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PPC Strategies for Small B2B Brands to Beat Big Competitors So many B2B companies and marketing teams waste budget on tactics that don't drive results or support core business goals. Smaller B2B brands often compete against much larger companies while working with less internal bandwidth, tighter budgets, and limited resources. The key being successful lies in their ability to be strategic, efficient, and resourceful despite these obvious constraints. So how can small B2B brands outmaneuver big competitors using PPC and smarter marketing strategies? That's why we're talking to Andy Janaitis (Founder and Chief Strategist, PPC Pitbulls), who shared his experience and PPC strategies for small B2B brands to beat big competitors. During our conversation, Andy discussed the importance of foundational B2B marketing elements like high-converting landing pages, automated email flows, and a well-structured PPC strategy. He highlighted why targeted messaging and measurement are essential to compete more effectively against competitors. Andy also underscored the value of understanding B2B audience pain points, having a well-designed website, and leveraging key metrics such as first-order profitability and customer lifetime growth. He emphasized the importance of transparency and authenticity in B2B marketing strategies and advocated for a data-driven approach that achieves scalable, profitable growth. https://youtu.be/DR6d_dFfnVI Topics discussed in episode: [03:06] The Small Brand Advantage: Why being smaller allows for more targeted messaging that resonates better than broad, big-brand ads. [05:05] Avoid the Testing Trap: Why splitting a small budget across too many creative tests leads to insufficient data and wasted spend. [07:14] Winning the Auction: How the real-time ad auction rewards quality and specificity, allowing you to pay less than big brands for premium placements. [09:50] The Conversion Ecosystem: The critical role of landing pages and automated email flows in nurturing leads who aren’t ready to buy yet. [14:58] 5 Essentials for Ad Readiness: A checklist of what you need (from audience understanding to goal clarity) before launching your first campaign. [21:55] AI in PPC: How AI-driven automation has powered platforms for years and where it is heading next. [25:34] Better Metrics: Why you should look past ROAS and focus on first-order profitability and customer lifetime growth. Companies and links mentioned: Andy Janaitis on LinkedIn PPC Pitbulls Transcript Andy Janaitis, Christian Klepp Andy Janaitis 00:00 If you’re sending people to a landing page that’s not built to convert, if it doesn’t have the social proof that gives somebody the trust in your product or your service, you may be able to get folks to your site, but they’re not ultimately going to purchase for you, and that’s just one other component. Something else we see all the time is email flows, so making sure that you have automated welcome flows, that if they don’t purchase the first time they’re on your site, they have a lower value touch point, whether it be downloading a free lead magnet or something like that, that brings them into your ecosystem and allows you to start nurturing the relationship over time. Those are two things that we see all the time, landing pages and email flows that are fundamentals that get overlooked and people say, hey, the ads aren’t working, you know, I gotta, you know, try more creative. I gotta keep tweaking. I gotta change, you know, the different structure that some YouTube Guru told me that I need to be running, when in reality, it’s like, no, there’s some key fundamentals that you’ve got to get right about your business first. And getting those things right is going to have 100 times more impact than tweaking little bits of the creative here and there. Christian Klepp 01:04 So many B2B companies and their marketing teams waste money on marketing that doesn’t match their business goals. They go up against much larger competitors, while also having to contend with limited budgets, resources and bandwidth. So how can smaller B2B brands outsmart their biggest counterparts and win? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today, I’ll be talking to Andy Janaitis, who will be answering this question. He’s the Founder and Chief Strategist of PPC Pitbulls, a boutique digital marketing agency that helps B2B businesses grow past seven figures through leveraging Google and Meta ads. Tune in to find out more about what the speed to be Marketers Mission is. All right, and off we go. Mr. Andy Janaitis, welcome to the show, sir. Andy Janaitis 01:50 Thanks for having me, Christian. Christian Klepp 01:51 Really enjoyed our pre-interview conversation, Andy. We talked about a lot of things that range from B2B Marketing to family and hobbies and the different cities that we’re living in, and what have you. But I am really looking forward to this conversation, because it’s something that I think a lot of people in the B2B Marketing world can relate to. And if they can’t relate, they should all right, so let’s dive right in, because I think this is going to be a really interesting conversation, right? Andy Janaitis 02:19 Definitely. Christian Klepp 02:20 Okay. So Andy, you’re on a Mission to help scale independent B2B brands with data driven Google and Meta ads. But for this conversation, I’d like to zero in on the topic of how smaller B2B brands can outsmart the bigger competitors by being strategic with PPC. If we’re going to use military terms, it almost sounds like you have to learn how to use Guerrilla warfare instead of conventional war tactics, right? So I’m going to kick-off the conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them all right? So the first question is, what is it about PPC or Pay Per Click that you wish more people understood? And the second question is, why do you think small brands fail when they try to copy big brand ad strategies? Andy Janaitis 03:06 There’s a lot, a lot there to unpack, and I think, you know, there’s, I think you touched on it there, but there’s a lot of anxiety among small brands. We work with Founders and Marketing Directors of these independent brands, and oftentimes there’s a fear of a Google Ads or Meta ads, because they say, Hey, there’s some big competitors out there in my space that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And if I’ve got my little budget, if I’m trying to spend $5 or $10,000 a month, how do I have any chance of competing with them? You know, surely they’re going to outbid me on every single keyword, every single ad placement that I could be in, and what gets missed there is that you actually do have a big advantage in that being smaller. Your product probably has a smaller niche than you think, because you’re not distributed to everybody, you’re speaking to a smaller audience, which allows you to be much more targeted in your messaging. So in that way, where you might have some of these bigger brands that are, of course, way out investing, you that investment is being spread across so many different audiences and so many different placements, whereas you have the ability to say, Hey, I’ve got a limited budget. Let me only target, you know, the most likely people to purchase from me, and the people who are, you know, who I’m most likely to resonate with, and then give them a message that really speaks directly to them. So I think that’s the first and foremost thing to remember, is that you can take this, you know, supposedly disadvantage, and really turn it into an advantage when you when you focus in on, you know, who is your smallest, tightest, ideal client, that that you can target and speak to. I think that’s really, really important and gets missed and to your second question around, you know, the big brand tactics. I think a lot of times people see these in Instagram reels, LinkedIn posts that come up with a lot of different strategies that could work well, but are only going to work well on those larger budgets. So one great example of this. A lot of times I see people talking about creative testing and talking about needing we tested across 100 different assets, talk about, you know, let’s use AI so that we have the model in this particular influencer ad. You know, we can change the hair color and the shirt color and all these different combinations and test all these different things. The problem with that is, if you try that with a much smaller budget, you’re necessarily going to split, you know, the budget that many different ways. So say you run 100 different combinations, 100 different messages targets, you’re splitting your budget that many different ways, and you’re not building up enough data about any one of those individual combinations to make a good decision. So I always kind of tell people focus on the fundamentals. First worry about your top level messaging. What is it that really matters most and makes your product different, you know, and your really key differentiators to your to your most ideal audience, forget about, you know, button colors, or, you know, with these smaller budgets, don’t worry about testing. You know, what’s the color of the shirt that the model is wearing kind of thing, you know, you’ll have time to test those things in the future. But, you know, I think people get too caught up in those, those types of practices that, you know, big brands are spending a lot of time and money on and forget about, you know, the fundamentals themselves. Christian Klepp 06:35 Absolutely, absolutely. You brought up some really great points. I like to go back to like, two of them that you mentioned, I think the first one, short of getting too granular or getting too in the weeds, but you brought up something that I thought was really important to discuss further about, like the worry or the concern the Marketers have that people are gonna outbid us for those, for those keyboards, For example, talk us through, if you can, even from a top level perspective, how does a small B2B Company navigate through that? Because it sounds like it can. It can be an exercise that could potentially become very complex. Andy Janaitis 07:14 And the nice thing about this is it’s all automated these days. So, you know, realistically, when you are putting, you know, saying, hey, I want to run an Ad, whether it be on Google or on Meta. What’s happening is a real time auction where they’re saying, Hey, there’s this particular placement or this particular search, in the case of Google, so anybody who could possibly run an Ad on that, we’re going to let them, you know, put their ad forth and how much they’re willing to bid on it, and see, you know, who kind of gets in the top position and gets to show their ad. Now the thing that’s interesting there is it’s not based only on how much you’re about to pay for the ad. It’s also based on the quality of the ad, or how good of a match the ad is for that particular person or that particular search that’s coming in. And that’s where your ad can be more targeted, can be a higher quality ad, because it’s more specific. So you actually are going to be paying a little bit less for that placement than even some of these really big brands that are necessarily speaking a little bit broader language and not as niche down of a message. So that’s one, one big way. The other big thing is, as I mentioned, it’s in real time on every single on every single potential ad placement, or every potential search. So what that means is you probably aren’t going to compete with the big guys across all of the searches they’re running, but you don’t have to, because you may only show up, you know, you may only overlap in 5% of the placement. So where their budgets are going out there to every single potential placement or search that they could show up for, you only need to compete with them in that small, small percentage that is most relevant to your specific audience. Christian Klepp 08:55 Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Okay, second follow up question, and again, got to be careful, because we could potentially go down the deep rabbit hole with this one. But one thing that we all know about PPC is that there’s a lot behind it. And what I mean by that is, it shouldn’t be viewed as this one and done exercise. There’s a there’s a bit of an ecosystem behind it. And what I mean by that is, if somebody goes and sees the ad on Google or Meta and clicks on it, well, that clicks got to redirect people somewhere, right, be that a landing page or a website or whatnot, what’s on? What’s on the co you know, what kind of content are we talking about? What kind of CTA are we talking about? Walk us through that about why, why is it so important for B2B Marketers to understand that PPC is a component in this, this ecosystem? Andy Janaitis 09:50 That’s so, so important, and it’s, it’s important, especially as we talk about, you know, smaller brands, smaller budgets. You know, in that $10,000 to. $20,000 ad spend range. What we find is that, first of all, as you mentioned, it’s a holistic ecosystem. So, yeah, the ads are one part, and you got to make sure that you’ve got your ad copy, you’ve got your placements, you’ve got your you know, your strategy in the ad platforms down. But as you mentioned, if you’re sending people to a landing page that’s not built to convert, if it doesn’t have the social proof that gives somebody the trust in your product or your service. They’re not you may be able to get folks to your site, but they’re not ultimately going to purchase for you. And that’s just one other component. Something else we see all the time is email flows, so making sure that you have automated welcome flows, that if they don’t purchase the first time they’re on your site, they have a lower value touch point, whether it be downloading a free lead magnet or something like that, that brings them into your ecosystem and allows you to start nurturing the relationship over time. Those are two things that we see all the time, landing pages and email flows that are fundamentals that get overlooked. And people say, you know, hey, the ads aren’t working. You know, I gotta, you know, try more creative. I gotta, I gotta keep tweaking. I gotta change. You know, the the different structure that some YouTube Guru told me that I need to be running, when, in reality, it’s like, no, there’s some key fundamentals that you’ve got to get right about your business first. And getting those things right is going to have, you know, 100 times more impact than tweaking little bits of the creative here and there. Christian Klepp 11:26 You brought up one word that I think is worth repeating. It’s nurturing, right? Like, and I think that gets, um, that gets ignored or overlooked a lot in B2B, especially like, when, when the organization’s very sales driven. So it’s all about like, volume, volume, volume, right? Like we gotta, like, I mean, just to use the the old adage of like, you know, gonna hit that phone right, or pound the pavement and just get those numbers up right? But at the end of the day, especially if we’re talking about B2B, not everybody is ready to buy at the first contact. In fact, that would, I would almost go as far as to say, like, 97%, 98% of the time, they’re not, not, they’re not in buying mode, right? They’re probably still in an investigative mode. They’re still looking at what the options are out there. They’re probably doing their own research. That’s how they have landed on those ads. So it’s to your point. It’s so important to like, nurture that at that that lead rather in a non-pushy, non-intrusive way that helps to build that trust, to give them that confidence that this is, in fact, the right company that we should be perhaps having a conversation with, right? Andy Janaitis 12:33 Exactly, yeah, and I think sometimes people spend so much time on their messaging and their differentiators, and then they forget to tell their customers that, you know, they spent all this time working through what exactly it is that made their business better than the competitor. But if you don’t take the time to, you know, set up a welcome email flow it or, you know, build a presence on build an organic presence on Google, on Instagram or Facebook, you’re not necessarily getting that message out and giving people a chance to get to know you and fall in love with your brand. So I think that’s so, so important and often overlooked. Christian Klepp 13:12 Absolutely, absolutely. You brought up some of these already, but talk to us about some of these key pitfalls that Marketing Teams should be avoiding when it comes to PPC, and what should they be doing instead? Andy Janaitis 13:24 So we talked about a few of them. You know, some of the fundamentals that exist outside of the ad ecosystem. But one pitfall that I really want to focus on, that that is really closely tied to the ad ecosystem is measurement. So making sure that once somebody hit your site, you understand where they came from and ultimately what they did so that might be filling out a lead form. That might be purchasing a product, if you’re in kind of the E-commerce space, might be adding a product to their cart. You’ve got to make sure that you’re measuring all those independent events for two purposes, one, passing that data back to a Google or a Meta is the only way that those platforms can optimize and continue to get you better and better results. And two, you need to have that data to be able to report on and understand where your ad dollars are going and whether they’re working or not. That’s how you make the decision of, should I be putting more budget into Google or into Meta or hey, are neither of them working? And I got to try something totally different that’s often overlooked. We see clients coming to us that have spent untold amounts of money, and they’re not really even sure how it worked because they weren’t measuring it in the first place. So they’re just basing it on getting the cheapest clicks possible and not focusing on, you know, really optimizing for conversion? Christian Klepp 14:44 Yeah, no, absolutely. Those are, those are some very important points. In our last conversation, you talked about these five essentials that B2B brands need to have before they run their first ad campaign. Can you talk to us about that? Andy Janaitis 14:58 Yeah, definitely. I. So yeah, I’ll kind of walk through, and I don’t know if we’ll end up on four or six, but we’ll shoot for five here. The number one thing as you’re going through or selling online, obviously, you need to have an understanding of who your audience is and who you’re going to be targeting from that and what comes out of that is having an understanding of what are the main pain points that they have, and making sure that you’re speaking to those on a really well designed website that’s designed for, I say, designed for conversion, but what I mean by that is it helps guide somebody through that buyer’s journey, taking them from the point of just getting to know your brand to understanding what you do, to understanding how you solve their pain points, and then some social proof about why you’re better than others. So a you know, understanding your audience, having a well developed website that speaks to the audience, and importantly, speaks to the real symptoms and pain points that they’re dealing with, and how you can help solve them. Number three, I would say, is measurement. That’s, that’s a big piece that, you know, we just talked about in depth, but making sure you’re understanding once somebody hits the site, what are they, you know, what are they doing? Where are they going? What pages are they viewing? Do they ultimately fill out a lead form? Do they ultimately, you know, add the product to their cart and then leave? You’ve got to be able to measure what’s happening once they hit the site. Beyond that, I would say maybe, maybe item number four will group together a lot of those other fundamentals. So things that even outside of the website, things like a nurture flow and email, a presence on social, these are all so, so important, and even if you’re focused on paid ads running to a website to get a conversion, all of these other things are going to help that process. It’s a holistic marketing process, because we know today that people see you across a number of channels. It’s not that they’re only going to see your ad, come to your website, make a decision and buy. They’re going to, you know, hopefully see your ad later on, maybe see an organic post that you made on your socials. Maybe they bump into you at a trade show or a conference, and ultimately get to your website, make the decision there so making sure that those other fundamentals, like a an email nurture flow or a good organic social present are available, and then number five, and I think this is most important. And what I see people get wrong all the time is, understand your goals. So people will say, hey, I need to run ads. I want to run ads because I want more leads. Ultimately, you know, obviously we can, can run ads, and that could be an outcome. But if you’re not able to say, you know, what type of leads do you want, why are you not getting enough leads today? What’s your capacity? How many leads can you handle? You know, what type of behaviors are you trying to get more of, whether it be leads versus, you know, sales versus, you know, people buying a purchase or even downloading a lead magnet so that we can begin the nurture process. These are all viable, viable directions to go. And if you’re not thinking through specifically for your business, what’s the very specific goal that you that you have, and more importantly, what are the constraints you have? What’s your budget? What how much creative do you have available? Do you have a team on staff that can create more creative or work with your marketing strategy, understanding the goals and the constraints? A lot of people get caught up and just say, Hey, I got to run some ads and go for it. I want more revenue, when, in reality, there’s all these different nuances to it, and you really need to know what your specific goal is. Christian Klepp 18:39 Yeah, no, no, that’s great stuff. So let me just quickly recap for the benefit of the listeners, right? So you were talking about understand who the audience is, which is, which is imperative. I mean, you know, you almost shouldn’t start anything without knowing that, right? The second one was a well developed website, and I’ve got a follow up question for you on that one. Third one is measurement. So metrics like, know what to measure, and we will have a separate question about metrics later on in the conversation. Four is nurture, flow and email and organic and a presence on social. And the last one is understanding your goals, right? Like, what is it you want to achieve with this? Right? So on the topic of websites, when you say, well, developed website, I’m I have this feeling that you’re not referring to it’s got to be this incredibly expensive and complex website. That’s not what you’re talking about, right? Andy Janaitis 19:34 No and oftentimes, the simpler it is, the better it’s going to convert. So I think that’s really important what we think about. And I think the way I think of it is, in the old days, you might have a salesperson who’s going to get in front of a potential lead and then help kind of, you know, work through the objections they might have. So hey, you know, I’m not sure this might be a little too expensive for me. Or, Hey, I’m not sure if you know, you really serve people in my niche. Or if you know you you work with somebody, somebody different. I don’t know that this is a great fit for me. And the salesperson would have all the answers, right? They would say, hey, if this is their objection, this is how we answer that. If this is their objection, this is how we answer that. This is how we tell them about how we solve their problems. In today’s day and age, you may still have some sales people, but your website needs to do a lot of that work itself. So that’s what we need to think through is, what are all the things that a buyer needs to know before they’re ready to make that purchase and make sure that we’re putting that in front of them in a way that’s super easy to understand. A confused buyer is not a buyer. There’s a better way to use that statement. I’m sure you’ve probably heard that somebody, if they find confusion, they’re not going to be ultimately making a purchase with you. So make sure it’s really, really clear what is your product or service, how does it solve the customer’s problem? And hopefully some social proof too, and making sure that there’s some confidence that you’ve solved this problem for other people, like the potential buyer. Christian Klepp 20:57 And when you say social proof, you’re, of course, referring to things like in the form of case studies, testimonials, maybe even reviews on like platforms like Clutch and the like. Andy Janaitis 21:07 Exactly. All of those are great. You know, if you have a partner badge that, hey, you’ve done good work, or you’re certified to do particular work, that could be another one. If you’ve been featured in particular publications, that can be another one. But yeah, ultimately, all of these different ways that help give confidence that you can do the job. Christian Klepp 21:24 Fantastic, fantastic. You kind of scratch the surface a little bit in the beginning of the conversation, but PPC and AI, right? I mean, you kind of, you kind of cannot avoid this topic, right? Because it permeates across the entire marketing spectrum. But you know, from your perspective and in your experience, to what degree do you find AI harmful and helpful when it comes to PPC? Andy Janaitis 21:55 So I would say, on kind of the helpful side, and this is something that’s what’s interesting is we think of AI, you know, in the last, say, three years since chatGPT released, was it three? Five was the first, you know, kind of big milestone, breaking model where people said, Oh my gosh, this is, you know, this can really do a lot of, you know, can sound like a real human kind of thing. But long before that, AI has been implemented in these platforms, in Google and Meta, and for probably the last 10 years, we’ve been moving in the direction of more automation, more AI. So earlier, we talked about that ad auction, where every single time a keyword is searched or a placement pops up on Facebook or Instagram, you have to have a particular bid of how much you’re willing to spend to get your ad there. These days, you’re not putting any of those bids in manually. You’re just telling Meta or Google, hey, here’s the budget I want, and here’s the data coming from my website to let people know if they’re purchasing or filling out a lead form or not. And now Google or Meta, go out there and run with it. You know, go ahead and optimize with the ad assets that I’ve given you and the budget that I’ve given you. Go ahead and put me wherever you need to put me in order to get the most possible, you know, results, goals that that you can and that’s all AI driven. Then it’s been that way for a long time. We’ve been moving in that kind of direction. So that’s on the helpful side. That’s where, you know, AI is really driving, driving success for us. On the hurtful side. You know, you hear a lot of times people talking about, you know, now, especially in Google, when somebody makes a search, they’re getting the information. They’re getting an answer right up front. Or maybe they’re not even going to Google. Maybe they’re in ChatGPT or Perplexity, so, Christian Klepp 23:44 It’s a summary at the top right? Yeah. Andy Janaitis 23:47 Exactly, yeah. So they don’t even need to come to your website. From a PPC perspective, there’s not that click that you can go ahead and bid on and put your ad in front of, and that can be a concern, honestly, from a services and product perspective, I find that to be a little bit less of an issue. It’s definitely more of an issue for publishers. So if you have an information content kind of business that’s really harmful for you right now, because, you know, people are getting that information without ever having to make the click onto your website. But ultimately, if somebody is going to want to hire you for your services or buy one of your products, they still have to click through at some point. They’re not necessarily making that purchase, or they’re definitely not making that purchase out of the Google results summary. That being said, the other kind of big thing, and why I’m not super, super concerned about that development, is that whether it be on chatGPT or on Google, they really haven’t started monetizing yet, and that’s where I think you’re still going to see ads up in that area, we know that you’re going to be seeing ads up there. In fact, chatGPT is already hiring up and staffing up an ad organization, so it’s just going to be one more platform, one more area where you can run ads and get in. Front of your ideal customers. Because ultimately, you know, a subscription model can work to a degree, but you know, these companies, from an economic basis, need to have ads in order to kind of fund the type of growth that they that they need to see over the coming years. Christian Klepp 25:15 Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely, all right, previously, like when we talked about this, you mentioned this one thing, right? Kind of sounds like a song, right? Like this one metric that every B2B brand must know before scaling. So what is it? And why do you think B2B brands should have it? Andy Janaitis 25:35 So I’ll maybe take a little bit of a cop out. And they’re a couple different metrics. You know, we, especially on the e-commerce side, we look at four key metrics. One of the people get caught up when they’re thinking about on in the PPC world, a lot of times, people talk about ROAs (Return On Ad Spend) or CPA (Cost Per Acquisition/Action). So ROAs would be the amount of revenue that you’re getting in for every ad dollar your spend return on ad spend and CPA would be cost per action, or essentially, you know, if somebody is looking to get lead forms filled out, how many dollars of ad spend are you putting in for every lead form that you’re getting filled out? And those can be important metrics, but they abstract away a lot of important nuance, and it’s very possible to look good in those metrics and still not make a ton of money. So we have these four key metrics, especially on the e-commerce side, that we focus in on, and it’s things like first order profitability. So yeah, your ROAs may be high, but if it’s a lot of people making repeat purchases, you may still be spending too much money to acquire that that first customer so first order profitability is going to be the first time somebody makes a purchase. Are you profitable? Or are you not? You know that that one individual purchase even before you start to look at customer lifetime growth. Is it profitable for you? Another key metric that we look at is that customer lifetime growth. So okay, perfect. You’ve profitably gotten that first purchase, but are you building enough customer lifetime value so that over time it’s going to pay off what you had to put in to acquire that customer in the first place. Another key one that really applies, whether it be e-commerce or elsewhere, is the percentage of your revenue, the percentage of your leads that are coming from organic channels versus paid channels. So we love to focus on the paid side. We help people find scalable, profitable results in the paid channels, but if you’re too over indexed in those, if you’re getting too much of your revenue or your leads from paid channels, that tells you that you’re probably paying a little bit too much for it. And you need to develop that organic you know, from your your social from people just finding you via regular old Google search, making sure that you’re not over indexed towards the paid channel, if you want to be able to scale that profitably. Christian Klepp 28:06 Okay, okay, well, there’s some really great points, and I’m glad that you pointed that out about like, you know how everybody is very obsessed with ROAs and CPA, but there are actually, in fact, other metrics that they really should be paying more attention to, or that need, that deserve some of that limelight as well. Right? Andy Janaitis 28:23 Exactly. Christian Klepp 28:24 Fantastic. So we get to the point in the conversation, my friend, where we’re talking about actionable tips, and you’ve given us a ton already within these past like, 30 minutes. But just imagine there’s a B2B Marketer out there that’s listening to this conversation between you and I, and there are three to five things that you can tell them. You know, you can take action on this right now, right after listening to this conversation, what would those things be? Andy Janaitis 28:48 Yeah. So first and foremost, we talked about your measurement. So the action there is use GA for Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website already. Make sure you go ahead and get that installed. It’s a free tool. There’s some other paid tools that are better in certain ways. But you know, for my money, as you’re getting started out, Google Analytics is absolutely table stakes. You’ve got to have that installed on your site and set up properly to measure the behavior of what’s what’s happening on your site. If we’re talking PPC, similar to that, is making sure that everything is technically configured correctly, so that when somebody makes executes a behavior, makes a purchase, fills out a lead form, that data is getting back to, you know, either Google or Meta. So those are, you know, kind of the some of the key things that you got to do right out the gate and GA for Google Analytics. It’s a free tool, so there’s no, really no excuse not to have that set up. The other thing that I think is a first step that a lot of folks really got to got to figure out is getting crystal clear on who your customer is, what their main pain point that you can solve is. Is, and then ultimately, what’s your goal for for ads. So those kind of three, three components all tied together a lot of times. You know, we find people that are either, hey, we’re just looking for leads, but they can’t really give a good answer on, you know, who their customers or what type of leads would be a good lead for them. Or, you know, maybe they they’re really tight on who their customer is. And they say, Hey, we just, we just got to run some ads, but understanding kind of where ads fit into overall ecosystem. How are you doing organically? How do you close the leads once you get them you know? How often do people who make that first purchase end up coming back and making an additional purchase? Make sure you understand what you’re actually trying to get out of the ads. I think that’s probably the number one thing, and you can’t do that without the measurement piece that we that we discussed earlier. But I would really, you know, kind of start from a measurement component. Make sure you understand what’s happening when folks at your site, and then, before you spend $1 in paid ads, make sure you understand what you’re trying to get out of those paid ads and what gap in your marketing, you’re trying to solve. Christian Klepp 31:02 Absolutely, and it’s such a dangerous mindset to have that, you know, we just want to quickly do this right, and we just want to, like, generate some quick leads so we can show some numbers. But if you, you know, to your point, and you’ve raised it a couple of times in this conversation, if you don’t do this heavy lifting up front with understanding who your target audience is and understanding what the actual goals of this exercise are, then all of this is gonna go like, down the drain at some point, right? I mean, like, I’ll have to tell you, this is your this is your area of expertise. But if you don’t know what you’re doing with paid ads, that budgets gonna, like, evaporate fairly quickly. Andy Janaitis 31:40 Exactly, yeah. Christian Klepp 31:42 We’re gonna move on to the soapbox question. I’m gonna say I was, I was, I was trying to think about, well, how to describe this, but, yeah, that’s the best description. What is the status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why? Andy Janaitis 32:02 That’s a great question. I think we talked about some of the individual components earlier. You know, folks kind of listening to Gurus, kind of coming we still to this day, you know, have clients, or prospective clients coming in and say, Hey, I saw this YouTube video that told me I’ve got to do this. And it’s, you know, just bad advice for them kind of thing, you know, where they didn’t really, you know, get that good advice and take it one step further to see how that fits for their specific business. I think that happens all too often. The other big thing that we, we see, especially in marketing in general, I think there’s a lot of suspicion of, you know, marketing, you know, we people are really, really looking for authenticity these days. And I think there’s a fear that, you know, marketing as an industry is all about telling lies or not giving, you know, an authentic answer, trying to trick somebody into buying a product or a service. And a lot of that, you know, it’s kind of our own fault, honestly. You know, there’s a lot of Gurus out there that give the industry a bad name, when in reality, you know, all of this is about you should have a valuable product or a valuable service, and what we’re doing, you know, whether it be via paid ads or organic or you know those email nurture flows is just educating The customer on how your product authentically solves their specific pain points. So I think that’s, you know, something I would really like to kind of dispel that myth that marketing agencies say, you know, are not able to, are all charlatans and not able to give you good, authentic support. You know, we like to kind of think of it almost like when you bring your car to a mechanic, that old trusted mechanic thing, right? You don’t know what’s going on under the hood. You don’t know what that clunking sound is. So you better find a mechanic that you can trust to shoot it to you straight, not sell you something you don’t need. We like to think of ourselves like that in the marketing world, you know, in a world where there’s a lot of suspicion of the practitioners, you know, making sure that you can find somebody who is transparent and that you can trust to tell you the truth, I think that’s, you know, there’s a lot of good people out there and a lot of a lot of good businesses, agencies out there, you know, I’d like to kind of, you know, dispel that myth that there isn’t, you know, a trustworthy marketing agency that can really help you, guide your business to success, and help you find, you know, find the right answers for you, not what’s just profitable for the agency. Christian Klepp 34:33 This is gonna sound so biased coming from me, but yes, I agree with you. There are some good Marketers out there, right? I mean, we have to believe that too, because, you know, not, not all of us are, are out there to, like, just, you know, make some quick profit. In fact, like the way that I work with my clients, I always say up front, honesty and transparency. Andy Janaitis 34:52 Exactly. Christian Klepp 34:53 You know. And every time they asked me for for advice and or what I would do in this situation, I always start. Answer by saying full transparency, right? This is how I would do it, or I wouldn’t recommend you do this right now, because it’s not a good user for your budget, for example, right? And we and we know that, and we know that there are agencies out there that wouldn’t do that, right? They won’t say that, right? They’ll just say, oh, yeah, absolutely, go do it. Okay? But those relationships don’t tend to last very long in my experience. Okay, so here comes the bonus question, and we talked a little bit about this before I hit record. But rumor has it that you started your agency three months before your first child was born. So the question is, what important lesson to that experience teach you, both personally and professionally, like, like, it was almost like there was, there were two things coming into this world at that point in time as a war, right? Andy Janaitis 35:51 Yeah, it’s a great question. And certainly there’s been, you know, a lot that I’ve learned from, you know, both the business and and the parenting journeys, you know, I think kind of the crossover there, you know, we think about, like, the time component, right? You know, there’s only so many hours in the day. One big thing is, it definitely gives you perspective. You know, we always think about, you know, the perspective, hey, family matters the most and kind of what it means to, you know, now I know what’s really important, as opposed to getting worried or bent out of shape about, you know, some of the little things. But I think that really applies to the whole, you know, the holistic person, and, you know, the whole lifestyle, whether it be, you know, how we spend time with family or how we spend time, you know, working on the business and growing the business, it really forces you, because you have a limited time horizon, you know, forces you to kind of really focus in on what’s most important and not waste your time on, you know, either spending time on the things that aren’t going to be impactful or don’t matter so much, and especially not wasting your worry and your anxiety on, you know, things that are going to solve themselves and you really don’t need to be worried about. Christian Klepp 37:04 And just my two cents worth, because we kind of both started our businesses around the same time, but it kind of teaches you to prioritize and manage your time a little bit better. Not that we didn’t know how to manage our time previously, but it’s a different type of time management, right? Like, time management to take care of the family and time management to, like, run the business. Right? Andy Janaitis 37:26 Exactly. Yep. Christian Klepp 37:28 Yeah. No. Fantastic, fantastic. Andy, this has been such a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for coming on and for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. Please. Quick intro to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Andy Janaitis 37:43 Yeah, so we’re at ppcpitbulls.com at PPC Pitbulls. We’re really focused on helping e-commerce Directors, Marketing Directors, and just small businesses in general, figure out, you know, kind of demystify the world of digital marketing, and go from confused, not knowing where the next dollars are going to come in, to having a really good, stable strategy, and, you know, confidence in, you know, a strategy for profitable growth. So if you want to learn more, come check us out. We’ll actually have a special page, ppcpitbulls.com/mission, and that will be for listeners of this particular podcast. I talked about those four key metrics that we really care about. We’ve got that all put down in kind of a self guide that you can go through. We call it our paid ads reality checklist you can go through step by step. And I’ll show you exactly how to calculate each one of those metrics and how to analyze it on the back end. If that’s too much for you, can always just book a time with me too. I love sitting down with and meeting new small businesses, learning about your niche and you know, talking about where you can go next with your digital marketing. Christian Klepp 38:52 Fantastic, fantastic. So once again, Andy, thanks so much for coming on. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Andy Janaitis 38:59 Talk to you soon. Thanks for having me.
Whenever the church stumbles, left-leaning media make sure you know about it. Whenever archeological discoveries seem to refute the Bible, you hear all about it. Rogue-rabbis? Whenver they show up, left-leaning media make sure they remain on the front page. So, how come they didn't bother to inform you of this huge hoax that exposed the fragility of science. Follow the science? I think not. Become a Happy Warrior https://www.wehappywarriors.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers. Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies
Whenever the church stumbles, left-leaning media make sure you know about it. Whenever archeological discoveries seem to refute the Bible, you hear all about it. Rogue-rabbis? Whenever they show up, left-leaning media make sure they remain on the front page. So, how come they didn't bother to inform you of this huge hoax that exposed the fragility of science. Follow the science? I think not. Become a Happy Warrior: https://www.wehappywarriors.com/
Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers. Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. 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
Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers. Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers. Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
Ben Ennis and Sho Alli close out Monday with Sportsnet.ca's Luke Fox discussing the Leafs' road trip, where they earned 5 of 8 points. They explore the shift in team dynamics since early December, the improved power play, and Auston Matthews' resurgence. What can be expected from the crowd when Mitch Marner returns on Friday? Post-break, TheScore's Brenden Deeg (25:34) shares insights on the Bills' loss to the Broncos, Josh Allen's blame in that defeat, and the lack of a ref review for a controversial catch. He also discusses the Bills' future, the Patriots' playoff path, and CJ Stroud's performance. Can the Seahawks and Bears sustain their seasons?The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliate.
In this episode of The Fun Waste of Time, the fellas celebrate the 11th anniversary of the show with an action-packed and very rare super-sized episode! The "Top Three Favorite" video games, movies, and TV shows of the year and "Most Anticipated" of the upcoming year have become an annual "end of year" tradition. The fellas break down the content they've most enjoyed in the previous year and what has them most excited in the year to come. Listen in as they discuss, debate, and argue over what made their lists! FWT Website: thefunwasteoftime.com FWT Email: podcast@thefunwasteoftime.com YouTube: https://youtu.be/CYPigW2Hmk4 Top Favorite Video Games 2025 Tarrus: 3. Dispatch 2. Lies of P 1. Ghost of Yotei Anthony: 3. College Football 25 2. F1 25 1. Ghost of Yotei James: 3. N/A 2. Death Stranding 2 1. Arc Raiders Most Anticipated Video Games 2026 Tarrus: 3. Control Resonant 2. Crimson Desert 1. Lords of the Fallen 2 Anthony: 3. Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra 2. Marvel's Wolverine 1. 007: First Light James: 3. Marathon 2. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight 1. GTA 6 Top Favorite TV Shows 2025 Tarrus: 3. A Shop for Killers 2. Andor: Season 2 1. Last Samurai Standing Anthony: 3. Stranger Things: Season 5 2. Slow Horses: Season 5 1. Percy Jackson: Season 2 James: 3. Severance: Season 2 2. Alien Earth 1. Stranger Things: Season 5 Most Anticipated TV Shows 2026 Tarrus: 3. Spartacus: House of Ashur 2. Primal: Season 3 1. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Season 2 Anthony: 3. Blue Eye Samurai: Season 2 2. Lanterns 1. Harry Potter: HBO Series James: 3. Alex Cross: Season 2 2. The Boys: Series Finale 1. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Top Favorite Movies 2025 Tarrus: 3. Long Distance 2. The Fable / The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn't Kill 1. Predator: Killer of Killers / Predator: Badlands Anthony: 3. F1 2. Fantastic 4 1. Superman James: 3. How To Train Your Dragon 2. Superman 1. Sinners Most Anticipated Movies 2026 Tarrus: 3. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu 2. Godzilla Minus Zero 1. The Odyssey Anthony: 3. The Odyssey 2. Avengers: Doomsday / Spiderman: Brand New Day 1. Masters of the Universe James: 3. Spiderman 2. Hunger Games: Rise of the Reaping 1. Dune: Messiah / Avengers: Doomsday
Episode 1045: "Fantastic start to the year - the show just keeps delivering like no other"
Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they swap their favorite hacks and stories from the week. In this episode, they'll start off by marveling over the evolution of the "smart knob" and other open hardware input devices, then discuss a futuristic propulsion technology you can demo in your own kitchen sink, and a cheap handheld game system that get's a new lease on life thanks to the latest version of the ESP32 microcontroller. From there they'll cover spinning CRTs, creating custom GUIs on Android, and yet another thing you can build of out that old Ender 3 collecting dust in the basement. The episode wraps up with a discussion about putting Valve's Steam Deck to work and a look at the history-making medical evacuation of the International Space Station. Check out the links over on Hackaday if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
To tackle Michael Radford's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR on the sixth installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists almost feels like a cliche. But then, isn't the current political climate in America a bundle of tired authoritarian tropes anyway? And so we dive into this bleak adaptation of Orwell's dystopian tale and marvel at how it predicted Fox News - among other things.Thank you for checking this new project out, whether you are a long-time Contrarians fan or someone who's just trying to listen to people talking positively about immigrants and negatively about fascism. If you have any recommendations for future entries in the series, let us know!Many thanks to the amazing Jordan Cooper for composing our intro and outro. Fantastic collaborator to work with - and he has a They Might Be Giants podcast: DON'T LET'S START. You can also check out Jordan's band TROUBLE'S AFOOT on Bandcamp!- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!
In this edition of Sports Open Line, Matt Pauley kicks off the first hour by talking through the Nolan Arenado trade, as the future Hall of Famer has been sent to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Then, we are joined by Jordan Dajani, NFL writer for CBS to discuss the first round of the NFL playoffs. Amy Marxkors joins us as well to talk some St. Louis Blues! We wrap up the hour by opening up the phone lines and giving you the floor to give your opinions on the Arenado trade!
John Rocha and Winston A. Marshall bring you a new episode of SPILL THE TEAQUILA! They discuss the new Avengers: Doomsday trailer featuring the Wakandans including Black Panther and M'Baku, Namor and the Tolukan, and Ben Grimm of the Fantastic 4 and if She-Hulk will be recast in Doomsday or Secret Wars. They also talk the Renee Good situation in Minnesota and how it escalated into a fatality. And they discuss the NFL head coach firings and their reactions to the NFL playoffs from this past weekend and their predictions for the games this weekend!Remember to LIKE and SHARE this video on your social media and to SUBSCRIBE to the channel below! #marvel #blackpanther #avengersdoomsday #avengers #trump #NFL #NFLPLAYOFFS #SpillTheTeaquila #JohnRocha #WinstonAMarshall Chapters:0:00 Intro and Rundown4:06 Avengers Doomsday Trailer Breakdown Featuring Wakanda, Namor and F417:00 Will Tatiana Maslany's She-Hulk Be Recast in Secret Wars?24:20 Renee Good Situation in Minnesota and Its Fallout56:02 NFL Playoffs Reactions and Predictions for This Weekend's Games1:20:05 Streamlabs and Superchat QuestionsTo become a Patron of John Rocha and The Outlaw Nation, please go to / johnrocha Follow John Rocha: / @therochasays Follow Winston A. Marshall: / @theswaggyblerd
In Paul's letter to the Colossians (Colossians 1:15-23) he presents Jesus as so attractive as to be utterly compelling. We're called to do something similar, in our similarly pluralistic context of Los Angeles: to present Jesus as he is--unapologetically the center of the universe. Jesus is the one everyone is looking for: he's the only one who fully satisfies us, the only one who is supreme over us, and the only one who continues to sustain us. In a world that is so obviously broken and in pain, let us invite everyone we know to meet him; the one who makes us whole. He's fantastic. By Ed Flint
Audacy NFL Insider Mark Schlereth, the host of "The Stinkin' Truth" podcast, joined Sports Talk. Schlereth emphasized the importance of the tight end position in the modern NFL. He also previewed the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.
Avengers Doomsday Wakanda, Fantastic 4, Namor Teaser, Blade Cancelled? 28 years later the bone temple review, Primate review Fallout, A Knight of the Seven kingdoms, and much more!Listen to our podcast on Bpodstudios.com or wherever you get your podcasts! Please give us a like, comment or share if you like the show! Follow us on Instagram @geekculturecongress Also tell your smart speaker to "play geek culture congress podcast" anytime! Don't miss our live show NOW EVERY TUESDAY 8:30pm EST on Youtube at @speedysmultiverseSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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The Alan Cox Show
Star Tribune sports columnist Chip Scoggins makes his weekly visit on sports, talking this time about a fabulous weekend of playoff football in the NFL, an excellent comeback win for the Wolves over the Spurs last night and more.
NBA and Miami Heat News featuring Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Norman Powell, Nikola Jovic, Andrew Wiggins, Kel'el Ware, Kasparas Jakucionis, Terry Rozier, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Pelle Larsson, Keshad Johnson, Erik Spoelstra and more. Subscribe for more Miami Heat, Miami Dolphins, NBA and NFL news. My YouTube Channel My Twitter Intro Song : Pine Island - RadixTheRuler Outro Song : Pull Up Freestyle - RadixTheRuler Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
PTE 367: Hot Seat H2H El Guapo v Sara C! Welcome back to the Pub! We hope you all are having a FANTASTIC start to your new year! We are back to our Hot Seat Head-to-Head format this week and with Mike being out sick we have one of our four favorite Frenemies Sara Callori taking on our resident legal expert El Guapo himself Christian Hernandez! www.patreon.com/ptebb Connect with us on Discord or Facebook – www.ptebb.com Don't forget! Leave us a 5 star rating and write us a review!
Today was a FANTASTIC program. If the fog slowed you down this morning and you weren't able to catch anything we did - you can stream everything from this morning beginning to end on all podcasting platforms just by searching 'THEjoeSHOW on 93.3 FLZ'. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Deezy covers the latest BULLISH news for Solana. Morgan Stanley just changed their stance on SOL and when you combine this with the charts, Solana is looking to have a FANTASTIC 2026!
The Drunk Guys look for beer this week when they read Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey by Martin Handford. They find: Green Caps by Other Half and Wangies by Other Half. Join the Drunk Guys next Tuesday when they read Magic Eye III by N.E. Thing Enterprises The Drunk Guys now have a Patreon! The Drunk Guys Book Club Podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Overcast, and where ever fine podcasts can be found. We are also part of the Hopped Up Network of independent beer podcasters. If you're drunk enough to enjoy the Podcast, please give us a rating. To save time, just round up to five stars. Also, please follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. There's no excuse to miss another Drunk Guys episode, announcement, or typo!
Angie Dawkins is an Inner Glow Coach who transforms high-achieving, spiritual women from chasing love and approval to radiating fierce confidence so they can feel happy, free, and loved for who they are. She is the author of the book titled "Running in Slippers," which is a raw and vulnerable memoir about finding resilience after hitting rock bottom. Angie has her own personal story about hitting rock bottom before finding the courage to stop living for external approval and start living for herself. Angie shares her fascinating story and her incredible story of her own journey of personal transformation along with the many trials, tribulations, and bumps in the road along the way. These include moving from Chicago to Hawaii and landing there at the start of covid, learning how to surf in a community that was less than welcoming to outsiders, finding herself blacked out on a cold floor in Morocco and having no idea how she got there, being held hostage by her cab driver for eight hours, and so much more! She tells her story with open honesty, compassion for herself and others, and a delightful sense of humor. Download this amazing episode to hear her story along with valuable tips and powerful insights into how we can all find our own path to radiating fierce confidence. Fantastic story! Connect with Angie: https://www.runninginslippers.com/ https://www.runninginslippers.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@angiehawkins808 https://www.instagram.com/angiehawkins808/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/angiehawkins1/ https://substack.com/@angiehawkins808 Want to be a guest on TheFemiNinjaProject? Send Cheryl Ilov a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1620842117560x116520069523704300
John Kosh in conversation with David Eastaugh https://koshdesign.com/ Kosh is a Multi-Grammy award winning art director and former creative director for Apple Records. In the mid-sixties, he was designer for The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera House, where he produced a gold foil covered program for the anniversary Royal Gala attended by her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. At the age of 22, Kosh was responsible for designing the innovative entry portal to the “Young & Fantastic” avant garde art and sculpture exhibition on The Mall in London's West End. Following his work for The Opera House, he met John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1968 as they had admired his work as art director of Art & Artists magazine. They invited him to meet them one evening at Hammersmith Hospital, where Yoko was recuperating. Shortly thereafter they offered him a desk at Apple Records at 3 Saville Row. His first project was the “War Is Over (if you want it)” Christmas card, which led to the worldwide WAR IS OVER billboard campaign that continues to this day. He designed The Beatles' Get Back picture book with the Let It Be album package, the Abbey Road album cover, John & Yoko's elaborate Wedding Album box set, and Hey Jude. Kosh was one of the few attendees at the Beatles' farewell rooftop concert. While working for Apple Records, he designed Mary Hopkin's Postcard, Billy Preston's That's The Way God Planned It, George Harrison's Radha Krisna Temple and The Plastic Ono Band's, Life With The Lions, plus singles, “Give Peace a Chance”, “Instant Karma”, “Cold Turkey” and “Power To The People.”
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Friends, welcome to SEASON NINE of the podcast. To kick off a new season and a NEW YEAR (Happy New Year!) we're talking to a brand new guest - Dr. Hugo Mendez. Hugo is an associate professor in Ancient Mediterranean Religions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He recently wrote a book called "The Gospel of John: A New History" and it is FANTASTIC - a must read if you want to know more about the Jesus story told (in particular) from the vantage point of John's Gospel. We talk about the background of the Gospel and the radical (very radical!) theology of the Gospel that doesn't always seem to make its way into churches today. Buckle up and enjoy! (**Below are Amazon affiliate links. If you use these links to buy the product I may earn a small commission) SHOW NOTES: HUGO MENDEZ: https://www.hugomendez.com THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: https://amzn.to/4pi7Cwg MY BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Rubble-Stories-Shattered-Relationships/dp/B0C7T5TJD4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2B051GGV2WCSI&keywords=glenn+siepert&qid=1700157759&sprefix=glenn+%2Caps%2C399&sr=8-1 SUBSTACK / BLOG: https://whatifproject.substack.com/ ART STUDIO: https://www.whatifproject.net/art EBAY ART: https://www.ebay.com/usr/what_if_project SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.whatifproject.net/support
Episode #572! The Fantastic Art of Roy G. Krenkel and The Giant! This week we look at three book on two creators. First up Scott has The Giant Orson Wells, The Artist & The Shadow. Written and draw by Youssef Daoudi, The Giant gives readers a nice looking fictionalized biography of Orson Wells. After that, DL brings two incredible art books to the podcast. First is Craig Yoe's The Fantastic Art of Roy G, Krenkel which focuses on Roy's Amra zine illustrations. And also at the table this week is the oversized tomb Roy G. Krenkel Father of Heroic Fantasy A Centennial Celebration. At over 300 pages, it's packed with hundreds of images including pencil drawings, inked work, roughs, colored illustrations and paintings. Check it out!
This week kicks off with an engaging conversation between Joe and Cody, where Joe shares his thoughts and feelings about the much-anticipated ending of season one of "Welcome to Derry." He expresses how the finale not only met but exceeded his expectations, highlighting the intricate storytelling and character development that kept him on the edge of his seat. Joe delves into specific scenes that resonated with him, discussing the emotional weight they carried and how they set the stage for potential future developments in the series. As their discussion progresses, the guys shift gears to talk about the exciting array of trailers that have been released over the past week, generating buzz among fans and critics alike. First on their list is the newest teaser for "Avengers Doomsday," a film that promises to bring a fresh perspective to the beloved franchise. Joe and Cody speculate about the possible plotlines and character arcs that could unfold in this upcoming installment, particularly in relation to the overarching narrative that leads into the future sequel, "Avengers: Secret Wars." They ponder the implications of multiversal elements and the potential for unexpected character returns, reflecting on how these developments could reshape the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Next, the conversation takes a turn towards Christopher Nolan's latest project, "The Odyssey." Joe expresses his excitement about Nolan's unique storytelling style and how it often intertwines complex narratives with stunning visuals. They discuss the themes that are likely to be explored in the film, including the nature of heroism and the human condition, and how Nolan's previous works have set high expectations for this new endeavor. Finally, the discussion shifts to some surprising industry news regarding "The Talisman," a highly anticipated adaptation that fans have been eagerly awaiting. Joe and Cody share their thoughts on the recent announcement that The Duffer Brothers, known for their successful work on "Stranger Things," are no longer attached to the project. They analyze the potential impact of this change on the adaptation's direction and quality, considering the Duffer Brothers' unique storytelling approach and how their absence might influence the film's development. The guys reflect on the challenges of adapting such a beloved novel and what this news could mean for fans who have been looking forward to seeing the story come to life on screen.Official Website: https://www.comesnaturallypodcast.comOfficial Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/comes-naturally-podcast/iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/kqkgackFacebook: http://tinyurl.com/myovgm8Tumblr: http://tinyurl.com/m7a6mg9Twitter: @ComesNaturalPodYouTube: http://tiny.cc/5snxpy
We have a lot of nice things. We're really good at making nice things. We should preserve these nice things. But also nothing lasts forever? The Origins of Efficiency By: Brian Potter Published: 2025 384 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? The clever and incremental ways we've vastly increased humanity's ability to make stuff. We're constantly finding ways to build stuff cheaper, faster, and with fewer resources. What's the author's angle? Potter is probably best known for his Substack Construction Physics, which covers infrastructure, manufacturing, and building stuff in general. He also works at the Institute for Progress. Put those two together and you've got someone who's a big fan of material progress, or what is sometimes referred to as a techno-optimist. Who should read this book? If you want some amazing stories of how processes have improved, and a stirring defense of the modern world and all its wonders this is a great book. If you're looking for higher level reflection on what it all means, particularly any sort of caution around progress and efficiency, then this is not the book for you. Potter is definitely an "onward and upward!" kind of guy. He does note that efficiency can't be applied everywhere, and that it's often constrained by other goals, like safety, but he still treats it as being inherently good. What does the book have to say about the future? The book does point out that efficiency has become a "sociotechnical" issue. Particularly in the West, we often make choices to constrain efficiency as part of some broader societal goal. Potter doesn't talk very much about China, but one could imagine that their drive for efficiency is not constrained in the same way and, going forward, this could give them the edge in our ongoing competition. Specific thoughts: Fantastic, awesome, hopeful, and scary
Happy New Year 2026! I love January and the opportunity to start afresh. I know it's arbitrary in some ways, but I measure my life by what I create, and I also measure it in years. At the beginning of each year, I publish an article (and podcast episode) here, which helps keep me accountable. If you'd like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below. 2026 is a transitional year as I will finish my Masters degree and continue the slow pivot that I started in December 2023 after 15 years as an author entrepreneur. Just to recap that, it was: From digitally-focused to creating beautiful physical books; From high-volume, low cost to premium products with higher Average Order Value; From retailer-centric to direct first; and From distance to presence, and From creating alone to the AI-Assisted Artisan Author. I've definitely stepped partially into all of those, and 2026 will continue in that same direction, but I also have an additional angle for Joanna Penn and The Creative Penn that I am excited about. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Leaning into the Transformation Economy The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community Webinars and live events Finish my Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture Bones of the Deep — J.F. Penn Add merch to CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories and Short Story Collections — Joanna Penn Other possible books Experiment more with AI translation Ideally outsource more marketing to AI, but do more marketing anyway Double down on being human, health and travel You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. Leaning into the Transformation Economy I've struggled with my identity as Joanna Penn and my Creative Penn brand for a few years now. When I started TheCreativePenn.com in 2008, the term ‘indie author' was new and self-publishing was considered ‘vanity press' and a sure way to damage your author career, rather than a conscious creative and business choice. It was the early days of the Kindle and iPhone (both launched in 2007), and podcasting and social media were also relatively new. While US authors could publish on KDP, the only option for international authors was Smashwords and the market for ebooks was tiny. Print-on-demand and digital audio were also just emerging as viable options. While it was the early era of blogging, there were very few blogs and barely any podcasts talking about self-publishing, so when I started TheCreativePenn.com in late 2008 and the podcast in March 2009, it was a new area. For several years, it was like howling into the wind. Barely any audience. Barely any traffic, and certainly very little income. But I loved the freedom and the speed at which I could learn things and put them into practice. Consume and produce. That has always been my focus. I met people on Twitter and interviewed them for my show, and over those early years I met many of the people I consider dear friends even now. Since self-publishing was a relatively unexplored niche in those early years, I slowly found an audience and built up a reputation. I also started to make more money both as an author, and as a creative entrepreneur. Over the years since, pretty much everything has changed for indie authors and we have had more and more opportunity every year. I've shared everything I've learned along the way, and it's been a wonderful time. But as self-publishing became more popular and more authors saw more success (which is FANTASTIC!), other voices joined the chorus and now, there are many thousands of authors of all different levels with all kinds of different experiences sharing their tips through articles, books, podcasting, and social media. I started to wonder whether my perspective was useful anymore. On top of the human competition, in November 2022, ChatGPT launched, and it became clear that prescriptive non-fiction and ‘how to' information could very easily be delivered by the AI tools, with the added benefit of personalisation. You can ask Chat or Claude or Gemini how you can self-publish your particular book and they will help you step by step through the process of any site. You can share your screen or upload screenshots and it can help with what fields to fill in (very useful with translations!), as well as writing sales descriptions, researching keywords, and offering marketing help targeted to your book and your niche, and tailored to your voice. Once again, I questioned what value I could offer the indie author community, and I've pulled back over the last few years as I've been noodling around this. But over the last few weeks, a penny has dropped. Here's my thinking in case it also helps you. Firstly, I want to be useful to people. I want to help. In my early days of speaking professionally, from 2005-ish, I wanted to be the British (introvert) Tony Robbins, someone who inspired people to change, to achieve things they didn't think they could. Writing a book is one of those things. Making a living from your writing is another. So I leaned into the self-help and how-to niche. But now that is now clearly commoditised. But recently, I realised that my message has always been one of transformation, and in the following four areas. From someone who doesn't think they are creative but who desperately wants to write a book, to someone who holds their first book in their hand and proudly says, ‘I made this.' The New Author. From someone who has no confidence in their author voice, who wonders if they have anything to say, to someone who writes their story and transforms their own life, as well as other people's. The Confident Author. From an author with one or a handful of books who doesn't know much about business, to a successful author with a growing business heading towards their first six figure year. The Author-Entrepreneur. And finally, from a tech-phobic, fearful author who worries that AI makes it pointless to create anything and will steal all the jobs, to a confident AI-assisted creative who uses AI tools to enhance and amplify their message and their income. The AI-Assisted Artisan Author. These are four transformations I have been through myself, and with my work as Joanna Penn/The Creative Penn, I want to help you through them as well. So in 2026, I am repositioning myself as part of The Transformation Economy. What does this mean? There is a book out in February, The Transformation Economy by B. Joseph Pine II, who is also the author of The Experience Economy, which drove a lot of the last decade's shift in business models. I have the book on pre-order, but in the meantime, I am doing the following. I will revamp TheCreativePenn.com with ‘transformation' as the key frame and add pathways through my extensive material, rather than just categories of how to do things. I've already added navigation pages for The New Author, The Confident Author, The Author-Entrepreneur, and The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, and I will be adding to those over time. My content is basically the same, as I have always covered these topics, but the framing is now different. The intent is different. The Creative Penn Podcast will lean more heavily into transformation, rather than just information — And will focus on the first three of the categories above, the more creative, mindset and business things. My Patreon will continue to cover all those things, and that's also where I post most of my AI-specific content, so if you're interested in The AI-Assisted Artisan Author transformation path, come on over to patreon.com/thecreativepenn I have more non-fiction books for authors coming, and lots more ideas now I am leaning into this angle. I'll also continue to do webinars on specific topics in 2026, and also add speaking back in 2027. It's harder to think about transformation when it comes to fiction, but it's also really important since fiction books in particular are highly commodified, and will become even more so with the high production speeds. Yes, all readers have a few favourite authors but most will also read a ton of other books without knowing or caring who the author is. Fiction can be transformational. Reader's aren't buying a ‘book.' They're buying a way to escape, to feel deeply, to experience things they never could in real life. A book can transform a day from ‘meh' into ‘fantastic!' My J.F. Penn fiction is mostly inspired by places, so my stories transport you into an adventure somewhere wonderful, and they all offer a deeper side of transformative contemplation of ‘memento mori' if you choose to read them in that way. They also have elements of gothic and death culture that I am going to lean into with some merch in 2026, so more of an identity thing than just book sales. I'm not quite sure what this means yet, but no doubt it will emerge. I'll also shape my JFPennBooks.com site into more transformative paths, rather than just genre lists, as part of this shift. My memoir Pilgrimage always reflected a transformation, both reflecting my own midlife shift but I've also heard from many who it has inspired to walk alone, or to travel on pilgrimage themselves. Of course, transformation is not just for our readers or the people we serve as part of our businesses. It's also for us. One of the reasons why we are writers is because this is how we think. This is how we figure out our lives. This is how we get the stories and ideas out of our heads and into the world. Writing and creating are transformative for us, too. That is part of the point, and a great element of why we do this, and why we love this. Which is why I don't really understand the attraction of purely AI-generated books. There's no fun in that for me, and there's no transformation, either. Of course, I LOVE using Chat and Claude and Gemini Thinking models as my brainstorming partners, my research buddies, my marketing assistants, and as daily tools to keep me sparkly. I smiled as I wrote that (and yes, I human-wrote this!) because sparkly is how I feel when I work with these tools. Programmers use the term ‘vibe coding' which is going back and forth and collaborating together, sparking off each other. Perhaps that I am doing is ‘vibe creation.' I feel it as almost an effervescence, a fun experience that has me laughing out loud sometimes. I am more creative, I am more in flow. I am more ‘me' now I can create and think at a speed way faster than ever before. My mind has always worked at speed and my fingers are fast on the keys but working in this way makes me feel like I create in the high performance zone far more often. I intend to lean more into that in 2026 as part of my own transformation (and of course, I share my experiences mainly in the Community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn ). [Note, I pay for access to all models, and currently use ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro). So that's the big shift this year, and the idea of the Transformation Economy will underpin everything else in terms of my content. The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community The Creative Penn Podcast continues in 2026, although I am intending to reduce my interviews to once every two weeks, with my intro and other content in between. We'll see how that goes as I am already finding some fascinating people to talk to! Thank you for your comments, your pictures, and also for sharing the episodes that resonate with you with the wider community. Your reviews are also super useful wherever you are listening to this, so please leave a review wherever you're listening this as it helps with discovery. Thanks also to everyone in my Patreon Community, which I really enjoy, especially as we have doubled down on being human through more live office hours. I will do more of those in 2026 and the first one of the year will blearily UK time so Aussies and Kiwis can come. I also share new content almost every week, either an article, a video or an audio episode around writing craft, author business, and lots on different use cases for AI tools. If you join the Patreon, start on the Collections tab where you will find all the backlist content to explore. It's less than the price of a coffee a month so if you get value from the show, and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com/thecreativepenn My Books and Travel Podcast is on hiatus for interviews, since the Masters is taking up the time I would have had for that. However I plan to post some solo episodes in 2026, and I also post travel articles there, like my visits to Gothic cathedrals and city breaks and things like that. Check it out at https://www.booksandtravel.page/blog/ Webinars and live events Along with my Patreon office hours, I'm enjoying the immediacy and energy of live webinars and they work with my focus on transformation, as well as on ‘doubling down on being human' in an age of AI, so I will be doing more this year. The first is on Business for Authors, coming on 10 and 24 January, which is aimed at helping you transform your author business in 2026, or if you're just getting started, then transform into someone who has even a small clue about business in general!Details at TheCreativePenn.com/live and Patrons get 25% off. In terms of live in-person events, it looks like I will be speaking at the Alliance of Independent Authors event at the London Book Fair in March, and I'll attend the Self-Publishing Show Live in June, although I won't be speaking. There might be other things that emerge, but in general, I'm not doing much speaking in 2026 because I need to … Finish my Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture This represents a lot of work as I am doing the course full-time. I should be finished in September, and much of the middle of the year will be focused on a dissertation. I'm planning on doing something around AI and death, so that will no doubt lead into some fiction at a later stage! Talking of fiction … Bones of the Deep — J.F. Penn The Masters is pretty serious, as is academic research and writing in general, and I found myself desperate to write a rollicking fun story over the holiday break between terms. I've talked about this ‘tall-ship' story for a while and now I'm committing to it. Back in 1999, I sailed on the tall-ship Soren Larsen from Fiji to Vanuatu, one of the three trips that shaped my life. It was the first time I'd been to the South Pacific, the first time I sailed blue water (with no land in sight), and I kept a journal and drew maps of the trip. It also helped me a make a decision to leave the UK and I headed for Australia nine months later in early 2000, and ended up being away 11 years in Australia and New Zealand. I came home to visit of course, but only moved back to the UK in 2011, so that trip was memorable and pivotal in many ways and has stuck in my mind. The story is based on that crossing, but of course, as J.F. Penn my imagination turns it into essentially a ‘locked room,' there is no escape out there, especially if the danger comes from the sea. Another strand of the story comes from a recent academic essay for my Masters, when I wrote about the changes in museum ethics around human remains and medical specimens i.e. body parts in jars, and how some remains have been repatriated to the indigenous peoples they were stolen from. I've also talked before about how I love ‘merfolk' horror like Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter, and Merfolk by Jeremy Bates. These are no smiling fantasy mermaids and mermen. They are predators. What might happen if the remains of a mer-saint were stolen from the deep, and what might happen to the ship that the remains are being transported in, and the people on board? I'm about a third in, and I am having great fun! It will actually be a thriller, with a supernatural edge, rather than horror, and it is called Bones of the Deep, and it will be out on Kickstarter in April, and everywhere by the summer. You can check out the Kickstarter pre-launch page with photos from my 1999 trip, the cover for the book, and the sales description at JFPenn.com/bones Add merch to CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com I've dipped my toe into merch a number of times and then removed the products, but now I'm clear on my message of transformation, I want to revisit this. My books remain core for both sites, but for CreativePennBooks, I also want to add other products with what are essentially affirmations — ‘Creative,' ‘I am creative, I am an author,' and variants of the poster I have had on my wall for years, ‘Measure your life by what you create.' This is the affirmation I had in my wallet for years! For JFPennBooks, the items will be gothic/memento mori/skull-related. Everything will be print-on-demand. I will not be shipping anything myself, so I'm working with my designer Jane on this and then need to order test samples, and then get them added to the store. Likely mid-year at this rate! How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories and Short Story Collections — Joanna Penn I have a draft of this already which I expanded from the transcript of a webinar I did on this topic as part of The Buried and the Drowned campaign. It turns out I've learned a lot about this over the years, and also on how to make a collection, so I will get that out at some point this year. I won't do a Kickstarter for it, but I will do direct sales for at least a month and include a special edition, workbook, and bundles on my store first before putting it wide. I will also human-narrate that audiobook. Other possible books I'm an intuitive creative and discovery writer, so I don't plan out what I will write in a year. The books tend to emerge and then I pick the next one that feels the most important. After the ones above, there are a few candidates. Crown of Thorns, ARKANE thriller #14. Regular readers and listeners will know how much I love religious relics, and it's about time for a big one! I have a trip to Paris planned in the spring, as the Crown of Thorns is at Notre Dame, and I have some other locations to visit. My ARKANE thrillers always emerge from in-person travels, so I am looking forward to that. Maybe late 2026, maybe 2027. AI + religion technothriller/short stories. I already have some ideas sketched out for this and my Masters thesis will be something around AI, religion, and death, so I expect something will emerge from all that study and academic writing. Not sure what, but it will be interesting! The Gothic Cathedral Book. I have tens of thousands of words written, and lots of research and photos and thoughts. But it is still in the creative chaos phase (which I love!) and as yet has not emerged into anything coherent. Perhaps it will in 2026, and the plan is to re-focus on it after my Masters dissertation. I feel like the Masters study and the academic research process will make this an even better book, But I am holding my plans for this lightly, as it feels like another ‘big' book for me, like my ‘shadow book' (which became Writing the Shadow) and took more than a decade to write! How to be Creative. I have also written bits and bobs on this over many years, but it feels like it is re-emerging as part of my focus on transformation. Probably unlikely for 2026 but now back on the list … Experiment more with AI translation AI-assisted translation has been around for years now in various forms, and I have experimented with some of the services, as well as working with human narrators and editors in different languages, as well as licensing books in translation. But when Amazon launched Kindle Translate in November 2025, it made me think that AI-assisted translation will become a lot more popular in 2026. AI audiobook narration became good enough for many audiobooks in 2025, and it seems like AI-translation will be the same in 2026. Yes, of course, human translation is still the gold standard, as is human narration, and that would be the primary choice for all of us — if it was affordable. But frankly, it's not affordable for most indie authors, and indeed many small publishers. Many books don't get an audiobook edition and most books don't get translated into every language. It costs thousands per book for a human translator, and so it is a premium option. I have only ever made a small profit on the books that I paid for with human translators and it took years, and while I have a few nice translation deals on some books, I'm planning to experiment more with AI translation in 2026. More languages, more markets, more opportunities to reach readers. More on this in the next episode when I'll cover trends for 2026. Ideally outsource more marketing to AI, but do more marketing anyway You have to reach readers somehow, and you have to pay for book marketing with your time and/or your money. Those authors killing it on TikTok pay with their time, and those leaning heavily on ads are paying with money. Most of us do a bit of both. There is no passive income from books, and even a backlist has to be marketed if you want to see any return. But I, like most authors, am not excited about book marketing. I'd rather be working on new books, or thinking about the ramifications of the changes ahead and writing or talking about that in my Patreon Community or here on the podcast. However, my book sales income remains about the same even as I (slowly) produce more books, so I need to do more book marketing in 2026. I said that last year of course, and didn't do much more than I did in 2024, so here I am again promising to do a better job! Every year, I hope to have my “AI book marketing assistant” up and running, and maybe this will be the year it happens. My measure is to be able to upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,' and then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me. We have something like that already with Amazon auto-ads, but that is specific to Amazon Advertising and only works with certain books in certain genres. I have auto-ads running for a couple of non-fiction books, but not for any fiction. I'd also ideally like more sales on my direct stores, JFPennBooks.com and CreativePennBooks.com which means a different kind of marketing. Perhaps this will happen through ChatGPT shopping or other AI-assisted e-commerce, which should be increasing in 2026. More on that in trends for the year to come in the next show. Double down on being human, health and travel I have a lot of plans for travel both for book research and also holidays with Jonathan but he has to finish his MBA and then we have some family things that take priority, so I am not sure where or when yet, but it will happen! Paris will definitely happen as part of the research for Crown of Thorns, hopefully in the spring. I've been to Paris many times as it's just across the Channel and we can go by train but it's always wonderful to visit again. Health-wise, I'll continue with powerlifting and weight training twice a week as well as walking every day. It's my happy place! What about you? If you'd like to share your goals for 2026, please add them in the comments below — and remember, I'm a full-time author entrepreneur so my goals are substantial. Don't worry if yours are as simple as ‘Finish the first draft of my book,' as that still takes a lot of work and commitment! All the best for 2026 — let's get into it! The post My 2026 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.
I tried and evaluated every "Youth Ministry Social Media" Pack I could find on the internet. I evaluated on 4 criteria, and the verdict is in! I discovered the pack you should be using at your church in 2026 and beyond! SHOW NOTES Shownotes & Transcripts https://www.hybridministry.xyz/182 Social Team Checklist https://www.patreon.com/posts/social-media-138081327?utmmedium=clipboardcopy&utmsource=copyLink&utmcampaign=postsharecreator&utmcontent=join_link Mic'd Kid Reel https://www.instagram.com/p/DGtLVQOxLw8/ LIFE CHURCH https://open.life.church/resources/5220-youth-social-media-graphics DYM MONTHLY SOCIAL MEDIA PACK January Pack: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/dym-january-2026-social-media-pack/social-media/instagram-10658.html Membership: https://www.dymmembership.com/ YOUTH MINISTRY DROP https://youthministrydrop.com/ SUNDAY SOCIAL https://sundaysocial.tv/social/ NUCLEUS Video: https://youtu.be/onqh7dHLwKs?si=XFtY-4Lcv32XMoH8 Nucleus Social: https://www.nucleus.church/media SERMON MULTIPLIER https://sermonmultiplier.com/ DYM Membership: https://www.dymmembership.com/ HYBRID HERO SOCIAL PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utmmedium=clipboardcopy&utmsource=copyLink&utmcampaign=postsharecreator&utmcontent=join_link Hybrid Heroes get this pack for $4/mo https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry
The second half of 2025 brought a different kind of energy to Any Given Runday from race-day nerves and strategies, post marathon blues and pitfalls, big challenges, and honest conversations about what really goes into endurance sport.From first time marathoners to elite athletes, to caffeine, strength work, climbing the tallest peaks in the world, and ballsy strategies to endurance challenges, this episode captures some the lessons and the craic on the podcast from July through December.Whether you're deep in winter training, recovering from a big year, or already eyeing your next start line, this Best Of is a reminder that progress doesn't come from one perfect session, it comes from showing up, learning, and staying curious.Thanks again for making 2025 our biggest year yet. This one's for the runners, the thinkers, and the ones still figuring it out.2:01 Anne & Jamie on what to expect on Dublin Marathon morning5:49 The Fantastic 4, with Cliodhna on signing up for her first ever marathon10:46 Rob Dwyer, who does lane swimming on a Monday11:15 Niamh Culhane on caffeine and performance: benefits, timing, and pitfalls18:50 Learning about The Speed Project and the lads' ballsy approach to it25:55 Sarah Kelly on why women's training is different and how research lagged behind on purpose34:10 Mick Fox's Dublin Marathon approach from our first-ever YouTube Live episode38:55 Kevin English with post marathon advice most runners ignore45:51 Will Boyle on the turning point that started his running journey55:37 Enda Kilgallon breaks down the strength exercises runners should actually be doing63:24 Andy Nolan on why Denali was the hardest peak he's climbed so farYou can follow us on Instagram:@anygivenrundaypodcastYou can now get 20% off all Perform Nutrition products, including their new Electrolytes+, using the code 'AGR' at checkoutPerformNutrition.com This episode is sponsored by ULTRAPURE Laboratories and their Ultrapure Sports Recovery prducts. Ask for the ULTRAPURE Laboratories Muscle Recovery range in your local Pharmacy or Health Store or visit their new online storeUltrapurelabs.ie
Issue #734 - THE TC BEST OF 2025, Part Three: Return of the First FamilyDownload Directly From iTunesNOW on SPOTIFY!Hip hip... NEW YEAR! Well, not yet--as long as it's still 2025, we still have some BEST OF 2025 to share with all of you! This week, John and Bob share all of their favorite things from the past year, including John's undying passion for GI Joe and Bob's FANTASTIC year.The Comic Book Podcast is brought to you by Talking Comics (talkingcomicbooks.wordpress.com). The podcast is hosted by Steve Seigh, Bob Reyer, Joey Braccino, Aaron Amos, John Burkle, and Bronwyn Kelly-Seigh who weekly dissect everything comics-related, from breaking news to new releases. Our Instagram handle is @TalkingComicsPodcast and you can email us at [podcast@talkingcomicbooks.com].
In this episode, Jim and Derek are joined by Jeremiah to try and figure out why gremlins hate airplanes so much. Then, how do stretchy superpowers like Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man work? Panelists: Jim, Derek, Jeremiah
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On the step-by-step process of writing her new single, "For The Record." On what it means to make it in country music in 2025. On the impact of Eminem on her writing process. On writing for the Walmart shopper.
Let me begin by saying that we have FANTASTIC news on our front. The economic news continues to wow, and I said this before but…YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET!This next year will make this one look anemic, and it was anything but.That's we've come to expect from Trump. Excellence.Democrat corruption as a wholeWant to know how bad things are for Democrats, just read between the lines even in the fake news. One doesn't need to consult a psychic on how crazy the Party of Murder is. But they studied themselves and interestingly won't release the report of their findings.[X] SB – Dems won't release report on what went wrong in 2024And what of crooked Hillary Clinton? Look at what we can now verify about her and her crooked organization.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Stroke etanercept injection 18 months on: what lasted, what changed, and what Andrew learned after the PESTO trial Some stroke survivors are told a version of the same sentence in hospital: “After three months, what you have is what you'll have.” Andrew Stops didn't buy it, not because he was naïve, but because he needed a reason to keep showing up for rehab when nobody could give him a straight answer about what “recovery” would look like. Four years after his ischemic stroke, and 18 months after a stroke etanercept injection, Andrew is back to share what improved quickly, what continued to evolve, and how he made peace with research results that didn't match his lived experience. The question so many survivors are really asking When people reach out about perispinal etanercept (often discussed as “etanercept after stroke”), they're rarely asking for a science lecture. They're asking: Will this help me get my life back? Will I be the person it works for… or the person it doesn't? How do I decide without being misled by hype, fear, or my own desperation? Those questions are valid. They're also heavy, because the stakes are high: the treatment is expensive, travel can be intense, and the emotional cost of hoping—then not getting results—can be brutal. Andrew's baseline: what his stroke took at the start Andrew's stroke most impacted his right side. Early on, he had: No use of his right arm or hand A weaker right leg Right foot drop A slight speech impediment He worked hard to walk again quickly, using practical supports early (including an elastic extension on his shoe to help keep his foot up). But his bigger mission was clear: find ways to complement rehab—because medical staff couldn't give him a timeline, and he felt a “lack of hope” from their perspective. That's a common moment for survivors: you're doing the work, but you also want a map. The “complement” phase: why hyperbaric helped, even without perfect measurement Before etanercept entered the picture, Andrew leaned on what had helped him before: hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). He had a history of a brain tumor and had used hyperbaric previously for healing, so he rented a soft-shell chamber at home for three months and went in daily for 90 minutes. Andrew was careful with his claims: he couldn't measure physiological changes in real time at home. But he could measure something important, his ability to cope. HBOT became a daily “warm cocoon” where he could breathe oxygen-rich air and calm his nervous system. For him, that mental-health benefit wasn't a side note. It was fuel. And when you're rebuilding your life after stroke, fuel matters. The etanercept decision: hope, uncertainty, and the reality of the “roll the dice” problem Andrew discovered perispinal etanercept through a media story about Dr. Tobinick's clinic, and after about a year, decided he needed to know he'd tried everything he reasonably could. He crowdfunded to afford the trip and treatment. That detail matters because it introduces the single biggest ethical challenge around treatments like this: Even if you try to stay balanced, it's hard not to hang hope on something that costs time, money, energy, and pride. Andrew doesn't tell people to go. In fact, when people contact him now (he's spoken to more than 50), he's careful: He explains it worked for him, but might not work for them He encourages going without expectation He frames it as “knowing you tried everything,” not a guaranteed fix That's responsible guidance from someone who understands how fragile hope can become when it's under financial pressure. What changed fast (and what stayed improved 18 months later) Andrew's report of early changes is striking not because it proves causality, but because it describes specific, functional shifts: Cognitive fatigue and sensory overload He noticed cognitive fatigue dial down immediately. He still experiences it, but it takes far more to trigger now. The most vivid example: on the way to the clinic, he used an eye mask, noise-cancelling headphones, and had medication ready for overload. On the return flight 24 hours later, he didn't need any of it. He stood in the airport like any other traveler. Pain and cramping A persistent cramp in his right calf eased significantly. Emotional regulation He noticed improvement in emotional control, something many stroke survivors quietly struggle with and often feel ashamed about. Hand function and fine motor control His right hand went from feeling like it moved “in molasses” to loosening up. And here's where the “18 months on” part becomes powerful: Andrew recently discovered he could play scales on his clarinet again, covering holes with independent finger movement, something he hadn't been able to do since the stroke. That's not framed as: “etanercept did this.” It's framed as: recovery kept unfolding. “Your stroke recovery doesn't stop. There's no end date.” The PESTO trial: when research challenges your story Then came the PESTO trial results, which (as discussed in your episode) reported that etanercept was not more effective than placebo in the studied group. This is where Andrew's story gets even more human. He didn't just shrug it off. He described feeling guilt, even fraudulence, because he couldn't reconcile the research headline with his lived experience. That response is deeply relatable: when something helps you, and others don't get the same outcome, it can feel like survivor's guilt, especially when people have spent enormous money and emotional energy. A careful theory: the blood–brain barrier question In your conversation, Bill raises a hypothesis, not a proven conclusion that deserves careful attention: If etanercept struggles to cross the blood–brain barrier in general, could certain people have a more permeable barrier due to factors like stroke, surgery, or radiation therapy (which Andrew had)? Andrew himself wonders if radiation could be part of his “why.” This isn't a sales pitch. It's a research direction, a possible explanation for why outcomes might vary so dramatically between people. If that line of thinking ever becomes clinically actionable, it could change the whole decision-making process for survivors, because the question would shift from “roll the dice” to “are you likely to be a candidate?” What a stroke survivor can take from this without being sold to If you're reading this because you're considering a stroke etanercept injection, here are the grounded takeaways from Andrew's 18-month update: Recovery can continue for years. Don't let a timeline kill your momentum. Treatments don't have to be “proven” to feel meaningful, but meaning isn't the same as certainty. Hope needs guardrails. Don't stake your whole future on one intervention. If you pursue something controversial, protect your mindset. Go in informed, realistic, and supported. You deserve respect, not ridicule, for wanting your life back. If you want ongoing encouragement and tools to navigate recovery (and the emotional complexity that comes with it), Bill's work is built for that: Book: recoveryafterstroke.com/book Patreon: patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Andrew's 18-Month Etanercept Update: Fatigue, Function, and What the Research Says 18 months later, Andrew shares what improved after etanercept fatigue, function, and the tough questions raised by the PESTO trial. Highlights: 00:00 Introduction and Background 06:15 Exploring Treatment Options 08:59 Stroke Etanercept Injection And It’s Impact 12:14 Research Findings and Controversies 17:59 Conversations with Other Survivors 23:26 Reflections on Treatment and Guilt Transcript: Stroke Etanercept Injection – Introduction and Background Bill Gasiamis (00:00) Hey again there everyone. Welcome back to the Recovery After Stroke podcast. Before we get started, a quick thank you to everyone who supports this podcast on Patreon. Your support helps cover hosting costs and after more than 10 years of doing this largely solo, it’s what helps me keep showing up for stroke survivors who need hope and real conversations. A huge shout out to everyone who comments on YouTube, leaves reviews on Spotify and Apple podcasts. has bought my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, and even the folks who don’t skip the ads, thank you. All of it helps this podcast reach the people who are searching for answers late at night when recovery feels heavy. Now today’s episode is a follow-up many of you have asked for. Andrew Stopps is back, and we’re talking about stroke and etanusept injections 18 months on. We’ll unpack what changed for him, what’s continued to improve and how he processed the PESTO trial results that found Etanercapt wasn’t more effective than the placebo. If you’re considering this treatment or you’re trying to make sense of conflicting stories and research, this conversation will help you think more clearly without hype and without fear. All right, let’s get into it. Bill Gasiamis (01:17) Andrew stops. Welcome back. Andrew (01:20) Thank you for having me. It’s good to back. Bill Gasiamis (01:22) It is so good to have you back. The last time we spoke, was March 26, 2024. At least that’s the date that I uploaded the podcast Andrew (01:30) it would have been before that even, probably a couple of weeks before that. Bill Gasiamis (01:34) Yeah, something like that. So a good 18 months since we last spoke. And the original reason why you reached out and kind of we connected was I think because you had found my podcast, I had maybe had a couple of conversations about Etanercept like, and I had no idea what it was, how it worked, if it worked. And then you reached out and said, hey, I’ve had this injection. I’ve tried it. Why don’t connect about it? Andrew (01:36) So a good 18 months. Bill Gasiamis (02:03) And then we connected and we had a really great conversation and that interview has had like 19 and a half thousand views since then. And then what’s been happening a lot about that interview is heaps of people have reached out to me to say, can I speak with Andrew? Can you connect me with Andrew? Andrew (02:23) And he’s people reached out to me because of that. And also they found me on the interwebs somehow and contacted me that way. So I’ve probably been spoken now, well over 50 people. Bill Gasiamis (02:40) Wow, man, that is fascinating. So and what I love about it is that we put out information. What we hope is we hope people make a more informed decision. Right. That’s kind of the idea is like, how do I help people make people make a more informed decision, especially when I haven’t experienced something and I’m trying to get across the benefits or the pitfalls or, you know, what to avoid on a product. It’s just impossible. But You were very gracious as well as you. I’ve interviewed, by the way, a bunch of other about Etanercept. And one of them was Dwayne Simple. Dwayne also gets a few people who I sent to him that are in Canada because Dwayne is in Canada. He’s had Etanercept and it worked out for And then I’ve spoken to another lady from Australia, Karen. who also a shot or two of Etanercept and had positive results. But of course, Etanercept is extremely controversial. And one of the challenges with it is that it doesn’t work for everybody. And there’s only one way of knowing if it’s going to work is to go and get the injection to pay the money and then to kind of roll the dice and see what happens. Now, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. But before we talk about the new Andrew (03:37) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (03:58) research that has come out, the PESTO trial research. Before we talk about that, we’ll briefly talk about your condition, where you started. We’ll have a real short version of that, where you started, what happened, and then how you ended up overseas experiencing Dr. Tobinick’s procedure, and then update us on what happened in the last 18 months. Andrew (04:17) Okay, so I had my stroke exactly four years ago last Thursday. So I’m a four year old stroke survivor now. And my most damage was done to my right side. So I had no use of my right arm or hand at all. My right leg was weak, but it was okay. But my right foot just fell. I had a slight speech impediment. But otherwise physically that was really it for the stroke. And I worked really hard to get myself walking again as quickly as I could. And so when I got home I could walk but I’d had an elastic extension on my shoe to help keep my foot up. And I… From that moment, I was looking for ways to complement my rehab to help me recover fully from the stroke because the doctors and people in the hospital, no one could say to me like how long, how I was going to be, how much recovery, what I could expect, like anything. was just everyone’s unique. And I understand that, but there was a ⁓ lack of like hope from their perspective. So the first thing we did when we got me home was I’d heard, well, I knew that hyperbaric chambers helped healing. And I knew that because I had a, previously had a brain tumor and I used hyperbaric to help me heal from that. It was really, really good. So we hired one, we rented one for three months and had a soft shell chamber at home, which I went in every day. for 90 minutes and it was fantastic. I can’t say how, if that physiologically helped because I don’t have access to an MRI at home or anything. Yeah, I can’t measure it, but it did wonders for my mental health. Like it was brilliant because for an hour and half every day, I got to sit in this nice warm cocoon shell, they do not over me. Bill Gasiamis (06:01) You can’t measure it. Exploring Treatment Options Andrew (06:15) and listen to really nice music and breathe in almost, you know, pure, very heavily oxygenated air. And so it was like meditation for an hour and half. And the hour and a half went just like that. It was so quick. And I was really sad to have to, you know, give it up after three months. But yeah, it very much helped with my mental health during that time. And I mean, It’s hard to say if it helped me physically, but I certainly got back my ability to move my foot. My arm was another beast though, and that took a long time. That took about two months before it even moved slightly before I could just, you know, move it up and down. So getting back the function of my arm was a longer process. So I kept researching online and finding, you know, other ways that I could help myself to recover. That’s when came across the 60 minutes interview with Dr. Tobinick and the clinic and the lady from Australia. Bill Gasiamis (07:17) Which by the way, 60 minutes has taken down. You can only find that on Dr. Tobinick’s YouTube channel now. Yeah, right. So that’s interesting just as a thing that I observed that people might find interesting as well to hear. It doesn’t mean anything perhaps. Andrew (07:24) really? Interesting. Yeah, I mean, yeah, can be anything anyway, so I found that I watched it. I was really really inspired and I thought well I’ve got to know that I have tried everything like if this is how I’m going to be and this was After one year and I was told that you know after three months or That pretty much what I had after three months was was how I was going to be so I figured after one year, I’ve got to try everything. And so I crowdfunded and had about 30 or 1000. Bill Gasiamis (08:13) You raised how much? US, New Zealand dollars. Andrew (08:22) Yes, so that was to that was to fly that was for the flights accommodation the shots like the whole the whole package And yeah, and we flew out in in February Last last year 2025 Was it last year? can’t remember Bill Gasiamis (08:37) I did 20, 24, 18 months ago. Stroke Etanercept Injection And It’s Impact Andrew (08:40) 2024. And yeah, had the shot and it was it was amazing how fast I found things start to to wake up and recover. By then I had had more movement in my arm, but my hand was very sluggish. And I really didn’t have any fine motor control at all. ⁓ So yeah, that was the 32nd story of Andrew’s stroke recovery. Bill Gasiamis (09:04) Yeah, that’s a cool story. So we did a full deeper dive interview for Andrew’s story, an hour and 18 minutes worth of conversation. And the link to the original interview with Andrew about Etanercept will be available in the show notes, right, and in the YouTube description of this video. So anyone who wants to go back and watch that can do that as well. Now, like I said, it’s had 19,000 views. It’s 521 likes and it has just a ton of comments, just a ton, a ton of comments. Now, one other thing that has happened since then is I haven’t been able to find people who are willing to talk about Etanercept who did not have positive results when they went to Dr. Tobinick’s clinic. just, people don’t want to be interviewed if it’s about that. It seems as though it’s been really hard, right? So. I can’t give this balanced view of here’s somebody who has had good results, here’s somebody who hasn’t had results. They comment on the YouTube comments and they send me emails about it, but they don’t really tell me whether or not they will join me on the podcast to discuss it properly. recently the Griffith University study came out about Perispinal Etanercept and it had some positive results. It didn’t find that it was able to help restore certain functions, et cetera, but it did have an impact on pain relief for some people. Now, after that, the highly anticipated study was the one from the Flory Institute here in Australia called the PESTO trial. I’ll share my screen and I’ll put it on the screen while we chat about it, right? We’re gonna chat about what if. what it found, Andrew, just so that we can bring people up to speed so they can just hear a conversation about it. Bill Gasiamis (10:50) We’ll be back with more of Andrew’s story in just a moment, but if you’re listening right now and you feel stuck, want you to hear this clearly. Recovery isn’t a three month window. It’s not even a one year window. Your brain can keep adapting for a long time. And the real challenge is learning how to keep hope without putting all your hope in one thing. In the second half of this episode, Andrew shares what actually lasted 18 months on. What still improved over the time. And we’ll talk about the biggest question. If the PESTO trial says the Etanercept shouldn’t work better than the placebo, then why do some people still report a night and day difference? Bill Gasiamis (11:30) OK, so this is the PESO trial. Now, I interviewed recently ⁓ Vincent Thijs the doctor who headed the study. but the Flory Institute is basically reporting on his findings. He has presented these findings at stroke conferences around the world. And what was interesting was that this study started in, I think, 2018. And then because of COVID had to be paused, amongst other things. And then finally, all the research was reviewed and it became available at the beginning of 2025. And then it’s been out probably for about seven or eight months now. Stroke Etanercept Injection Research Findings and Controversies And what they found was that the, and they’re being a little bit provocative here calling it a miracle cure, but what they found was that a perispinal etanusept, the arthritis drug, ⁓ was not effective in treating people that were experiencing symptoms because of a stroke anymore. than the placebo. So what they found was that the people on the placebo who ⁓ received the placebo, 56 % of them had a positive result from the placebo as opposed to less than 56 % of people who were actually using the Etanusept. And the reason being, they say, is because the drug doesn’t have the capability of crossing the blood-brain barrier to get to where the ⁓ inflammation is and to actually ⁓ decrease the inflammation. In arthritis, for example, the inflammation is in the joints, which are not part of the brain. There is no blood-brain barrier or some barrier that stops the atanasip from going there. And therefore, when people get injected to experience relief from ⁓ the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, they do experience that relief sometimes almost immediately, et cetera. And ⁓ as a result of that, the guys published the study and basically concluded that it is not effective and more research needs to be done to understand why or why not it works for some people and why it doesn’t for others. And I’ve had a couple of kind of ideas since then. And I’ll stop sharing my screen now because we can go back to just you and I, Andrew. And I’ve had some ideas as to how do I then talk to people about that, right? So I know I’ve interviewed Andrew, five other people that I’ve interviewed at least who said they had a positive result. And I should tell people there’s people who had a positive result, right? And then there’s the other people on the other side of the spectrum, which are really hostile saying like, it’s snake oil. My idea is that even if you go there and you receive Etanercept and it works when it’s not meant to and it’s just a placebo working because you’ve got high expectations of it working. You need it to work. You’ve invested $30,000. You you’ve traveled half a way across the world. Even if it works and it didn’t cross your blood brain barrier, to me, that’s a tick, right? That’s like. It worked fantastic. People improve their function. They got their life back. The body is very powerful. It can achieve amazing things. Who cares how it did that? A B, your blood brain barrier might be compromised. So there is a thing called leaky gut. We’ve heard about leaky gut. It is a compromised gut barrier which allows toxins to escape the gut and get into the blood. and causes a lot of autoimmune conditions. The same thing is possible for the blood brain barrier. If you’ve got a really compromised blood brain barrier because you’ve had a stroke or you’ve had brain surgery or something like that, it’s possible. Andrew (15:47) we’ve had radiation therapy, which I have. Bill Gasiamis (15:50) or you’ve had radiation therapy because of previous medical conditions, et cetera, then there could be a more permeable blood brain barrier, which enables the Etanercept to actually penetrate it and get to the root cause of the stroke inflammation or the root location of the stroke inflammation. And therefore, some people through no… ⁓ you know, through no fault of their own, I either have a really healthy blood brain barrier and Etanercept can’t cross it or have a compromised blood brain barrier and Etanercept can cross it. And therefore they experience positive results. But the issue then is how do we know? How can we work that out for people, you know, before they go and drop 30 grand on a treatment that they may not get a result for. Now. That’s my thinking about it, right? But I still send people to you and I still send you these studies as they come up, just so that I can say, Andrew, I need your feedback. I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me something. Like, where do you stand on all of this? I’m going to keep sending people to you who reach out to me to speak to Andrew because they’re interested. So like, how does that conversation go in your head and then with the people that you connect with? Andrew (17:09) Okay, so having having been a teacher, career teacher, I’m really careful of what I advise people like I would be really careful what I advise my students. So I never say to people, yes, you’ve to do it because it worked for me. God, do do it, do drop it again. I never ever say that I tried to give them the balance for you. And and even though it worked for me, I make sure it’s I’m very clear that they understand that it worked for me, but it might not work for you. Conversations with Other Survivors So you’ve got to go like I did and don’t go with any expectations. Just go, just know that you’ve tried everything you can to help your recovery. That’s all. And so that’s how that conversation usually goes. They ask me lots of questions about what it feels like, what the place is like, what Dr. Tobinick was like. just all the sort of the mechanical questions around it. But generally, it’s, I don’t know whether I should go. And it’s also, I want to go, but my family don’t want to go. And I can’t go because they don’t support me, because they think it’s snake oil. Bill Gasiamis (18:18) Okay, that’s an interesting conversation. So I often try and advise stroke survivors to be careful who they share information with. Not saying that you shouldn’t share information with your loved ones and your family members after a stroke. What I’m saying is like, even in situations where things are not that critical, where you’re not talking about spending 30 grand, I’m just talking about people who have the experience sometimes Andrew where they say, oh, I wanna try this meditation thing, you know, and. somebody hasn’t meditated before, thinks it’s woo woo and says, don’t worry about that stuff. What do you wanna be? Like a hippie or something? There’s those types of people who hang out in our world who do intervene with things that we’re curious about and we wanna kind of shift away from perhaps old habits to new habits, especially around alcohol as well. I found that people would go, aren’t you gonna have one drink? Like what’s the point of going out if we can’t have a drink? It’s like, dude, like I’m a completely different version of myself. I’ve had a stroke, I can’t drink. But understanding how to deal with people like that is a bit of an issue. So then you’ve spoken to about 50 people who have either gone or not gone. Like have some people gone and contacted you and said it worked and some people gone and contacted you and said it hasn’t worked. Andrew (19:40) Yes. Yep. And I’ve. The contact normally starts to go quiet once they actually go, whether it works or doesn’t work. And I usually just get a quick message saying, hey, I went and it worked and that’s great. And, you know, have a good life. You know, I don’t want to keep bugging them. But the people that it didn’t work for have been pretty gutted. Bill Gasiamis (20:03) Right. Andrew (20:04) Because I’ve, you know, even though I’ve tried not to make it something they hang all their hopes on, you know, they still do to a certain extent. And so they come back pretty, not bitter or angry at me, just at the situation, that it didn’t work. And they don’t know where to turn next. Bill Gasiamis (20:22) So they might’ve had all their hopes kind of set on this working, all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, didn’t work and now they feel like maybe they’ve lost hope or they haven’t got another alternative or option. Andrew (20:35) Yeah, yeah. And what I’ve learned in the last 18 months is that your stroke recovery doesn’t stop. There’s no end date. So when you’re told in hospital that after three months that’s what you’ve got, no, no. doesn’t, like your brain is constantly evolving and working and learning and repending itself. If you want to work something and exercise something and rehab part of your body, eventually it’s going to improve. Even if it’s only by a little bit and it’s really slow, it’s going to improve. Bill Gasiamis (21:09) Yeah. So you’ve been 18 months down the track. One of the questions I got asked recently was, does the procedure need to be repeated every couple of years? Does it last? What have you found about how you have changed or experienced your body in the last 18 months? ⁓ Tell us first what you got back and how quickly and then what that led to, what you were able to achieve as a result of what you got back. Andrew (21:34) Yeah, okay. So, um, immediately the things that came back is is that my cognitive fatigue like just just lowered like straight away. Um, and I was when I had the shot, I was exhausted because they take it through a battery of tests. So I like was an hour and a half of tests. And so I was I was done. I was ready to go lie down. Um, And that just lifted like straight away and it didn’t come back. I still get cognitive fatigue now, but I really have to be doing stuff that that really taxes my brain to do it. And or I have to be really tired. But before I had the injection, I would get I would be on the verge of fatigue all the time. So it wouldn’t take much to push me over into it. So that was gone. I had a ⁓ really nasty cramp in my right calf that never went away. That went away. That literally just dialed down as I was sitting there after the shot. the emotional control also came back. Bill Gasiamis (22:42) Uh-huh. Andrew (22:43) which was good. Now, for me, I was, for the first shot, I was only in Florida for 24 hours. So we flew down from Memphis and I had the shot the next day and then we flew back that afternoon. So when we flew down, because of my cognitive fatigue and sensory overload, I had eye mask, had noise-canceling headphones, had like, lorazepam in my pocket. Like, you know, I had all the, you know, all this stuff to, you know, save my senses. When we flew back, I didn’t need any of it, and that was 24 hours later. So I just stood in the airport like any other traveler. And that was… Reflections on Stroke Etanercept Injection Treatment and Guilt Bill Gasiamis (23:26) Yeah. Andrew (23:28) That was the biggest sign that something profound had happened. Bill Gasiamis (23:33) Yeah. Andrew (23:34) The other thing was that my hand, my right hand went from feeling like it was sort of like moving in molasses really slow to loosening up and being more independent. And I found only a month ago that I was able to start to play scales on my clarinet again. So I can move my fingers independently. I could cover the holes with my clarinet here. Bill Gasiamis (23:52) Wow, man. Andrew (23:57) I can the holes in my fingers. It’s something that I haven’t been able to do since the stroke. To be able to play the thing, to be able to just play a scale, just says to me, at some point in the future, you’re gonna be able to play the thing again. Bill Gasiamis (24:11) So things are still improving. Your function is changing still. you, being able to play the clarinet, would you can attribute that to a tenor sept that long ago or just things getting better? Andrew (24:26) I think because it was if I come home and was able to play the clarinet then I would have a definite causality you know so I would rather say the definite yeah it was a tenor step that did it because before I went away I couldn’t even you know I couldn’t pick up things one more right hand so but because it’s been 18 months I think it’s because that that skill has come back Bill Gasiamis (24:50) Yeah, okay. What about work wise? Were you working or not working before the injection? Andrew (24:57) No, no. So I was able to go back to relief teaching. The classroom as a music teacher is ⁓ in a high school is too busy and there’s too many moving parts. So that’s not something I’ll be able to do again, at least not in the foreseeable future. And I don’t know if I want to now. Bill Gasiamis (25:11) Wow. Andrew (25:20) I have done some relief teaching. There are days where I’m in a school and I just feel that it’s a bit too much. And that could be because I had a bad night the night before or it was hot and I couldn’t sleep. And that wasn’t like that before the stroke. yeah, coming up with a new career now has been an interesting journey itself. Bill Gasiamis (25:41) Yeah. So there isn’t a need for another injection or anything like that. Nobody ever told you about another injection or what will happen in two years or anything like that. Andrew (25:51) No, If I can go there and get one, if I think it’s going to make even more improvement, because I had improvement from, you know, from the first. But yeah, there was no compelling sort of needs to go back. And I’m thinking that I probably would like maybe to have a second one, a second trip there and have. having the shot but ⁓ I don’t know I’ll see how my improvement goes. Bill Gasiamis (26:20) Yeah, okay. Andrew (26:22) It’s so hard to One of the things I did do, I had an MRI about two months ago. And it was an MRI to check the status of my tumor and to see where it was. And obviously they also had a look at the stroke site. And comparing the stroke site now to when it was taken when I had the stroke. there’s a day and night difference. Whereas I had a hole in my brain after the stroke, all I had was a little bit of glial, called glial scar tissue. So scar tissue of the brain cells, a little white line in my brain. ⁓ Bill Gasiamis (27:08) as opposed to a round circle of what appeared to be offline or dead brain cells. Yeah, which, you know, it sounds like to me, it’s like where the inflammation was, that area they usually call, they often call, sometimes called the penumbra, which is the area that’s able to be rehabilitated, which is around the site of the stroke, which is offline but not dead, which HBOT targets, the right kind of, Andrew (27:15) Yes. Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (27:38) hyperbaric oxygen therapy can target those as well and try and reduce them. So day and night, like a proper difference between one and the other. Andrew (27:47) Yeah, I was expecting to see when I saw the scan, know, where my brain tumor was and also the big hole and the hole was gone and there was just this like, this is a little, a little line there with scar tissue. Bill Gasiamis (28:01) Yeah, fabulous. How long has the brain tumor been there for? Andrew (28:05) 20 years. Bill Gasiamis (28:07) Okay, and what does it do just sort of sit around and ⁓ Andrew (28:10) Yeah, so ⁓ what happened is it just gradually grows bigger and bigger and bigger and then eventually if you don’t get it treated, it crushes your brain stem and that kills you. So I had mine irradiated 20 years ago and it’s got growing and it’s just started dying off and now it’s just like a… dead mess in there and they check every four years to make sure it hasn’t done anything naughty and It hasn’t so they actually said of this last scan look it hasn’t changed in the last 12 years, so no more scans Bill Gasiamis (28:41) I hear you, okay. So it’s benign now. Andrew (28:46) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (28:47) Yeah, okay. So you’ve through the rigor, mate. You’ve had an interesting neurological experience, Andrew (28:54) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, feels like my brain’s out to get me. Bill Gasiamis (29:00) Yeah. Well, seems like the interventions have been really helpful in prolonging your life and then your life experience, like how you go about life. So as far as you’re concerned, like it’s all it’s all. You know, it’s been a good outcome, both both interventions. Andrew (29:19) Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, my biggest challenge this year has actually not been the stroke or the brain tumor, but it’s been the medications for stroke to prevent another one. So my stroke was caused by an overactive adrenal or adrenal glands producing too much aldosterone. Bill Gasiamis (29:31) What man which man say you want? Andrew (29:43) And that was only diagnosed and found last year. So What was happening is that my body was? Was was keeping salt it was it was send my blood pressure sky-high and then crash it down And for 10 years we thought that was anxiety. But what it was was that because my blood pressure wasn’t consistently high, I could go to the doctors and I could be normal. And then my other doctors didn’t have high blood pressure. It was not consistent. So I was just treated for anxiety and given a sort of a low dose blood pressure medication. But actually what it was is both glands like over producing this hormone and that’s what gave me the stroke. So they’ve they’ve given me a hormone suppressant which helps, but they’ve been trying to. to juggle multiple types of blood pressure medication to also bring my blood pressure down to a consistent normal. And so up until about three weeks ago, my blood pressure was still all over the place. And they had me on a really nasty cocktail at one point this year where I literally could not function. I couldn’t even get up. It suppressed my whole system so much. that every time I stood my blood pressure would drop 50 points and I would almost pass out. So I was like a zombie. ⁓ It was just the combination of too many blood pressure medications at once. And finally, I’ve seen a different specialist and he changed my medication and I’ve just got one little pill at the minimum dose and it’s actually stabilized my blood pressure to normal. Bill Gasiamis (30:51) All right. Righto, that’s good. Andrew (31:18) So like when I took it today, was 122 over 72. So it hasn’t been like that for I don’t even know how long. Bill Gasiamis (31:25) Yeah. Fantastic, what kind of stroke did it cause? Andrew (31:31) are ischemic, so a clot. Bill Gasiamis (31:34) ⁓ huh, okay. Wow, man. What an interesting journey you’ve been on. And this insight into Etanercept and how and why it might work for some people and not for others is probably helpful for it again, for a whole bunch of people to hear and kind of get a better understanding about scientifically speaking, Etanercept is not a viable solution for people who have had stroke and there will be some people who will become all, what’s the word? Like they will, they’ll be all, this is snake oil stuff. And then there will be people who brag about it as being the best thing they’ve ever done, which seems to be kind of the camp that you’re in. I think, no, no, no, no. I mean, it’s one of the best things you’ve ever done with regards to your stroke recovery, right? Andrew (32:18) I don’t feel like complaining about it though. Yeah, yeah, and I found that when I got the results for the for the pesto test I really had to do a lot of soul searching because because I couldn’t explain to myself Why it seemed to have worked for me and yet the study was saying hey, doesn’t really have any effect and and I had to to Bill Gasiamis (32:36) Wow. Did you feel remorse or guilt about that? Wow, Wow. Andrew (32:47) Yes, very much. I felt like a fraud. Because why? I couldn’t explain how I had such a huge night and day difference. And that couldn’t be placebo and it’d be still working 18 months later. Bill Gasiamis (33:08) Yeah, I think our hunch about the blood brain barrier is where the research needs to go. And I don’t know how you investigate the blood brain barrier. But if you can go there and investigate the blood brain barrier and if you can understand who has a compromised blood brain barrier and therefore. Andrew (33:15) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (33:31) due to a compromised blood-barrier barrier, a candidate for a Etanercept I think that’s kind of where it needs to go. Because the biggest issue that people have with clinics who offer a Etanercept perispinally, like Dr. Tobinick’s, the biggest issue that people have that makes it hard for them to make a decision is will I be the right candidate? Will I be the one who will it work for? Or will I be the one that it doesn’t, you know? But I… I find it very fascinating that you would respond that way, that you would feel guilty and remorseful that it worked for you and the pesto child says it shouldn’t have. Andrew (34:10) I feel guilty that it worked for me and didn’t work for someone else. You know, as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s like survivor’s guilt in a way. Yeah, that’s that and that’s how I felt. so the way I’ve thought of it is, well, OK, if it was placebo, it worked for me. Bill Gasiamis (34:14) Yeah. just wishing for the best for everybody. Yeah, I can relate to that. Yeah. Andrew (34:37) like it just it worked for me whatever it was it worked for me so and that’s that’s that’s all I can all I can say but I think this blood brain theory is is a good one and I would like to I would like to research and understand what what makes the brain leaky like what what events can make your brain Bill Gasiamis (34:41) Yeah. Yeah. Andrew (35:00) ⁓ better suited to receiving Etanercept Like for me, probably the main cause could have been the fact that I had radiation on my brain years ago. Bill Gasiamis (35:05) Yeah. Andrew (35:13) Or it could be that I have a high blood pressure for 10 years. Or it could be I have my appendix out when I’m 17. But I would like to do some research into what it is, what factors make people more likely to have a leaky brain. Bill Gasiamis (35:17) Who knows? Yeah, I think that’s a great thing. I want to research that too, because I have known about it. I’ve understood it. I appreciated that I might be somebody who has had a leaky brain because of the strokes that I experienced, the brain surgery and all the stuff that I went through. And I know that if you restore the blood brain barrier, you can really decrease the fatigue that happens to people after a stroke. And you can make it impenetrable again to toxins. and heavy metals and all that kind of stuff, which is often the cause of real chronic neurological fatigue, even in people who haven’t had a stroke, who are, quote unquote, normal. So that’s fascinating. I really appreciate your continued willingness to have conversations about this topic and sharing your story more than once with me. And then also being being an ear to the people who are curious about whether or not they should go down this path and then kind of just like, you know, being honest about your story, sharing what happened to you, what you experienced and even your own reservations because I don’t think you have anything to, and you probably know this cognitively anyway, right? You don’t have anything to be guilty about or feel bad about or. anything like that. But I understand why emotionally you might go down that path because you’re a guy that cares deeply for other people. You appreciate how hard it is for people to go through stroke and you wish them the same solution or other solutions that you had so that we don’t have to suffer. I know exactly what’s behind it. Andrew (37:08) Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (37:12) Yeah. Well, hopefully this continues the conversations to give people more things to think about. Leave us a comment in the YouTube comments section. Reach out via email. Yeah, drop us a comment. Reach out to us and we’d be happy to continue the conversation, support you, guide you. Just being here and I don’t know, help you make a more informed decision. That’s all we can do. We’re not going to suggest. Andrew (37:35) Yeah, definitely. Bill Gasiamis (37:41) that you should or should not go and experience Perispinal Etanercept one way or another. Bill Gasiamis (37:46) Well, that was Andrew Stopps again. What a fascinating conversation. If today’s episode connected with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the YouTube comments, especially if you’ve looked into Etanercept Try it. I decided not to. Your experience can help someone else make a more informed decision. And if you found this helpful, please subscribe on YouTube and follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Reviews and comments genuinely help more. stroke survivors find these conversations. If you want to go deeper, you can grab my book at recoveryafterstroke.com slash book. And if you’d like to support the podcast and help keep it going, you can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash recovery after stroke. Thanks again for being here. You’re not alone in this recovery journey and I’ll see you in the next episode. The post Stroke etanercept injection 18 months on: Andrew's update after the PESTO trial appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.
This week we listen to an out of this world show from Jan. 25, 1969 featuring a young and still unknown Led Zeppelin rocking the Boston Tea Party. This show is amazing. I play howling versions of As Long As I Have You (with medleys) and How Many More Times (with medleys). Fantastic performance from the halls of legend.
Send us a textFor the final YMAAA episode of 2025, music photographer, podcaster, entrepreneur and record collector Scott Dudelson introduces Al to Dillard & Clark's 1968 debut album The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark. Scott talks about how he first encountered the album, why it had special significance for him during an important time in his life and why it continues to be a favorite album of his. He also discusses how bluegrass legend Doug Dillard and rock icon Gene Clark became a duo and how Bernie Leadon came to be an important contributor to their work. Scott also talks about his Legends podcast, his work as a music photographer and rebuilding his substantial record collection after losing his home in the Palisades Fire.You can check out Scott's interviews on his @alldayvinyl YouTube channel or at the home for his Legends podcast, https://musiclegendspodcast.com/.Scott mentioned his Instagram account, and you can follow him there at @alldayvinyl. He also has an IG account for his photography at @photos_by_the_dude.Be sure to sign up for the YMAAA Newsletter at youmealbum.ghost.io. The first five episodes of Bonus Tracks—YMAAA's subscriber-only podcast series—are now available at patreon.com/youmealbum. More monthly episodes and other good stuff are soon to come. Please consider subscribing! Your support will make it possible for Al to keep this podcast going.To keep up with You, Me and An Album, please give the show a follow on Instagram at @youmealbum1:15 Scott's introduction2:08 Scott explains why he picked this Dillard & Clark album for this episode3:40 Learning about Dillard & Clark helped both Scott and Al to better see the connections between country and rock5:24 Scott revisits his experience of buying The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark9:08 Scott recalls what impressed him about the album initially10:33 Scott talks about Bernie Leadon's role on the album13:10 Scott discusses some of the details regarding the album that he learned from interviewing Leadon17:21 Scott explains why this album resonates for him personally22:35 Scott spotlights the songs that stand out for him25:58 “Train Leaves Here This Morning” sent Al on a musical exploration27:44 "The Radio Song” reminded Scott and Al of other songs30:41 The Dillard & Clark album inspired Scott to explore other music33:35 Scott talks about starting All Day Vinyl and interviewing Leadon35:30 Scott discusses the process of rebuilding his record collection with help from donations39:44 Scott doesn't just listen to music on vinyl41:33 Scott mentions some interviews he has done for his Legends podcast43:02 Scott explains how he got started as a music photographerSupport the show
THE FANTASTIC POUR Brett welcomes the brilliant Andrew Leyland to the Fantasti-Lounge for a very special Christmas Eve end-of-year edition of the Fantastic Pour as we talk Spider-Man! We enjoy a Glenmorangie 12 year Scotch and read Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man #67. Join us in the Fantasti-Lounge as we enjoy the holiday season and discuss: Should Spider-Man have hung it up after issue #99? What is Chrimbo Limbo? Who makes up the best Dad Show team? And much, much more! Secret Pour-igins: Scotch Whiskey Cocktail: Scotch Ingredients Glenmorangie 12 year old A clean glass Whiskey Stones (Not Water!) Instructions Open the bottle of Glenmorangie Pour a couple fingers of Glenmorangie into the glass Drop the Whiskey Stones in (or have it neat) Drink it Comic: Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol.1 #67, Marvel Comics, 1982 Have a question or comment? E-MAIL: fwpodcasts@gmail.com You can find The Fantastic Pour on these platforms: Apple Podcasts Amazon Music Spotify The Fantastic Pour podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Fire & Water website: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Fire & Water Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Fire & Water on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fwpodcasts.bsky.social Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts
Find the 9 Points Rating system here: https://www.alostplot.com/9-points/ Find our review of Avatar: The Way of Water here: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/maverick51411/episodes/2022-12-29T20_39_12-08_00 In this episode, hosts Maverick and Avalon delve into the third installment of the Avatar series, Fire and Ash. They discuss their initial impressions, character developments, and the overarching themes of grief, family, and environmentalism. The conversation highlights the film's strengths and weaknesses, particularly in storytelling and character arcs, while also addressing the portrayal of villains and the visual spectacle that James Cameron is known for. They discuss the significance of family loyalty, environmentalism, and the complexities of characters like Spider, who struggles with identity and consistency. The conversation highlights the film's exploration of faith and the overarching themes of human greed versus nature, while also critiquing character arcs and emotional engagement.----------Highlights:0:00 ‘Avatar: Fire & Ash' Review10:46 Opening Scene16:21 Jake Sully27:53 Miles Quaritch & Other Villains37:57 Tension & Stakes43:49 Themes & Messages48:30 Miles 'Spider' Socorro55:33 Neytiri59:26 Lo'ak1:04:28 Kiri1:09:18 Lasting Impact#avatar #fireandash #jakesully #milesquaritch #spider #neytiri #loak #kiri #tuk #film #filmreview #pandora #alostplot #avatarfireandash #fantasy
Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe world is moving away from wind and solar, coal demand is up, China was never going along with the green new scam. Trump is moving carefully through the [CB] minefield economy. Gold is on the move. Trump is moving the country out of the old system. The [DS] try to get Trump with the Epstein hoax, now that the information dropped the people can now see what the [DS] was planning. Ship building is coming back to the US. Trump signs the NDAA that has additional protections for the election. Every step of the way Trump is countering the [DS] cheating system. Economy https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2003156645388406992?s=20 consumption, or 4.95 billion tonnes. By comparison, US coal demand stands at 410 million tonnes, just ~5% of the world's total. Meanwhile, the IEA projects a gradual decline in demand over the next 5 years, to ~8.60 billion tonnes by 2030. However, past forecasts of peak coal demand have repeatedly proven wrong, as consumption continues to rise. Coal remains in high demand 23 US States Are At High Risk Of (Or In) Recession Currently In 2025, states responsible for about a third of U.S. GDP are in recession, or face high recession risk. Another third are expanding, including Florida and Utah, based on payrolls, employment, and other key economic data. This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows recession risk by state in 2025, based on analysis from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. In Recession/High Risk Treading Water Expanding State/District Business Cycle Status Share of U.S. GDP (%) Georgia In Recession/High Risk 3.03 Montana In Recession/High Risk 0.25 Wyoming In Recession/High Risk 0.18 Michigan In Recession/High Risk 2.44 Massachusetts In Recession/High Risk 2.73 Mississippi In Recession/High Risk 0.53 Minnesota In Recession/High Risk 1.70 Kansas In Recession/High Risk 0.80 Rhode Island In Recession/High Risk 0.28 Delaware In Recession/High Risk 0.34 Washington In Recession/High Risk 3.02 Illinois In Recession/High Risk 3.85 West Virginia In Recession/High Risk 0.36 New Hampshire In Recession/High Risk 0.42 Maryland In Recession/High Risk 1.86 Virginia In Recession/High Risk 2.66 South Dakota In Recession/High Risk 0.25 Connecticut In Recession/High Risk 1.27 Oregon In Recession/High Risk 1.14 Iowa In Recession/High Risk 0.86 New Jersey In Recession/High Risk 2.93 Maine In Recession/High Risk 0.33 District of Columbia In Recession/High Risk 0.64 Missouri Treading Water 1.54 Ohio Treading Water 3.14 Hawaii Treading Water 0.39 Arkansas Treading Water 0.65 New Mexico Treading Water 0.49 Tennessee Treading Water 1.87 New York Treading Water 7.92 Vermont Treading Water 0.16 Alaska Treading Water 0.24 Colorado Treading Water 1.92 California Treading Water 14.50 Nevada Treading Water 0.86 South Carolina Expanding 1.18 Texas Expanding 9.41 Oklahoma Expanding 0.92 Idaho Expanding 0.43 Kentucky Expanding 0.99 Alabama Expanding 1.10 Indiana Expanding 1.81 Nebraska Expanding 0.63 North Carolina Expanding 2.86 Louisiana Expanding 1.11 Florida Expanding 5.78 North Dakota Expanding 0.26 Pennsylvania Expanding 3.54 Arizona Expanding 1.88 Wisconsin Expanding 1.53 Utah Expanding 1.02 Currently, many coastal, Northeastern states are facing some of the worst economic conditions. In Maine, for instance, year-over-year GDP growth is just 0.8% as of Q2 2025, compared to the U.S. average of 2.1%. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C.'s unemployment rate was 6.4% in July, significantly higher than the 4.6% U.S. average given sweeping federal cuts. According to Zandi's analysis, New York and California are “Treading Water”, together responsible for driving over 22% of U.S. GDP. In comparison, Texas, which fuels 9.4% of U.S. economic growth is expanding. Unemployment rates of 4.0% in July remain below the U.S. average. Additionally, the Texas economy is growing faster than the nation, while income growth rose 6.3% annually as of Q2 2025, outpacing the national average. Source: zerohedge.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/unseen1_unseen/status/2003254895143461092?s=20 caused by falling home prices while increasing the affordability of homes. Home builders aren’t going to build more homes if they are losing money. Trump can’t force them to build homes. This is where thinking outside the box comes in play and things like the 50 year mortgage, interest rate cuts, lower down-payments, salt taxes etc get proposed. With deportations and the decline of the boomer generation from old age, supply will be increasing. Prices will come down. The trick is not to allow them to go into a free fall and keep demand high enough to soak up a great deal of that supply. Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff rebate checks depend on Congress President Donald Trump needs Congress to take action to make good on a proposal to send some Americans $2,000 tariff rebate checks next year. Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett said the U.S. House and Senate will need to take up the matter. “I would expect that in the new year, the president will bring forth a proposal to Congress to make that happen,” Hassett said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. Details about Trump’s tariff rebate proposal remain sparse. Trump has said he wants to issue the rebate checks and use the rest of the tariff revenue to pay down the nation’s $38 trillion debt, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet determined whether he has the authority to impose tariffs. Source: thecentersquare.com US Industrial Production Rises At Strongest Annual Rate Since Apr 2022 Following the much-stronger-than-expected GDP print, US Industrial Production also surprised to the upside, rising 0.2% MoM in November and pulling the YoY change up to 2.52% – the strongest annual growth since April 2022… Source: zerohedge.com Trump Boom: U.S. Economy Grows 4.3%, Fastest in Two Years, Smashing Expectations The U.S. economy grew this summer at the fastest pace in two years, far outpacing economists' forecasts. The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the government's official economic scorecard—rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted 4.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter. The report on the July through September period was delayed due to the shutdown. Consumer spending grew much faster than expected, expanding at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3.5 percent. That's up from 2.5 percent in the second quarter and above the 2.7 percent expected. Source: breitbart.com FULL steam ahead — “You haven't seen anything yet!” Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2003149733158588868?s=20 This list is just the table setting for the coming booming economy. Wait till Trump transforms the entire fiat world debt system. A Golden Age for the world approaches. https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2003285919668011147?s=20 good news, the Market went up. Nowadays, when there is good news, the Market goes down, because everybody thinks that Interest Rates will be immediately lifted to take care of “potential” Inflation. That means that, essentially, we can never have a Great Market again, those Markets from the time when our Nation was building up, and becoming great. Strong Markets, even phenomenal Markets, don't cause Inflation, stupidity does! I want my new Fed Chairman to lower Interest Rates if the Market is doing well, not destroy the Market for no reason whatsoever. I want to have a Market the likes of which we haven't had in many decades, a Market that goes up on good news, and down on bad news, the way it should be, and the way it was. Inflation will take care of itself and, if it doesn't, we can always raise Rates at the appropriate time — But the appropriate time is not to kill Rallies, which could lift our Nation by 10, 15, and even 20 GDP points in a year — and maybe even more than that! A Nation can never be Economically GREAT if “eggheads” are allowed to do everything within their power to destroy the upward slope. We are going to be encouraging the Good Market to get better, rather than make it impossible for it to do so. We are going to see numbers that are far more natural, and far better, than they have ever been before. We are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! The United States should be rewarded for SUCCESS, not brought down by it. Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed Chairman! Political/Rights https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2003309528805470611?s=20 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/2003266300832038926?s=20 https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2003271819705389139?s=20 interfere with immigration operations. https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2003378383862817224?s=20 https://twitter.com/BillMelugin_/status/2002573015142576350?s=20 https://twitter.com/TriciaOhio/status/2002801058897142114?s=20 This was a targeted operation to arrest Fernandez Flores, a criminal illegal alien from Honduras with a criminal conviction for making a false police report. Flores entered the United States illegally at unknown date and location without inspection by an immigration officer. He will remain in ICE custody pending further immigration proceedings. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will find you, we will arrest you, and you will not return. https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/2003130997198713329?s=20https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2003214521419333695?s=20 https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2003214521419333695?s=20 WATCH: Justice Department Releases Shocking Recreation Video of Jeffrey Epstein Trying to Kill Himself The Justice Department on Monday released recreation video of Jeffrey Epstein inside of his jail cell trying to kill himself. The video – which was revealed to be computer-generated – is timestamped August 10, 2019 at 4:29 am ET – Epstein was found dead at 6:30 am ET on August 10, 2019. Prosecutors previously said that the two CCTV cameras positioned outside of Epstein's cell had malfunctioned. The 10-second recreation video shows Epstein sitting on the floor of his cell attempting to kill himself. WATCH: Source: thegatwaypundit.com https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003476301970133417?s=20 “a circular line of erythema at the base of the neck” along with other marks of friction and bruising on his knee. Epstein told prison staff he didn't remember what happened but was afraid to return to the Special Housing Unit, saying it was “where he had gotten marks on his neck and he does not know why it happened.” He said he had only slept 30 minutes a night for five days due to noise and stress. His cellmate, ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione, had reportedly been harassing him, and Epstein claimed “he tried to kill me.” Staff noted Tartaglione had been aggressive and was seen mocking Epstein with a string around his neck. Despite these signs, the incident was labeled a “possible suicide attempt.” https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003292687835787393?s=20 were actively tracking and attempting to contact 10 individuals connected to Epstein’s crimes. The email references attempts to contact Brunel (modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who later died in prison), Maxwell (Ghislaine, now serving 20 years), and mentions “Ohio contacting Wexner.” Les Wexner is the billionaire L Brands founder who gave Epstein his $77 million NYC mansion and served as his primary financial benefactor for years. A separate confidential document from law firm Debevoise & Plimpton lists SDNY matters they appeared in, including one entry: “Wexner: Epstein investigation.” 10 co-conspirators. Only Maxwell was ever charged. The names behind those black boxes are the real story here. https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/2003358231780032675?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003480729624412240?s=20 and his residence as Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Profession listed: “Manager.” It's part of a trove of thousands of Epstein-related files released overnight. https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003436034709995730?s=20 from Epstein's properties – computers, hard drives, disks, the digital nervous system of the operation. And they can't get it. At one point, frustration boils over into honesty: “The FBI is completely fucking us on this.” That's not a tweet. That's an internal DOJ message. Translation: the prosecutors responsible for bringing cases did not have a clear, reliable accounting of the evidence in the FBI's possession. Not what was seized. Not what was imaged. Not what was searchable. Not what was missing. This isn't incompetence in a vacuum. It's structural. Evidence control is power. Whoever controls the data controls the pace, the scope, and the fallout. And remember: Epstein died before trial. Maxwell was prosecuted narrowly. No broader conspiracy case ever materialized. Prediction: this is why. Not because the evidence didn't exist- but because it never cohered into something prosecutors could safely touch without detonating their own case. The scandal isn't just who was on the tapes. It's that even the feds couldn't tell you where the tapes went. That's not a cover-up movie plot. That's a system quietly eating itself. https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/2003457025695719784?s=20 and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 Election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.” New: More Epstein Files Drop, and Donald Trump Appears to Be the Star This Time Around So, what incriminating evidence against President Trump is to be found in this latest drop? Apparently, an email from January 2020 in which a federal prosecutor from New York – of course – to an “undisclosed person” claiming Trump had flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plan at least eight times during the 1990s, and one time there was a 20-year-old woman on the flight. Here’s more: The email, which was sent in January 2020 from a federal prosecutor in New York to an undisclosed person, says, “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case.” This big revelation is that Trump traveled a few more times than we previously knew, although this was during a time period that the president has already acknowledged having had an association with Epstein. Note the timing of the email – January 2020 is when the presidential election would be kicking into full swing. This anonymous federal prosecutor clearly thought they had a gotcha moment, but there’s a pesky little detail that puts things in perspective: “[Trump] is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.” Source: redstate.com The specific document you’re referring to appears to be the complaint filed in the 2020 civil lawsuit Doe v. Indyke et al. (Case No. 1:20-cv-00484, S.D.N.Y.), which was part of the recently released Epstein files by the U.S. Department of Justice. This lawsuit was brought by an anonymous plaintiff (“Jane Doe”) against the executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate (Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn) and Ghislaine Maxwell, seeking compensation for alleged sexual abuse and trafficking by Epstein.How Trump’s Name Appears in the DocumentOn page 4 of the complaint, the plaintiff alleges that during one of her encounters with Epstein (around the 1990s), he took her to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when she was 14 years old. Epstein reportedly introduced her to Donald Trump (then the owner of Mar-a-Lago), elbowed him playfully, and asked, referring to the girl, “This is a good one, right?” Trump is described as smiling and nodding in agreement, after which they both chuckled. The plaintiff states she felt uncomfortable but was too young to understand why at the time. The document does not accuse Trump of any criminal wrongdoing or involvement in Epstein’s abuse; it frames this as part of the broader context of her grooming and exploitation by Epstein.How the Name Got Into the DocumentTrump’s name was included as part of the plaintiff’s personal allegations detailing her experiences with Epstein. The complaint is a legal filing where the victim recounts specific incidents to support her claims against Epstein’s estate and associates. It reflects her firsthand account, not a court-verified fact or evidence from other sources. There is no mention of independent corroboration (e.g., witnesses, photos, or records) in the filing itself, and it has not been adjudicated in court as true.Source of the AllegationThe source is the anonymous plaintiff (“Jane Doe”), who claims to be a victim of Epstein’s abuse starting from age 13 or 14. She was reportedly recruited at a summer camp in Michigan and alleges ongoing grooming and assaults by Epstein over several years. This Doe is distinct from other known accusers like Virginia Giuffre, though a similar incident (Epstein introducing a 14-year-old to Trump at Mar-a-Lago without the “good one” comment) was testified to by another accuser (“Jane”) during Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 criminal trial. https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2003236602374713557?s=20 DOGE Geopolitical https://twitter.com/BreannaMorello/status/2003196698974191914?s=20 that are protected under the Constitution. Under D.C. law, anyone wishing to own a firearm must register it with the MPD. However, the D.C. Code imposes a sweeping ban on the registration—and thus the legal possession—of a wide range of firearms. This broad prohibition, the Justice Department argues, infringes on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens who seek to keep and bear commonly owned firearms for lawful purposes. Trump's DOJ Sues Washington, D.C. Police Department Over Unconstitutional Ban on Semi-Automatic Firearms The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department for enforcing a ban on semi-automatic firearms in violation of the Second Amendment. The lawsuit alleges that D.C.'s gun laws require registration of all firearms with the MPD; however, the D.C. Code imposes a sweeping ban on numerous protected weapons, making it legally impossible for residents to own them for self-defense or other lawful purposes. The DOJ said in a press release announcing the lawsuit: “MPD's current pattern and practice of refusing to register protected firearms is forcing residents to sue to protect their rights and to risk facing wrongful arrest for lawfully possessing protected firearms.” “Today's action from the Department of Justice's new Second Amendment Section underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. Bondi continued, “Washington, DC's ban on some of America's most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment — living in our nation's capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” Echoing this sentiment, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division added, “This Civil Rights Division will defend American citizens from unconstitutional restrictions of commonly used firearms, in violation of their Second Amendment rights. The newly established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to ensure that the very rights D.C. resident Mr. Heller secured 17 years ago are enforced today — and that all law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes may do so.” The case draws directly from the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to own semi-automatic weapons in their homes for self-defense. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2003192220753723840?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2003238094057955337?s=20 War/Peace https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2003334956479558072?s=20 there will be no escalation into broader conflict, and the decision has already been made. However, precision air strikes on cartel assets seems like a probable outcome. Trump is neutralizing Deep State assets around the globe, and South/Central American drug cartels are assets of the Deep State. They are transnational criminal organizations responsible for the drug, weapon, and human trafficking of the Western hemisphere, and their racket feeds the Deep State machine. My guess is, that cartel drug factories and assets are going to get smoked by the US MIL via precision air strikes, and the other powerful leaders of the world have already agreed to some sort of deal with Trump and no one will interfere. Just like Iran and Syria. I think most of the leaders/nations of the world agree with Trump that these transnational criminal organizations must be eradicated, and stability must be brought to the world. President Unveils ‘Trump Class’ Of Warships, Huntington Ingalls Shares Jump build two new “Trump-class” battleships, to acquire 20-25 of these ships in the coming years. In his address, the President noted these 30,000-40,000 ton ships will carry a large quantity of missiles, including hypersonic missiles, and will also be outfitted with electromagnetic rail guns and directed energy lasers. Trump-class battleships will also carry nuclear-armed sea launched cruise missiles (currently under development) adding an additional element of nuclear deterrence to the Navy. Trump-class destroyers appear to be designed as the center of enhanced command and control networks at sea, as the Navy looks to field more autonomous assets and traditional vessels in the coming years. The first “Trump-class” battleship will be named USS Defiant, and it will be even longer than the Iowa-class battleships of the World War II era. However, at 35,000 tons, it will only weigh about half as much, and have a smaller crew of between 650 and 850 sailors; the Iowa had some 2,700 sailors. The new ships — which are being called “guided missile battleships” — are part of larger vision for a “Golden Fleet.” The Navy has rolled out a website to promote that concept. Sources tell AP that construction of the Defiant is expected to start in the early 2030’s, with another 19 to 24 Trump-class ships to follow. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2003231263520379120?s=20 that kind of money, they HAVE to build quickly!” “We want the dividends to go into the creation of production facilities. We’ll be talking about CapEx, dividends and the pay.” “Also, buybacks…they want to buy back their stock. I want them to put their money in plants and equipment! So they can build these planes FAST, like, IMMEDIATELY!” Medical/False Flags https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2003224842078675311?s=20 of American institutions or threats to our food supply, economy, or public safety. Protecting the homeland means vigilance: every time, no exceptions. https://twitter.com/ThomasMoreSoc/status/2003262595566850541?s=20 precedent-setting victory, a federal court has permanently blocked California AG Rob Bonta and the CA Dept. of Education from forcing teachers to lie to parents about their own children’s secret gender transitions—declaring parents have a constitutional right to know and teachers have a constitutional right to share the truth. [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2003205278796501397?s=20 larger scale. Don't forget that the Malthusians are antihuman and that they believe that 7 out of every 8 human lives on the planet must be terminated in order to save the world. Nearly 100 Minnesota Mayors Send Panicked Letter to Lawmakers Complaining About Fraud Scandal and the Leadership of Tim Walz Almost 100 mayors in the state of Minnesota have sent a letter to state lawmakers complaining about the fraud scandal and how it is going to impact the communities they serve. They are clearly not happy with the leadership of Governor Tim Walz and his connections to the fraud scandal that has rocked the state in recent weeks. The scandal is still unfolding and it's unclear what the final tally will be, but it's looking like something in the tens of billions. FOX News reports: You can see the full letter here. These mayors should have demanded that Tim Walz resign. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2002771316345327905?s=20 Our crooked politicians have set up the biggest money laundering operation in the world and that 38 trillion in debt is almost all tied to fraud. this is the tip of the iceberg. Buckle up, its all being exposed. Your harder earned money was used to support a criminal syndicate. President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/DcLidstone/status/2003338615917806050?s=20 John Brennan Lawyers Confirm Their Client is a “Target” of a Grand Jury Investigation Lawfare lawyer Kenneth Wainstein representing former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed in a proactive litigation letter to Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, their client is a “target” of a grand jury investigation. The word “target” is important here, because the letter specifically outlines how Brennan has received subpoenas for documents and information surrounding his construct of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. The letter notes that prosecutors from the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, have advised Mr. Brennan that he is “a target” of a grand jury investigation. [SOURCE] Pay attention to the footnotes being cited by Brennan's lawyers as they begin to pull in some of the commentary by voices who have publicly given opinion about the overall Trump targeting operation. Mike Davis name appears frequently in this letter, as the Brennan defense team begins to frame the conspiratorial nature of some claims against their client. In essence, the Brennan legal team are attempting to refute the evidence by pointing to the blanket of some crazy commentary that covers it. This is exactly what I have been cautioning about {SEE HERE}. Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/2003448097930662069?s=20 Cannon's courtroom. FANTASTIC. https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2003133420021424297?s=20 Thune objected the president would be able to adjourn Congress for ten days and get his full team on the field. https://twitter.com/DavidShafer/status/2002953961595449763?s=20 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Contains Hidden Election Integrity Gem – Could Have Huge Implications for Voting Machines With the National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump on December 18th, 2025, a little-known section was snuck into the 3000+ page bill: Section 6805. Requiring Penetration Testing As Part Of The Testing And Certification of Voting Systems. This section amends the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by adding a “Required Penetration Testing” section that “provides for the conduct of penetration testing as part of the testing, certification, decertification, and recertification of voting system hardware and software” by an accredited laboratory. The amendment now requires the penetration testing as a condition of certification from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and allows consultation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology or any other federal agency on “lab selection criteria” and “other aspects of the program.” While this is still short of a legitimate attempt at ensuring election integrity, it is an effort toward scrutinizing the voting systems by finally requiring cybersecurity experts to do what Clay Parikh was restricted from doing during his time as a VSTL contractor. Hand-marked paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level, is being utilized in Dallas County, TX for the 2026 midterm primaries, and is still the ultimate goal of the election integrity community to ensure free and fair elections in the United States. Source: thegatewaypundit.com Penetration testing, often abbreviated as “pen testing,” is a cybersecurity practice where authorized experts simulate real-world cyberattacks on a computer system, network, or application to identify and exploit vulnerabilities before malicious actors can do so. The goal is to uncover weaknesses in security measures, such as software flaws, misconfigurations, or inadequate defenses, and provide recommendations for remediation. It typically involves several stages: Planning and reconnaissance: Gathering information about the target system. Scanning: Using tools to probe for potential entry points. Gaining access: Attempting to exploit vulnerabilities to breach the system. Maintaining access: Testing how long access can be sustained without detection. Analysis and reporting: Documenting findings, risks, and fixes. In the context of Section 6805 of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which incorporates provisions from the SECURE IT Act (H.R. 6315), penetration testing is mandated as part of the testing, certification, decertification, and recertification process for voting system hardware and software. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) must implement this requirement within 180 days of enactment, with accreditation of testing entities handled through recommendations from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This ensures that voting systems used in federal elections undergo rigorous cybersecurity assessments to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities, enhancing election security Poll: Trump's Approval Rating Lands at 50 Percent, 9 Points Above Water President Donald Trump enjoys a 50 percent approval rating, with a net approval rating of plus 9 points, according to the latest polling from InsiderAdvantage. Source: breitbart.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");
Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger Picture The [CB] is losing control of the economy, they wanted a crash instead Trump has turned it around and the economy is growing very quickly. The D’s are trying to convince the people that the economy is worse than what Trump is letting on, this will fail.Watch gold, silver and Bitcoin. The [DS] tried to gain control the military by having the seditious 6 tell the military not to obey, Trump gives them a dividend check to show he cares about them. The Epstein files were released, it all points to the Clinton’s and the D’s. The entire plan backfired on the [DS], boomerang. Every step of the way they are feeling the pain. The [DS] wants war and Trump is fighting against those countries who are suppose to be our allies. He will get peace in the end. Economy (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent BODIES Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren with a Devastating Reminder After She Claims Trump is Setting the Stage for the Next Economic Crash Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren (D-MA) made a poor decision trying to school Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this week, and it spectacularly backfired. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/2000915011154112623?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2000915011154112623%7Ctwgr%5E4c8d9bec902c32b0cd01ee05619255f6315a3493%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Ftreasury-secretary-scott-bessent-bodies-elizabeth-pocahontas-warren%2F substantial increase in private credit which is outside of the regulated banking system — that tells me that the regulated system is too constrained.” https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/2001375798947885283?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2001375798947885283%7Ctwgr%5E4c8d9bec902c32b0cd01ee05619255f6315a3493%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Ftreasury-secretary-scott-bessent-bodies-elizabeth-pocahontas-warren%2F https://twitter.com/SecScottBessent/status/2002138930410324028?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002138930410324028%7Ctwgr%5E4c8d9bec902c32b0cd01ee05619255f6315a3493%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Ftreasury-secretary-scott-bessent-bodies-elizabeth-pocahontas-warren%2F Administration. Over-regulation is not the solution to what ails the American banking system. Rigorous, responsible supervision is. The initial report on the 2023 debacle by former Vice Chairman for Supervision, Michael Barr, was an exercise in obfuscation and sophistry. The American people deserve supervisors who are not asleep at the wheel, and the incoming Chairman of the Federal Reserve should undertake a thorough investigation of the systemic and oversight failures that led to that disaster. Source: thegaetwaypundit.com Trump announces that they've sold $1.3 BILLION worth of Gold Cards within Days Political/Rights https://twitter.com/RepJamesComer/status/2002011743254380602?s=20 More than a dozen politically exposed people and government officials’ names appear in the hundreds of thousands of pages of Jeffrey Epstein files made public Friday, sources said. And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ discovered more than 1,200 victims and their families during the exhaustive review, explaining the process behind determining which files could be released in a letter to Congress exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital. https://twitter.com/Badhombre/status/2002388917618610413?s=20 home in New York to solicit money for her campaign and the DCCC. FBI was warned that Jeffrey Epstein was into child porn — but ignored it for 10 years, docs show A former employee of late sex predator Jeffrey Epstein alerted the FBI that he was interested in “child pornography” and that he threatened to “burn her house down” decades before Epstein became an international fixation — but feds apparently did nothing. Source: nypost.com If there was every anything about Trump, it would have been released before he reached the bottom of the escalator in 2015, the Comey FBI would have leaked it, and the Dems would have brought it up at some point while Biden was in office. But none of that happened. Why? Because Epstein leads to the Dems, and people like myself have been trying to warn the world about it for 10+ years. https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2002408563193368834?s=20 and it worked brilliantly. Could you imagine if in Trump's first term he released all this stuff about Epstein? The public would not have believed it, and the Dems/MSM would have claimed it was all politically motivated and fabricated by Trump. The only way this Epstein disclosure was going to work, was to get the public to beg for it. So that's what Trump did. https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/2002450017647301084?s=20 https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2002530633394934144?s=20 partner with Wolfe via the TerraMar project, which is also connected to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. What is Nathan Wolfe known for? Searching for bat coronaviruses in Ukraine via USAID Project PREDICT, via his biolab company, Metabiota, which was funded via Rosemont Seneca, which is partially owned by Hunter Biden. Russia accused Wolfe and his biolab company of creating genome-specific biological weapons in Ukraine. This situation has been addressed by RFK Jr. and Tulsi multiple times, and has been a major topic at the UN for over 3 years now. So Epstein had an interest in eugenics and he had financial/social connections to virologists who were making genome-specific biological weapons via USAID grants in Ukraine. Nathan Wolfe even directly thanked Epstein in his 2011 book “The Viral Storm: The Dawn of the New Pandemic Age” where Wolfe predicted the COVID pandemic 8 years before it happened… So what am I getting at? I think Epstein had plans to engage in ethnic cleansing/population control/genocide via biological weapon, and I think he had something to do with Covid. Epstein is at the epicenter of the Deep State empire. He was essentially a real life James Bond villain. The timing could not be worse. He and Hillary are in the middle of trying to fight subpoenas to testify in person to the House Oversight Committee on the Epstein matter and what they might know. They want to submit sworn statements. Republican Committee Chair James Comer (KY-1) wants to be able to question and cross-examine them in person. DOGE Geopolitical U.S. Snatches Venezuela Oil Tanker in Dark‑Hour Strike on Narco‑Terror Funding In a stealth operation carried out before dawn on Dec. 20, the U.S. Coast Guard—working alongside the Department of War—seized an oil tanker last seen in the terrorist state of Venezuela. The United States accused the ship's operators of moving sanctioned crude to fuel narco‑terror activity. Officials issued a stark warning to traffickers: “We will find you, and we will stop you. https://twitter.com/Sec_Noem/status/2002481990755627050?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002481990755627050%7Ctwgr%5E0acb5b51ea0ddfb03f7a0e25a375c9245159ce68%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html2002481990755627050 https://twitter.com/PeteHegseth/status/2002504193924342003?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002504193924342003%7Ctwgr%5E1410e2476c70f24b31810862ee2f8e034c77bc3e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html2002504193924342003 conduct maritime interdiction operations — through OPERATION SOUTHERN SPEAR — to dismantle illicit criminal networks. Violence, drugs, and chaos will not control the Western Hemisphere. Source: breitbart.com U.S. imposes sanctions on family and associates of Venezuela’s Maduro and his wife The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on family members and associates of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, as Washington ratchets up pressure on the Venezuelan president. The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that it had imposed sanctions on seven people it said were tied to Maduro and his wife. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused them of “propping up Nicolás Maduro’s rogue narcostate.” “ Source: cbc.ca War/Peace Zelenskyy Announces Eastern Ukraine Citizens Will Not Be Allowed to Vote in Elections Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has agreed to hold elections if there is a ceasefire. However, eastern Ukraine citizens, those currently living in the Donbas region, who are supportive of Russia, will not be permitted to vote. This creates a rather bizarre official hypocrisy within the Zelenskyy regime. The official position of Zelenskyy is that Eastern Ukraine will never be accepted as a part of the Russian federation. Zelenskyy has recently noted, with EU leadership support, that his government will never recognize Eastern Ukraine as part of the Russian federation. However, this same region, approximately 20% of Ukraine, will not be permitted to participate in his controlled election. Essentially, any Ukraine resident who does not support Zelenskyy will not be permitted to vote in any election, if any election is ever permitted. Additionally, Zelenskyy notes that “there is the practice of voting abroad,” however, any region not controlled by Zelenskyy cannot submit votes. Source: zerohedge.com A Lie And Propaganda’: Gabbard Fact-Checks Reuters’ Russia Scaremongering In Real Time Reuters posted an anonymously-sourced story pushing the idea that Russia is bent on reconstituting the Soviet Union. Before the metaphorical ink had dried, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pounced, condemning the story as “a lie and propaganda” on behalf of “warmongers” seeking to derail President Trump’s drive to end the long and bloody Ukraine war. Reuters vaguely attributed the purported US intelligence conclusions about Russia to “six sources familiar with US intelligence.” https://twitter.com/DNIGabbard/status/2002484806978834862?s=20 narrative to block President Trump's peace effort, and fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia. The truth is the US intelligence community has briefed policymakers, including the Democrat HPSCI member quoted by Reuters, that US Intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO. It also assesses that, as the last few years have shown, Russia's battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe. https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/2002503405156151648?s=20 invade/conquer Europe (in order to gin up support for their pro-war policies). The truth is that ‘US intelligence' assesses that Russia does not even have the capability to conquer and occupy Ukraine, what to speak of ‘invading and occupying' Europe. Source: zerohedge.com WATCH: US CENTCOM Releases Footage from Operation Hawkeye Strikes Against 70+ ISIS Targets US Central Command released footage from Operation Hawkeye strikes against ISIS militants and facilities on Friday night. “Tonight, U.S. and Jordanian forces struck 70+ ISIS targets in Syria with 100+ precision munitions. Peace through strength,” CENTCOM said on X. This is one of 10 operations conducted in Syria and Iraq since the December 13 ambush in Syria, which left multiple American service members injured and two soldiers and a civilian interpreter killed. Twenty-three terrorist operatives have been killed or detained, according to CENTCOM. “We will continue to relentlessly pursue terrorists who seek to harm Americans and our partners across the region,” CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper said. TAMPA, Fla.- Following the attack on U.S. and partner forces last Saturday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commenced Operation Hawkeye Strike at 4 pm ET against ISIS in Syria, Dec. 19, at the Commander in Chief's direction. Source: thegatewaypundit.com of Syria, led by a man who is working very hard to bring Greatness back to Syria, and is fully in support. All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned — YOU WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE IF YOU, IN ANY WAY, ATTACK OR THREATEN THE U.S.A. DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Medical/False Flags [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/2002717078722052256?s=20 reclassify serious crimes as less severe “intermediate offenses” that are not publicly reported. https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/2002421989886075083?s=20 BREAKING: HUD Sec. Scott Turner CONFIRMS major investigation into Boston for anti-white public housing discrimination“They were using discriminatory housing policies in their city! We found a quote on their website that said they will integrate ‘racial equity at every level of city government.'”“They put race above reality. They put race above merit and need. Our job at HUD is to enforce and uphold the fair housing – and they were evading and encouraging landlords and property owners to evade the Fair Housing Act!”“They have been put on NOTICE. We uphold and enforce this law.” https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2002091915819253766?s=20 weaponized against Minnesota!” GOOD. IT’S CALLED ACCOUNTABILITY, TIM. “They’re threatening us with this. And this is what happens when you have a floundering presidency, and it is about those ballrooms and everything else. Now we’re back on transgender folks. And these are healthcare providers providing the best guidance to parents and children to get their care.” “It’s on every front! It’s CDLs, it’s transportation money, it’s money across the board that they have weaponized!” He should be worried. https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/2002596210620969230?s=20 https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/2002531244131991931?s=20 https://twitter.com/cb_doge/status/2001646253655097726?s=20 https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2002203857955549464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002203857955549464%7Ctwgr%5E7d1378774cdcbdfe43552d1c5b5ef213bd4f721f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html2002203857955549464 President Trump's Plan Democrats Have Devised a Plan to Compete With Turning Point USA for Young Voters and it's Going to be a Disaster Democrats have decided that they need to have their own version of Turning Point USA in order to appeal to young voters and what they have come up with is the most Democrat thing ever. It's going to be a total disaster. It's called the ‘DNC National Youth Coordinated Table'. It's not a grassroots group, it's completely fabricated. And you can just imagine how meetings of this group are going to go, with mini-groups within the group fighting for dominance and power. Newsweek reported on this: Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2002577300802711720?s=20 DOJ Appeals Controversial Ruling That Disqualified Trump-Appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, Resulting in the Dismissal of Charges Against Letitia James and James Comey The Department of Justice has formally appealed a controversial ruling that disqualified Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a decision that directly led to the dismissal of federal charges against James Comey and Letitia James. According to a Notice of Appeal filed on December 19, the Trump-led DOJ is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to overturn a lower-court ruling that declared Halligan's appointment unconstitutional and voided every prosecutorial action she took while in office. Source: thegatewaypundit.com JUST IN: DOJ Wins Motion to Unseal Documents on Investigation into Trump Shooter Thomas Crooks The Department of Justice announced that it successfully moved to unseal documents related to the investigation into would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks. “The Department of Justice received court approval to disclose to Congress documents gathered as part of the FBI's investigation of Thomas Crooks and his attempt to assassinate President Trump,” the Western District of Pennsylvania announced on X. A copy of the motion and order can be found here. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/2002596363138445539?s=20 Justice Department Sues Four States Including Georgia After Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger Sides With Democrats in Failure to Produce Voter Rolls https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/2001775020566286614?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2001775020566286614%7Ctwgr%5Ee92dad24c2453e3b35c6a465ec1523cafbc35499%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fjustice-department-sues-four-states-including-georgia-after%2F Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2001992915850260516?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarkPaoletta/status/2002483634251461079?s=20 memorial to President John F. Kennedy and now additionally honors President Donald J. Trump, who has brought America back and saved the Trump-Kennedy Center. The Board's action is permissible under the statute and no legislation is necessary. The Board’s action does nothing to change the statutory title. Instead, the Board has–in line with longstanding Executive Branch practice–designated a new name. For example, The Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer, within the Office of Management & Budget, is designated by statute as the “Office of Electronic Government.” But it's long gone by the name “Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer” in official, public, and internal communications. Similarly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is designated by statute as the “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.” But since the beginning, the agency has long gone by the name Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB in all official communications, correspondence with the Hill, titles and signage on its buildings. The “United States Institute of Peace” was established by statute but was renamed by the Department of State as the “Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace.” The Department of War was established as the “Department of Defense” by statute in 1947. Earlier this year, President Trump authorized the use of the name “Department of War” and the name is now etched on the Pentagon's building and in official correspondence and public communications. It is entirely fitting for the Board of Trustees to vote to add President Trump to the title so that this Center is now named The Donald J. Trump And The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. President Trump has provided superb leadership at every level to save the Kennedy Center from financial ruin and wokeness, and to bring our national treasure to new heights! Thank you, @kencen Board of Trustees for honoring President Trump. I have been going to the Kennedy Center for decades and have never seen such energy and excitement as I did at the Christmas tree lighting and Noel performance. The Golden Age is here! AND ORDER. As your next Governor, Bruce will continue to fight hard to Grow the Economy, Cut Taxes, and Regulations, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., Champion American Energy DOMINANCE, Strengthen our Military/Veterans, Advance Election Integrity, and Protect our always under siege Second Amendment! Bruce Blakeman is a FANTASTIC guy, will win the big November Election and, without hesitation, has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Governor of the ONCE GREAT STATE OF NEW YORK (IT CAN BE GREAT AGAIN!). BRUCE BLAKEMAN WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN! (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");
This week, we're talking about Stick It -- or Bring It On for gymnastics! We talk about a movie that doesn't quite STICK the landing (...or beginning?), a great leading performance by Missy Peregrym, and Kat makes a long-awaited joke. This episode brought to you by MasterClass. With classes on a variety of topics, all taught by world class masters at the top of their fields. Fantastic for yourself and as a gift. MasterClass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off. Head over to www.masterclass.com/ihateit for the current offer. Produced by Andrew Ivimey as part of The From Superheroes Network Visit www.FromSuperheroes.com for more podcasts, articles, video series, web comics, and more.
Fantastic comedian and old friend, Sean Patton is back to talk about his time at Skankfest. His family owns Patton's Catering in New Orleans and their food was showcased at the festival. | Sean can expertly deep-fry a turkey and tells the secrets of not getting burned. | Jay once got dosed with acid by his so-called friends. | Sean knows all the dangers of his hometown of NOLA but still had a harrowing experience with a cab driver who got crazy for no reason. Sean Patton will be performing at @witsendcharleston North Carolina all week! *To hear the full show to go www.siriusxm.com/bonfire to learn more! FOLLOW THE CREW ON SOCIAL MEDIA: @thebonfiresxm @louisjohnson @christinemevans @bigjayoakerson @robertkellylive @louwitzkee @jjbwolf Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of The Bonfire ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.