Podcasts about Embers

This month, we dove into one of our core values: connection. We loved welcoming back a special part of the Valo circle—our alumni. It was such a treat to catch up, hear their stories about what connection meant to them when they were here, and see how they've carried that same spirit into their lives today. Moments like these remind us why connection is at the heart of everything we do.

Welcome to a surprise tasting event. Today I'll be joined by Greg King of Proof, who is going to introduce us to the 2025 lineup of Diageo Special Releases. In this episode we'll dive into the history of this series and Greg and I will taste the new Oban and Lagavulin releases and I'll toss in a couple wildcards as well. We'll talk a little about the distilleries and flavor characteristics. There are some nice surprises in this pack that includes: ● Lagavulin 12 Year Old 'Grain & Embers' ● Oban 12 Year Old 'Heart of the Harbour' ● The Singleton of Glen Ord 17 Year Old 'Into the Blue'  ● Talisker 14 Year Old 'Molten Seas'  ● Dailuaine 21 Year Old 'Marbled Treasures' ● Roseisle 14 Year Old 'Harmonic Grace'  ● Clynelish 18 Year Old 'Waxen Sun'  ● Teaninich 8 Year Old 'Daring Rye'  ‼️ DISCLOSURE ‼️ Whiskies supplied by Proof for this tasting. Opinions are my own. for this tasting. Opinions are my own.

"Forever Shining" In 1976 brothers Tony and Chip Kinman founded the legendary Carlsbad punk band The Dills, who in just four short years crammed their music CV with highlights. Before they disbanded in 1980, The Dils had recorded classics like "Class War" and Mr. Big" opened for the Clash and appeared in Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke. The Kinmans went on to form Rank and File, who are considered by many to be one of the first cowpunk bands around. Rank and FIle's rootsy stomp and melodic muscle powered them through three perfect albums--Sundown, Long Gone Dead and their self-titled 19897 swansong. The Kinmans had an uncanny ability to read the cultural room before anyone else--they were hardcore before it hit the suburbs and they were cowpunk before it was cool and with their next band Blackbird, they were techno metal before Korn and Linkin Park shirts at Hot Topic. The Kinmans went on to play in bands like Cowboy Nation and Ford Madox Ford and sadly, Tony Kinman died in 2018. Which brings us to KInman's self-titled Kinman's new album. A stirring song cycle filled with acoustic numbers, Tex-Mex techno, the undulating rhythms and "Me And Tony" a streetwise tribute to a life in music with his brother, Kinman's new record sounds like nobody else. It's filled with unexpected sonic flourishes, heartfelt emotional ruminations, great storytelling and devastating beauty. It's bold and brilliant work. https://intheredrecords.com/collections/chip-kinman/products/chip-kinman-s-t-lp www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast EMAIL: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com (mailto:editor@stereoembersmagazine.com)

Make it Louder! Episode 572 of Make Some Music radio show with your host - Ruslan Radriges ♪ New track "I Want To Hold You Tonight" with Huvagen ► interplay.ffm.to/itp398 ♪ Discover this episode: ► band.link/msm572 Also new music by Ruslan Radriges in playlist. Subscribe: ► soundcloud.com/ruslanradriges/sets/rrmusic Follow Ruslan Radriges: ♦Instagram ► instagram.com/ruslanradriges ♦Spotify ► spoti.fi/2pRImzg ♦Facebook ► facebook.com/RuslanRadriges ♦YouTube ► youtube.com/c/DjProduserRuslanRadriges ♦VK ► vk.com/ruslanradriges ♦Apple ► music.apple.com/ru/artist/ruslan-radriges/541431482 ♦SoundCloud: ► @ruslanradriges ♦Yandex ► music.yandex.ru/artist/3961521 ♦iTunes: > https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ruslan-radriges/id1480936940 #RuslanRadriges #MSM572 TRACKLIST: Ruslan Radriges - Intro 01. Embers of Hope & Cris Von X - Still The One [RNM] 02. Katoff - Burning Shadows [Magic Island Deep] [SOME LATELY FAVORITE] 03. Semblance Smile & North Skies - Lights Slow Down [A Tribute To Life] 04. Mike Mendizabal - Odyssey [2Rock Electronic] 05. Anton Pallmer x Spectorsonic x Alex BELIEVE - Let's Go [Suanda Future] 06. Ginchy & Cubicore - Beyond [Ginchiest] 07. Yves V - Here Comes That Sound [Smash The House] 08. Knolldoll - City Lights [Revealed] 09. Ginchy x DEADLINE x Desyfer ft. Emma Konnavov - Something [Epic247] 10. FEEL - Now We Are Free [Suanda] 11. Netsky & Bebe Rexha - Light That Leads Me (Boris Way Remix) [Helix] 12. Alexander Popov x Annie Sollange x Ruslan Radriges - The Light (DJ Tony Magic Remix) [Interplay Global] [MOMENT OF THE PAST] 13. Armin van Buuren ft. Richard Bedford - Love Never Came 14. Alexander Popov & MatricK - Enter Reality [Interplay] [PERFECT TUNE] 15. Somnia x Ruslan Radriges - High In Your Low [2Rock] 16. MOMOMIN & Takahiro Yoshihira ft. C. Todd Nielsen - Light It Up [Acid Dolphin] 17. Jan De Vice & NAEMS - Acid Mthfckr [Kurai] 18. Sofia Cristo ft. Adalaide Adams - Look At Me [Arryba] Ruslan Radriges - Outro

The team prepare for their attack on Misery and weigh-up exactly what they're willing to do for victory. Dice Company: Small Embers is a cinematic Dungeons & Dragons actual play podcast that blends immersive storytelling, high production values, and emotional character drama. Join a cast of storytellers as they navigate political intrigue, ancient magic, and moral consequences in a world on the brink of collapse. Each episode follows the adventuring party through the dark and richly detailed continent of Aethelon; a place of broken empires, cursed relics, and gods long forgotten. Combining deep narrative roleplay with expert sound design and original scoring, Small Embers delivers the atmosphere of a prestige audio drama with the heart and spontaneity of D&D. Whether you love fantasy podcasts, D&D campaigns, or character-driven storytelling, Dice Company: Small Embers is the perfect mix of epic adventure and intimate human storytelling. Perfect for fans of Critical Role, Dungeons & Daddies, and The Adventure Zone.

In this week's episode, we discuss the advantages of digital content ownership for both readers and writers. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: CLOAK2025 The coupon code is valid through November 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 277 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 14th, 2025, and today we are discussing the benefits of owning your own content for both readers and writers. Before we get to our main topic, we will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is CLOAK2025. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through November 24th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for your Thanksgiving travels this month, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report the rough draft of Blade of Shadows is done. This will be the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. Right now, it is just about exactly as long as Blade of Flames. It may be a little longer or a little shorter depending on how editing goes since there's some stuff I'm going to cut out, but there's also some scenes I'm going to add. I also wrote a short story called Elven Arrow. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Elven Arrow when Blade of Shadows comes out, which will hopefully be before American Thanksgiving at the end of the month. I'm about 23% of the way through the first editing pass, so making good progress there and hope to keep up with the good progress. I am 11,000 words into Wizard-Assassin. That will be my next main project once the Blade of Shadows is published and probably the final book I publish in 2025, because I think the first book I do in 2026 will be Blades of Ruin #3, if all goes well. In audiobook news, the recording for Blade of Flames is done and it's gradually making its way out into the world (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills). I think as of the time of this recording, the only place where it's actually live is Google Play, but hopefully more stores will come online soon, and it would be cool if the Blade of Flames audiobook was available everywhere before Blade of Shadows came out. Hollis McCarthy is still working on Cloak of Embers and we hope to have that to you before the end of the year, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:25 Main Topic: Digital Content Ownership as a Reader and Writer Now let's move on to our own topic, the ownership of digital content as both a reader and a writer. As the digital revolution has gone on and on and put more decades behind it, people are increasingly building very large digital content libraries and it's an increasingly tangled point of law what happens to those digital libraries when for example, their account gets suspended, or for example, someone else dies and wants to leave their Steam library of games to their heirs. We're today going to be focusing on digital content ownership for readers and writers, and we'll start with readers. Although the price of an ebook and print book of many traditionally published books are roughly the same at this point (and sometimes bafflingly, the ebook versions cost more), the rights you have as the owner of the ebook copy are substantially less powerful. In fact, technically speaking, you aren't actually the owner of an ebook purchased from Amazon or other retailers. It's more accurate to say that you purchased a long-term conditional lease. As a side note, I'm talking about this from the perspective of United States Copyright law and ebook/audiobook stores there. The laws and standards in your own country may be different. Also, I am not a lawyer and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice. You obtain legal advice by hiring a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. But now back to the main argument. In America, there is something known as the First Sale Doctrine. This section of the US Copyright Act allows physical media to be lent out and resold, among other things. For example, someone who purchases a physical book is considered its owner and the publisher can't take it back from them. The physical version of books can be used in libraries or as classroom materials until they literally fall apart, unlike their electronic equivalents, which face complicated licensing agreements that generally offer far less favorable terms of use for a much larger cost (especially for libraries and academic institutions). In the US, electronic content ownership is covered by contract law instead of the First Sale Doctrine. Although each seller has their own licenses and standards, a few things tend to remain consistent across those licenses: the inability to lend or resell the content, the inability to remove DRM from the content, and the right of the seller to alter or even remove the content. Ownership is not a right guaranteed for digital content. There is an American lawsuit currently challenging Amazon Prime Video and its use of words like "purchase" and "buy" for its video content. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of misrepresenting a heavily conditional license as a purchase, giving the average customer the impression that they own the content in perpetuity. Amazon lawyers argue that the average customer understands the difference, but frequent outrages over content being removed from users' libraries suggests otherwise. Here are four reasons owning your ebook content is important. #1: Keeping access to the content if the company closes or gets bought out. One of the early leaders in the US ebook store market way back at the start of the indie revolution was Sony. When their Sony Reader store closed, they gave readers the option to migrate their libraries to Kobo. Books that were not available through Kobo were not able to be transferred, so some purchased content was lost for readers. A more egregious example comes from, as you might expect, Microsoft with the closing of the Microsoft ebook store in 2019. When the store closed, they offered refunds instead of giving readers an opportunity to self-archive or transfer their purchases. Any margin notes taken by readers were lost, and they were given a $25 credit for the inconvenience. Although refunding customers was a good gesture, it's not a guarantee that readers are able to repurchase the ebooks elsewhere or even that the price would be the same when they did. As an aside, I spent a good chunk of time in 2018 trying to figure out how to get into the Microsoft ebook store and then finally gave up because it was too complicated, which in hindsight turned out to be a good decision. Owning your ebooks outright gives them independence from the store that you bought them from. #2: Keeping content from being altered. Ebooks can be altered anytime. Most of the time these changes are harmless, such as updating a cover, fixing a typo, or adding a preview chapter. I do that myself all the time. Every time I get typo corrections, I upload a new version. Yet there is a potential for books to be edited or censored from the original copy that you purchased. Chapters could be removed, scenes altered, or in extreme cases, the entire book could be removed. Owning a hard copy means that you have a version that cannot be changed without your knowledge. #3: The ability to self-archive. Most ebook stores use a form of digital rights management (DRM) that makes it difficult to transfer or permanently store your collection outside of their collection or library. Trying to do so is a violation of the license you purchased from the store, so I won't discuss how to do that. Amazon recently made self-archiving more difficult by discontinuing the feature to download and transfer Kindle books via USB. Finding DRM-free ebook stores is important if you want to organize and store your ebook collection as you see fit. Two examples of stores with DRM-free ebooks are Smashwords and direct [sales] sites like My Payhip store. Other stores like Kobo have a dedicated section devoted to DRM-free ebooks. #4: Keeping your reading habits private. Companies like Amazon track reading data, mostly out of a desire to sell you similar books or ad space. They track what you're reading, the amount of time you spend reading, your reading speed, and the highlights that you make in a book. Now, most of the time this is generally pretty harmless. It's mostly used for…you look on Amazon, you see that the section "customers who enjoyed this book also enjoyed this". Then if you use the Kindle app on your phone a lot, it has a lot of badges and achievements and it tends to be used for that kind of thing. However, there could be sinister undertones to this, especially if you're reading things you would prefer other people not know about. So if this concerns you, if there are some settings that you can adjust, but if you want complete privacy, outright ownership of your ebooks is the way to go. So what is the easiest way to own your own ebooks as a reader? The easiest way and perhaps the safest way to own your content outright is to buy print copies of books. That said, buying direct from authors or finding ebooks that have more favorable license terms is easiest way to own your ebook purchases. One of the reasons that opening a Payhip store was important to me was I gave my readers a chance to outright own purchased copies of my work and self-archive them in the way that they saw fit, if that was important to them. The price is the same on my Payhip store as other ebook or audiobook stores (and sometimes even cheaper if you're using Coupon of the Week). The ebooks and audiobooks there are DRM-free and untethered from specific stores and companies. You have the option to download files in a variety of file formats and store them in a way that makes the most sense to you. Buying direct also gives a greater share of the sale price to the authors, especially in the case of audiobooks. In conclusion, ebooks lag behind print books in terms of ownership rights for purchasers here in the United States (at the time of this recording). That said, you can be an informed consumer by reading terms of use carefully and educating yourself to make sure that you have the most possible access to your purchased content. Now, we've covered that from the reader side, and let's look at it from the side of the content creators, specifically writers. This can also apply to other content creators such as musicians, and we're going to use a very famous example for that, Taylor Swift. The general public learned about the importance of fully owning your content as a creator during the long and very public battle between musician Taylor Swift and the record company that sold her work to a private equity firm associated with someone she personally disliked. She owned the copyrights to the works (along with her various collaborators), but not the masters, the specific recordings of each song. As long as she didn't own her masters, she didn't have control over song choices for her public performances, the label releasing older content against her wishes, or how her music would be licensed out for commercial use. Swift reasserted control by rerecording old albums (a strategy previously used by the musician Prince), which gave her ownership of these new masters and devalued the original masters to the point where she could later afford to buy them outright. Many artists, including Olivia Rodrigo, credit Swift for helping them to negotiate adding the ownership of their masters into their contracts. As predatory as the publishing industry can be, the music industry tends to make them look like rank amateurs in terms of sheer evil. So it is a testament to her popularity and business success that she was able to convince them to do this. The world's most famous pop star taught millions of fans that owning your work is the ultimate goal of a creative. Why is ownership of your work important for writers specifically and not just American pop stars? We'll discuss six reasons why it's important for content creators and specifically writers in this episode. And as a reminder yet again, I'm talking about this from the perspective of United States law. Laws and standards in your own country may be different. Also, I am not a lawyer and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice. You obtain proper legal advice by contacting a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. So with that in mind, let's get into the topic. What is ownership as a writer? Writers generally keep the copyrights to works they sell to publishers. Writers are essentially selling the right or a license to produce and distribute their book in a certain format, language, and geographic area. Most of the time, geographic area rights are sold separately. For example, rights for the Harry Potter books are owned by Scholastic in the United States and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom. Sometimes writers will keep the rights in a specific format, like when I signed with Tantor to give them the audio rights to the first five Frostborn books while keeping the rights to my print and ebook formats. What writers lose in the process of selling to publishers is the ability to control how their work is marketed, packaged, and sold. They do not have the freedom to make major decisions such as when a book is released or where it is marketed. Today I am going to share six reasons that retaining ownership is important for writers and what things you generally sacrifice when you sign with a traditional publisher instead of self-publishing or indie publishing. #1: Creative control. It is not standard to have complete control over your book's cover design. Often an artist is able to submit suggestions to the designer, but the publisher has ultimate authority over the book's cover. Sometimes covers end up being wildly inappropriate for the book, but the author has no recourse. The same is usually true with the ability to pick an audiobook narrator or change anything about the narration. At times, writers (especially new ones) are pressured into changes they do not want by editors. The surest way to completely lose all creative control is signed with a book packager like Alloy Entertainment. If you want to hear the story of how L.J. Smith was fired from her own series due to a plot dispute with that publisher, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson covers it in her epic length summary of The Vampire Diaries show. Although a certain paycheck from a book packager is tempting, you'd be wisest not to create any fictional characters or worlds for this type of publisher for that reason. #2: Dead Series Syndrome. If the first book in a series does not sell well, the publisher tends to abandon the series. The next book in the series might be ready for publication, but they're not obligated to publish it if they suspect it will not be profitable. Unfinished series are extremely common in traditional publishing, unfortunately. Writers who are locked into a contract for a series are generally out of luck putting out the books on their own. Even if they put out later books on their own, not having the rights to the first book in the series makes it difficult for a writer to sell and market subsequent books. I had a series (Demonsouled) that I wanted to continue even though the first book was released by my publisher. I was able to get the rights back for it and then was able to self-publish this rest of the series. This was much easier to do 14 years ago than it is now. Modern contracts, especially from larger publishers, are not so generous in letting authors do this. It would be much easier to start as a self-published author and have full control over the trajectory of your series and make sure readers are able to finish it instead of waiting for a contract to elapse or fighting a difficult, hard to win battle to get the rights back. #3: The ability to change. One of the perks of owning your book is the ability to make quick changes that react to data. For example, I was able to retitle the Stealth and Spells series fairly quickly when it became immediately clear upon release that some found the original title confusing. A traditional publisher would likely not have bothered to make the effort unless there was a legal reason for doing so. The ability to change covers, repackaging books in different ways (like omnibus editions), and to make quick changes to the book on the fly (such as fixing typos or continuity errors), is the unique privilege that comes with owning your own work. Publishers are slow to make these types of changes, if they do it at all. #4: Profit. Writers typically only receive an advance (an initial lump sum) when working with a traditional publisher. The complexities of publisher accounting usually ensure that only great successes receive royalties, and often even those that do can take a while to reach that benchmark. Royalties are typically doled out quarterly or semi-annually, for those who make enough to receive them. The earning statements are fairly byzantine. It's hard for the average person to understand them fully to make sure they're being paid exactly what is owed to them. Owning your own work and publishing yourself means that you keep all of the profit after the cut taken by the ebook store and whatever you pay cover designers, editors, and so on. You can see all of the sales as they come in and don't have to wait for those two to four royalty checks each year in order to get paid. It's much easier to make a living as a writer and to feel confident that you can pay others when you have more accurate data on the money coming in. Indie publishing sacrifices the certainty of an advance for a far, far greater share of the profits in the long run. Additionally, agents typically take a 15 to 20% commission on author earnings, and they are an essential part of the process in traditional publishing. It's just about impossible to get foot in the door with traditional publishing without one. Most self-published writers don't bother with an agent, which means they're able to keep that cut of the money and don't have to shape their work around the preferences and whims of an agent. They also spared the stress and hassle of working with an unethical or bad agent (of which they're unfortunately far too many). #5: Professional freedom. The publisher decides when the books are released or if they're released at all. Are you ready to publish a book two months after the first one is released? Too bad. A publisher is not going to put out the next one that quickly. The traditional wisdom of publishing schedules seems wildly out of date in the content-heavy modern world, where algorithms reward recent titles and frequent publishing. Publishing more often also helps fans stay connected to your work, and frankly, it's much easier to make a living as a writer putting out several books a year instead of just one. Additionally, traditionally published writers do not control how a book is marketed. Are you upset that your book is being marketed as a romance when you think it's complex literary fiction? Too bad. It's not your call. In fact, writers may be contractually obligated to post content to their social media pages written or approved in advance by the marketing department at the publisher. You might have to put your name publicly to marketing copy you dislike or disagree with in order to not violate your contract. In a related vein, you might find that if you post heavily on your social media pages about political or controversial topics, you may be reprimanded by the publisher or in some cases, have your contract canceled entirely. Although indie authors aren't immune from social consequences of what they post, no publisher is holding them back from posting what they want just because they're writers and the publisher is scared of what the shareholders might think. #6: The publisher being sold. One of the biggest problems for traditionally published writers is when their publisher is sold to another one. This may mean restructuring that takes away staff they worked with a long time (like a favorite editor being replaced by an inexperienced one). As smaller publishers are eaten up by the larger ones, you might find that your books become an afterthought and you don't have any power to fix that. You might even have to fight to get paid what you're owed in your own contracts, which writers of Star Wars books found out when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. Apparently when Disney bought Lucasfilm, it decided it no longer owed royalties to several writers of Star Wars tie-in novels that Lucasfilm had published and weren't going to pay them until it went public and caused a bit of controversy. Finally, a settlement was reached. This is sort of the shifty behavior that Disney is well known for in certain circles, and it is something you have to watch out for with large publishers and media conglomerates. The easiest way to keep this from happening is, once again, to publish yourself and keep ownership of your work. In conclusion, when traditional publishing was the only way to become a writer, their restrictions and control were something you had to live with because you had no other option. Now that self-publishing is extremely accessible and traditional publishing is shrinking, it's no longer worth making the trade-offs that authors once had to in order to gain readers of their work. Although I never actually listened to a Taylor Swift song all the way through, her career and business ventures are proof that owning your work as a creative is the best way forward. Ownership should be the starting point, not the end goal of anyone who values creative control and fair, transparent payment for their creative work. So that is it for this week. I hope that illuminated the importance of owning your own work, especially if you are a writer or other creative. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Nous voici arrivés au bout de notre voyage à travers le mythique album de PINK FLOYD :  "Wish You Were Here", parcouru dans l'ordre avec sa face A en fin de dernière saison puis sa face B depuis la rentrée. Opus qui se termine donc à l'issue de ce numéro sur les notes composées et jouées sur les claviers du regretté Richard Wright en attendant d'ici un mois la réédition augmentée...ne laissons pas refroidir ce chaud business... On le sait maintenant, cet album du Floyd de 1975 était un hommage  à SYD BARRETT, le "sacrifié" membre fondateur, objet de toutes les légende dont celle de son apparition à Abbey Road durant l'enregistrement de "Wish You Were Here", méconnaissable et laissant les membres du groupe sous le choc...Alors hommage également dans ce numéro dès l'ouverture d'antenne avec un extrait de son 1er album solo "The Madcap Laughs" paru en 1970 après deux longues années de labeurs et d'épuisement de plusieurs producteurs devant ce musicien autant instable que génial. A ces fins, il aura été épaulé par des musiciens de Soft Machine et ses amis d'enfance Roger Waters, co-fondateur et bassiste du Floyd et David Gilmour guitariste chanteur, qui l'aura remplacé... Enfin, localement nos amis nantais pourront célébrer leur groupe favori au FLORIDE ce samedi 15 novembre avec le tribute band ATLANTICK FLOYD !  Entre ces monstres sacrés, d'autres artistes programmés parfois suite à vos contributions d'auditeurs et auditrices ! J'ai ainsi découvert NEURAL DAWN, projet quelque peu obscure de Londres proposant avec ce 1er album "The Last Frequency" un opéra-rock de science-fiction. Nous sommes ici dans un genre "rock cinématique" et le propos du groupe est la rencontre entre les émotions humaines et la technologie... En termes de découvertes, deux groupes/artistes français et partageant la même origine géographique (près de Nice) se sont aussi partagé cet épisode. HOMME, c'est le nom de cette formation qui n'a pas été sans me rappeler leurs illustres aînés de ANGE. Ils ont d'ailleurs pour point commun de partager la langue de  Molière pour s'exprimer. Attention talent ! Il semblerait que sur scène, c'est pas mal non plus ! Si vous en avez l'occasion, vous m'en direz des nouvelles. Écoutez leur album "Ma Vie En Théorèmes", dont la superbe reprise de Lavilliers "Idées Noires",  bien que ce soit un autre extrait qui était diffusé dans ce numéro. L'autre frenchy de l'étape est EREWÄN avec son 3ème album intitulé "Soul Is The Key", un rock progressif teinté de folk et de celtitude. A écouter également sur prescription de votre serviteur ! Le tout mis en son par un certain Alexandre Lamia du groupe Nine Skies (et j'ouvre la parenthèse pour m'interroger sur la date de sortie parait-il imminente du nouvel opus : "Vega" ! ) Un petit détour par la Grèce, ça ne se refuse pas ! C'est justement avec une reprise complètement originale mêlant percussions africaines, musique classique et avant-gardiste que le duo VOODOO DRUMMER s'était fait connaitre, notamment dans votre émission favorite, avec "Set The Control For The Heart Of The Sun" de notre groupe du jour (le Floyd). Ce titre a été incorporé à l'album paru cette année :  "HellaS Spells"  dont je vous propose  un nouvel extrait dans ce numéro, histoire de nous ouvrir l'esprit ! GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT : après l'Irlande des 70's la semaine dernière, place à une formation contemporaine et enfant du space-rock pour atterrir sur les Terres d'Eire. Ici avec un extrait de leur dernier album en date, "Embers" sorti en 2024. 40 ans plus tôt, un groupe dont le nom issu de la littérature fantastique outre-manche, MARILLION, nous proposait un deuxième album, encore à l'époque sous la plume et par la voix de Fish. Extrait de "Fugazy" dans ce numéro. Et puis en 1996, (outre la création de votre radio favorite ! ) voyait le groupe ANATHEMA opérer sa transition, passant d'un doom métal aux voix bien gutturales, à un rock progressif et plus mélodique avec l'album "Eternity" et dans lequel figure d'ailleurs un titre interprété par un certain Roy Harper (que l'on retrouve aussi dans "Wish You Were Here" ). Mais c'est un autre titre qui a été programmé dans ce numéro. Et pour être complet, sachez que Daniel Cavanagh, membre fondateur du groupe est à l'origine d'un autre projet : Weather System que je vous proposerai à l'écoute très prochainement...   Souvenons nous du 13 novembre 2015... Ce numéro est dédié aux victimes du Bataclan ...  Thierry Joigny Suivez Amarok sur Facebook également sur instagram

"Rocks Off" The Connecticut-born singer songwriter Sean Griffin has helmed the Irish punk outfit The Ruffians for close to thirty years. With three great albums under their belts, the band has played shows with everyone from Shane MacGowan to Black 47 and in the process, they've garnered a reputation for being one of the best live acts around. Sean's solo work swaps some of the traditional instrumentation of the Ruffians and makes winning detours into Britpop and indie rock bliss. His first single was the rousing "People Are Mad" which was followed up by "Rocks Off" which is a swaggering blast of pop mastery which may very well be a late entry into one of the year's biggest bangers. Griffin's voice has plenty of muscle and plenty of elegance and that rare mix brings to mind the raw but polished athleticism of a gymnast, which, by the way, Griffin actually was. We talk about that and so much more... www.seangriffinrocks.com (http://www.seangriffinrocks.com) www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) Stereo Embers BLUESKY + IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

The statue is revealed and his story takes centre stage for the Order of the Heron, as long-held mysteries are finally revealed... Dice Company: Small Embers is a narrative-driven actual play podcast set in the world of Elestia, using Dungeons & Dragons (D&D 5e) as its framework. Expect cinematic storytelling, immersive roleplay, and high-fantasy adventure filled with epic battles, rich character development, and deep lore. Whether you're a seasoned TTRPG player or new to actual play podcasts, this is a D&D experience you won't want to miss!

Today we're exploring how art can become activism through the story of aerial artist and climate advocate Sasha Galitzki. After losing her home in the 2024 Jasper wildfire, Sasha turned grief into purpose, using her breathtaking performances to spotlight the fragility and beauty of our changing planet. Her new project, Embers, is a powerful visual journey through loss, resilience, and renewal, blending art, science, and environmental storytelling. Featuring voices from glaciologists and wildfire experts, Embers reminds us what it means to find hope amid the ashes. ABOUT SASHA Sasha Galitzki is an acclaimed aerial artist and climate advocate. Her unique style of performance art shines a spotlight on the beauty and vulnerability of mountain environments. Losing her home in the 2024 Jasper wildfire strengthened her resolve to use her art to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on the places she loves and works to protect. Her unique perspective, breathtaking performance art, and creative approach to storytelling have made her a powerful voice in the fight against climate change. Additional voices from the scientific community — Glaciologists Dr. Alison Criscitiello & Dr. Mauri Pelto and wildfire experts Dr. Amy Cardinal Christianson & Dr. Mike Flannigan — support Sasha's first-person narrative. ABOUT EMBERS After losing everything in a wildfire, aerial artist Sasha Galitzki performs amidst burnt forests and receding glaciers, channeling her grief into a visually arresting journey of environmental advocacy. On July 24, 2024, a wildfire tore through Jasper, Alberta, reducing aerialist Sasha Galitzki's home to ashes. Embers connects Sasha's loss in the wildfire and the glacial recession she has witnessed in her creative work to highlight their common cause: climate change. Set in the year following the fire, Embers follows Sasha as she rebuilds her life and confronts the realities of a warming world. Through interviews with wildfire and glacier experts, she seeks to understand the heartbreaking changes affecting the mountains and community she loves. Gradually returning to her aerial practice, she performs over the ashes of her home and amidst the whirling winds of melting glaciers—inviting us on an intimate journey to find hope out of darkness. Embers captures a profound shift within Sasha, who channels her grief and art into a powerful and visually impactful message of environmental activism. Watch the trailer for Embers here Sasha's Instagram Previous episode with Director Trixie Pacis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode, I take a look at my direct sales for 2025, and consider six lessons for improving direct sales. I also answer a reader question about Kobo Plus. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Battle, Book #5 in The Shield War series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SHIELD2025 The coupon code is valid through November 17, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 276 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 7, 2025, and today we are discussing how I had a 300% increase in direct sales for 2025 so far, and the challenges that might pose. We'll also have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing progress, and a reader question about Kobo Plus. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Battle, Book #5 in The Shield War series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store, which seems appropriate because we're talking about direct sales. That coupon code is SHIELD2025 and as always, links to my store and the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through November 17th 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing progress. As of this recording, I am 70,000 words [into] Blade of Shadows, the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. That puts me on chapter 16 of 20, so I'm about three quarters of the way through. I think the rough draft is going to land at about 85 to 90,000 words. So if all goes well, I'm hoping to finish that rough draft next week and hopefully get the book out before Thanksgiving, but we'll see how the rest of this month goes. I'm also 8,000 words into Wizard-Assassin, which will be the fifth book of my Half-Elven Thief series. If all goes well, I want to have that out in December, which will make it the final book I publish in 2025. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is working on recording Blade of Flames, the previous book in the Blades of Ruin series and good progress is being made there. And Hollis McCarthy is also working on the audiobook of Cloak of Embers, which was Book 10 in the Cloak Mage series. So if all goes well, we should have both of those audiobooks to you before the end of the year. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:00 Thoughts on Kobo Plus Let's talk a little bit about Kobo Plus before we move on to our main topic. A reader recently asked if I made more money from sales on Kobo from direct sales on the Kobo platform or through Kobo Plus, which is Kobo's subscription service. And the answer is, well, it depends. My primary answer always is that readers should read my books on whatever platform they prefer and which is most convenient for them (with the exception of piracy). As for the specific details, it gets a little bit more complicated. I suspect at this point more Kobo readers use Kobo Plus than actually buy ebooks off Kobo. Like in September alone (which is the last month I have complete figures for), 75% of my Kobo revenue came from Kobo Plus. So very clearly not having my books in Kobo Plus is a non-starter of an idea. That said, Kobo Plus (unlike Kindle Unlimited) runs off minutes read rather than pages read that KU uses, which makes it a lot harder to game the way some people do with Kindle Unlimited because the system is more opaque. So obviously longer books do a lot better with Kobo Plus and I have a lot of longer books in the form of various omnibus editions. Even a fast reader is going to take a while to get through Frostborn: Omnibus One, so I know for a fact those do quite well on Kobo Plus. So I suspect with individual novels I make less with Kobo Plus than I do with ebook sales, but for the omnibus editions, I make more from Kobo Plus than I do with the individual sales. Overall, I would say if you're a Kobo user and you want to read a book just once, Kobo Plus is probably the economical choice, but if you want to reread the book many times, you're better off buying it outright. For an interesting bit of data, here are my 10 most read Kobo Plus books for 2025 so far. Thanks for reading them, everyone! 1.) Shield of Deception 2.) Cloak Mage Omnibus One 3.) Shield of Battle 4.) Ghost in the Assembly. 5.) Cloak of Illusion 6.) Ghost in the Corruption 7.) Cloak of Embers 8.) Dragontiarna Omnibus One 9.) Dragonskull Omnibus One 10.) Cloak of Masks So as you can see, there were three different omnibus editions in that Top 10 list, so those do quite well on Kobo Plus. 00:04:00 Main Topic: Six Lessons Learned from a 300% Increase in Direct Sales Now onto our main topic, six lessons learned from a 300% increase in direct sales for 2025. By means of some background, in 2021 I started a direct sales site for my books and audiobooks using the Payhip platform. I'd been thinking about this for some time and the instigation was that at the time I was about to publish Ghost in the Vision. The Barnes and Noble site had problems with a ransomware attack that made it impossible to upload new books to the Barnes and Noble site for about three weeks (if I remember correctly). And obviously this was concerning because I had Ghost in the Vision coming out during that time and I wanted to be able to get it to Barnes and Noble readers, but I couldn't because the Barnes and Noble site was having technical difficulties. So that's when I started using Payhip and mentioned that hey, Barnes and Noble readers, I know I can't upload it to the Barnes Noble site right now, but you can get it from Payhip and obviously Barnes Noble restored the website and I was able to upload a book again, but I kept going with the Payhip site. Why did I do that? Well, as I've said before for direct sales, it makes sense for me to have a place that I could fully control since (barring technical difficulties that we talked about) the main ebook platforms can take a day or two before the books are ready to be sold. And as we mentioned before, sometimes oddities happen and a book can get delisted on a site like Amazon or a site could suffer a cybercrime attack like Barnes and Noble did in 2021. Direct sales also give authors a greater percentage of the profits, especially for audiobooks. The highest rate of royalty I get for any audiobook sales is definitely through direct sales. Progress was slow for getting people to use the Payhip site for obvious reasons. People are locked into the platforms where they feel the most comfortable (the Kindle Library, for example). It takes a lot to get people to change their buying behaviors, but over the last year, I've seen a 300% increase in sales at my Payhip store over what I had made in 2024. And there are six reasons why I think that happened that I'd like to share with you in this week's episode. #1: The first reason is it gives people an alternative. For a variety of reasons, many people are frustrated with Amazon or Google and the other big tech companies and are boycotting them for a number of reasons. If you've paid attention to the news at all over the last five years, you can probably guess what a few of those reasons might be. Others are concerned with the amount of tracking data on these sites and having their browsing data sold as advertising info. Having a direct sales platform gives readers who have these concerns a way to support you. Payhip is great for those with privacy concerns because it provides us with very, very little user data and there's no way to put ads on the site or even sell ad space there. The only customer data I get from a transaction through Payhip is the email address, which is obviously necessary since there needs to be a place to send the ebooks and the audiobooks. I don't sell or share that data with other companies or even other authors, so that is a good way to buy my books while leaving a minimal data footprint that can't be used for any kind of tracking. #2: The second reason and one that I think is about 50% of the sales growth this year, is new releases. And that is because my Payhip site is always the first place to find any of my new releases since I have complete control over the uploads there. How fast books appear on other sites is out of my control and can sometimes take a day or two (or in extreme cases, even longer than that). But I have complete control on Payhip of upload time (so long as Payhip is working and my internet connection is working). Consistently having the new releases available on my Payhip site right away also makes people feel like they're not missing out by shopping there. Having someone to help me with my Payhip store has made that a lot easier to do that consistently over the past couple of years. I did hire someone to help me out with that and it's been light years forward in having all my ebooks and audiobooks available on the Payhip store. #3: Number three, which I think is the other 50% of the reason I had a direct sales increase this year, is Coupon of the Week, which we already listened to on this episode. Coupon of the Week only takes about a minute to set up, but it has been an effective way to get people to buy ebooks and audiobooks at my Payhip site. The discount amounts I use means I'm still getting paid roughly the same amount that I would from a sale on Audible or Amazon, but the reader is getting a pretty substantial discount. Discount amounts are usually 25% off for an ebook or 50% off for an audiobook. It's enough of a discount to make it worthwhile for my readers. I've also been experimenting with discounting entire series in a Coupon of the Week instead of only one book. This change has been good for sales. It lets readers stock up on a whole series for a fraction of the price. That kind of whole series discount is also a good response to (only a few) readers who want omnibus editions that cover every single book in the series, which frankly isn't profitable to me for a couple of reasons. One is that if it's on Amazon, a file that size would incur a significant delivery fee from Amazon, which would cut into the profits. Another reason is that the file size for that just gets to be unwieldy. Frostborn is 15 books and 15 fairly long novels combined into a single ebook file does get pretty unwieldy. #4: The fourth reason and one that has consistently been helpful is the free short stories. Switching ebook platforms is a big change for many readers and it's best to give them a good incentive to do that. The old saying that it's easier to draw someone in with a carrot instead of a stick is true in ebook sales, as is in every other facet of life. Free items are a low-pressure way for someone to try out the site and test out the experience of downloading a book through my direct sales page. Direct sales pages are the best way to have control of free content that you're giving out to readers since price changes on other sites can vary wildly in when they occur, which makes setting up promotions very difficult if you're not sure when the price change will be live on all platforms. It's also a lot easier than what people used to do in the early 2010s for this kind of thing, which is directly email ebook files to readers, whereas having them nicely delivered through Payhip and then the Book Funnel backend is much more convenient. Coupon codes can be too much of a hassle for some readers, and setting up coupon codes on multiple platforms is definitely a massive hassle and can't be done on some platforms as frequently as I would like, so giving away free short stories via Payhip is an effective use. #5: The fifth reason is my direct sales page [content] is DRM free. This winter, Amazon removed the option to download and transfer Kindle books via USB for any books purchased through Amazon, which created a stir on social media even though most readers weren't using the feature and weren't even aware that it existed. What the outrage over the change did was make many people aware that they weren't truly owners of the content they bought from Amazon. It might be your instinct as a writer to put DRM in your ebooks and audiobooks in the belief that doing so prevents piracy. As anyone in the music industry can tell you, people will always find a way around DRM. All it does is punish the honest people who are supporting you by buying your content legally and making it more difficult for them to use in the ways to make the most sense to them. Selling books without DRM gives people a chance to truly own the content and archive it the way that works best for them. Everything on my Payhip store is DRM free for those reasons. Because the books can be downloaded and stored without restrictions, they can't be removed from your collection like a book in a Kindle Library can. A book purchased from Payhip is one that you can truly and completely own. #6: The sixth reason that has been helpful I think is honestly simple patience. Direct selling ebooks is a lot harder than just putting them on Amazon because Amazon is very well optimized for getting people to buy things and direct sales are often not. The very first year I did direct sales in 2021, by the end of the year I made a grand total of $10. This year I am probably going to make high three figures (if all goes well), which still is not a lot compared to some of the sales people can report off platforms like Amazon. But if you go from $10 in 2021 to high three figures in 2025, that is quite a growth trajectory. So again, if you were to start using direct sales, be patient and bear in mind it might take a long time of using things like free short stories and Coupon of the Week to gradually build up interest in the site. I also want to talk a little bit about what I think will be future challenges with direct sales and a big one that will happen if my direct sales continue to grow at this rate will be US sales tax. In 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that states can charge sales tax for any purchases online. Previously they had not been able to do so and the law has been changed and challenged and tweaked a little bit since then, but it's boiled down to that for most of the states (it varies by states, and this is not legal advice), the rule is if you are selling more than $100,000 worth of product in their state or more than 200 individual transactions in that state, then you're obliged to pay sales tax on those sales to that individual US state. For me, obviously that is not a problem right now. I believe as of this recording, I have had a total of 95 individual transactions for direct sales. If you divide that out among the 50 US states and UK and several EU countries, I'm nowhere near the reporting thresholds for any individual US state, even the most restrictive ones. That said, it could happen if direct sales continue to grow, that will be a problem I need to address in the future. Payhip collects a VAT for EU countries, but it doesn't do any sales tax collecting for the US. So if my direct sales continue to grow to the point where I'm hitting sales tax thresholds for the individual states, I would probably have to change platforms from Payhip to something like Shopify where there are a number of plugins on Shopify (like Tax Jar for example) that will take care of the sales tax reporting and filing and paying for you. But that is obviously not a problem right now unless my direct sales grow a good bit. But that is something to keep in mind for future endeavors. So in conclusion, Payhip has been a growing source of income for me (although still far from my primary one) because of these strategies. Payhip has been a great platform for direct sales and has given my readers another choice in where to buy my books and audiobooks. And as always, I would like to thank everyone who has bought and read my books from either Payhip or any other platform. And even though I have this direct sales platform, a reminder that my preferred answer to the question "where should I get your books?" is "wherever is most convenient for you" (with the exception of piracy, of course). So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting by form of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

"Hammer + Echo" Getting their start in the early '80s, the Kilkenny Cats were one of the most fascinating bands at a time when there were a lot of fascinating bands around. Formed by the North Carolina born Tom Cheek, who had relocated to Athens, Georgia for college, the Kilkenny Cats played a dark and moody blend of post-punk and psychedelia that still, after all these years, feels decidedly timeless. Here's what I mean by that--sometimes when you listen to a band you can hear the years they existed. We won't name. names, but you know what I mean--however, when it comes to the Kilkenny Cats, their music was so singular, they elude the timeline. Although their fellow city dwelling comrades ranged from REM to Pylon to Love Tractor, they were their own thing. Alive with jangling guitars, prowling basslines, foreboding drums and sonorous vocals, the Kilkenny Cats' music was awash in mystery and maybe that's why all these years later, they still sound as pressingly relevant as ever. They were a beloved live act, they had a deal with Twin/Tone, played shows with REM and Husker Du and then? Well, then decades of silence. Why? Well, that's what we're here to figure out and Tom Cheek walks us through it all. Spoiler alert: The 'Cats are back and more music in addition to the wonderful expanded reissue of 1988's Hammer + Echo, will be coming. I'll let him explain. www.propellorsoundrecordings.com www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) Stereo Embers IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

Send us a textFor today's aural offering I've brought aerialist and filmmaker Sasha Galitzki back to talk about her new film Embers, creating art out of tragedy, and advice to new filmmakers.What you'll hear:Listen to Sasha and I's first conversation about Wild Aerial here:  Episode 97:  Making Art in the Extreme with Sasha GalitzkiLife 1.5 years after losing everything 3:50On making Embers 8:00On making art out of hard things that have happened to you 12:00Accidentally becoming an artist activist 15:15On Ember's premiere November 4th 2025 18:30On the reemergence of gremlins after feeling they had gone away forever 24:00Having to totally re-find spin tolerance after a huge grief 27:50On bringing on MOAR PEOPLE and experts in Embers 35:00How to decide what film festivals to submit your films to 39:00Advice to aspiring filmmakers 43:45Closing out with some action items 49:30Find out how to watch Embers and Wild Aerial here, or visit the BANFF Film Festival website here!You can follow and reach out to Sasha on the website above or here on InstagramDon't go back to sleep.xoRachelSign up here for monthly blasts and functional wooFind me on InstagramSupport this podcast on Patreon

Ready to ignite your soul under the Taurus Super Full Moon? Dive deep into cosmic alchemy, earth energy, and the secrets of celestial transformation. Discover how Venus, Pluto, and Jupiter power your inner wisdom, resilience, and creative drive—plus, experience an immersive guided meditation to activate your light. Tune in to the Everything Is Energy Podcast: this episode is your invitation to slow down, trust your intuition, and step confidently into your role as a conscious creator. Thank you for joining me—your light is needed now more than ever! Join my email list: www.everythingisenergyapothecary.com/contact

The Blasters & Blades PodcastWe've got another #RetroMovieReview episode with some cool people. We talked about the iconic Jurassic Park, a blast from the past. We had on returning guests, Bill McUisdean, Jana S Brown (aka Jena Rey), Melissa McShane, Michael LaVoice and Teri Kay Job on to have more fun than is legal in some states! This was an awesome movie and a fun chat, so what are you waiting for?Co-Hosts:JR Handley (Grunt)Nick Garber (Super Grunt)Madam Stabby Stab (Horror Nerd)Jana S Brown (Chief Shenanigator)We work for free, so if you wanna throw a few pennies our way there is a linked Buy Me A Coffee site where you can do so. Just mention the podcast in the comments when you donate, and I'll keep the sacred bean water boiling!Support the Show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AuthorJRHandleyOur LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/blastersandbladespodcastToday's SponsorAshes and Embers by Opal Kingdom Press: https://www.amazon.com/Ashes-Embers-Jason-Newman-ebook/dp/B0FDD7WDNM/Coffee Brand Coffee AffiliateSupport the Show: https://coffeebrandcoffee.com/?ref=y4GWASiVorJZDb 10% Discount Code: PodcastGruntsCheck out the Movie!Movie: https://www.amazon.com/Jurassic-Ultimate-Collection-Blu-Ray-Region/dp/B0F9Z4N73J/Movie Trailer: https://youtu.be/_jKEqDKpJLw?si=xCNff5NKvYYSdmvaFollow Bill McUisdean on social mediaBill's Website: https://zorne.substack.com/Bill's Substack: https://substack.com/@wylder396?utm_source=user-menuBill's Twitter: https://x.com/Wylder396Follow Jana S Brown on social mediaJana's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jana-S.-Brown/author/B015VJV7JWJana's Website: www.opalkingdompress.com Jana's Facebook: www.facebook.com/janasbrownwritesJana's LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/opalkingdompress Follow Melissa McShane on social mediaMelissa's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Melissa-McShane/author/B00TON8E1QMelissa's Website: www.melissamcshanewrites.comMelissa's Facebook: www.facebook.com/melissamcshanewritesFollow Michael LaVoice on social mediaMichael's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/michaellavoiceMichael's Website: https://michaellavoice.com/Michael's Substack: https://michaellavoice.substack.com/Michael's LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/michaellavoiceFollow Teri Kay Jobe on social mediaTeri's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Teri-Kay-Jobe/author/B0DG3TPL66Teri's Website: https://terikjobe.com/#scifishenanigans #scifishenaniganspodcast #bbp #blastersandblades #blastersandbladespodcast #podcast #scifipodcast #fantasypodcast #scifi #fantasy #books #rpg #comics #fandom #literature #comedy #veteran #army #armyranger #ranger #scififan #redshirts #scifiworld #sciencefiction #scifidaily #scificoncept #podcastersofinstagram #scificons #podcastlife #podcastsofinstagram #scifibooks #awardwinningscifi #newepisode #podcastersofinstagram #podcastaddict #podcast #scifigeek #scifibook #sfv #scifivisionaries #firesidechat #chat #panel #fireside #religionquestion #coffee #tea #coffeeortea #CoffeeBrandCoffee #JRHandley #NickGarber #MadamStabby #MovieReview #Review #RetroMovieReview #OpalKingdomPress #JenaRey #JanaSBrown #JurassicPark #BillMcUisdean #MelissaMcShane #MichaelLaVoice #TeriKayJobe #MichaelCrichton #dinosaur #SamNeill #AlanGrant #paleontologist #LauraDern #EllieSattler #paleobotanist #JeffGoldblum #IanMalcolm #mathematician #chaostheorist #RichardAttenborough #JohnHammond #InGen #BobPeck #RobertMuldoon #MartinFerrero #DonaldGennaro #BDWong #HenryWu #JosephMazzello #TimMurphy #ArianaRichards #LexMurphy #SamuelLJackson #RayArnold #WayneKnight #DennisNedry #JerryMolen #DoctorHarding #MiguelSandoval #JuanitoRostagno #CameronThor #LewisDodgson #WhitHertford #raptorCopyright @ Universal City Studios LLC, doing business as Universal Pictures, LLC 1993. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action by the rights holder. The clips used in this movie review were utilized under the Fair Use Doctrine and are transformative in nature.

In the eighty-sixth chapter of the D&D Actual Play Adventure Dice Company: Small Embers... The Order of the Heron reunite after Petren receives an unexpected visitor. Together again, they resolve to investigate the statue aboard the reanmed Vox Domini...

We and our guest writer Nate Ming discuss Shonen Jump manga Embers.   MAL Description: Middle school brawler Noboru Haitani has never lost a fight. But the bitter taste of a soccer defeat gradually warms him up to the sport, until one day Haitani finds himself in a match against a team featuring middle school soccer prodigy Takami. An outlaw fights his way into the world of soccer!   Show Notes: • You can reach us at Twitter @shonenflopcast, Tumblr shonen-flop, or email shonenflop@gmail.com   • You can find our guest at bsky.app/profile/nateming.bsky.social   • Become a member of our community by joining our Discord. You can hang out with us, submit your questions or six word summaries! Find it at https://discord.com/invite/4hC3SqRw8r   • Want to be a guest? You can ask to be on a future episode at bit.ly/shonen_flop_guest   Credits: • Manga by Nishii, Soutarou (Art), Kurumazaki, Kei (Story)   • Shonen Flop is hosted by David Weinberger and Jordan Forbes   • Additional editing assistance by Dylan Krider you can find his podcast, Anime Out of Context at animeoutofcontext.com   • Assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research done by Tucker Whatley and MaxyBee   • Episode art by Merliel (IG: mer_liel)   • Cover art funded by our generous art benefactor Nigel Francis

SCRIPTURE- James 1:22"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."REFLECTION- JeffMUSIC- "A Walk in the Forest" by Brian Crain- "Embers" by Helen Jane LongNOTES-PRAYER OF LETTING GOTo You do I belong, O God, into Your hands I surrender my life. Pour out Your Spirit upon me that I may love You perfectly, and serve You faithfully until my soul rests in You.

In this week's episode, we take a look at the Praetorian Guard of the Roman Empire, and consider how ancient history can inspire fantasy novels. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store: SILENT2025 The coupon code is valid through November 10, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 275 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 31st, 2025, and today we're talking about the Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome and how that can inspire fantasy novels. Also, Happy Halloween (or Happy Protestant Reformation Day, if you prefer). Before we get into all that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in my Silent Order series at my Payhip store: SILENT2025. And as always, both the coupon code and the links to my store will be in the show notes. This coupon code will be valid through November 10th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook for this fall as we come into winter, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing projects. As I mentioned last week, Cloak of Worlds is now out and you get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and at my Payhip store. The initial response has been very strong and very positive, so thank you for that and I'm glad that people are enjoying and reading the book. Now that Cloak of Worlds is done, my next main project is Blade of Shadows, which will be the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I'm currently 44,000 words into it, which puts me on chapter 9 of 20, though I'll probably have more chapters in the final draft than I will in the first draft. I found people really do tend to prefer shorter punchier, shorter chapters. Anyway, I'm about 44,000 words into it. I think I'll be about 109,000 words, when all is said and done. So hopefully that will be out in November. I'm also 4,500 words into the next Rivah book, which is Wizard-Assassin. It'd originally been entitled Elven-Assassin, but I decided Wizard-Assassin sounded punchier, so we went with that instead. I'm about 4,500 words into that and if all goes well, it will come out in December, which will make it the final book I'll publish in 2025, though hopefully I'll be publishing more books in 2026 before too much longer. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is currently recording Blade of Flames and we've been listening to some proof chapters of it and are very excited about what we're hearing. Hollis McCarthy is starting work on recording Cloak of Embers. That'll be the 10th book in Cloak Mage, and hopefully we will have both of those audiobooks out before the end of the year, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. 00:02:33 Main Topic: Praetorian Guard of the Ancient Roman Empire Now let's move on to our main topic this week, which is the Praetorian Guard of the Ancient Roman Empire, and they were very bad at their jobs, but we'll get into that more very shortly. One of the fascinating (if occasionally depressing) aspects of history is how often institutions end up having the exact opposite outcome of what they were intended to do. The late science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle had something called Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which once the bureaucracy got large enough, it will inevitably start turning its main focus to perpetuating the bureaucracy rather than carrying out its actual mission. And we can see examples of that time and time again, and no doubt you yourself can think of many examples: schools that make their students dumber, military organizations that fail to defend, hospitals that make people sicker, bureaucracies that exacerbate the problems that they are created to solve, and so forth. This can also apply to social movements as well. My favorite example of this is Prohibition in America. The Temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th century achieved its goal of banning alcohol sales in the United States during the Prohibition period, but the backlash and the consequences made it unpopular. And today, while alcohol is much more heavily restricted than it was at the end of the 19th century, the idea of banning alcohol in the United States is utterly implausible. The Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome, the personal bodyguards of the Emperor, might be another example of such an institution that utterly failed at its primary goal. For over a thousand years, people have been asking why the Roman Empire fell, and I think that might actually be the wrong question. The better question is why did the Roman Empire last as long as it did, because it sure almost didn't. At the height of its power, the Empire controlled land on three different continents in an area larger than many modern states, and it had to maintain that control without anything resembling modern technology and organization. Think of the difficulties involved in governing a large multi-ethnic state in the 21st Century with modern technology and communications and imagine how much harder it was in the first century AD. Travel was difficult and dangerous even with the Roman road system. The account of St. Paul's shipwreck in the book of Acts must've been an all too common experience in the Roman Empire, given the number of Roman wrecks on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Messages could take weeks to reach their recipients, and there was no division between civilian and military authority. That meant if the Emperors wanted to do anything, they had to use the army to do it because the army was the only pool of skilled men loyal to the state. Since the Empire never really solved the problem of succession and the transfer of power, it didn't take long before ambitious men figured out that the man with the largest army could declare himself Emperor and the Roman Empire actually broke apart into three competing mini empires and almost fell apart entirely in the middle of the 200s AD. So as we can see, there were a lot of reasons the Roman Empire fell apart and the Praetorian Guard, the bodyguard of the emperors, was one of them. The Praetorian Guard certainly wasn't the sole reason the Roman Empire collapsed, but the guard most definitely didn't help. In the last century of the Roman Republic, one of the growing problems was that the armies were less loyal to Rome and more loyal to their general, who made sure they got paid and received grants of land upon discharge. To show their prestige and to guard against the danger of assassination from rivals, generals began collecting personal bodyguards. Since the Roman generals commanded from a tent in a legionary camp called a "praetorium," the general's private guards became called "praetorians." Obviously, the general wanted his best troops as his bodyguards so becoming a praetorian was a privileged position with higher pay and perks. This practice continued as the Roman Republic split apart into civil wars between the ambitious generals of the First and Second Triumvirates. The civil wars of the Roman Republic ended with Octavian, later known as Caesar Augustus, as the last man standing with sole control of what we now think of as the Roman Empire. Augustus is remembered as the first Roman emperor, but the office of Emperor didn't really exist at the time, not the way we think of it now. Rather, Augustus was essentially a military dictator, but after he won, he went to great lengths to conceal his power under cloak of legality by having the Senate invest him with various official powers and offices. In modern terms, it'd be like if the United States was ruled by a military dictator who simultaneously held the offices of President, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, the governorships of the five most populous states, all while claiming to be only the first citizen among equals. Essentially, Augustus invented the powers of the Roman emperor on the fly while being a military dictator and his successors followed suit. Julius Caesar famously pardoned his enemies and went around without a bodyguard to show his courage, which ended up getting him assassinated. Augustus, by contrast, was determined not to repeat that mistake. So after annihilating his enemies, he founded a personal bodyguard in what we know today as the Praetorian Guard. That's a modern term. The praetorians never called themselves the Praetorian Guard, and they always refer to themselves as the praetorian of whichever emperor they happen to be serving like the Praetorians of Augustus or the Praetorians of Claudius and so forth. Augustus seems to have seen some of the potential danger in the institution of the Praetorian Guard, and during his reign, they were scattered around Italy with ones guarding him rotated out every so often. The Praetorians in Italy, when not guarding the Emperor, tended to do odd jobs for the government that needed doing like policing, construction, surveying, settling boundary disputes, and so forth. However, Augustus's successor Tiberius concentrated the Guard in Rome, which made it even more dangerous. It also tied into another problem with the Roman Empire, one that it never quite managed to solve, which was the succession problem. Augustus was a military dictator who assembled a sort of ad hoc legality around his position with various offices and powers. But how would he pass that onto a successor or what if someone else decided they were the proper successor? Augustus had taken his office by force, so why shouldn't anyone else? The Praetorian Guard exacerbated this problem further. Was their loyalty to the office of the Emperor (which was tricky because that office didn't technically exist)? Was it to the man himself or to his heirs? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Praetorian Guard eventually settled on the most practical answer to this question. Their loyalty belonged to whoever paid them the most money. There's a very high chance that Tiberius was murdered by the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, which means that the imperial bodyguard made it only two emperors [repeated for dramatic emphasis] before it started killing them. Tiberius's successor Caligula was famously insane and the Guard eventually got sick of him and participated in his murder. After Caligula's death, the guard declared Claudius as the new Emperor, who repaid them by giving them lavish donatives. That meant the Guard had gone from protecting the emperors to killing ones that didn't like, and then installing new ones. After the Senate turned against Nero and he committed suicide in 69 AD, the Roman Empire had its year of four emperors: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian, who won the civil war and became the new emperor. Each of the potential claimants had their own praetorians who fought against other praetorians. The original Praetorian Guard of Nero did not cover itself in glory, as their comfortable life in Rome did not make them effective as field soldiers and they lost against the toughened legionaries from the frontier armies who came to fight in the civil war. That said, during the reigns of the Five Good Emperors (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius) from 96 to 180 AD, we don't hear much about the Praetorian Guard. The most likely explanation is that these emperors were strong and capable rulers, so the guard had no reason to turn against them, and therefore any potential conspiracies that would've involved the Guard just didn't get off the ground. However, part of the reason the 100s AD were the apex of the Roman Empire is that Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius did not have sons, so they adopted a capable leader as their son and heir, thereby creating continuity of rule. Marcus Aurelius unfortunately had a natural son named Commodus, and after he died, Commodus became Emperor. Commodus was a spectacularly incompetent narcissist, nowadays famously known as the villain from the movie Gladiator. If anything, Gladiator toned down Commodus' brutality, though to be fair to Commodus, he didn't murder his father like the fictional version did in the movie. Commodus was eventually assassinated, and the Praetorian Guard hit its lowest point soon after. Pertinax became Emperor after Commodus, and there was hope he would be a Nerva-type figure, a respected elderly Senator who would adopt a capable heir the way Nerva did with Trajan. However, Commodus had used the Guard as his privileged force of personal thugs, and Pertinax tried to impose discipline upon them. The Guard most definitely did not care for that, so they murdered Pertinax and then auctioned off the title of Emperor to whoever would pay them the most. Soon after Septimius Severus seized control of the Empire and he summarily fired all the Praetorian and put his own veteran legionaries in their place. So the Praetorian Guard, which had been intended to guard the emperors, ended up murdering the Emperor on a regular basis and sometimes choosing a successor and even auctioning off the title of Emperor to the highest bidder. Septimius Severus was a brutal ruler and held the Empire together long enough to die of natural causes. His sons Caracalla and Geta were his successors, and Caracalla murdered Geta before he was assassinated himself by yet another plot from disgruntled praetorians. After that, both the Empire and the Guard declined precipitously. This was the period later historians would call the Crisis of the Third Century, when the Roman Empire fractured into the three competing mini empires I mentioned earlier. A depressing pattern rapidly took hold. The Praetorian Guard or the army would kill an Emperor and proclaim a new one. The Emperor would last until he tried to do something the army didn't like, such as imposing discipline and then the pattern would repeat. The Praetorian Guard was never really reformed, but like so many failed institutions, it gradually became obsolete. Part of the reason was that the Empire was subject to frequent barbarian invasions throughout the 200s. The Emperor was required constantly on the frontiers to supervise the defense with the field armies. The emperors developed a different kind of bodyguard called the "scholae palatinae", a mounted group of soldiers that would accompany him in the field as he moved about the Empire. The constant defensive warfare also resulted in a subtle shift within the Empire. Rome was no longer the center of power within the Empire. The center of power was actually wherever the Emperor happened to be at the moment. The city of Rome itself had become in many ways an expensive vestigial relic of another age. Some of the emperors only visited Rome once. Some of the shorter-lived ones never made it there at all, and the Emperors certainly did not rule from Rome. Because of these changes, the idea of the Praetorian Guard, a permanent bodyguard force based in Rome, had become obsolete. The actual end of the Praetorian Guard came after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD, the battle where the Emperor Constantine famously had the vision that led him to convert to Christianity. The Praetorian Guard sided with Constantine's opponent Maxentius, and since Constantine had no use for the Praetorian Guard and indeed would move his capital to the new city of Constantinople, he simply had the Guard disbanded and continued to rely on mounted cavalry units for his personal bodyguard. So the Praetorian Guard, after three centuries of frequent treachery and corruption, had come to an end. Amusingly, while the Guard was gone, the title of "praetorian prefect" remained in use in the Empire for the rest of its history, which came to show just how powerful the commander of the Guard could become. In the end, the Praetorian Guard was yet another example of institution that became a hindrance to the very goals it was founded to advance. This seems to be a curse of any organization, and the only cure is constant vigilance and strong leadership, two qualities, alas, that are all too rare at any age of history. Yet you can definitely see why I say history is the best source of material for fantasy writers. You could get like 20 different novels out of the events I discussed above. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe, stay healthy, and see you all next week.

"Medicine Show" Over the course of nearly ten winning studio albums, four fabulous live records and a handful of EPS, the Dream Syndicate are one of those bands that nail the cover off the ball every single time. Formed in 1981 and reactivated in 2012 after nearly three decades apart, as far as I'm concerned, The Dream Syndicate are Hall of Famers, full stop. The Santa Monica-born Wynn's output as a musician is staggering: his solo career spans close to 25 albums, he's also put out records with Smack Dab, Gutterball and with Dan Stuart of Green on Red as Danny and Dusty. He's also put out several albums with his other band The Baseball Project--and if you want to talk about a deep bench, that's what the Baseball Project has--the band is comprised of Wynn, his wife Linda Pitmon of Zuzu's Petal, Peter Buck and Mills of R.E.M., and Scott McCaughey of Young Fresh Fellows. The Dream Syndicate's sophomore album Medicine Show is celebrating its 40th anniversary and what better way to commemorate it than with a four disc box set. This thing is a beast and it traces the evolution of the landmark 1984 effort that time and perspective have revealed to be one of the most enduring and accomplished albums ever made. The Dream Syndicate play with grinding beauty, bluesy howl and jangling blis and Medicine Show has never sounded better or more urgent. www.thedreamsyndicate.com www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

8. Greenland's Final Days: The Mystery of Herjolfsnes and the Fifteenth-Century End Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age The final chapter focuses on the end of Norse settlement in Greenland, begun by Eric the Red around 985 AD. Herjolfsnes, one of the last settlements, preserved the clothes and bodies of the final generations in its graveyard, dating into the early fifteenth century. The garments were patched, coarse woolen pieces reflecting the declining status and isolation caused partly by climate change. One woman's dress tore when she was buried—a poignant detail. The Norse interacted with the Inuit, who may have carved figures depicting Norse dress. The final reports include a man burned for seducing a married woman through witchcraft in 1407 and a wedding in 1408. The ultimate fate of the last few inhabitants remains an unsolved mystery. 1949

7. Defining the End: 1066, Harold Hardrada, and the Battle of Largs Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age The ending of the Viking Age is explored through political shifts. The year 1066 AD is conventionally used as the endpoint, marking the death of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Hardrada, a larger-than-life figure who had served the Byzantine emperor, based his English claim on Cnut's North Sea Empire. William of Normandy, who triumphed shortly thereafter, was of culturally assimilated Norse descent—Norman means Northmen. However, 1066 is Anglocentric. A later marker is the 1263 Battle of Largs, where conflict between King Hákon of Norway and King Alexander III of Scotland over the Western Isles ended with Hákon's death. This effectively ended Norway's political control in the region, although Norse culture persisted. 1920 John Carter on Mars

6. Kerið Cave: Offerings to the Fire Giant in Iceland's Liminal Space Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age A recent discovery in Iceland is Kerið cave, a lava tube associated with the fire giant Surtr, formed by a volcanic eruption around 900 AD. Deep inside, archaeologists found a massive built wall, unburned animal bones, and stones arranged in the outline of a boat. Within the boat, offerings related to fire—ornaments, jasper, and burned bones—were left, likely intended to placate the fire being dwelling further within, possibly responsible for the volcanic activity. This site represents a liminal space, a meeting point between the physical world and the mythological worlds of fire and ice. After Iceland's official Christian conversion around 1000 AD, a metal cross was left as the final offering, seemingly closing off the pagan practice

5. Creation, Ragnarok, and the Cautionary Tale of Post-Conversion Norse Mythology Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age Accessing Norse belief systems requires caution because the main textual sources, such as the Prose and Poetic Eddas, were written in the thirteenth century in Iceland, after the conversion to Christianity. Snorri Sturluson, a poet and politician murdered in thirteenth-century Iceland, composed the Prose Edda as a handbook to preserve the myths. Norse creation mythology describes life beginning in Ginungagap, the eternal void where the fire world (Muspel) met the ice world (Niflheim), forming the primordial ice giant Ymir. The mythological destruction, Ragnarok (the doom of the gods), involves the fire giant Surtr and Loki arriving on Naglfar, a ship terrifyingly constructed from the fingernails of dead people. 1920

. Reliquaries, Status Seeking, and Rune Amulets Against Dwarves Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age The discussion moves to reliquaries, originally used in a Christian context, such as at Lindisfarne, to house saints' relics. Norse raiders prized the metal and decoration, discarded the relics, and brought them back to Norway, often gifting them to women. These items were passed down through female generations or repurposed as brooches, suggesting that early raids were often masculine activities focused on acquiring wealth and status necessary for young men to secure a wife and establish a home. Pre-Christian belief systems involved protective runes and amulets against malevolence caused by supernatural beings such as elves or dwarves. A human skull fragment from Geber, Denmark, dating to the early eighth century, was carved with runes, possibly intended to guard against sickness caused by dwarves. 1919

3. Kievan Rus Assimilation and the Unsolved Mystery of the Salme Ships Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age In the east, Rurik and his company founded what became Kievan Rus, shifting their power base south from Novgorod (862) to Kiev. Although people of Norse heritage controlled the area initially, they were a minority who mastered cultural assimilation with Slavic groups. Norse names like Ingvar and Helga became Slavicized as Igor and Olga, demonstrating extensive cultural mixing. The text also covers the mystery of the Salme ships in Estonia, recently discovered. These two ship burials, dated around 750 AD and predating Lindisfarne, contained the remains of dozens of high-status individuals from Sweden who died violently, likely on a diplomatic mission. One leader was buried with the king piece of the popular board game Hnefatafl placed in his mouth—an intentional act of storytelling.

2. From Raiders to Rulers: The Danelaw and the Eastern Expansion of the Norse Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age The discussion highlights the transformation of Vikings from raiders—who famously plundered Paris for 7,000 pounds of gold—to military conquerors. The Great Heathen Army arrived in England around 865, conquering East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia. The subsequent stalemate led to an agreement between King Alfred and the Norse leader Guthrum toward the end of the ninth century. This accord established the Danelaw, granting the Norse political and legal control over vast swathes of England, evidenced today by Old Norse influences in place names. The Norse cultural sphere was enormous, characterized by a diaspora that spread east and west. People from what is now Sweden moved down Eurasian waterways, becoming known as the Varangians, or Russ (rowers), and settled Novgorod in 862.

1. Everyday Objects and the Shocking Start of the Viking Age Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age The book uses everyday objects to explore the real lives of the people known as Vikings. For example, a runic message carved on wood from Norway around 1200 AD shows a woman named Gia telling her inebriated husband, who is in a tavern, to come home. Runes were spiky letters often carved into hard surfaces like wood or bone, possibly originating during the Roman Empire. The book's title is a kenning, an Old Norse poetic device in which "Embers of the Hands" originally meant gold but here refers to precious, personal objects. The Viking Age is generally dated from 750 to 1100 AD, with a defining start marked by the shocking raid on the wealthy monastery at Lindisfarne in 793 AD.

MAL Description: Middle school brawler Noboru Haitani has never lost a fight. But the bitter taste of a soccer defeat gradually warms him up to the sport, until one day Haitani finds himself in a match against a team featuring middle school soccer prodigy Takami. An outlaw fights his way into the world of soccer! Show Notes: • You can reach us at Twitter/X @shonenflopcast, Bluesky shonenflop.bsky.social, or email shonenflop@gmail.com • Help keep the show running by joining the Shonen Flop Patreon at patreon.com/shonenflop. Get perks like early access to episodes; picking series for us to cover; and exclusive episodes on manga like Undead Unluck, Magu-chan: God of Destruction, and Cypher Academy. • Become a member of our community by joining our Discord. You can hang out with us, submit your questions or six word summaries! Find it at https://discord.com/invite/4hC3SqRw8r • Get Shonen Flop merch, including this episode's cover art, on a shirt, mug, print, or whatever else might catch your eye https://www.teepublic.com/stores/shonen-flop?ref_id=22733 • Want to be a guest? You can ask to be on a future episode at bit.ly/shonen_flop_guest Credits: • Manga by Nishii, Soutarou (Art), Kurumazaki, Kei (Story) • Shonen Flop is hosted by David Weinberger and Jordan Forbes • Additional editing assistance by Dylan Krider you can find his podcast, Anime Out of Context at animeoutofcontext.com • Assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research done by Tucker Whatley and MaxyBee

This month our teens not only led a panel discussion at Maine Youth Thriving's REVIVE event, they podcasted there as well! Two of our teens facilitated a meaningful discussion of bravery, difficult conversations, and how these are tools that can help teens feel seen and heard.

"Anywhere But Here" Ben Arnold is a busy dude. The Philadelphia-raised musician not only has two bands--Pistol For Ringo and U.S. Rails--his solo career is in full swing and his new solo album XL finds the singer/songwriter never sounding better. His three endeavors keep him on the road but Arnold is a happy guy when he's on any highway anywhere in the world. With a handful of fabulous albums under his belt like Lost Keys and Sunday Morning Meltdown, Arnold keeps moving from strength to strength with each release. Eleven not only keeps Arnold's winning streak going, it's a beast of an album. From Catch The Lightning to "My America" to "Long Cool Shadow," Eleven is filled with rootsy fight songs, melodic muscle and bluesy bliss. It's a rousing record that's filled with nostalgia, love and regret but it also reminds us that resilience has its own rare power. This is a cool chat--here's me and Ben Arnold having a conversaiotn . www.benarnold.com www.bombshellradio.com www.stereoembersthepodcast (http://www.stereoembersthepodcast) www.alexgreenbooks.com Stereo Embers: BLUESKY + IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

"In The Garden" The New York-born saxophonist/composer Alison Shearer's new album In The Garden is one of the most dynamic, stirring and altogether thrilling albums of the year. The follow up to her View From Above album, which was a moving tribute to her father John Shearer, the legendary civil rights-era photojournalist, In The Garden is a delicious blend of inventive time meters whose inspirations range from philosophy to children running through a Pakistani marketplace. Played with elegance and grace the compositions on In The Garden are a seamless collision of formalism and modernism and it's just exquisite work. Not only has Alison toured all over the U.S., Canada and South Asia, she's a touring member of Red Baraat and Sunny Jain's Wild Wild East, and she's on the faculty of Jazz at Lincoln Center's High School Jazz Academy. She's busy! But what's cool about Alison being busy is she's busy in her discipline and she's living the life of an artist with authenticity and joy. www.alisonshearer.bandcamp.com www.alisonshearermusic.com www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

Turning Tides: Algeria will discuss the history of the colonization and subsequent battles which plagued Algeria. The second episode, Smoldering Embers, will cover the period from 1872 to 1954, in which WWI and WWII greatly contribute to the rise in the Algerian nationalist movement.If you'd like to donate or sponsor the podcast, our PayPal is @TurningTidesPodcast1, or you can donate to us through our Buy Me a Coffee link: buymeacoffee.com/theturningtidespodcast. Thank you for your support!Produced by Melissa Marie Brown and Joseph Pascone in affiliation with AntiKs Entertainment.Researched and written by Joseph PasconeEdited and revised by Melissa Marie BrownIntro and Outro created by Melissa Marie Brown and Joseph Pascone using Motion ArrayWebsite: https://theturningtidespodcast.weebly.com/IG/YouTube/Threads/Facebook: @theturningtidespodcastBluesky/Mastodon: @turningtidespodEmail: theturningtidespodcast@gmail.comIG/YouTube/Facebook/Threads/TikTok/Bluesky/Mastodon: @antiksentEmail: antiksent@gmail.comEpisode 2 Sources:1. French Invasion: Algerian Resistance (1830 - 1871), by S.E. Al-Djazairi2. The Algerian War of Liberation, 1954 - 1962, Myths and Lies, by S.E. Al-Djazairi3. A Short History of Algeria, by Lina De Marco4. Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader: A Story of True Jihad, by John W. Kiser5. The History of Algeria: From Berbers to Independence, by Fatima Linda Haddad6. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954 - 1962, by Alistair Horne7. https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/wine/algeria-wine-history-africa/?srsltid=AfmBOoqKYNVCKsjGg-huHFX4PNKdXHQkVeaegIKLSsD4LQtFcpcsCTVM8. https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2022/01/18/l-algerie-sous-vichy-sur-arte-revient-sur-la-strategie-petainiste-pour-diviser-les-juifs-et-les-musulmans-d-algerie_6110013_3246.html9. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/10. Wikipedia

DJ Embers, 8th October 2025.At www.bootboyradio.netPlease Play, Like, Comment, Follow, Download & Share,

"Only Hoping" There's real magic in the work of Al Nicol. There's also real magic that guided the work of Al Nicol but we'll get to that in a second. The Canadian-born singer/songwriter writes some of the most affecting compositions around. His lyrics are contemplative and thoughtful, his voice has a bold and breezy command and his pastoral compositions bring to mind everyone from Nick Drake to Ron Sexsmith. The path leading to Nicol's new album Only Hoping was shown to him through a visit with a shaman and once he received that knowledge, Nicol wasted no time in venturing into the unknown to discover the sonic riches that would form the record. I'll let him tell you that story, but let me say this: Only Hoping is a stirring blend of indie folk and spare psychedelia and it was helmed by MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger whose production effortlessly lifts the songs into the cosmos. Featuring members of Bonny Light Horseman, Erin Rae, and Taylor himself, Only Hoping finds Nicol kicking his songwriting into another otherworldly gear. It's a work of pure magic. www.alnicol.com www.stereoembersmagazine.com (www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (www.alexgreenbooks.com) www.bombshellradio.com (www.bombshellradio.com) IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

"Only Hoping" There's real magic in the work of Al Nicol. There's also real magic that guided the work of Al Nicol but we'll get to that in a second. The Canadian-born singer/songwriter writes some of the most affecting compositions around. His lyrics are contemplative and thoughtful, his voice has a bold and breezy command and his pastoral compositions bring to mind everyone from Nick Drake to Ron Sexsmith. The path leading to Nicol's new album Only Hoping was shown to him through a visit with a shaman and once he received that knowledge, Nicol wasted no time in venturing into the unknown to discover the sonic riches that would form the record. I'll let him tell you that story, but let me say this: Only Hoping is a stirring blend of indie folk and spare psychedelia and it was helmed by MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger whose production effortlessly lifts the songs into the cosmos. Featuring members of Bonny Light Horseman, Erin Rae, and Taylor himself, Only Hoping finds Nicol kicking his songwriting into another otherworldly gear. It's a work of pure magic. www.alnicol.com www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

This binge compilation contains 5 episodes.Episodes included:1. A Command in the Dark (October 06, 2025)2. The Sleepwalker (October 07, 2025)3. Empty Quarters (October 08, 2025)4. Embers in the Plains (October 09, 2025)5. The Plight of the Plains (October 10, 2025)---Episode 1: A Command in the DarkRogers finally gets his audience with Alard, intending to make his own case for leadership of the Thieves Guild. Instead, he receives a fiery defense of Ralan's honor and a stark reminder of who is truly in command.Episode 2: The SleepwalkerDarla's frantic search for the missing Prosper ends in the one place he shouldn't be: the Guildmaster's private quarters. She finds him there, not lost, but drawn by a hidden purpose, delivering a cryptic message about the Tower's true nature and its secret history.Episode 3: Empty QuartersProsper quietly admits he “sent away” Guildmaster Ralan—minutes before Darla discovers the top floor of the Tower empty, the bed made, and a guard who swears no one came down. Her sprint through silent libraries and moonlit balconies becomes a midnight search for a leader who shouldn't be able to disappear.Episode 4: Embers in the PlainsAlone in the vast plains, Rebecca confronts the weight of her grandfather Pietro's legacy as she struggles to unlock the secrets of a mysterious wand. As night falls and doubts surface, she questions everything she believed about Pietro's tales and her place in his grand vision. Was the beloved storyteller truly a secret genius, or was his friendship with the Crown built on nothing more than entertaining fabrications?Episode 5: The Plight of the PlainsRebecca's solitary journey across the desolate plains takes a dark turn when she encounters a starving family of homesteaders. What begins as a simple request for aid escalates into a tense standoff between survival and compassion.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-thieves-guild--6141933/support.Some secrets are worth dying for. Some are worth killing for.Want to binge The Thieves Guild with fewer ads? Every Friday night we release a bonus episode of the week's previous five chapters, with fewer ads in between chapters and a seamless listening experience! Perfect for a weekend binge! ---If you would like to view a map of Ness, you can find it here.---Check out our other audiobook podcasts!Artifacts of the ArcaneA historical urban fantasy set at the beginning of World War Two. The world has abandoned magic, but magic  hasn't abandoned the world.ThursdayA cyberpunk VR thriller.No one can be trusted when nothing is real.---Find out more about writer/show runner Jake Kerr: https://www.jakekerr.comFollow Jake on Bluesky @jakekerr.com

Alone in the vast plains, Rebecca confronts the weight of her grandfather Pietro's legacy as she struggles to unlock the secrets of a mysterious wand. As night falls and doubts surface, she questions everything she believed about Pietro's tales and her place in his grand vision. Was the beloved storyteller truly a secret genius, or was his friendship with the Crown built on nothing more than entertaining fabrications?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-thieves-guild--6141933/support.Some secrets are worth dying for. Some are worth killing for.Want to binge The Thieves Guild with fewer ads? Every Friday night we release a bonus episode of the week's previous five chapters, with fewer ads in between chapters and a seamless listening experience! Perfect for a weekend binge! ---If you would like to view a map of Ness, you can find it here.---Check out our other audiobook podcasts!Artifacts of the ArcaneA historical urban fantasy set at the beginning of World War Two. The world has abandoned magic, but magic  hasn't abandoned the world.ThursdayA cyberpunk VR thriller.No one can be trusted when nothing is real.---Find out more about writer/show runner Jake Kerr: https://www.jakekerr.comFollow Jake on Bluesky @jakekerr.com

This week I chat with Heather Mueur who is the owner, founder, and visionary behind The Embers, a glamping and RV resort in Branson, Missouri. Heather and her husband Ryan built and sold an auto parts business, and used the proceeds from that to purchase this abandoned campground.  Heather takes us through the 2-year process of permits, plans, and construction, as well as the financing process–everything from SBA loans to finding investors. I asked all about the additional income streams they created, including an onsite laundromat and coffee shop. And you'll also hear how she grew her social media account from a couple hundred followers... to over 100,000 from LITERALLY JUST ONE POST. Lastly, Heather teases us on her newest project, a boutique motel located just a couple miles from her campground which will be slowly renovated in phases to accommodate existing reservations! Connect with Heather @roaminghomeheather Follow @theembersbranson Thank you to my sponsors! Lodgify - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Receive 20% off Lodgify's most powerful plans with code NoVacancy20 at checkout Proper - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Visit the link to claim your free risk assessment with Proper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Very Day" If you're wondering if the Connecticut-born Grammyt Award winning keyboardist and composer grew up with music in the house, the answer is yes--his father Joe Porcaro was a renowned jazz drummer who played with everyone from Sinatra to Stan Getz to Madonna. He also played on hundreds of film and television scores including The Wild Bunch, I Dream Of Jeannie and Edward Scissorhands. He also founded the Percussion Institute of Technology and later the drum department at the Los Angeles Music Academy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_College_of_Music). So, yeah music was the lifesblood of the Porcaro household and at very young ages, Steve and his brothers Mike and Jeff went into the family business. How early of an age you might be wondering? Well, at 17 when most of us were finishing our last year of high school and thinking about who and who wouldn't go with us to the prom, Steve was playing with Gary Wright's band on his 1976 Dream Weaver tour. A year later while most of us were fumbling our way through our first year of college, Steve and his brothers were in Boz Scaggs's band. In 1978 Steve and his brother Jeff along with a few other session playing pals formed their own band called Toto. How'd that work out? Well, 50 million albums later, I'd say it worked out very well, thank you. From "Hold The Line" to "Rosanna" to "Africa" Toto had a procession of hits, became one of the biggest bands on the planet and went on to compose the music for David Lynch's Dune. Steve left the fold in 1987 and went on to compose and score for countless film and television projects, including From Dusk Til Dawn 2, Eddie Murphy's Metro and he did all the original music for Justified. This is just a partial list, by the way--he also wrote the song "Human Nature" which Michael Jackson recorded on his Thriller album, the beginning of several compositions he wrote for Jackson to record. Considered one of the pioneers of analog synths, Porcaro's inventive loops appeared on works by everyone from Elton John to Don Henley. When it comes to artists he's collaborated with, here's a list that's going to knock you out: Hall and Oates, Earth Wind and Fire, Sheena Easton, Diana Ross, Warren Zevon, Jefferson Airplane, Yes, and Michael McDonald. Also a partial list. And speaking of Yes, Porcaro was good friends with Yes's Chris Squire and played in his band The Chris Squire Experiment. Porcaro's second solo album The Very Day is one of 2025's real bright spots. Featuring guest appearances by Stan Lynch, Jude Cole, Michael McDonald, Gardner Cole and his Toto pal David Paich, The Very Day is a stirring song cycle of effortless pop melodies, rootsy grooves and insanely catchy hooks. It's pure magic. And this conversation felt the same. Steve's an open book and a lovely guy and I can't wait for you to meet him, www.steveporcaromusic.com www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereo) www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com (mailto:editor@stereoembersmagazine.com)

What does living a good life involve? Michael Rosen's new book is called Good Days and offers suggestions to brighten our daily lives. Dr Sophie Scott-Brown is a research fellow at St Andrews' Institute of Intellectual History. The Rev'd Fergus Butler-Gallie has spent time working in the Czech republic and South Africa and ministering in parishes in Liverpool and London. His most recent book is Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings that made Christianity. Dr Rachel Wiseman lectures on philosophy at the University of Liverpool and explored the impact of the relative absence of women philosophers. Sudhir Hazareesingh is a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol, Oxford and author of "Daring to be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, which raises questions about the Enlightenment's exclusion of enslaved people from the universal vision of a good society. Matthew Sweet hosts the discussion about what it means to be good. The six books shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2025 which will be announced on December 2nd are:• Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough (Profile Books) • The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor (Allen Lane) • Multicultural Britain: A People's History by Kieran Connell (Hurst Publishing) • Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Hannah Durkin (William Collins) • The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda by Andrew Fleming (Birlinn) • The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge (Yale University Press)The judges for the Wolfson History Prize 2025 are Mary Beard, Sudhir Hazareesingh, Helen King and Diarmaid MacCulloch, with the panel chaired by David Cannadine.Producer: Jayne Egerton

"Crashing Dream" Like many aspiring artists of all kinds, the New York-born singer/guitarist Matt Piucci found himself in Los Angeles in the early '80s with his college pal David Roback playing in the band they formed. That band was Rain Parade and they hit the ground running--a stirring blend of 60s jangle and dark post-punk rhythms, Rain Parade put out two instant classics--Emergency Third Rail Power Trip and Crashing Dream, a brilliant live album recorded in Japan called Beyond The Sunset. They were nerve short of critical acclaim and their shows were inspired and rousing, but by 1986 the band called it a day. In 2023 Rain Parade put out their first album in nearly 40 years called Last Rays Of A Dying Sun and the band is back at it, with creative energy running as high as ever. Over the course of their career Rain Parade toured with The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, the Jesus and Mary Chain and The Church and Piucci has recorded with everyone from The Bangles to the Dream Syndicate. There were personnel changes over the years--Roback left the band early on and went on to form Opal and Mazzy Star while his brother Steven joined the fold and he and Piucci found a creative synergy that was almost cosmic. The deluxe reissue of Crashing Dream restores it to it original vision and it's just glorious. www.rainparadeofficial.com (http://www.rainparadeofficial.com) www.stereoemberrsmagazine.com (http://www.stereoemberrsmagazine.com) www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com Stereo Embers: IG+ BLUESKY: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

DJ Embers27th September 2025At www.bootboyradio.net       Please Play, Like, Comment, Follow, Download & Share

"Wait For Fire Burning" Formed in Oakland in 1985, Legal Reins were comprised of singer/guitarist Danny Benatar, bassist Eden Unger and drummer Tim Freund. They tore up the Bay Area scene, playing show after show and cementing themselves as one of the best live bands around. This is a band who did the work, got in the reps and eclipsed the Gladwellian idea of 10,000 hours. Opening for everyone from Madness to Killing Joke, Legal Reins proved themselves time and again that they could step on any stage and match anyone in terms of power and heart. Their exhilarating blend of sweeping pop epics and punchy hook laden rock and roll brought to mind everyone from The Sound to Echo and the Bunnymen to the Waterboys. After a bit of a bidding war, they signed to Arista in 1987, put out their debut album Please, The Pleasure soon after and then? Well, then things turned the other way. I'm going to let Tim tell you the story, but let me say this: In 1986 I was the music director of KVHS, an all-metal station located conveniently on my high school campus. I was in the habit of sneaking in The Smiths and The Chameleons in between Accept and Venom just to see if anyone noticed--they did, by the way. It was slightly terrifying to be 16 and getting death threats for not playing King Diamond, but I digress. Legal Reins called me up and they were very kind and I loved their music and one time I played them in between Y&T and Armored Saint and this one guy called up and said, very aggressively, Who was that you played after Y&T? I told him Legal Reins and he was quiet for second and then he said, That was pretty good... TEED: https://open.spotify.com/track/64o01ap4UeiY5Y8fVaqChx www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) BLUESKY + IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Penguin Random House, 2025) is the second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War. On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M. G. Sheftall's series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry.The result is an intimate, firsthand account of life in Nagasaki, and the story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bomb drop. This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped “Fat Man,” to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if Japan would surrender to the Allies–or if more bombs would fall. Related Genres: Asian World History, 1950 – Present Military History, World War II Military History Praise for M.G. Sheftall's Embers Series: “Sheftall's meticulous, novelistic recreations are deeply immersive. It's an invaluable contribution to 20th century history.”—Publishers Weekly on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II) (starred review)“A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.”—Kirkus on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II)“M.G. Sheftall's Hiroshima presents as a master class in eyewitness storytelling. As poignant as it is powerful, this gripping narrative chronicles one of history's darkest nightmare moments—the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945—and the memories of its surviving eyewitnesses. As the events fade from living memory, Hiroshima is at once a brilliant tribute and a cautionary tale.”—Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario“An important, deep-dive book into most every detail about the atomic bomb's making and use, in anger. A strong argument for why it must never be allowed to be used for any reason whatsoever. This book adds significantly to the argument that we need to back up fast and return to nuclear arms reduction.”—Charles Pellegrino, author of To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima“M.G. Sheftall takes us on a deep dive into one of the most significant and horrific events in world history. Hiroshima is a gripping, moving story of fear and shame, courage and grace, and a powerful argument that we should never, ever use these weapons again.”—Evan Thomas, author of Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II“A compelling analysis of the suffering endured by the citizens of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the dropping of the nuclear bomb on 6 August 1945. Written by a scholar who lives and works in Japan, and who has interviewed many of the last survivors, this is a book that offers valuable insights into Japanese thinking during the war and the subsequent struggle to rebuild the country.”—Laurence Rees, author of Auschwitz and The Holocaust 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

Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Penguin Random House, 2025) is the second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War. On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M. G. Sheftall's series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry.The result is an intimate, firsthand account of life in Nagasaki, and the story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bomb drop. This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped “Fat Man,” to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if Japan would surrender to the Allies–or if more bombs would fall. Related Genres: Asian World History, 1950 – Present Military History, World War II Military History Praise for M.G. Sheftall's Embers Series: “Sheftall's meticulous, novelistic recreations are deeply immersive. It's an invaluable contribution to 20th century history.”—Publishers Weekly on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II) (starred review)“A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.”—Kirkus on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II)“M.G. Sheftall's Hiroshima presents as a master class in eyewitness storytelling. As poignant as it is powerful, this gripping narrative chronicles one of history's darkest nightmare moments—the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945—and the memories of its surviving eyewitnesses. As the events fade from living memory, Hiroshima is at once a brilliant tribute and a cautionary tale.”—Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario“An important, deep-dive book into most every detail about the atomic bomb's making and use, in anger. A strong argument for why it must never be allowed to be used for any reason whatsoever. This book adds significantly to the argument that we need to back up fast and return to nuclear arms reduction.”—Charles Pellegrino, author of To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima“M.G. Sheftall takes us on a deep dive into one of the most significant and horrific events in world history. Hiroshima is a gripping, moving story of fear and shame, courage and grace, and a powerful argument that we should never, ever use these weapons again.”—Evan Thomas, author of Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II“A compelling analysis of the suffering endured by the citizens of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the dropping of the nuclear bomb on 6 August 1945. Written by a scholar who lives and works in Japan, and who has interviewed many of the last survivors, this is a book that offers valuable insights into Japanese thinking during the war and the subsequent struggle to rebuild the country.”—Laurence Rees, author of Auschwitz and The Holocaust Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Penguin Random House, 2025) is the second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War. On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M. G. Sheftall's series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry.The result is an intimate, firsthand account of life in Nagasaki, and the story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bomb drop. This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped “Fat Man,” to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if Japan would surrender to the Allies–or if more bombs would fall. Related Genres: Asian World History, 1950 – Present Military History, World War II Military History Praise for M.G. Sheftall's Embers Series: “Sheftall's meticulous, novelistic recreations are deeply immersive. It's an invaluable contribution to 20th century history.”—Publishers Weekly on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II) (starred review)“A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.”—Kirkus on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II)“M.G. Sheftall's Hiroshima presents as a master class in eyewitness storytelling. As poignant as it is powerful, this gripping narrative chronicles one of history's darkest nightmare moments—the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945—and the memories of its surviving eyewitnesses. As the events fade from living memory, Hiroshima is at once a brilliant tribute and a cautionary tale.”—Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario“An important, deep-dive book into most every detail about the atomic bomb's making and use, in anger. A strong argument for why it must never be allowed to be used for any reason whatsoever. This book adds significantly to the argument that we need to back up fast and return to nuclear arms reduction.”—Charles Pellegrino, author of To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima“M.G. Sheftall takes us on a deep dive into one of the most significant and horrific events in world history. Hiroshima is a gripping, moving story of fear and shame, courage and grace, and a powerful argument that we should never, ever use these weapons again.”—Evan Thomas, author of Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II“A compelling analysis of the suffering endured by the citizens of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the dropping of the nuclear bomb on 6 August 1945. Written by a scholar who lives and works in Japan, and who has interviewed many of the last survivors, this is a book that offers valuable insights into Japanese thinking during the war and the subsequent struggle to rebuild the country.”—Laurence Rees, author of Auschwitz and The Holocaust Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor AUTHOR NAME: Eleanor Barraclough BOOK TITLE: Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age GUEST NAME: Eleanor Barraclough 100 WORD SUMMARY: The segment introduces Eleanor Barraclough'Es book, Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, which draws history from everyday objects. The title's source, "embers of the hands," is an Old Norse kenning for gold, repurposed here to refer to precious, personal artifacts. Barraclough shares a favorite piece of evidence: a runic message from Gyða telling her inebriated husband in a Bergen tavern around 1200 AD to "go home." The discussion then addresses the traditional starting point of the Viking Age, 750 to 1100 AD. The symbolic start is the shocking 793 AD raid on Lindisfarne (Holy Island), a very rich monastery in northeast England, which generated fear across Europe.

When the Lord leads you to write at a very young age, He will see you through the process of writing a book of poetry based on Bible verses.  Today you'll meet James Chung, who wrote a book called Out of the Embers Comes the Fire.  Why did he write it?  Tune in to find out.Reach Out to Me:Website: https://www.dontignorethenudge.com/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/profile/creators?u=50504485IG: https://www.instagram.com/dontignorethenudgepodcast/Private FB group to WATCH interviews: https://www.dontignorethenudge.com/facebookBusiness/Personal Coaching with Cori:https://www.corifreeman.com/(951) 923-2674Reach Out to James Chung:Website: https://us.atomy.com/mainAmazon Link to Out of the Embers Comes the Fire: https://amzn.to/3IIE5Na

"Futility" It's true--the last time I saw Sandy Smallens was in the spring of 1989 when his band Too Much Joy came to the campus radio station to play on my weekly show. The band were incredibly cool and I've never forgotten that they took the time to traipse into the East Bay hills to get to my school and how nice they were. They even played an unrehearsed acoustic version of Clowns at my request, which was awesome. I'd play it for you now, but guess what? After the band left, I took out the tape and found that I hadn't hit record. It's bothered me for years. At any rate, Too Much Joy and Wonderlick which is Tim and Jay from TMJ, have a lot of news coming out their camp, so they do come up a bit in this chat, but really, the focus here is on Sandy's other band Surface Wound. Informed by the undulating jagged basslines of bands like Gang Of Four and Wire, Surface Wound's new album Futility is a riveting blast of post-punk magic. The Scarsdale-raised, Yale-educated Smallens played football in high school and as a result his bass playing has a real athleticism to it and not only that, but his voice has never sounded better. Filled with prowling basslines and muscular hooks, Futility is filled with fight songs for desperate times. Sandy Smallens is a busy guy--he's in a bunch of bands, he hosts the Four Strings And The Truth podcast and as the guy who launched Spotify's original content department, he now runs the podcast company Audiation. Not only that, but he's a massive supporter of the arts . And, he's one of the nicest guys around. www.surfacewound.bandcamp.com Sandy Smallens' podcast: Four Chords And The Truth Podcast: https://pod.link/1733284004 www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com www.alexgreenbooks.com BLUESKY + IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com