show she believes in all of this." "I don't tell you that you're brilliant often enough, Ash," he said, leaning into to kiss her, which started tender but definitely amped up in intensity a bit before she pulled back, a wry smile on her face. "You don't, but it's okay," she said. "You say it lots, and lots is brilliant. Before we head to bed tonight, though, mister, I was given a request this morning, so we're going to go and fulfill it, you and I. The request was made to me, because they were worried you might take offense to it, but I want you to know, in advance, this is what everyone wants, they're hoping you'll lean into it, at least a little, and the safeword, should it be needed, is limoncello. Okay?" She was pulling him to his feet, that playful expression widening on her face, as he waggled his eyebrows. "You girls certainly do love testing me," he told her. "This one's not me at all, love," she said, sliding her arm around his waist. "It's more of just a thing to show you what you can be capable of when it's asked of you, and this particular play partner wants even more than you gave her last time." "Uh oh," he said. "That sounds like I'm not living up to my end of the bargain." "Stop. No," she said, squeezing his hip. "You did great, but the girls in question just want you to know you can and should go further." She led him down towards the room they'd been planning to go to anyway, the basement living room, but instead of heading for the television, Andy saw that over near where he'd usually sit, one woman was standing and another was kneeling, the room barely lit, as if the atmosphere of it was important to the ambiance of the moment. Andy's nighttime eyesight wasn't great, but as they got closer, he could make out who the two people were. The woman standing was Nicolette, but she had ditched her typical French maid's outfit for something that looked a lot more dominatrix. She wore a leather corset that was tied tight to force her tits into nearly a shelf of flesh, propped up and pushed out but still marginally covered. She also had black leather shorts, fishnet stockings and long leather high heeled boots that came up to her mid thigh. The heels were at least a few inches, because it made Nicolette look huge, her blonde hair done up in a tight bun atop her head. In her hand was the end of a long leash. At the end of the leash, on her knees, was Whitney, completely nude except for the collar around her neck, her hair done up in jetblack pigtails, her pale white flesh almost the shade of moonlight in the summer. Her arms were folded together in front of her to make her smaller tits press together, the rosy pinkness of her nipples like strawberries, her wrists resting on top of one another, as if she expected them to be bound at some point, or maybe they already were in her mind. He could see the black curls of her pubic V peeking from between her thighs. Ash took his hand and gave it a soft squeeze. "You did well with Whitney the first time, babes," she whispered to him. "But you need to know you can go further, you should go further, at least every so often, and that she doesn't just want you to do that, she's going to get off on it. I know that part of you is in there," she said, kissing his cheek. "We just need to wake the bastard up." Andy wasn't entirely surprised by all of this, if he was being honest with himself. Early on, he thought he'd given Nicolette exactly what she wanted, and then around when all the girls had presented their friends for consideration for the house, Nicolette had told him to go even harder at her. So he had. He'd been nervous out of his mind when he'd done it, almost certain that she was going to scream for him to stop, that he was being too rough, that she didn't want it. Instead, she had thanked him at the end of it, and told him that she was very glad he was learning that not all of his partners enjoyed the same kind of sex, and that that wasn't a bad thing. His first time with Whitney had been something of an eyeopener as well, as she wanted him to go at her hard. He thought he'd done enough to satiate her desires, but apparently she wanted to take him even further. He wasn't even entirely sure what that entailed. "Heya Master," Nicolette purred at him. "I think it's time you give your little porcelain slut a real go, don't you? She's been itching for round two, and it's about time you step up your game. Haven't you, slut?" She gave Whitney a nudge with her foot, and the brunette nodded. "Yes Master. Our first time was very nice, but you're capable of being stronger, harsher, more forceful," she said, not lifting her eyes. "And this slut wants to see what you're truly capable of." "I'm worried your friend's been hyping me up too much, Whitney," Andy said, stepping closer, Aisling walking along with him, as Nicolette toyed with the end of the leash idly. "I'm not entirely sure I'm capable of what you think I am." "She told your slut that you bent her over a table in the hallway and pounded her slippery cunt until your cock was slick enough to jam up her ass, and then pounded her until she came so hard her knees were shaking and she couldn't sit properly for a few days." "Well, I  " "She told your slut that you grabbed a fistful of her hair and shoved her face up against the wall and pinned her there while you had your way with her, drilling her like she was just an object for you to take your pleasure from." Ash giggled. "It certainly sounded like that from down the hallway," she said to him. "Don't you start," he replied. "She even told me you shoved her panties in her mouth to keep her from making too much noise, even though you like it when a slut uses filthy words, because you wanted to demonstrate how much control you had over her." "That wasn't  " "That was fucking hot was what it was, Master," Nicolette said, licking her lips. "I almost expected you to put your hands around my throat for a bit, and that would've just made me cum even harder. At first, he didn't even take them off, slut, he just tugged them aside, like they were an impediment that bothered him." "Your slut finds all of that very attractive, Master, and if she might be so bold," she said, turning her icy blue eyes upwards to look at him, "she very much wants to meet that man." "You can do this, Andy," Aisling whispered into his ear. "And both Nicolette and I will be right here, making sure you don't chicken out and/or go too far, whichever you're more afraid of." He inhaled a deep breath, and Whitney suddenly turned her eyes back downwards, as if she were a child caught looking at something she wasn't supposed to. "Before I start this, I want to confirm something. Aisling told me your safeword is limoncello. Is that correct, Whitney?" "It is, Master." "And you will use it if I cross a line?" "This slut does not think you're capable of that, Master." He stepped closely and reached forward, his fingertips pinching one of her nipples hard between his thumb and forefinger, seeing her wince even as she moaned a little bit. "No one knows what a man is capable of, Whitney, especially when he's pressed too much or too hard." "Yes Master," Whitney said. "Your slut apologizes Master." "Now answer my fucking question," he growled. He wasn't setting out to hurt her, but at this point, it had been made abundantly clear to him that he had a part to play, and if that was what Whitney wanted from him, it was what he intended to deliver. "If Master his slut beyond what she is capable of withstanding, Master, she will say the word and ask for relief," she said quietly, licking her tongue out over her bright red lips. "But until then, she implores you to have at her without mercy or reservation." "What limits do you have, Whitney?" he said, unbuckling his belt, grabbing the metal buckle, a simple square with a single stem in it, pulling on it to force the leather to come slowly slithering through his belt loops. "For you, Master? None at all. Your slut will do whatever it is you ask of her." He snapped the end of his belt out and then bent it in half, holding it on the ends as he pushed the belt together, forming a giant circle between two lines of leather, then yanking them apart to make a loud crack as he snapped one against the other. "You seem awfully confident of that." He wasn't sure who moaned the loudest at that motion, Whitney, Nicolette or Aisling. "She is at her best when she is fulfilling her purpose, Master," Nicolette said to him, a hint of amusement in her voice "Pleasure and pain are kissing cousins in our world." "Did I ask your fucking opinion?" he said sharply to Nicolette, and he felt like he must have done so very convincingly, because he could see her breath catch a moment, although he knew it was excitement he saw behind her eyes, not fear. "No Master. Sorry Master." He looked down at Whitney, towering over her, as she remained perfectly still. "When Nicolette came to me and asked me to bring you into my home, Whitney, she told me of your previous partner, and how the relationship you and he had was one of total dominance and submission. That you did nothing without his permission. That you enjoyed being commanded, being told exactly what you did and did have his consent to do, and that you found freedom in surrendering your own initiative." "Yes Master," Whitney said. "I can fulfill that role for you, but it will take some adaptation on your part, because as much as you may want to surrender complete and total control to someone else, I don't want complete and total control over someone else. Not all the time, anyway." He traced a fingertip along her cheek, and he could feel her leaning in towards his touch, as if she took comfort from the very contact of his skin against hers. "I'm probably capable of giving you what you want. I can push and pull you into place, slap your ass while I'm thrusting my cock into one of your holes with the kind of roughness from the more disgruntled pornography I've seen. I think I'm likely perceptive enough to know when strikes have crossed from pleasurable pain into pure pain, at least most of time. I think I can live up to my end of the bargain on this, but there are a handful of rules that are non negotiable, you understand?" "Tell your slut of your rules, Master, and she will follow them," Whitney said, pressing a kiss to his fingertip. "They aren't much, but they're important to me. The first is that you will need to be in charge of your own voice, and that if you aren't using it, I will start to doubt myself, and think I am doing something unwelcome. Nicolette told me you're unaccustomed to speaking without being ordered to speak, but this is a rule I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist upon. You will speak whenever you think is appropriate or even might be welcomed. If you think I am at all doubting my actions, and you want more instead of less, you will need to provide the carrot, understood." Whitney nodded. "She does, Master. Might you provide guidance as to how she should speak?" "The filthier the better," Nicolette said with a giggle, looking at Andy as if she was afraid he might scold her, but when she saw the smile on his face, she decided to elaborate. "I told you, Master loves dirty talk, so if you talk, whore, you should be talking dirty. Nothing clinical, only perverse. You do not have breasts, you have tits. You do not have a vagina, you have a pussy or a twat or a cunt. And although I know it goes against everything you've been taught for the last few years, you're going to have to be a little proactive here, slut." Whitney frowned a little, sighing slightly. "That, makes this slut nervous, ma'am," she said, turning to look up to Nicolette. "How will she know when it is right to remain in her place and when it is right to act unbidden?" Andy reached down and turned Whitney's head to look at him. "You'll act on instinct, much like you're entrusting me to do. And I do not expect perfection. You will make mistakes, and, frankly, I think you'll probably enjoy being punished for them, so maybe I expect some of the mistakes will be intentional and some will be accidental, but very little in this life is truly unforgivable, Whitney, and I think we'll both do well to remember that." "Yes Master," she said, looking up at him with adoring eyes. "What other rules do you have for your slut?" "When you want to see this particular stripe of me, Whitney, you will need to initiate it, you will need to ask for it, and not just subtly, but actually vocalize and express your desire for the closed fist instead of the open hand," he said. "By you regularly reminding me that you enjoy this, it will reinforce in my mind what you expect out of our arrangement." "Did, did this slut not express it well enough before, Master?" "With communication, Whitney, more is always better," he said confidently. To be continued in part 25, by CorruptingPower for Literotica.

#realconversations #Germany #WorldWarII #communism #powCONVERSATIONS WITH CALVIN WE THE SPECIESMeet BERND HABER; “I call myself a bit of a World War IIstudent. That encompasses having watched Casablanca (1942) 157 times. And othermovies. Books. Documentaries. Interviews. Yet, I never encountered a storyquite like Bernd Haber's book, ‘Fritz Haber-The Complete Diary; 16 months in anAmerican POW Camp. Fritz Haber was Bernd's grandfather. In 1931 in Germany, hewas a devout communist and tried to warn about Hitler's new Germany. Nazisdidn't like communists. Eventually, Fritz was conscripted into the Germanmilitary, known as the Wehrmacht. And was captured near the end of the war andspent 16 months in an American POW camp, able to write a diary. Bernd saw thatdiary. He also immigrated to America from East Berlin just after reunification.Bernd is passionate, eloquent, and brilliant. This radiates in this interview.I'm mesmerized by this story and by Bernd. Obvious reasons. Bernd lives inPhoenix, obtained his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering in Germany, andworks at Worldstrings Promotion, a music agency. This is a rare and specialinterview.” Calvinhttps://www.youtube.com/c/ConversationswithCalvinWetheSpecIEs550 Interviews/Videos  9200 SUBSCRIBERSGLOBAL Reach. Earth Life. Amazing People.  PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and COMMENT**BERND HABER; Author, ‘Fritz Haber; The Complete Diary: 16Months in an American POW Camp' (German Grandfather captured near the end ofWWII); LIVE fr PhoenixA story about how “human destinies can get easily mixed up,”reminding us to pay attention to forces that might interfere with our lives inunexpected ways.YouTube: https://youtu.be/kAWPHuVG2rEBIO: Bernd, grandson of Fritz, was born in East Berlin afterthe Berlin Wall was erected. He grew up in the German Democratic Republic undera Communist ruling government. Bernd attended the Technische Universität inChemnitz, Saxony, Germany, and graduated with a Master's Degree in MechanicalEngineering, with a focus on Manufacturing Process Design and Computer-AidedManufacturing. Very early in his life, he began to show an interest in Germanhistory, music, and modern information technology. When the Berlin Wall,separating East and West Berlin, fell on November 9, 1989, his world radicallychanged - an event that allowed him to embark on a personal journey, eventuallyleading him to move to Phoenix, Arizona, where he lives today.Bernd's move to the United States connects him with Fritzwho served many months in an American POW camp in 1945-1946 after WWII ended.The - what could be called: The Häber Family Trilogy - link between him and hisgrandfather is Bernd's father Herbert Häber who had climbed up in the hierarchyof the East German Communist Party, the SED, and later became a member of thePolitburo in 1984, the political body composed of the highest officials of theparty, state, and security organs. In 1985, Herbert was expelled from thePolitburo due to a staged high-level plot against him. After Germanreunification in 1990, Herbert was indicted and prosecuted for being allegedlyresponsible, as a Politburo member, for some of the killings at the BerlinWall. He faced two related criminal trials at the District Court of Berlinbetween 1995 and 2004.Bernd is the author of several books, such as "LettersTo and From My Senators FLAKE and MCCAIN: How they might have failed to fulfilltheir constitutional obligation", "Tempest - 20th Anniversary",and "The Wondrous Story of Hugo and Matilda". Bernd co-led theSpanish Civil War history project together with Björn Krondorfer - Director,Martin-Springer Institute at the Northern Arizona University called"Stories from the Spanish Civil War" which includes Bernd's greatuncle (and brother-in-law of Fritz) and other International Brigades volunteersfrom the United States, the UK and Canada.

In this episode of Audiobook Lovin', narrator Heather Kay Ling shares an electrifying excerpt from "The Dragon Spy" by Bill Blume, a thrilling blend of Cold War espionage and supernatural suspense. It's 1983, and the CIA's most secret weapon isn't tech, it's teenagers. Raised and trained in a covert program known as the Greenhouse, Lynna Harrison is half-human, half-sea dragon... and fully committed to protecting her country. But when a mission in East Berlin reveals a traitor in their midst and a new enemy with super-powered operatives of their own, Lynna must decide who she can trust — and whether loyalty is worth dying for. Spycraft, secrets, and sea dragons collide in this gripping twist on the Cold War thriller — perfect for fans of X-Men, John le Carré, and Tom Clancy. Listen in for an exclusive preview and get ready to dive into the world of The Dragon Spy. Guest: Narrator Heather Kay Ling Website Post for more info: https://www.vivianaenchantressofbooks.com/2025/06/audiobook-lovin-2025-presents-s11-ep-8.html Audiobook Lovin's Main Site: https://www.vivianaenchantressofbooks.com/p/audiobook-lovin-2025.html We hope you have enjoyed this production of Audiobook Lovin' Series. Become a patron at www.patreon.com/AudiobookLovin Follow us on: Audible: adbl.co/3lbkxl2 Amazon Prime Music: amzn.to/32xUgaA Apple Podcasts: apple.co/3L3Nf25 Spotify: spoti.fi/38l1odY Soundcloud: bit.ly/AudiobookLovinSoundcloud iHeart Radio Podcast: ihr.fm/38qaZ31 Host: Viviana Izzo Podcast Intro & Outro: Narrator Stephen Dexter All rights reserved. This has been an Audiobook Lovin' production Copyright 2017 by Viviana Izzo, Enchantress of Books. Production Copyright 2017 by Audiobook Lovin' Audiobook Lovin' is a division of Viviana, Enchantress of Books. Please visit Viviana, Enchantress of Books to learn more about the Audiobook Lovin' Series. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, modified, copied, distributed, repackaged, shared, displayed, revealed, extracted, emailed, transmitted, sold or otherwise transferred, conveyed or used, in a manner inconsistent with the Agreement, or rights of the copyright owner. You shall not redistribute, repackage, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, extract, reveal, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer the Content. You are not granted any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Content. For permission requests, please visit Viviana, Enchantress of Books for more information.

God's Existence: Deeper Thoughts for Greater Insights by Gary R. Lindberg Amazon.com Garyrlindberg.com Does evolution contradict the Bible, or is it another tool God used for Creation? Why was the Old Testament written? What should Genesis tell us about creation? How should we look at certain issues raised in Genesis such as Adam and Eve, missing people, descendants of Adam, and even the Great Flood? We want to evaluate whether or not Moses was real, and whether or not the Exodus really happened. When did the alleged Exodus actually occur? We seek answers to these and other questions to get a better understanding of those events so long ago. The answers may be shocking, surprising, or different than what we were told. A profound book that is "on fire" to discover new truths to age-old questions.About the author Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the author's parents moved just before his seventh birthday to Santa Maria, California. There he grew up and attended grade schools up through high school. The author is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in U. S. History. Then he volunteered to join the Peace Corps for two and a half years during which he taught primary school students and teachers various techniques in a trial school gardens program in the Ivory Coast which is located in West Africa between Liberia and Ghana. He became fluent in French during that time. After his Peace Corps service, he toured Europe and visited primarily Italy, Germany (including East Berlin then under Communist control), France, England, and the Netherlands. Since he was drafted, he volunteered for the Navy in which he served for four years. Next, he went to San Francisco State University where he earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree with a concentration in Management and Personnel. After that he began his 43-year career as a Human Resources professional for a number of major companies including National Gypsum, Celotex, McCormick (spices), Del Monte, Quebecor Printing, and Micro Lithography, Inc. He retired in November, 2019 to pursue personal endeavors.

With his fantastic new book, EMINENT JEWS (Holt), writer and critic David Denby explores the impact on American culture of Jews Unbound through profiles of Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. We talk about how he selected his four subjects, how each of them came of age in an environment that Jews hadn't experienced in millennia, the ways each handled the responsibilities of family against their careers, the difference between "Jew" and "Jewish," and which one unfolded the most to him over the course of writing the book. We get into why Bernstein's greatest role may have been as a teacher, how Mailer's magnetism persisted way beyond its expiration date, how Friedan changed the world but was always challenged by her midwest upbringing, and whether Brooks was being disingenuous when he made musical numbers of our the Inquisition and Hitler. We also discuss judgements David made over the course of his career as a movie critic, what he did when he finally gave up reviewing and how he eased back into the cinema, why he revisited the Lit Hum course at Columbia a few years ago, after previously revisiting it 30+ years ago for Great Books, his take on my my lightning round of classic lit questions, his non-Le Carré experience in East Berlin, his reaction to my parents taking me to History of the World: Part 1 when I was 9, and more. Follow David on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Simon Wood served in the British Army's Royal Military Police in Berlin during the1980s. He describes the unique challenges he faced patrolling the Berlin Wall and policing British troops in the divided city. Discover the political tensions, the camaraderie with fellow soldiers, and the surreal moments such as being present at the post-mortem of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess. We also hear about life at Checkpoints Charlie and Bravo, interactions with East German forces, and taking part in Flag Tours in East Berlin which resulted in various confrontations with Soviet troops. Episode extras ⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/episode405/⁠⁠⁠ The fight to preserve Cold War history continues and via a simple monthly donation, you will give me the ammunition to continue to preserve Cold War history. You'll become part of our community, get ad-free episodes, and get a sought-after CWC coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to ⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/⁠⁠⁠ If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, we welcome one-off donations via the same link. Find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life! Just go to ⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/store/⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on BlueSky ⁠⁠⁠https://bsky.app/profile/coldwarpod.bsky.social⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Threads ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@coldwarconversations⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Twitter ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/⁠⁠⁠ Youtube ⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations⁠⁠⁠ Love history? Join Intohistory ⁠⁠⁠https://intohistory.com/coldwarpod⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Busses are joined by special guest Sigi Oblander, a dear friend and one of the founders of Global Outpouring. Having survived the intense hardships of growing up in communist-controlled East Berlin, Sigi has an understanding of surrender that most of American Christianity has yet to experience. Sigi shares some amazing testimonies of what God can do through an ordinary person with a fully surrendered life.Sigi will be the speaker on the opening night of Convention 2025! She always brings a deep, life-changing Word from the Lord, so come join us to see what God has in store! Registration is available on our website.EMAIL: feedback@globaloutpouring.orgWEBSITE: https://globaloutpouring.net Upcoming Events:Global Outpouring Convention 2025 Info and RegistrationGeneration Awakening Youth and Young Adult Retreat 2025School of the Supernatural – Translation by Faith 2025 Related Links:Podcast Episode 26: Freedom with Sigi and David Oblander – Part 1Podcast Episode 27: Freedom! Part 2 with Sigi and David Oblander“Sigi and I” By Gwen Shaw (Book)“Sigi and I” By Gwen Shaw (PDF)“Rich Wounds” by Sharon Buss CONNECT ON SOCIAL MEDIAGlobal Outpouring Facebook PageGlobal Outpouring on InstagramGlobal Outpouring YouTube ChannelGlobal Outpouring on X

Welcome to HODGEPOD with Rob Fredette, featuring an exclusive conversation with Bernd Haber, the grandson of Fritz Haber, an author whose diaries unveil captivating stories from World War II. Born and raised in East Berlin, Bernd recounts his journey to Phoenix, Arizona, and shares insights into his grandfather's experiences as a German soldier captured by American troops during World War II. Bernd delves into his grandfather's diary, being a POW in an American camp, life in post-war Germany. They also explore family secrets that span generations, including connections to the Spanish Civil War. The conversation paints a vivid picture of Germany's historical changes and the resilience of its people. RECORDED MARCH 29, 2025 HODGEPOD can be heard on APPLE, SPOTIFY, IHEART, AUDACY, TUNEIN RADIO AND THE PODBEAN APP. hodgepodallin@yahoo.com  

Welcome to HODGEPOD with Rob Fredette, featuring an exclusive conversation with Bernd Haber, the grandson of Fritz Haber, an author whose diaries unveil captivating stories from World War II. Born and raised in East Berlin, Bernd recounts his journey to Phoenix, Arizona, and shares insights into his grandfather's experiences as a German soldier captured by American troops during World War II. Bernd delves into his grandfather's diary, being a POW in an American camp, life in post-war Germany. They also explore family secrets that span generations, including connections to the Spanish Civil War. The conversation paints a vivid picture of Germany's historical changes and the resilience of its people. RECORDED MARCH 29, 2025 HODGEPOD can be heard on APPLE, SPOTIFY, IHEART, AUDACY, TUNEIN RADIO AND THE PODBEAN APP. hodgepodallin@yahoo.com  

Send us a textHEDWIGBefore we say auf wiedersehen to Season 14 with its eight revamps of the previously covered during the show's first five years, the boys of TGTPTU reveal their unexpected special little packages: 1x1's, wherein each host shall choose a single film by its merits of discussion and unlikelihood to be exposed on a future 4x4, creator, or thematic season. The first of these darlings is Thomas's: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001). Adapted from the rock musical of the same name that started as the collaboration between frontman of the NYC-based band Cheater (performing on stage as Hedwig's band) Stephen Trask and then actor later turned actor-director with this debut film John Cameron Mitchell. Hedwig's story, on stage told in song and monologue, of male-to-female surgery so as to marry an American GI and leave East Berlin originated from Mitchell's own experiences as a military brat in Germany and Kansas trailer parks while the jealousy and newer betrayal Hedwig expresses toward her protégé and superstar success/successor Tommy Gnosis (also played by Mitchell in the play but embodied by Early Aughts indie film darling and pod-contentious actor Michael Pitt) is elevated by Trask's music and lyrics and is expanded and enriched with animation, locations, and added characters (most notably Andrea Martin as the band's manager) for the silver screen.   Learn more about the progression from stage to screen from Thomas on research; jam out to Rock Facts with Ryan (sorry, mineralogists, but we're talking glam and punk rock here); former host Jack on vibes in the rhythm section wakes up mid-episode to like the film and dig the hand-drawn animation; and Ken lands his rimshot, getting to tell his joke that calls back to TGTPTU's Nolan coverage (Season 12).  Spoiler: You'll be hearing from four Hed heads.  Reminder: You don't put a bra in a dryer!  CONTENT WARNING: At least once during the episode the “f” word (“Ferengi”) is used. For those allergic to Star Trek and nerdom, our sincerest apologies. My you live long and prosper. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gBuzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias

This week's episode is one you cannot miss. We're joined by the extraordinary Ute Monsen, whose incredible journey from the oppressive walls of East Berlin to personal liberation is nothing short of transformative. Raised in fear and under constant suppression, Ute's story will leave you rethinking everything you know about freedom. In this raw, honest conversation, she opens up about the challenges she faced and how she ultimately discovered a freedom that changed not just her life but her entire perspective. Tune in for a gripping, life-altering story that will redefine what freedom truly means—and how it can unlock your own inner peace.Also, remember to submit your questions or topic suggestions anonymously for a future Insight Exchange. https://collectinginsight.com/insight-exchange All episodes edited and mixed by Jake Musiker.

Ever wonder what spy books former CIA spy Valerie Plame can't put down? Today on Spybrary, host Shane Whaley is joined by none other than Valerie Plame—former CIA covert operative, bestselling author, and an iconic voice in the world of intelligence and espionage. For over a decade, Valerie Plame served on the front lines of national security, operating undercover in some of the world's most complex and volatile environments. Her CIA career—and the controversial public outing that ended it—has been the subject of headlines, books, and a major Hollywood film 'Fair Game' Now, Valerie Plame joins us for a very different kind of mission—her Spybrary Dead Drop 5. She'll reveal the five spy books she'd choose to stash in a hidden drop in East Berlin, the titles she'd rely on during a covert operation behind the Iron Curtain. From childhood favorites to deeply researched histories, Valerie's picks promise intrigue, insight, and a few surprises. Strap in—this is going to be a Spybrary episode to remember. The Dead Drop 5 is back! In this much-requested Spybrary feature, our guest is embedded behind the Iron Curtain and can request five spy books, a gadget, luxury items and more from their handler. Before we get to Valerie Plame's five favourite books do check out her event Spies at Seas. Valerie and her team have kindly offered a discount for Spybrarians.

In this episode of the On The Rail Podcast, we get into the intricacies of saddle making with custom saddle maker Joey Wenger from East Berlin, Pennsylvania. Joey shares his journey from growing up in a horse show family to becoming a renowned saddle maker. He discusses the challenges he faced starting his business, the learning curve of working with leather and tools without any prior experience, and how he gradually perfected his craft. Joey also provides insights into the importance of saddle trees, the process of designing custom saddles, and the evolving trends in the industry, particularly the rise of ranch saddles. This episode offers a thorough look at the dedication, craftsmanship, and innovation required to excel in the saddle making business.00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction01:22 Joey's Background and Early Years02:20 Starting the Leather Business03:39 Challenges and Learning on the Job06:12 Family Support and Initial Struggles10:54 Transition to Saddle Making20:22 Developing Custom Saddle Trees29:49 Saddle Making Process and Custom Orders38:56 Innovations in Saddle Design39:22 The Rise of Ranch Saddles42:39 Leather Tooling and Craftsmanship46:48 Challenges in the Saddle Industry50:33 The Impact of Rising Costs55:43 Future Trends and Opportunities57:17 Personal Reflections and Family Life01:01:25 The Importance of Quality and Customization01:08:20 Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

Fritz Häber, The Complete Diary: 16 Months in an American POW Camp by Bernd Häber Amazon.com Worldstrings.com 16monthsaspow.com Examining history through family archives frequently complicates our understanding of the past. This complexity is heightened when descendants encounter diverse forms of testimonial evidence from a bygone era—whether it be a photograph, an object, postcards, official documents, or a diary—and undertake the challenging endeavor of deciphering the meaning of these personal remnants within the broader context of historical events. This diary stands apart from the typical World War II narratives found in documentaries, textbooks, and retellings, often providing only the highlights and a broad overview. For readers seeking a genuinely fresh and intimate perspective on the physical war and psychological war that unfolds beneath the surface, this real-life account offers an insightful and comprehensive experience. This is the story of Fritz Häber, a young German father who grappled with the dual responsibilities to his family and country. His reflections provide personal insights that extend beyond him to encompass broader global perspectives. Forced to serve in a Nazi anti-aircraft unit near Munich during WW2, he later endured 16 months imprisoned in an American POW camp. Fritz Häber begins his diary with this dedication: “I dedicate these pages to my wife and my children of whom I hope are still alive and whom to find well when I return from captivity… May these lines serve my wife in the future as a compensation for the long time during which she knew nothing about my well-being, and for the children to serve as an example of how human destinies can get easily mixed up.” Stories such as his prompt an exploration of our family histories and their untold narratives. They illuminate themes of resilience and survival, morality and choice. Even when these tales harbor discomfort or controversy, they possess the power to enlighten us and offer valuable guidance for our present actions. His steadfast and unyielding belief in his survival gave him the faith that he would be reunited with his family one day. Having endured physical and emotional challenges, his story is a timeless, powerful source of inspiration 75 years later and will resonate with future generations. From the author: n this book, which is both a diary and a memoir, you will meet my grandfather, Fritz Häber. As a child, he was just my grandpa, a jovial, vigorous, warmhearted man, whom I would visit during the occasional holiday vacation. It was only later when contentious, life altering, family events were revealed to me that I realized Fritz had served in Hitler's Wehrmacht during WWII, one of the most tumultuous and violent time periods of world history. I had so many questions. Although his part in this global drama can be considered minor, he extensively documented his experiences and shared his astute reflections on everything from human psychology to political philosophy. Like many history buffs, I have spent countless hours reading about high level diplomacy and watching documentaries that detail the technical and military aspects of war, but it was not until reading Fritz's diary that I could fully imagine both the momentous decisions he made and the drudgery of being a reluctant soldier. Fritz, an antifascist, not only warns “human destinies can get easily mixed up” during war, but also reminds us to pay attention to forces that might interfere with our lives in unexpected ways. I am excited to now share his story with you. About the author Bernd, grandson of Fritz, was born in East Berlin - after the Berlin Wall was erected. He grew up in the German Democratic Republic under a Communist ruling government. Bernd attended the Technische Universität in Chemnitz in Saxony/Germany and graduated with a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Process Design and Computer Aided Manufacturing.

This week on No Priors, Sarah and Elad talk with GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke about the rise of AI-powered software development and the success of Copilot. They discuss how Copilot is reshaping the developer workflow, GitHub's new Agent Mode, and competition in the developer tooling market. They also explore how AI-driven coding impacts software pricing, the future of open source vs. proprietary APIs, and what Copilot's success means for Microsoft. Plus, Thomas shares insights from his journey growing up in East Berlin and navigating rapidly changing worlds. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @ThomasDohmke Show Notes: 0:00 Introduction 0:37 GitHub Copilot's capabilities 4:12 Will agents replace developers? 6:04 Copilot's development cycle 8:34 Winning the developer market 10:40 Agent mode 13:25 Where GitHub is headed 16:45 Building for the new challenges of AI 21:50 Dev tools market formation 29:56 Copilot's broader impact 32:17 How AI changes software pricing 39:16 Open source vs. proprietary APIs 48:01 Growing up in East Berlin

In this third episode of the East Germany series, Artie is joined by Deputy Minister and fellow Berlin tour guide Tina to discuss East Germany's first major crisis.By the early 1950s, West Germany was booming thanks to American subsidies, while the GDR remained in ruins, burdened by Soviet reparation payments. Living standards had declined, fuelling unrest. When the government ordered a 10% productivity increase without extra pay, anger boiled over. On 16 June 1953, workers in East Berlin went on strike. By the next day, protests had spread nationwide, turning into a full-scale uprising. Crowds stormed government buildings, tore down propaganda, and overpowered security forces. The SED was on the brink of collapse—until Soviet tanks rolled in.The uprising was brutally crushed, killing 55 people, with more subsequently executed after show trials. In response, the GDR expanded Stasi surveillance, cementing its status as one of history's most oppressive police states.The Ministry of History offers more than just podcast episodes! Check out our blog for engaging historical insights, access transcripts of episodes, subscribe to our newsletter for updates and early access to posts, and explore our digital content. Planning a trip to Berlin? You can even book a history tour with Artie himself! To find all this, simply head to our website. You can also follow us on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.Artwork by Leila Mead. Check out her website and follow her on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 29 March 1974, Czesław Kukuczka stormed into the Polish embassy in East Berlin, threatening to detonate a bomb unless he was allowed to escape to the West. Shot at point-blank range while trying to cross the Berlin Wall, the identity of Kukuczka's killer remained a mystery for decades - until archive documents led investigators to former Stasi officer Martin Naumann. Naumann's historic trial made him one of the first former Stasi officers to be convicted of murder.Dan Hardoon speaks to Dr Filip Gańczak, the historian whose work helped bring Kukuczka's killer to justice.Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic' and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy's Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they've had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America's occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.(Photo: The Berlin Wall. Credit: Owen Franken/Corbis via Getty Images)

Download Bios:https://we.tl/t-kchI8WwhMT Playlist No 264 Another month commences our journey filled with wondrous sounds, where men and women harmonise with machines on an electric voyage, manifesting in atmospherics of interlacing moods static-hypnotic sequences diverse rhythms varied melodies and experimentation into strange soundworlds. Making their debut on our podcasts is flutist Liesbet, seamlessly blends with ambient guests and transports listeners into a sound and visual universe. For the first time since the EP was recorded in East Berlin over 40 years ago, the music of Martin Zeichnete, a disciple of Kosmische Muzik, can finally be heard. From The Sine label C37, an emotional downbeat album captures moments of love, loss and hope. Ambient producer from Finland Janne Hanhisuanto has described his work as spacious and cinematic. Rounding off with Matthew Labarge, whose orchestral mood unfolds like novels and yields new insights after many listens. 02.42 Kosmischer Läufer ‘Die Weisse Rose' (Track Club EP) https://kosmischerlaufer.bandcamp.com 07.51 Hello Mr Klaus ‘Il viaggio delle balene cosmiche (per Manuel, seconda parte)' (album The Fairy Of The Cyclical Journey) https://cyclicaldreams.bandcamp.com 16.47 Hanni Rani '24.03 (Studio 1, Warsaw)' (album Nostalgia) https://haniarani.bandcamp.com/album/nostalgia 21.41 Hanni Rani ‘The Boat (Studio 1, Warsaw)' 27.56 Janne Hanhisuanto ‘Barycentre' (album Moon On Man) https://jannehanhisuanto.bandcamp.com/album/moon-on-the-man 31.04 Janne Hanhisuanto ‘Moon And Sea' 37.33 Steve Roach ‘The Nurturing Ground' (album The Reverent Sky) www.projekt.com 50.04 Noveller ‘Mannahatta' (album No Dreams) https://noveller.bandcamp.com 58.10 Atlus ‘Holding The Moment' (album The Sun Will Rise Tomorrow) https://altusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-sun-will-rise-tomorrow 01.03.46 Atlus ‘Such Fleeting Advancement (Stoic Mix)' 01.09.58 C37 ‘Between The Lines' (album) Into Thin Air) https://sine-music.bandcamp.com/album/into-thin-air 01.13.18 C37 ‘I Believe I Was Wrong' 01.17.00 C37 ‘Our Day Will Come' 01.20.51 Tom Eaton ‘Traces' (single) https://tomeaton1.bandcamp.com/track/traces-single 01.24.36 Urs Fuchs ‘Wolkenfee' (single ) www.bscmusic.com 01.29.46 DELREI ‘Mysterious Traveller' (album Live Curtarock Festival Curtarolo 07/26/2024 www.projekt.com 01.32.51 DELREI ‘Into The Wasteland' 01.36.11 Thaneco ‘Hercules Supercluster' (album Cosmic Atlas) https://thaneco-syngate.bandcamp.com 01.44.54 Thaneco ‘The Observable Universe' 01.51.54 Endless Dive ‘Petit Bain' (album Souvenances) https://endlessdive.bandcamp.com/album/a-brief-history-of-a-kind-human 01.54.44 Endless Dive ‘Iridescence' 01.57.00 Frank Tischer ‘The Grande Mirage' (album Circumpolar) https://franktischer.bandcamp.com 02.03.43 Frank Tischer ‘Cygnus' 02.06.47 Matthew Labarge ‘All Hope Illuminated' (Windy Starry Blue) https://www.matthewlabarge.com 02.11.10 Matthew Labarge ‘Night Divine' 02.14.59 Orchestra Indigo ‘Chimera#2' (album Hearing Visions) https://orchestraindigo.com 02.16.41 Orchestra Indigo ‘Hearing Visions' 02.21.17 Ivan Black ‘Follow The Leader' (album Dancing With The Stars) https://ivanblack.bandcamp.com/album/dancing-with-the-stars-2 02.28.56 Ivan Black ‘Pluto's Heart' (album Pluto's Heart) https://ivanblack.bandcamp.com/album/pluto-s-heart 02.36.21 Liesbet Leroy, Christian Alsemgeest ‘Calm After The Storm' (album Kindred Spirit) https://marenostrumlabel.bandcamp.com/album/kindred-spirit 02.39.09 Liesbet, Andrea Accorsi ‘Dawn Chorus' 02.41.29 Lightwave ‘To the Deep!/Waterfalls' (album Cantus Umbrarum) https://lightwave-musique.bandcamp.com 02.51.52 Lightwave ‘Tycho On The Moon/Apolgee' (album Tycho Brahe) 03.00.52 Lightwave ‘Sonnenstürme' (albums, Mundus Subterraneus) 03.09.46 Dirk Serries ‘Other Transformations' (album Treasure To The Stars (Streams Of Consciousness) *** www.projekt.com Edit ***

Citizens of the GDR were exposed to an idealised version of western freedoms made up of luxury shopping, blue jeans and cowboy flicks. Read by Helen Lloyd. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Image: Intershop in Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin. Credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo

Today, Martin Luther King Day and the day before the reinauguration of King Ubu of the Divided States of America, is an appropriate time to revisit the life and legacy of the great Paul Robeson. Both great Americans, King and Robeson, were met with great resistance, incomprehension, and opposition in their day. While Dr. King is now justly celebrated with a national holiday, his legacy is often watered down by those, even right-wing extremists, that seek to attach their own agenda to his progressive legacy. Paul Robeson returned to his native country during the dark days of World War II. Shortly after the war ended, Robeson was also subject to incomprehension and oppression related to his embrace of Communism, which led to him being blacklisted and his passport being rescinded. Finally in 1958, after eight years of being hounded by the FBI, Paul Robeson finally regained the right to travel abroad. During the years of his blacklisting, he had effectively been unable to support himself. In thanks to his supporters following his emancipation, Robeson gave a celebratory concert on June 1, 1958 at his home church, Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem. Shortly thereafter, he departed on years' long sojourn abroad. His first stop was the Royal Albert Hall in London, where he performed on August 10, 1958, the beginning of a nationwide tour across the UK. Thereafter he visited other countries as well, including East Germany, where he was particularly celebrated and revered and where, in 1959 in an East Berlin recording studio, he made a new recording of old and new favorites with his frequent collaborator Earl Robinson. Rare selections from each of these events are featured on this episode, which is enhanced with excerpts from, and commentary by, Paul Robeson on his greatest stage success, the title role in Shakespeare's Othello, a work which is distressingly relevant as the United States faces its greatest challenge in recent history. This episode is both a celebration of one of the greatest patriots our country has known as well as a warning of the pitfalls that await a nation that chooses to ignore or misrepresent those great Americans in lieu of hate-filled opportunists. Countermelody is a podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel's lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and journalist yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody's core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody's Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

David Mackay is a former Cold War special forces officer and author of Bubbleheads, SEALs and Wizards: America's Scottish Bastion in the Cold War. He continues his unvarnished anecdotes about his Cold War career as an officer in the Parachute Regiment. The conversation extends to further experiences in East Berlin, West Germany, Nigeria, and Northern Ireland, highlighting the varied roles and military duties he undertook—from Flag Patrols in East Berlin to being shot by the IRA  with many stops in between. Through David's unique humorous and reflective storytelling he sheds light on the often absurd and dangerous realities of being a British officer during the Cold War. All our combat episodes in one convenient playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6j6YJmRWzt42kYiPGkcFfa?si=95e5366e4ad945a3 Buy David book here https://uk.bookshop.org/a/1549/9781849955546 Episode extras here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode384/ The fight to preserve Cold War history continues and via a simple monthly donation, you will give me the ammunition to continue to preserve Cold War history. You'll become part of our community, get ad-free episodes, and get a sought-after CWC coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, we welcome one-off donations via the same link. Find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life! Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/store/ Follow us on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/coldwarpod.bsky.social Follow us on Threads https://www.threads.net/@coldwarconversations Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/ Youtube https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations Love history? Join Intohistory https://intohistory.com/coldwarpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dramatically alters how we look at the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Tracking key events in US-Soviet relations across the years between 1980 and 1985, Simon Miles shows that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the Soviet system and building up US military capabilities. The received wisdom in diplomatic circles is that the beginning of the end of the Cold War came from changing policy preferences and that President Reagan in particular opted for a more conciliatory and less bellicose diplomatic approach. In reality, as Miles vividly demonstrates, Reagan and ranking officials in the National Security Council had determined that the United States enjoyed a strategic margin of error that permitted it to engage Moscow overtly. As US grand strategy developed, so did that of the Soviet Union. Engaging the Evil Empire covers five critical years of Cold War history when Soviet leaders tried to reduce tensions between the two nations in order to gain economic breathing room and, to ensure domestic political stability, prioritize expenditures on butter over those on guns. Written with style and verve, Miles's bold narrative shifts the focus of Cold War historians away from exclusive attention on Washington by focusing on the years of back-channel communiqués and internal strategy debates in Moscow as well as Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin. Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno's studio is two big and old industrial units covered in graffiti, in what was East Berlin. This was where the company AGFA developed and made the chemicals that made colour photography possible. The ground is so polluted Saraceno's lease forbids him from growing any vegetables, and this matters to this environmentally concerned artist. But the industrial past of Studio Saracen is fitting as Tomás' work is highly technical. Here he has an architecture department, an arachnid research laboratory and an engineering works. He has about 40 people working on different projects. Tomás talks to Julian May about some of his projects, including Aerocene - sculptural hot air balloons that ascend and fly without the use of any fossil fuels, by capturing the reflected heat of the sun. His ambition is to create a kind of slow aviation, in which his balloons circumnavigate the globe on air currents.

"You go through this feeling to then be in freedom." The notorious photographer and bouncer talks about the ethos behind selecting the world's hardest door, early life in East Berlin and Berghain's 20th anniversary. Today's Exchange guest is Berghain's infamous figurehead and doorman Sven Marquardt, who was born and raised in German Democratic Republic (GDR)-era East Berlin. He lived a rebellious life as a queer punk in Prenzlauer Berg, which banned him from entering Berlin's central districts because of how he looked. It was during these years that he congregated with fellow East Berlin new wave kids and began documenting their relationships and his own life through photography. When the wall fell, electronic music and the exciting scene that arose in the DDR's vacuum became Marquardt's focus. He started partying at gay fetish parties and bouncing doors at new clubs alongside his brother. In this interview, he talks to RA Exchange producer Chloe Lula about how Berlin has evolved from his adolescence in the post-war years and his thoughts on the changes erasing institutions in the city's clubbing landscape today. He also reflects on the contemporary nightlife industry and how Berghain's policies have shifted with the times, initially catering to an almost exclusively gay male crowd but now welcoming a demographic more representative of the diversity of people who make up club culture. While German politics and the rise of the right wing have deeply affected him, he says, he recognizes the opportunities it enables for his community to use art and culture as a reactionary, countercultural force. Listen to the episode in full. Photo by Torsten Ingvaldsen.

"You go through this feeling to then be in freedom." The notorious photographer and bouncer talks about the ethos behind selecting the world's hardest door, early life in East Berlin and Berghain's 20th anniversary. Today's Exchange guest is Berghain's infamous figurehead and doorman Sven Marquardt, who was born and raised in German Democratic Republic (GDR)-era East Berlin. He lived a rebellious life as a queer punk in Prenzlauer Berg, which banned him from entering Berlin's central districts because of how he looked. It was during these years that he congregated with fellow East Berlin new wave kids and began documenting their relationships and his own life through photography. When the wall fell, electronic music and the exciting scene that arose in the DDR's vacuum became Marquardt's focus. He started partying at gay fetish parties and bouncing doors at new clubs alongside his brother. In this interview, he talks to RA Exchange producer Chloe Lula about how Berlin has evolved from his adolescence in the post-war years and his thoughts on the changes erasing institutions in the city's clubbing landscape today. He also reflects on the contemporary nightlife industry and how Berghain's policies have shifted with the times, initially catering to an almost exclusively gay male crowd but now welcoming a demographic more representative of the diversity of people who make up club culture. While German politics and the rise of the right wing have deeply affected him, he says, he recognizes the opportunities it enables for his community to use art and culture as a reactionary, countercultural force. Listen to the episode in full. Photo by Torsten Ingvaldsen. Audio overdubs by Marios Gavrilis.

It is day six of our 12 Nightmares Before Christmas, and we are headed to Germany. After World War II, Germany was divided into four Allied occupation zones, with the Soviet Union controlling East Germany and East Berlin, while the United States, France, and the U.K. managed Western Germany and West Berlin. By 1949, Europe had transformed dramatically, symbolized by the creation of two Germanies. Initially, movement between the two regions was unrestricted, but as East Germans fled westward in droves, the border was sealed in 1961, culminating in the Berlin Wall, a defining emblem of the Cold War.  In Plauen, East Germany, young Volker Eckert grew up in a Communist city near the Czech border. As a child, Volker developed a fixation on hair, playing with his sister's dolls and mother's wigs, which sparked sexual fantasies he kept secret. By age 14, his obsession with hair escalated into violence. On May 7, 1974, he strangled his classmate Sylvia Unterdörfel in her home under the pretense of needing help with homework, driven by an uncontrollable urge to feel her hair. Fearing exposure, he killed her and staged her death as a suicide. Sadly, Sylvia would not be his only victim. In fact, there would be many more. Join Jen and Cam of Our True Crime Podcast on this episode entitled ‘The Polaroid Killer: Volker Eckert.'A huge thank you to Sleep Creme for sponsoring this episode. Order your bottle today at sleepcreme.com. Use the code OTCPODCAST at checkout to save twenty bucks on the first order! Thank you to our team:Written and researched by Lauretta AllenListener Discretion by Edward October from Octoberpod AMExecutive Producer Nico Vitesse of The Inky PawprintSources:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8BLkEZ7zk0&ab_channel=Mia%27sRealityChannelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Eckerthttps://murderpedia.org/male.E/e/eckert-volker.htmhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/07/crimehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/01/germany.gilestremletthttps://web.archive.org/web/20120103001441/http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_11264.shtml#ixzz5TG24bAlwhttps://www.novinite.com/articles/73211/Bulgarian+Victim+of+German+Sex+Killer+was+Pregnanthttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/23/germany.gilestremletthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

Wanna have a coffee? Well, I hope you're not an East German in the '70s & '80s, 'cos it's gonna be tough (and taste like wood).On this episode of History Flakes Pip & Jonny dive deep into the lukewarm cup of coffee that is East Germany's struggle to procure the brown stuff for its people. To do that we've enlisted the help of TikTok's own Call Me Steve. If you follow Jonny on various socials you may have bumped into Steve's excellent, deep, engaging, and humorous East German/Cold War content. He takes us on a ride through East Germany's economic woes as we sit and sip our own coffee (Jonny had tea...) in East Berlin's Café Sibylle.++++++Jonny's idea (sorry) to record this in a café was perhaps a little ambitious. Bear with us through some robotoic AI-sounding audio.++++++Want more Steve? You got it:YouTubeTikTokInstagram++++++ToursWant to book Pip & Jonny for tours you can get in touch via the Whitlam's Berlin Tours website.You can follow Jonny online on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and more!++++++Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5++++++SourcesBooksBrewing Socialism: Coffee, East Germans, and Twentieth-Century Globalization by Andrew Kloiber ⁠Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe edited by Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger ⁠Illustrierte Konsumgeschichte der DDR by Annette Kaminsky ⁠The Plans That Failed: An Economic History of the GDR by André SteinerStasi Fileshttps://www.ddr-im-blick.de/jahrgaenge/jahrgang-1977/report/reaktionen-auf-die-versorgungsprobleme-mit-kaffee-1/https://www.ddr-im-blick.de/jahrgaenge/jahrgang-1977/report/tendenzen-der-unzufriedenheit-in-der-bevoelkerung-1/https://www.ddr-im-blick.de/jahrgaenge/jahrgang-1977/report/tendenzen-der-unzufriedenheit-in-der-bevoelkerung-2/https://www.ddr-im-blick.de/jahrgaenge/jahrgang-1977/report/reaktionen-auf-die-versorgungsprobleme-mit-kaffee-2/

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Berlin Wall and East German border opening in the autumn of 1989. In this riveting episode, I speak with Dietmar Schultke, a member of the Grenztruppen, the East German Border Guards and delve into the life of those responsible for preventing escapes over the Berlin Wall and the East German Border. Dietmar opens up about his life in the GDR, sharing personal stories of his recruitment into the border troops, the rigorous training he endured, and the psychological pressures he faced during his service. Training in Eisenach prepared him for a potential third World War, with exercises in sharpshooting, combat, and gas mask drills. The psychological toll of such training was immense, as soldiers were constantly under surveillance, with one in ten being a Stasi informant. The cultural impact of the time was not lost on Dietmar. He vividly recalls attending a Bruce Springsteen concert in East Berlin, an event that felt like a taste of freedom amidst the oppressive regime. The concert was a beacon of hope, yet, the return to the border was a stark reminder of the barriers that still existed. Episode extras including links and videos here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode373/ Dietmar's web site https://www.dietmar-schultke.de The fight to preserve Cold War history continues and via a simple monthly donation, you will give me the ammunition to continue to preserve Cold War history. You'll become part of our community, get ad-free episodes, and get a sought-after CWC coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, We also welcome one-off donations via the same link. Find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life! Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/store/ Support the project! https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/ Youtube https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations Love history? Join Intohistory https://intohistory.com/coldwarpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've reached No. 90 on our list and it comes with a visit to Kansas via East Berlin as we watch the 2001 punk rock musical comedy ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch'. The film was written, directed and stars John Cameron Mitchell who had previously played the role on stage. The story follows a rock musician chasing after an ex lover who plagiarised her songs. Full of beautiful music and storytelling join us as we journey through Hedwig's journey in this cult classic!

The Berlin Wall is, for most, one of those historical topics you're aware of, but probably don't know a ton about. Well don't freak out because that's what we're here for. Post WW2 Germany was divided into zones with the U.S., U.K. and "France" taking stewardship of West Germany and the Soviet Union taking East Germany. Now this was right at the start of the Cold War,  East Berlin and West Berlin, which were also divided basically become a 24/7, 365 side by side comparison of Western Capitalism vs. Soviet Communism. Things got pretty bad in East Germany and East Berlin as their neighbors to the West thrived with the influx of western culture and that sweet sweet money. Well eventually J. Stalin got fed up with the embarrassment suffered due to the mass exodus of young talented people from East to West and decided to put a stop to that. How did he do it you ask, well he started building a wall. But it was what was happening on the East side of the wall that's really the story. Support the show

James Stejskal, ex-special forces, tells of the jubilant and vitriolic scenes, as the Berlin Wall came down. November 9th 1989 - the Iron Curtain descends. Hear how it was on the ground, as both ordinary citizens, and global intelligence services, descend on East Berlin, seeking the vast archives of information meticulously gathered over decades by the Stasi. From SPYSCAPE, the HQ of secrets. A Cup And Nuzzle production. Series producer: Joe Foley. Produced by Morgan Childs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2008, Union Berlin played in the third division in German football. They were best known for the extraordinary atmosphere at their unique stadium, the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, which is surrounded by forest in East Berlin. But long term financial challenges for the club meant the stadium was becoming too run down to use. The team was at risk of having to move, until fans volunteered in their thousands to take on the renovation work themselves. Lifelong Union fan Sylvia Weisheit oversaw the project, and she tells her story to Kit Holden. This is a Whistledown production for the BBC World Service.Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive and testimony. Sporting Witness is for those fascinated by sporting history. We take you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes, you become a fan in the stands as we take you back in time to examine memorable victories and agonising defeats from all over the world. You'll hear from people who have achieved sporting immortality, or those who were there as incredible sporting moments unfolded.Recent episodes explore the forgotten football Women's World Cup, the plasterer who fought a boxing legend, international football's biggest ever beating and the man who swam the Amazon river. We look at the lives of some of the most famous F1 drivers, tennis players and athletes as well as people who've had ground-breaking impact in their chosen sporting field, including: the most decorated Paralympian, the woman who was the number 1 squash player in the world for nine years, and the first figure skater to wear a hijab. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the tennis player who escaped the Nazis, how a man finally beat a horse in a race, and how the FIFA computer game was created.(Photo: A supporter cements stairs during renovation work at Union Berlin's stadium. Credit: John MacDougall / AFP via Getty Images)

This episode explores Bridge of Spies (2015), the Cold War legal and political thriller directed by Steven Spielberg (and written by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen). The film is based on the true story of American attorney James Donovan, who is assigned to represent Soviet spy Rudolf Abel after Abel is arrested in New York and prosecuted for espionage. The story takes a turn when American pilot Francis Gary Powers is captured by the Russians after his plane is shot down over the Soviet Union while conducting a surveillance mission. Donovan is then tasked with negotiating a high-stakes prisoner exchange—Abel for Powers—that culminates in a climactic scene on the Glienicke Bridge connecting Potsdam with Soviet-controlled East Berlin. The film is not only highly entertaining; it also provides a window into important legal issues around national security, criminal, and immigration law that still resonate today. Joining me to talk about Bridge of Spies are Lenni Benson, Distinguished Chair in Immigration and Human Rights Law at New York Law School, one of the nation's foremost authorities immigration law and a prominent advocate in the field, and Jeffrey Kahn, University Distinguished Professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, a leading scholar on constitutional and counterterrorism law, an expert on Russian law, and the author of a must-read article on the Abel case, published in the Journal of National Security Law and Policy. Timestamps: 0:00   Introduction2:19     Who were Rudolf Abel & James Donovan6:08    Cold War tensions and anxieties9:09    American justice on trial12:12    Misusing immigration law18:18    Abel's arrest and the legal issues in the case24:40  Abel's disappearance and coercive interrogation      30:23  A history of anti-communist hysteria 33:06 Cherry-picking from legal categories to avoid constitutional guarantees42:16  A frightening time for noncitizens engaged in political activity48:22  A foreshadowing of government abuses after 9/1153:55  A questionable citation to Yick Wo v. Hopkins59:17   The vast system of immigration detention105:24 Behind the Iron Curtain115:14  An ex parte conversation with the judge119:16  The aftermath for Abel, Donovan, and Francis Gary Powers123:31  The absence of women in important positions Further reading:Arthey, Vin, Like Father, Like Son: A Dynasty of Spies (2004)“‘Bridge of Spies': The True Story is Even Stranger Than Fiction,” ProPublica (Feb. 24, 2016)Donovan, James B., Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers (1964)Epps, Garrett, “The Real Court Case Behind Bridge of Spies,” The Atlantic (Nov. 17. 2015)Kahn, Jeffrey D., “The Case of Colonel Abel,” 5 J. Nat'l Sec. L. & Pol'y 263 (2011)Sragow, Michael, “Deep Focus: ‘Bridge of Spies,'” Film Comment (Oct. 14, 2015)  Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.htmlYou can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.comYou can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilmYou can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

Juli begins by recounting her early years in East Berlin, a time marked by the tragic loss of her father. Drafted into the army just days before her birth, her father continually deserted to see his family, ultimately leading to his untimely death. This early loss left Juli and her mother to navigate a harsh landscape in East Germany alone. Life in East Berlin was a world of contrasts. Juli describes the indoctrination she experienced in school, where lessons were steeped in socialist propaganda. The Berlin Wall, a symbol of division and oppression, loomed large in her family's life, cutting them off from relatives in the West. Despite the regime's efforts to control information, Juli's family found ways to glimpse the outside world through Western television channels, fuelling her desire for freedom. As Juli grew older, she became increasingly aware of the regime's lies and the oppressive nature of the state. The revolutionary movements of the late 1980s, sparked by events like the Tiananmen Square massacre, galvanized her. Juli joined the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, risking her safety to demand change. Juli's story doesn't end with the fall of the Wall. She moved to Ireland, where she built a new life and family. Her reflections on transitioning from a controlled, oppressive state to a free society are profound. She speaks candidly about the challenges of adapting to a new way of life and the lingering impact of her upbringing. East Germany episode playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1gHCa6R8q5OXkUncJQmyFm?si=9cc56794cf7244bc Episode extras https://coldwarconversations.com/episode363/ The fight to preserve Cold War history continues and via a simple monthly donation, you will give me the ammunition to continue to preserve Cold War history. You'll become part of our community, get ad-free episodes, and get a sought-after CWC coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, We also welcome one-off donations via the same link. Find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life! Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/store/ Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/ Youtube https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations Love history? Join Intohistory https://intohistory.com/coldwarpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mark Milde, the race director of the BMW Berlin Marathon joins Set the Pace to talk about what it's like to race 26.2 miles through one of Germany's most storied cities. With the marathon celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Mark has a lifetime of experience when it comes to this race because his father, Horst Milde, founded the race in 1974. This year will have a celebratory feel with lots of music along the course and a special exhibition at the Brandenburg Gate showcasing the history of the race. The past 50 years has seen dramatic change in Berlin, most notably, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that had divided the city. Mark's father, along with other race organizers, rerouted the course from being run entirely in West Berlin to entering parts of East Berlin, yet still maintaining the fast and flat course that it's known for.Then, the great Meb Keflezighi will be here with NYRR member and seasoned marathoner Paola Marte, and today's Meb Minute which focuses on week 7 of training for the TCS New York City Marathon.FOLLOW NYRR: Instagram | Facebook | X | TikTokSUPPORT: Support the Set the Pace podcast! If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.DISCLAIMERSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1983, punk rock was strictly forbidden in East Berlin. However, that didn't stop young music obsessive Mark Reeder, from Manchester in the UK, smuggling cassettes, and then a punk band across the Berlin Wall. Mark shares how he arranged for the West German band, Die Toten Hosen, to perform illegally at a secret concert in a church. This episode was produced by Paul Hanford and Rosalie Delaney. A Munck Studios production for the BBC World Service.(Photo: Members of the band Die Toten Hosen and friends in East Berlin in 1983. Credit: Mark Reeder)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange': with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world.WithLaura Bradley Professor of German and Theatre at the University of EdinburghDavid Barnett Professor of Theatre at the University of YorkAnd Tom Kuhn Professor of Twentieth Century German Literature, Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, University of OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio productionReading list: David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge University Press, 2015)Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (eds.), Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (Camden House, 2015)Laura Bradley, ‘Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship' (The Modern Language Review, 111, 2016)Bertolt Brecht (ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles), Brecht on Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2014)Bertolt Brecht (ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman), Brecht on Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)Bertolt Brecht (trans. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine), The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (Norton Liveright, 2018) which includes the poem ‘Spring 1938' read by Tom Kuhn in this programmeStephen Brockmann (ed.), Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021)Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (Routledge, 2009)Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (Bloomsbury, 2014)Ronald Speirs, Brecht's Poetry of Political Exile (Cambridge University Press, 2000)David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (Nick Hern Books, 2018)