Podcasts about Fantastic

Peter Stubbe or Peter Stumpp, also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg, was part of a case in Germany where the concepts of witchcraft and lycanthropy were interconnected. Research: Baillie, Nathan. “Monstrous Lessons: Peter Stumpp, the Werewolf of Bedburg.” University of Saskatchewan Undergraduate Research Journal Volume 9, Issue 2, 2024. Baring-Gould, Sabine. “The Book of Were-wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition.” London. Smith, Elder and Co. Cornhill. 1865. https://archive.org/details/thebookofwerewolvesbarin/ Barker, Sara. “Time in English Translations of Continental News.” News Networks in Early Modern Europe. Brill. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1ng.21 Beck, Melinda. “Before America Had Witch Trials, Europe Had Werewolf Trials.” History. 10/15/2021. https://www.history.com/articles/werewolf-trials-europe-witches Crabb, Jon. “Woodcuts and Witches.” The Public Doman Review. 5/4/2017. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/woodcuts-and-witches/ Davidson, Jane P. and Bob Canino. “Wolves, Witches, and Werewolves: Lycanthropy and Witchcraft from 1423 to 1700.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 1990, Vol. 2, No. 4 (8) (1990). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43308065 de Blécourt, Willem. “Monstrous Theories:: Werewolves and the Abuse of History.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural , Vol. 2, No. 2 (2013). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/preternature.2.2.0188 Dinwiddie, Gerda, trans. “The Execution of Werewolf, Peter Stump: A Translation.” Dana K. Rehn. https://danakrehnblog.wordpress.com/2021/05/22/the-execution-of-werewolf-petter-stump/ Dinwiddie, Gerda, trans. “Truthful and Frightening Description of the many Sorcerers or Witches: An English Translation.” Dana Rehn. https://danakrehnblog.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/truthful-and-frightening-description-of-the-many-sorcerers-or-witches-an-english-translation/ Priest, Hannah. “The She-wolves of Julich.” History Today. Vol. 65, Issue 6. June 2015. Summers, Montague. “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend.” Dover Publications. 1933. https://archive.org/details/TheWerewolfInLoreAndLegend/page/n273/mode/2up See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm very excited for the upcoming book “FANTASTIC! A Celebration of Fans Discovering Doctor Who”. Not just because I have an entry in it, but because I'm eager to read other fans' similar and vastly different stories on finding the show and their suggested entry points for someone else to discover it. Zepo Publishing launched […]

This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts Welcome to our new hosts: Wojciech, Major_Ursa. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4456 Mon 2025-09-01 HPR Community News for August 2025 HPR Volunteers 4457 Tue 2025-09-02 doodoo deuce Jezra 4458 Wed 2025-09-03 Creating an animation in Powerpoint Dave Hingley 4459 Thu 2025-09-04 How I got into tech Wojciech 4460 Fri 2025-09-05 Arthur C. Clarke Ahuka 4461 Mon 2025-09-08 Battle of the mic's Lee 4462 Tue 2025-09-09 HPR Beer Garden - Intro and Dessert Stouts Kevie 4463 Wed 2025-09-10 Software Freedom Day NJ, briefly. murph 4464 Thu 2025-09-11 Replacing the Trackpad on my Laptop Claudio Miranda 4465 Fri 2025-09-12 Playing Civilization V, Part 3 Ahuka 4466 Mon 2025-09-15 HPR Music project - Walking tune to(wards) a friend FredBlack 4467 Tue 2025-09-16 A small Odoo usage intro and a larger technical bit Jeroen Baten 4468 Wed 2025-09-17 AI Trap and Fix Archer72 4469 Thu 2025-09-18 Disagree With Me - 3 Statements About Life Living Antoine 4470 Fri 2025-09-19 HPR is twenty years old today. Lee 4471 Mon 2025-09-22 Ti-82 Makes Music and Password Manager operat0r 4472 Tue 2025-09-23 Cheap Yellow Display Project: Introduction to the Cheap Yellow Display Trey 4473 Wed 2025-09-24 HPR Beer Garden 2 - Session IPA Kevie 4474 Thu 2025-09-25 Hacker Poetry - 001 Major_Ursa 4475 Fri 2025-09-26 The true audio file for walking tune to(wards) a friend FredBlack 4476 Mon 2025-09-29 Does AI cause brain damage? Trollercoaster 4477 Tue 2025-09-30 doodoo 3 a deuce plus 1 Jezra Comments this month These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows. There are 22 comments in total. Past shows There are 4 comments on 4 previous shows: hpr4393 (2025-06-04) "Journal like you mean it." by Some Guy On The Internet. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-09-01: "Journaling" hpr4442 (2025-08-12) "Orthopedagogiek - what it is." by Manon. Comment 4: Manon Fallon on 2025-09-07: "Thank you" hpr4445 (2025-08-15) "doodoo one" by Jezra. Comment 3: Windigo on 2025-09-03: "Singular vs plural functions" hpr4453 (2025-08-27) "IPv6 for Luddites" by beni. Comment 5: Paulj on 2025-09-09: "Fantastic show - thank you" Comment 6: Dave Morriss on 2025-09-09: "I was surprised to find that my ISP offers IPv6" This month's shows There are 18 comments on 10 of this month's shows: hpr4456 (2025-09-01) "HPR Community News for August 2025" by HPR Volunteers. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-09-01: "show doubt"Comment 2: أحمد المحمودي on 2025-09-12: "Pronouncing my name"Comment 3: Ken Fallon on 2025-09-16: "Can I have an example" hpr4459 (2025-09-04) "How I got into tech" by Wojciech. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-09-01: "First show"Comment 2: Antoine on 2025-09-04: "Welcome! "Comment 3: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-09-04: "Thanks and welcome"Comment 4: Andrew on 2025-09-04: "Excellent first show..."Comment 5: paulj on 2025-09-09: "Welcome, and thanks!" hpr4461 (2025-09-08) "Battle of the mic's" by Lee. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-09-12: "Interesting dive into a topic not thought about often!" hpr4462 (2025-09-09) "HPR Beer Garden - Intro and Dessert Stouts " by Kevie. Comment 1: T.A.Spinner on 2025-09-13: "Your thoughts on hefeweizens?" hpr4466 (2025-09-15) "HPR Music project - Walking tune to(wards) a friend" by FredBlack. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-09-25: "unique idea for a show!" hpr4470 (2025-09-19) "HPR is twenty years old today. " by Lee. Comment 1: quvmoh on 2025-09-20: "congrats"Comment 2: ClaudioM on 2025-09-26: "Happy 20th Anniversary!" hpr4471 (2025-09-22) "Ti-82 Makes Music and Password Manager" by operat0r. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-09-25: "TI calc history" hpr4472 (2025-09-23) "Cheap Yellow Display Project: Introduction to the Cheap Yellow Display " by Trey. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-09-23: "Following the series" hpr4473 (2025-09-24) "HPR Beer Garden 2 - Session IPA" by Kevie. Comment 1: Ken Fallon on 2025-09-24: "FLOSS Beer Tracker " hpr4476 (2025-09-29) "Does AI cause brain damage?" by Trollercoaster. Comment 1: Trey on 2025-09-29: "Excellent episode"Comment 2: Trollercoaster on 2025-09-30: "Re: Excellent episode" Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2025-September/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page.Provide feedback on this episode.

Hailing from Cork, Ireland, songwriters Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan formed the band Microdisney in 1980. After relocating to London in 1983, the band recorded six Peel Sessions for BBC Radio and released their debut album for Rough Trade called 'Everybody Is Fantastic'. This week's guest, musician, filmmaker, podcaster and radio host Alexei Shishkin, joins us to discuss the band and that record. The duo's combination of lushly orchestrated pop paired with wryly poetic, at times biting lyrics were right up Alexei's musical alley, and we're here for it! Songs discussed in this episode: Dear Rosemary - Microdisney; Disco Elysium, Tiki Taka - Alexei Shishkin; Palm Of My Hand - The Pale Fountains; Horse Overboard - Microdisney; Pack Yr Romantic Mind - Stereolab; Blues For Ceausescu - The Fatima Mansions; McCardle Brown - Sean O'Hagan; Idea, A Few Kisses, Escalator In The Rain - Microdisney; Half A Person - The Smiths; Dolly (Live, Barbican sessions 2018), Dolly - Microdisney; The King Of Rock 'N' Roll - Prefab Sprout; Dreaming Drains, I'll Be A Gentleman, Moon, Sun, Sleepless, Come On Over and Cry, This Liberal Love, Before Famine, Everybody Is Dead, Everybody Is Dead (Peel session) - Microdisney; Ode To Carl Dennis - Alexei Shishkin

Establishing Fantastic Rewards For Your Team Hello, we would love to invite you to compete to get ranked and stars at the Coach Schuman's NUC sports Showcase events and combines go to http://myfootballcamps.com/campsevents to register
 Get the Legendary Leadership Book by Coach Schuman and improve your leadership skills today at www.legendaryleadership.coach myfootballcamps.com nucsports.com @coachschuman go to myfootballcamps.com/d1 to get promoted www.myfootballcamps.com www.nucsports.com @coachschuman on all social This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

In a weekend where Liverpool, Chelsea, and Tottenham all dropped points, Arsenal's last minute victory at St. James' Park was made all the sweeter due to those results. This week, RCR welcomes Newcastle supporter, Joel, to discus the fixture at SJP, the relations between Arsenal and Newcastle, and some very impressive VAR calls this weekend. Check out this weeks review of the EPL on RCR.Join the RCR discord to chat with the boys and make your picks for the week: https://discord.gg/bKt4eMbjdDConnect with us on social media. Follow us on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/RedCard_Radio​​​​Brad: https://twitter.com/KSBradG​​​​Sean: https://twitter.com/WhiteHart_Sean​​​​James: https://twitter.com/JamesTiffany​Follow us on Instagram now toohttps://www.instagram.com/redcard_radioTime Stamps to come#liverpool #arsenal #manchesterunited #manchestercity #chelsea #podcast #vodcast #soccer #football #tottenham #newcastleunited #fifa

It's another solo spotlight, and this time I'm diving into a few standout Superman trades—stories I think are absolutely worth your shelf space. Fantastic Comic Fan Podcast Website

Between the Mariners and Seahawks there is so much to be excited about in Seattle sports this week and Salk describes that to open the show. They then go Around The Station with interesting sound for conversation on both the Mariners and Seahawks.

The third installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists focuses on The Sullivans - an Irish family trying to start anew in America. So, of course, the movie is called IN AMERICA! Directed by Jim Sheridan, with Oscar-nominated performances from Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou, it's the kind of film that's determined to make you cry, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.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.- 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 @mildemonios on Twitter 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!

It's the famously bonkers, surreal, and very gay episode that broke our brains! Chris Cummins (Archie Comics, ⁠Sci-Fi Explosion⁠) joins us to revisit the classic Amazing Friends episode we originally covered very early in our podcast, where Dr. Doom accidentally imbues a lonely down-on-his-luck man named Mr. Frump with infinite god-like powers and absolute chaos ensues. We give an in-depth queer reading of this episode and its reality-bending horror, including Mr. Frump coming freshly out of the closet, Dr. Doom as a party bottom, and Aunt May as the only good ally.We're watching Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: Season 1, Episode 3: “The Fantastic Mr. Frump”.Find Chris:Sci-Fi Explosion on Twitch⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ | ⁠LetterboxdWebsite⁠ | ⁠Patreon⁠ | ⁠Discord⁠Part of The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast CollectiveContact us: @WallopingWebPod on ⁠Bluesky⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠Email: ⁠wallopingwebsnapperspodcast@gmail.com⁠Theme song features: ⁠“Resonance (Cyan & Ladybot Remix)” by HOME⁠ | ⁠License (CC BY 3.0)⁠

Fantastic news! There's a new movie and it's good. We review One Battle After Another, the latest from director Paul Thomas Anderson. Plus we discuss the Superman sequel man of steel (lowercase) and its connection to Peacemaker Season 2 and the wider DCU, Stan Lee's return in AI form, trailers for Avatar: Fire & Ash, Wolverine PS5 and The Mandalorian VS Groglet, a Bard Wire reboot and Mad Max might return but on television. Thanks for listeningNew episode of We Got 'We Got This Covered' Covered the clickbait bonus podcast out now!! Plus entire back-catalogue of let's play videos, bonus podcasts, movie commentaries, early access and ad-free episodes all available on https://bigsandwich.coEditor Laurence's New Dunkirk Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZtCohwqkY4James on Not Another Crime Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIlwfqZ7clE&tPLEASE be aware timecodes may shift up to a few minutes due to inserted ads.00:00 The Start06:13 Man of Tomorrow Draft Reveal14:58 AI Stan Lee at Comic Con22:48 Avatar: Fire and Ash Trailer25:57 Wolverine PS5 Game Trailer28:14 The Mandalorian & Grogu Trailer37:44 Barb Wire Reboot Series Announced39:15 Mad Max Series Rumour43:03 One Battle After Another Movie Review57:43 One Battle After Another Spoiler Segment01:04:51 What We Reading, What We Gonna Read01:12:10 Letters, It's Time For LettersSUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-moviesThe Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Filmmaker Mercedes Bryce Morgan (FIXATION, SPOONFUL OF SUGAR) joins Adam and Joe in the ArieScope studio to discuss the making of her latest feature BONE LAKE (in theaters now). From first reading the sexy, violent and twist-filled script… to her thoughts on the current cultural temperature with erotica in commercial cinema… to how she approached shooting the sex and violence integral to BONE LAKE's plot… to the key in finding the right location as a character… to how she pulled off this very ambitious thrill-ride with a fresh-faced cast on a tight schedule… to the film's triumphant premiere at Fantastic fest in 2024 and how she's been dealing with the many surprises the film has in store in a time of “spoiler culture,” BONE LAKE has stormed into theaters with a wave of major buzz behind it. See BONE LAKE in a theater near you!

You know you're having a good day when you win with a blown motor! I recap all of the action from the JapaneseGP - including Pecco Bagnaia's return to the front, Honda stepping up on home turf, that Ducati engine that just won't quit - and the biggest Championship story of the MotoGP era!The Rundown:- Qualifying - Pecco throws down the gauntlet with a record lap- Sprint Race - is that...the old Bagnaia? - Factory Aprilia wipeout- MotoGP Race - How did that engine make it to the end?- What about Honda? Fantastic weekend - can it continue?- MotoGP Championship: 2nd - 4th is getting interesting- Marc's Championship - the biggest story in MotoGP? I'll tell you why it is- My take on the JapaneseGPWhat did you think of Motegi? Let me know on Facebook or the Motoweek Reddit Sub.Find all of the latest episodes at Motoweek.net, follow on Bluesky and Instagram – and you can support the show on Patreon!Thanks for listening!

This week we welcome actor and author Alex Hyde-White, "The OG Reed Richards" from the unreleased 1994 Roger Corman Fantastic 4 film! Alex talks about growing up with famous parents, his thoughts on the legacy of the '94 Fantastic 4 film, what it was like to be included in Marvel's Fantastic Four: First Steps, writing his memoir, "In the Volume”, and more. This is a must-listen for any Marvel fan! Don't miss this one!  AlexHyde-White.com PunchandRoll.com Instagram: @AlexHydeWhite Click the link below to get your copy of “In The Volume”! https://www.archwaypublishing.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/837182-in-the-volume  #AlexHydeWhite #ReedRichards #Fantastic4 #Marvel #PopCulture #Nostalgia #CannedAirPodcast #actormemoirs #hollywoodstorytelling #behindthescenesstories #popculturediscussions #popcultureinterviews #firststeps Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There was tons to play for yesterday as the Reds captured the final NL Wild Card, the Blue Jays secured the AL East title, the Yanks and Red Sox set up an epic Wild Card battle and the Guardians finished off a run for the ages to take the AL Central. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

hey guys! so I am BACK with another episode for the free version of my podcast and boy do I have some FANTASTIC news for you guys! I officially hit my second goal with the crowdfunding campaign for my next EP so I am 100% DONE crowdfunding this project now! at least I think so. there is still ONE MORE thing that I'm seeking for this project and maybe two things but I'm working on getting them right now, but now it is officially GO TIME in terms of finishing this next EP/album. so I'll keep you posted in terms of when it's finished but as of right now, all of my parts have been recorded for most of the songs, and now it's time to bring in the extra singers/musicians for the songs we've already recorded and the next and final song I'm gonna record for this project is the cover. but anyways, I wanted to talk about another Brill Building Pop song because it's honestly been a while since I've done a NYC Girl Group pop record. so here's the link to that song right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_GQiBXdOU&list=RD0Y_GQiBXdOU&start_radio=1PLEASE do follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok right here:https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/https://www.tiktok.com/@iheartoldiesOk so I'm officially going to stop posting the link to the crowdfunding campaign for my next EP because I am DONE with that!, BUT, you can still subscribe to the premium version of my podcast so you can hear my latest interview episodes. btw guys, if you want like a 5 to 8 minute snippet of one of my interviews to be posted on here PLEASE let me know & email me at samltwilli@icloud.com, and I'll see what I can do about giving you guys a sneak peak with one of my MANY great podcast interviews with these 60's legends you can check out right here:https://themillennialthrowbackmachine.supercast.com/also PLEASE pre game for this next EP/album by checking out the last one I put out! this next EP is going to sound JUST as good if not better than the last one so PLEASE check this last project out so you can brace yourself for the next one that I"m about to release!: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/samlwilliams/an-old-soul-with-new--remiagined-thingsalso PLEASE do check out the latest merch for this show! I got a REALLY cool logo that is specific to this premium version of my podcast. PLEASE click the link right here so you can check it out: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Fly-On-The-Wall-Stories-by-60sSam95/158056341.NL9ACalso if you guys want to keep track of all of the songs that I talk about on my podcast, PLEASE do check out these playlists for this podcast so you can keep track of all of the songs that I talk about on this show: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21f3uBS6kU4hUF6QAC5JMj?si=431f75e47f654d2bhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1sYR7xky8&list=PL66sgq_GAmRcXy8yKZJfVmAD14HUYj7Nfif you guys found out some REALLY cool facts about this song and you've never heard of it and you're a Millennial/Gen Z and you fell in love with this song for the first time through me then DEFINITELY email me at samltwilli@icloud.com, you can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok @iheartoldies. so yeah guys, the next EP/album is moving along, so that's been going well. I'll keep you posted on the further progress of the album in the next episode that I drop of this podcast. and thank you so much those who are still listening to this show even though I don't put out as many free episodes as I used to. but anyways guys, I hope you're doing great and do share this podcast with other Millennials who are old souls who love 60's music. and I will talk to you guys again next month. also, do let me know if you want small snippets of my interviews to be posted on this feed. and I'll see what I can do about sharing that with you guys for some of these interview episodes for the private premium subscription feed of my podcast.

The Mendota and Hall defenses are playing well, L-P looks to extend its winning streak against Ottawa and more in the NewsTribune football notebook.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/friday-night-drive--3534096/support.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre is the author of more than thirty books that include the award-winning humorous urban fantasy Canadian Werewolf series— hailed by readers as “the thinking man's werewolf”—and his award-nominated ghostly explorations such as Haunted Hospitals and Tomes of Terror. He is also the editor of more than ten anthologies that include titles in the Hugo Award Nominated Pulphouse Fiction Magazine and the Aurora Award-winning Tesseracts series, which showcases the best in Canadian speculative fiction. His work has been translated into French, Italian, and German. While choosing the shorter and easier-to-spell moniker of Mark Leslie for most of his writing, Mark leverages his full name for work in inspiring, informing, and assisting other authors. Mark's first short story was published in 1992, the same year he began in the book industry. He is a tireless advocate for libraries, bookstores, and other authors and has held the roles of president of The Canadian Booksellers Association, board member for BookNet Canada, chair of the Professional Advisor Committee for Sheridan College's Honours Degree in Writing and Publishing, and Director of Self-Publishing and Author Relations for Rakuten, Kobo, Inc. where he launched Kobo Writing Life. A pioneer in digital publishing, Mark has embraced both traditional and self-publishing routes and continues to look for new ways that technology and innovation can improve the industry for all authors. He has appeared on countless podcasts, television, and radio programs and has spoken on stages across Canada and the United States as well as in England, Germany, France, and Italy. Mark's weekly podcast, Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing—launched in January 2018— takes an unflinching look at the reality of the publishing world with a balanced take on the pros and cons of various publishing routes. One of his greatest passions is helping writers navigate the bold new realms and opportunities that continue to unfold as the industry evolves. Mark Leslie Lefebvre became a Writers of the Future judge in 2024. “Fantastic fiction has long been considered the herald of possibility. If so, then writers are the pioneering champions of inspiring the world in creative and imaginative ways that can bring form and reality to that raw potential. One of the most significant things we can do as writers is to inspire others to dream well beyond the limits and constraints of our world—to imagine the infinite potency and wonders that lie just on the other side of ‘what if.' Those whose mission is to seek out and celebrate new imaginative voices, to offer them a platform to launch their words, dreams, and stories, and to provide guidance as they navigate a complex and ever-changing publishing industry are the purveyors of possibility in the finest sense. And that is what Writers of the Future has always been. I am proud and honored to join the prestigious panel of world-class writers, artists and all of the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes in continuing L. Ron Hubbard's magnificent vision of paying it forward to the creative minds of tomorrow.” —Mark Leslie Lefebvre Find out more at: markleslie.ca markleslie.ca/about/

On this Friday night broadcast we're spending some time on a few things that are irking me: We have these media censorship flip flops right now between Youtube and the Right, and ABC and the Left. And then we need to talk about the latest on the demise of Charlie Kirk and what is quickly becoming The Grassy Knoll of our time. Fantastic calls, including an unplanned de-occulting with an old friend! The lines are going to be open for all types of end-of-week calls, and perhaps some reels in the second hour! Unleash Your Brain w/ Keto Brainz Nootropic Promo code FRANKLY: https://tinyurl.com/2cess6y7 BPC-157 Peptides: https://mindthymitochondria.com/ Sponsor The Show and Get VIP Perks: https://www.quitefrankly.tv/sponsor One-Time Tip: http://www.paypal.me/QuiteFranklyLive Elevation Blend Coffee & Official QF Mugs: https://www.coffeerevolution.shop/category/quite-frankly Official QF Apparel: https://tinyurl.com/f3kbkr4s Send Holiday cards, Letters, and other small gifts, to the Quite Frankly P.O. Box! Quite Frankly 222 Purchase Street, #105 Rye, NY, 10580 Tip w/ Crypto: BTC: bc1q97w5aazjf7pjjl50n42kdmj9pqyn5zndwh3lng XRP: rnES2vQV6d2jLpavzf7y97XD4AfK1MjePu Leave a Voice Mail: https://www.speakpipe.com/QuiteFrankly Quite Frankly Socials: Twitter/X: @QuiteFranklyTV Instagram: @QuiteFranklyOfficial Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/u5RutUcSMJ GUILDED Chat: https://tinyurl.com/kzrk6nxa Official Forum: https://tinyurl.com/k89p88s8 Telegram: https://t.me/quitefranklytv Truth: https://tinyurl.com/5n8x9s6f GETTR: https://tinyurl.com/2fprkyn4 MINDS: https://tinyurl.com/4p84d3cx Gab: https://tinyurl.com/mr42m2au Streaming Live On: QuiteFrankly.tv (Powered by Foxhole) Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/yc2cn395 BitChute: https://tinyurl.com/46dfca5c Rumble: https://tinyurl.com/yeytwwyz Kick: https://kick.com/quitefranklytv Audio On Demand: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/301gcES iTunes: http://apple.co/2dMURMq Amazon: https://amzn.to/3afgEXZ SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/yc44m474

We react to Marvel Zombies which might be the most slept on project this year!Alien Earth season One has concluded, we give our thoughts! Also we continue with a crazy Gen V Season 2 Episode 4 Reaction!Come kick it, have some drinks and laughs and lets talk NERD! Here's some more topics on the docket this week! - Braniac to be next Superman Villain! - Demon Slayer Makes more than Fantastic 4 and Superman in the Box Office?!- Michael Colter all but confirms he'll be back as Luke Cage- Hugh Laurie is being considered to play Mister Sinister in MCU - Comics of the Week and more!Remember to Like, Comment and Subscribe!➜Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYVbz95-_7Fwm_FsnZ51cpQ/join---------------------------------Follow us on Social Media!

It's the final full day at Rat World and it all starts with the Big Skillet Bruffcuss at the Wilderness Lodge before the crew head to the Hollywood Studios. Supper tonight is at the 50s Prime Time Café and reserved seating at Fantastic! Whew.

According to research from Gartner, buyer uncertainty leads to a 30% reduction in a buyer's ability to make a purchase decision at all. So, how can you create a buying experience that builds confidence, drives engagement, and ultimately improves win rates? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Annabel Hosking, Global Sales Enablement Manager at LexiNexis Risk Solutions. Thank you so much for joining us, Annabel. Just to kick us off, I’d love if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Annabel Hosking: Hi everyone. I currently work as a global sales network manager at LexisNexis Risk Solutions within the data services brand, so I’m very fortunate to work across. Four different brands that will work within the data space. And within my role, I lead the sales enablement team. We’re a global team. We’re a small team, small but mighty, and we work across methodology enablement. So all about our sales methodology, how we go to market, how our customers. Experiences. And I also work across all of our onboarding as well as all of our tech stack as well. So my role is really varied. I’m very lucky I get to work with some really great people across the world. And yeah, it was never a dull moment, I’ll say. RR: Isn’t that always the case? Small scrappy teams. Wearing a lot of hats and it’s always exciting. We’re super excited to have you here because I know you have experience spanning a lot of core parts of enablement, so I think there’s a lot to dig into there. Could you walk us through, because I think everybody’s story is different, maybe your professional journey and then how that background led you to enablement, and then how it’s kind of shaped your approach to enablement today. AH: Absolutely. I have what I like to think of as, and it comes from a podcast I’ve been listening to recently, it’s called Squiggly Careers, and I feel like my career was like a very squiggly career of how I ended up in enablement, because I did not at school think, oh, I’m gonna become a. Sales enabler whatsoever. But my background is very much actually in content management and platform management and communication. And how I moved into enablement was I was actually hired in my current company and one of the brands, the beginning of the pandemic. To essentially deliver enablement content. So I worked on delivery of content, content management, delivery of our Highspot system as well. And that was how I started to move into the enablement realm. And I will say it was completely unknown to me originally. I. Wasn’t even clear that I was doing sales enablement per se, but at least a good 18 months in my role here. I thought I was just delivering content and it wasn’t until working with vendors like Highspot where. That term enablement started to come out and it started to change, I suppose, how I delivered my content and it’s really come into its own where now I’m very fortunate where I’m have on my team who does phenomenal content and through my experience. It’s really understanding who my audience is, understanding how they like to consume their enablement, but also how can we consistently stay, um, ahead of what the trends are and how people like to change, how they like to consume, what they’re seeing A meeting was held by our team on Monday with the client team for the Zephyr project to review the status of the forthcoming Q3 launch campaign. The campaign, originally built as a omnichannel activation across CTV, paid social and programmatic display, is now subject to substantial midstream revisions—following newly surfaced client directives. The feedback introduce a material shift in strategic framing under a compressed delivery window. There will be a pivot as Zephyr deprioritizing the performance-tracking narrative to favor of a broader “everyday wellness and inclusivity” story which will require an immidiate reframe of our messaging, architecture and associated visuals. To addressed the revised scope, I've assigned immediate follow-ups actions across the team. Visual art will lead conversations with post-production around stock content intergration. Ad sales will recalibrating the media plan in light of the repositioned messaging and will coordinate with DSPs to avoid penalties related on insertion order delays. Copy desk is to be tasked with stripping all unsubstantiated medical claims from copy, implementing the new CTA and managing a parallel review with legal. We conduct a daily internal stand-up each morning through end of week to identify blockers. The next client check-in is scheduled for July 3rd, where we preview asset revisions and confirm compliance milestones. Final go/no-go is slated for July 7th at 17:00 PDT. We are proceeding with all mitigations in parallel, and escalated any dependency delays as they surface. day to day, because that has vastly changed as well in the last six years. So. Thankfully my background and being adaptable, working globally, working with a lot of different people has really helped shape that. Because you know, I always say if there’s one thing, so my career of, you know, working in content management and working with platforms, working in technology. It has really shaped who I am today because it’s all really embedded in those user Jo Journeys user stories, and that translates into what I hope is a good enablement experience. RR: Well, amazing. I love the phrase squiggly career. I think I am certainly going to have to steal that one, and I think it’s such a good way to describe how so many folks end up at enablement. You start in one place and you bring all of that knowledge that you acquire in that early discipline. Into enablement programming that’s more effective for it. And thinking about, you know, your background in content management and creating content and all of that fun stuff, I’d be curious to know how they kind of come together. So you recently spoke at Spark EA and highlighted the importance of the buying experience, so. What are you seeing as some of those biggest challenges in engaging today’s buyers and how are you addressing them? Maybe through content, maybe through enablement? What does that look like to you? AH: I mean, I think the buying experience today in 2025 is unlike anything we have seen. Ever. It is a completely different world for both salespeople and for buyers as well. And what I’m seeing is, you know, buyers are not only overwhelmed with information, they’re also inundated with it. There is so much content out there for a buyer to consume and not just through their sales individual. This is content that they can easily go and either get themselves or with things like AI and Copilot, they can have. Harness and surface to them. So that makes the role of the seller that much harder because we don’t always know what the buyer is viewing and whether it’s of value to them, and that means that their time, the buyer’s time is so precious. We are seeing that, you know, buyers, and I mentioned this when I was at Spark, there are so many people now involved in the buying decision. We’ve moved, I think it was from about three people a few years ago. We’re now at. Six to 10 people. And if you think about it, those are all new personas that sellers have to understand, have to get to know, potentially map out, connect with. And what’s really unfortunate is we’re also seeing that for a lot of sellers, our buyers are actually taking. Long to make a decision that they kind of get to a point of no decision. We’re at this decision fatigue. We’re a information fatigue, we’re a decision fatigue. And I think on the whole, our buyers are they tired. And I can talk as a buyer, myself as a customer, it’s really exhausting. And so what we try to encourage where I am in data services is sales have to differentiate themselves. If you wanna get in front of buyers nowadays, you have to think what are you bringing to the table that’s different from them? That’s a unique experience, that’s an experience that makes ’em feel important, makes ’em feel, listened to, makes them feel like they really can understand why we are doing business together. And that starts in how we as enablement get that content to our salespeople. If we are not able to identify the value that we are bringing as brands into that conversation, it becomes really hard for sales to know how to articulate that to the buyers as well. And so. As enablement, we are that bridge between the, a lot of other functions and the sales teams and the commercial teams of making sure that value identification is really clear. So by the time it reaches the buyer, they absolutely know why they’re having that conversation. They absolutely know what the value of that conversation is going to be. And that really does start with how are you getting that information into the hands of your salespeople? How are you making that content? Really accessible, really palatable as well. I think traditional enablement, we defer to a lot of very wordy, very long documents, which from experience, no salesperson really wants to read or look at or go through. So just as we’re seeing the buyers experience evolve, the enablement experience has to evolve as well in order to stay ahead of that and to give them the best experience to our salespeople. RR: I think you’re absolutely right on all of that. It is only getting more difficult, and as things change externally, you need to adapt internally. And so kind of thinking about how you’re making that change, and to your point, how you’re distributing materials in a way that is usable and usable for a sales audience that maybe isn’t gonna read 10 pages of written content. What would you say then is kind of the unique value for an enablement platform when it comes to helping sellers? Create and deliver these impactful and differentiated buying experiences that you’re looking for? AH: Oh, huge value, absolutely huge value. The power of enablement comes in the ability to be able to streamline that messaging. But in order to do so, we do need a channel to do that, you know, and that can’t exist. In ad hoc documents that you just hold on someone’s computer. Our journey with Highspot started many, many years ago. I think it was about sort five or six years ago, very early days for Highspot even themselves. And we set out with a mission statement, which was that Highspot would be a single source of truth holding up UpToDate relevant sales content. And I am happy to say that five years later we still maintain that mission statement. The platform has got bigger. There’s more people, there’s more content, as I’m sure you can imagine, but we have stuck to our statement that it is a single source of truth. It is up to date, it is valid information that sales are getting, but that all comes from having a channel with a witch to push that through to the sales audience. It just makes your role as an enabler that much easier, you know, day to day. As you know, we spoke about at the top of the call is no one day looks the same for enablement. It will always be different. There’ll be different priorities. There’ll be different go to market, there’ll be different initiatives. But if you know that at least you have somewhere that you can reliably put information in front of sales and then see how it’s being used, how it’s being impacted, how the seller is using it, how the buyer’s consuming it. Your role as enablement starts to become just a little bit easier. And so I would say for anyone who’s within the enablement sphere and looking at their tech stack, having a solid CMS is really gonna be a, a strong cornerstone of that. RR: I love the perspective on an enablement platform as kind of a source of consistency. Almost everything is changing. Your day in enablement is different. Buyers are behaving differently. Reps need to do different things to engage ’em, but at least you have one place that is reliable. But I will say, I know that. Strong buying experiences aren’t necessarily contingent just on technology. They also require a lot of hard work internally. And as one of the things that you, I’ve seen you mention on LinkedIn is that a core foundation of LexisNexis Risk Solution Services is ensuring that customers really recognize the value that you provide. And that kind of starts internally. With sales and leadership alignment. So I’m curious, how are you aligning those internal stakeholders so that way your teams are set up for success when they’re shaping those buyer experiences externally AH: with immense difficulty, I’ll say, and I think any enabler that sits here and says that it’s an easy job is lying through their team. It is, I think, one of the hardest, the hardest roles. Of enablement is getting everybody aligned, getting everyone to agree, and especially I work, as I say, across a lot of businesses. You know, I have four MDs, I have four heads of sales, I have a lot of sales leadership and a lot of sellers, and I’m sure that’s the case for a lot of people working in large enterprise organizations, stakeholders. Can be difficult to align, especially when you have a lot of different priorities and a lot going on. But what I would say is, is really identify what is the core value that you as a company or you as a business, as a brand can all agree on. Our MD has this thing, he says that all of our kickoffs, which is, you know, value is not on the lips of the seller, but is in the eyes of the customer. And that mission statement as it were. Has sort of brought all the stakeholders together to agree that even if there’s misalignment or disagreement on how we do things, we can all agree that we want to give the best experience for our customer and the best value to our customer. And so for enablement, it’s then saying, okay, so we have this mission statement, we have this belief that we want to be customer centric. We want to be value focused. What does that actually mean? For each internal stakeholder, what’s important for them? What are the metrics that they’re looking at day to day, month to month, quarter to quarter, and how is what we are doing with an enablement? How is it actually starting to impact that? Where is their focus? What are they going after? And the only way you are really gonna get those answers is by talking to your stakeholders. If you’re an enablement and you’re not a people person, it’s probably gonna be quite a tough job because a lot of our job is just talking. It’s talking with people, talking, you know, at people, sometimes listening to people, taking in information. I would say spend time with your stakeholders. You are there to listen first and foremost. You can’t solve every single problem that they come up with, and you shouldn’t try to. But if you can really understand what their world looks like and what’s really important to them, and what are the behaviors, what are the metrics that are gonna move the dial for your stakeholders? You’ll eventually start to map out, which is what we did. But actually a lot of them start to align. And even though they might be saying different things, the reality is that for a lot of sales leadership, they want similar things. You know, they want to have better pipeline hygiene, they wanna have higher wind rate. They wanna see, you know, large opportunity amounts more in the qualifying, the identify stage, that early sales stages, they wanna increase, you know, the ramping of new starters. We start to get these similar uniform metrics and so then we as enablement can start to work that into our strategy. Although we as enablement can really start to build what we are working on to align with our internal stakeholders and start to deliver for them. RR: I really appreciate that you had some really tactical and helpful tips in there, but also that you led with, this is not easy. That’s the big part, is there’s so many kind of lofty initiatives that you are like, how do I even tackle this? And it sounds so overwhelming. So I appreciate the acknowledgement there. Kind of wanna shift gears a little bit maybe towards some of the capabilities that you’re using and finding some success with. So one of the things that we’ve heard is that digital rooms have been a lever for kind of creating those differentiated buying experiences. So what are some of your best practices for creating effective digital rooms and then maybe getting your teams to leverage them. AH: Mm, absolutely. We have a brand who is using digital rooms really fantastically, and they’re teaching our other brands how they’ve used them. So, you know, I, I wholeheartedly agree they can make such a difference in the buying experience and if you’re not using them, you should a hundred percent be looking into where you can use them. So I would say when you are looking to start with a digital room is really understand. Why are you doing this? Like what’s the purpose of actually taking the time and the effort to work probably with your product marketing team or with your marketing teams as a whole to put together something that looks really professional. Looks on brand, but is also really easy for sales to go in and start to customize. I would recommend not having sales do it fully themselves. They have very busy day jobs, and I think if you’re gonna say to any sales person, okay, over to you to go and create this, you might run. Some adoption issues, however, working, you know, this is where your cross-functional working really becomes essential, is working with the individuals who can make good content, who can deliver good, uh, visuals, good framework for the salespeople to literally just be able to, within their sales cycle, adopt this, lift it, and send it to the customer. Because then we start to see, okay, where are we actually starting seeing the customer impact? Has it changed how the customer engages with the content? Are they revisiting? And so what we’ve seen is we’re actually looking at, you know, we see a much higher engagement rate when we have the customers viewing content through a digital room as opposed to simply. Static content, and we can see that obviously with the Highspot metrics, which you know, are a real gold dust when it comes to that. We can also see that, you know, we have repeat visits, so something that we wanted to drive was customers coming back and revisiting the content rather than just clicking in, seeing it once and then never viewing it again, was actually having that revisit of them continually coming back to their individual microsite, if you will. You know, we spoken a lot about a differentiated. Differentiated buying experience. And that can be challenging for salespeople because unless you are fortunate enough to only have you know four or five accounts, the likelihood is your book of business is probably quite vast. And so the expectation that you are consistently offering a differentiated variance for every single customer is just not sustainable. And so using these digital rooms, you are able to. Have, you know, a differentiated experience that is scalable. That it makes a buyer feel like it’s a really individualized experience when the reality is for sales, it’s probably quite an easy thing for them to put together, but it does take some uplift front end with your other teams and your cross departmental functions. RR: Yeah. I wanna double click it as something you said there, which was, if you’re asking reps to build it themselves, you’re probably not gonna see much in the way of adoption. I, I kind of wanna. Speak about that idea of what you can do to drive adoption more broadly. Because looking at the data, you’ve achieved a really impressive 82% recurring usage rate in Highspot. So in addition to that kind of approach to digital rooms, how are you driving adoption more broadly across your revenue teams, whether that’s internal reps, partners, whomever, what are you thinking about that’s helping you? Get people in the platform and keep them there. AH: Yeah. That’s been, you know, a metric we’re very proud of. And it’s been something where, you know, going back to what I said earlier, which is Highspot was set out to be the single source of truth. As soon as we turned on Highspot, for lack of a better word, we pretty much turned off every single other site. So there was nowhere else. For sales to go to get this information apart from this one platform. And I’ve seen this done various ways. I’ve seen people where they have, you know, duplicates and, oh, we’re doing a slow migration. We’re gonna keep SharePoint for a while, and then we’ll have Highspot as well. And you know, there’s no right answer to this, but ultimately, if you are looking to put out a message that this is your single source of truth, this is where you need to go to speak to sales. Our adoption has come because we really drove that and we continue to drive that. If you want content in front of sales, if you want success stories in front of sales, whatever it might be, it has to live in Highspot because there just simply isn’t anywhere else to go. And this is for a couple of reasons. The main one being that, you know, the actual management of the content is far easier. And if you think about the trickle down effect, the user needs the best experience possible. And so if they have all of this disjointed experience of going to multiple places to find multiple pieces of content that look different, that sound different, they’re not getting the best experience and they’re probably not gonna come back to Highspot. So for us, it’s really making sure I’m maintaining. The consistency in the user experience, and that comes from feedback as well. So we will regularly have feedback forums with our salespeople, with our sales leadership, and we’re very open within our team to hearing, listen, this is actually getting quite complicated to navigate. I dunno how to find content. And so then we as a team, as an enablement team, go, okay, what do we need to do to make it easier? How do we start to surface more content directly in front of our users? Because if they’re not having a good experience, then we are not doing our role as enablement. And you know, you don’t have to, if you do have a large sales team, you don’t have to have that verbatim feedback. You can use things like the search reports in Highspot to see, you know, what are people searching, what are the terms they’re looking for and the pieces of content, how can you start to surface that in front of them in a much easier way? Putting it on the homepage, putting it into their specific areas, really thinking about how you. Manage, maintain and govern that content to give your users a really solid experience. And that’s what we’ve done and it’s reflected, as I say, in the adoption and in the revisit rates as well. RR: I really like that you called out that search results report because I think that’s such a great way to kind of get a pulse on your people without having to go dig around and have a bunch of conversations. So thinking in addition to that, how do you leverage data and insights in the platform to help you inform and improve the programs you’re leading? AH: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have actually had to learn to, I suppose, step away from data slightly. Um, so that’s been feedback I’ve had as I’ve moved more into a, I suppose a leadership role is actually the data can’t always tell the whole story, although my heart and enablement goes, yes, it can, it can. But yeah, the. The, the scorecards that we have in high spots. So really for us, you know, looking at things like that play scorecard, we deliver a lot of sales plays. They’re the best way to get our enablement in front of people. They’re enjoyed and they’re liked by sales. But I can see very clearly what is the percentage of my audience that is viewing this play? How long are they spending? You know, what are the outcomes of the, you know, the business impact? At what point in the sales cycle as well? If there’s external content in there, for example, the marketing collateral, are they deploying this collateral and is it actually having any impact on the customer? Those sorts of insights. You just do not get anywhere else within any other content platform that we have. And so when it’s come to say, onboarding our marketing team or our product team into contributing content, being able to give them this insight helps them understand that the work they’re doing on building the content, maintaining the content is actually worth something because we can directly see the correlation with business outcome, which has always been one of our biggest challenges. Beyond that, our company does a lot with actually pulling the data out of Highspot. So we make use of the Highspot data lake, and we’ve actually pulled that into our own BI platform where we’ve started to look at things around, you know, how many channels and how much activity per opportunity are we seeing within sales. Something at the moment that we’d really drive on. Going back to that differentiated experience for the buyer is looking at a multi-channel approach when it comes to how we prospect and how we outreach. And that really started from using information that came from Highspot, looking at information that comes from Salesforce and going, okay, how many channels do people currently use when they’re outreaching? We’re only maybe seeing a couple, you know, one or two channels. But we know in today’s buying world that it’s gonna take between six to eight. Channels to get through to a buyer and to actually have a meeting. So what can we do to start to move the dial and start to build our programs across driving that? And so that’s how we use data and enablement is actually saying, what are we seeing today? What are the outcomes we want to see in the next quarter? What do we need to do in order to get there? There’s always a lot of talk on LinkedIn. I always see it about, you know, you need to be data driven and enablement. If you’re not offering insight, if you’re not offering analytics, you’re not doing your job. And that can be kind of hard to hear when actually, I think there’s almost too much data sometimes, and it can be quite complicated to understand. And this is why I, I personally really like how it is viewed in Highspot because the scorecards make it very accessible, very easy to consume, but also it doesn’t matter whether you’re an enabler, a seller, or a senior leader, you can be presented a scorecard and you can very quickly see what you need to get out of that and what your conclusions you’re drawing from it. RR: Yeah, I think it’s that. The difficulty of democratizing data into meaningful, actionable insights is sometimes impossible. You have so much at your disposal, and so making it useful is sometimes a challenge, so I love hearing that. You’re finding a way to use it well and inform your programs well. So we’ve heard a little bit about engaging buyers driving adoption. Tracking your impact and seeing how it’s kind of helping you do the things that you need to. So just one last question for you to close this out. For other enablement leaders looking to improve the buyer experience in today’s very digital first world, what is the biggest advice you would give ’em? AH: Oh, that’s a great question. I would say if you are in a position where you’re fortunate enough to be the buyer, think about how you want to experience that life cycle. You know, as someone who is a buyer day to day, as well as an enabler. You know, I always ask myself through, when we do our methodology onboarding, I will go and speak to the sales people about actually what it’s like from a buyer’s experience today, and that really helps. Give them that insight into what is sometimes a little bit of an elusive world that we know the buyer’s world, the buyer’s experience. So I would say for other enablers is how do you like to speak to your vendors? How often you know, what makes them stand out? What makes them noisy in your inbox, you know? When do you get those emails or outreach that you think, wow, I really wanna continue a conversation with that person. What did that person do? How can you bring that into your go to market? How can you bring that into your sales team if you’re an enabler who is perhaps not in the buying cycle? I would say. Spend time with your salespeople, really understanding the customer experience, and there are many ways that we can do this. Nowadays with technology, obviously everybody’s got call recording software, so we have a lot of our sales calls recorded. If you as an enabler are not digging in and really understanding what’s happening in those customer conversations, it’s going to be harder for yourself to be able to really get into the world of salespeople. So I would say, you know, you really need to experience. What the customer is going through. And that can be simply by having a look at those calls. Where were they successful? Where was there a positive outcome? Where did the buyer enjoy it? But then also where did the buyer sometimes mention things that were pains to them or where they would like to see improvements? What were the questions? That is where we really need our enablers to be on the front foot of really digging into the customer experience and almost spend as much time as you know with your customers, as you do with your salespeople, to really get that insight. RR: I think that’s fantastic advice to close on, is to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes, understand what they’re going through, and know for yourself what good looks like to you and drive that in your own business. So thank you again, Anabel. This has been a wonderful conversation full of all sorts of good insights that I really can’t wait to share with our community. I appreciate you joining us so much. AH: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me as well. Fantastic questions. RR: Amazing. Well, to our listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement successful Highspot.

In this episode of Skip the Queue, Andy Povey sits down with Jérôme Giacomoni, co-founder and Chairman of AEROPHILE, the world leader in tethered gas balloons and immersive aerial experiences. Jérôme shares the story of how AEROPHILE began with a simple idea, to “make everybody fly” and grew into a global company operating in multiple countries, including France and the U.S.Tune in to hear about the company's signature attractions, including tethered balloon flights, the innovative Aerobar concept, and high-profile projects such as how you can experience flying the Olympic cauldron in Paris. Jérôme also shares how AEROPHILE has leveraged its unique platform to explore scientific initiatives like air-quality and climate-change monitoring and how he Integrates unique revenue streams from sponsorship and advertising.Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden, with co host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website SkiptheQueue.fm.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on LinkedIn. Show references:  https://www.aerophile.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerome-giacomoni-3074b7/Jérôme Giacomoni is co-founder of Groupe AEROPHILE and Chairman of AEROPHILE SAS. Since 1993, he has led the company to become the world leader in tethered gas balloons and balloon flights, operating iconic sites in France, the U.S., and Cambodia, and flying over 500,000 passengers annually. He also pioneered “flying food-tainment” with the Aerophare and Aerobar. Jérôme is a member of IAAPA, serves on the board of SNELAC, and is a Team France Export ambassador, earning multiple awards for entrepreneurship and innovation. Plus, live from the Day 2 of the IAAPA Expo Europe show floor, we catch up with:Rheanna Sorby –Marketing & Creative Director,  The Seasonal Grouphttps://theseasonalgroup.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/rheanna-sorby-seasonal/Sohret Pakis – Polin Waterparkshttps://www.polin.com.tr/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sohretpakis/Thomas Collin – Sales Manager, VEX Solutionshttps://www.vex-solutions.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-collin-18a476110/Peter Cliff – CEO // Founder, Conductr.https://conductr.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-cliff/Laura Baxter – Founder, Your CMOhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-baxter-4a756466/Josh Haywood – Resort Director, Crealy Theme Park & Resorthttps://www.crealy.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-haywood-68463630/ Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about the world's best attractions and the people that work in them. I'm your host Paul Marden, and with my co-host Andy Povey and roving reporter Claire Furnival, we're here at IAAPA Expo Europe. In today's episode, I go on a trip on Santa's Enchanted Elevator with the Seasonal Group, and Claire meets Peter Cliff from Conductr. But before all that, let's head over to Andy.Andy Povey: Good morning, everybody. I'm joined today by Jerome Giacomoni from AEROPHILE for our French listeners. I hope I've got that right. Jerome is the chief exec of AEROPHILE and has been the co-founder and president of AEROPHILE. And AEROPHILE supply helium-based balloon observation opportunities. I probably got the marketing on that completely wrong, Jerome. So please, can you share with our listeners what AEROPHILE is all about?Jerome Giacomoni: So AEROPHILE is a company I created with Mathieu Gobbi, my partner, 32 years ago, with a very simple idea, make everybody fly, you know, and we use a balloon to fly. So we have a tethered balloon. We have a huge, big balloon inflated with helium, a gas lighter than air. And we go up to more or less 150 meters high. up to 30 passengers. So we are linked to the ground with a cable, and the cable is linked to a winch. So you have to imagine that you have a winch that— when we go up—pulls when we go down. This is the exact opposite of an elevator because the balloon wants to go higher and higher. We have a lifting force of four tons.Andy Povey:Wow.Jerome Giacomoni:Yes, it's a big one. And so we need a cable to keep it. And thanks to this lifting force, we can fight against the wind.Jerome Giacomoni: And so the balloon can swing when you have some wind because the balloon is just pulled by the cable itself.Andy Povey: And trust me, listeners, they look absolutely spectacular. Just before we started recording, I was admitting to Jerome that I'm scared of heights. So I've stood and watched. The dining balloon, Futuroscope, never managed to pluck up the courage to try it myself.Jerome Giacomoni: This is another concept, Andy. So we have built two concepts. One is a tethered balloon, a real one with helium, with a cable, with a winch, and we fly by ourselves. The balloon flies by itself, okay? We did another concept 20 years after we created our company, so 10 years before now, in 2013, which is what we call the aero bar. It's a flying bar, and you have an inflatable balloon. to cover the gondola, but it's a fake. This is a real elevator, and you have a gondola with some winches and a metallic structure, and you go up and down. So what you saw in Futuroscope is not a balloon. It's a real elevator.Jerome Giacomoni: And the one you can see in Disneyland Paris, Disney World, Orlando or San Diego Zoo are a real balloon named a tethered balloon. So I'm glad you fell down into the trick. You caught me. Yes, I'm glad about that. But we have really two different concepts.Andy Povey: But the concept, the thing that the guest is experiencing, isn't really related to whether it's a balloon or a lift.Jerome Giacomoni: No. i think it's very different okay i think the aerobar is fun and you have the feet in the sky you feel the thrill of height and everything but you stop at 35 meters it's it's quite high for a ride but it's not a real flight And I think the balloon is a real flight. We have a balloon in Paris. We have a balloon in Budapest, Berlin. And you see the city from the sky at 150 meters high, which is very high. So you really experience a flight. With the aerobar, you have a ride, okay? So both of them are related to the sky, are related to the view, but one is really a flight, the other one is really a ride.Andy Povey: That makes absolute sense.Andy Povey: It doesn't reassure me on my fear of heights anymore, that I would like to go up three times, four times taller, higher than the one I saw first. Very interesting. So, listeners, we're often talking about technology and attractions. There's a huge amount of talk about augmented reality, about AI, about motion simulators. The reason, Jerome, we asked you to come and talk to us is because you don't do any of that. No—your experience is fantastic and it's new and it's unique, but there's no technology or very little obvious technology.Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, quite little. You know, it's amazing because we do this for now 32 years, as I told you. The first balloon was inflated in 1994. We have sold 120 balloons in more than 40 countries. And each time with the balloon, you have a magical effect, you know, because the balloon itself is very nice— because the balloon itself is a show from people looking at it from the ground. And because... The flight experience is amazing because you are really in the sky. You are really looking at the ground, at the landscape. You have no noise, you know, when you take a helicopter or plane. You have a lot of noise. You are in an enclosed airplane or helicopter. Here you are outside. You are on a balcony flying at 150 meters. And wherever we are, always we have like a magical effect of the flight. And with the flying bar, we decided to do something different— where we say, 'Why drink on ground where you can drink in the sky?'Jerome Giacomoni: So we add the drink to the ride, you know. So you are on a table and you have what we say in French conviviality. So we share a drink. We go at 35 meters and you have the thrill of the view of the height and also the conviviality of drinking. So this is another concept, but both of them are universal. And wherever we do it, we have sold 20 aero bars worldwide.Jerome Giacomoni: Everybody is very happy to have this kind of ride. I would say we are on the side of the main market. You know, we have two niche products. The balloon is a niche product. And the AeroBar is a niche product where we have another experience than a normal ride, like a roller coaster or a flume or a spinning coaster.Andy Povey: You say you're a nice product, but the balloon in Paris for the Olympics, where you lifted the cauldron, had phenomenal numbers of visitors watching. That wasn't something you could go on.Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, it was an amazing opportunity. You know, sometimes life gives you some presents.Jerome Giacomoni: And imagine that we were contacted by the Olympic Organisation Committee one day, and we believed it was a joke. And they said, 'We need to talk to you.' And then we discovered that instead of flying humans, they asked us to fly a cauldron. So the Olympic cauldron. And we have like one year and a half of design and manufacturing.Jerome Giacomoni: And then, at 11 pm, 25, the balloon has to fly in front of everybody. I can tell you it was a very stressful time. But so nice and so amazing to have experiences. So, yes, the balloon suddenly was visible by everybody. And that's back now in Paris, isn't it? Yes. First of all, the balloon has to stay only twice— 15 days. You know, you have the Olympics and the Paralympics. So we were open only 30 days in total. And the success was so huge that every night, you have dozens of thousands of people coming to look at it. That's why the mayor of Paris and the French president decided to keep it.Jerome Giacomoni: And just after the deflation of the balloon, they call us back and say, 'Jerome and Mathieu, we would like to have the balloon back.' So we work again with the city of Paris and the French presidency, and we agreed to put the balloon.Jerome Giacomoni: Three times, three months. So from June 21st, in France, this is a music event, you know, the Day of Music. To September 14th, which is a day of sport. So every year until the Olympic game of LA, we will operate the balloon for three months in the summertime. Fantastic.Andy Povey: So, Jerome, you operate in lots and lots of different countries all over the world. I think it's 14 countries that you've been.Jerome Giacomoni: No, we sold, but we operate only in the US and in France.Andy Povey: Ah, okay. Interesting.Jerome Giacomoni: We own ourselves, we operate ourselves, six balloons in the 120 we have sold. So we operate three in Paris region. One, the Parc André Citroën, where we have the Generali balloon since 1999. One in Disneyland Paris since 2005. So we are in Disneyland Paris for now 20 years. Time is flying. And the last one, the Cold Run, which is a very specific event that we operate now for one year and for the next two years. And in the US, we operate Disney World Orlando in Disney Spring since 2009, and San Diego Zoo Safari Park since 2005, and Irvine. South of LA since 2007. So we operate now six balloons for a long, long time, except the cold run. And we keep selling balloons.Jerome Giacomoni: We sell more or less five to six balloons every year.Andy Povey: And how do you find the differences between the French culture and you're on either side of America, so the differences between the different coasts of America and France?Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, we... We are in the US, but we are also in Mexico, in a lot of countries in Asia. In the Middle East, we have a beautiful balloon in Dubai. We have a beautiful balloon in Seoul. So we work a lot with very different cultures. You know, it's very interesting to sell the same product to different cultures. So I would say... The main difference probably lies in the contract. It's very funny when you make the contract. I would say a 'yes' is not the same 'yes' depending on the culture. But everybody is, you know, you... You love people when you work worldwide. You learn a lot, you discover a lot. You have to learn with different cultures. And I have the chance in my professional life to experience that and to meet people from all over the world. And, you know, my job is to go on site, and discuss with someone, and see if it's possible or not to have a balloon at this place.Jerome Giacomoni: So it's always a beautiful job because I travel in a lot of countries in beautiful spots.Jerome Giacomoni: We don't succeed a lot because, if not, I would have sold thousands of balloons. We have always constraints with local authority, with food traffic, etc. But always, it's a pleasure to meet people. And once... The balloon is accepted by the local authority when the customer has a finance for it. Then start more or less a one-year work together between installation, work on site, inflation, and training of the team. And after... They fly with their own wings, even if we have no wings with our balloons.Andy Povey: Very good. And I imagine that you don't put balloons into ugly places.Jerome Giacomoni: We did, sometimes for specific contracts. Ugly, I won't use this name, but not very obvious, logical site. But it has happened. Sometimes we do for small events or for specific needs.Jerome Giacomoni: But yes, most of the time, the sites are very interesting.Andy Povey: So there are other things you're doing with the balloons. So the air quality messaging that you have above Paris. Tell us more about your opportunities to influence in other areas.Jerome Giacomoni: Yes, you know, the balloon is not only a ride, a passenger ride, but it's also an amazing opportunity for communication and for advertisement. So in the city center, like Paris, Berlin, or Seoul, the balloon is used also as a giant advertising billboard. So you have two revenues. You have the revenue of the passenger, but you have also the sponsor revenue.Jerome Giacomoni: When we started the balloon in Paris, it was extremely difficult to get the authorisation to have a balloon in Paris centre. We are two kilometres south of the Eiffel Tower. But you remember, we had the famous Millennium, the Y2K. uh and and so the mayor faris was looking for a new idea and we propose a balloon And they gave us only a one year and a half contract. And the investment was quite huge. And we told him, OK, we can do it, but we cannot do it for only one year and a half. Except if you accept that we have a name on the balloon, a naming and a sponsor on the balloon. And the mayor say yes. And we start another business where we put sponsor on the balloon. And this is a very good business because it makes a... activity immediately profitable so we did that in Paris in 1999 and in 2008 the balloon was like 10 years old because when you fly you have your the balloon is huge we talk about a 32 meters high balloon we talk about like a 12-story building.Jerome Giacomoni: So everybody knows the balloon in Paris. Everybody can see it. And so, when we fly, we have 400,000 people who immediately see us. So we decided to give citizen aspect. And we start— pour changer le couleur de la balle selon la qualité de l'air. C'était en 2008. Et parce que nous l'avons fait, nous avons des scientifiques... coming to us and say, 'Hey, this balloon is a wonderful platform to measure air quality because you make like a carrot of the air from zero to 150 meters. Jerome Giacomoni:  Can we bring some scientist instrument on the gondola? And we say yes. And then we start to make science. And then we start to make scientific publications, scientific publications. And then we start a new business where the balloon is not only a tethered gas balloon for passenger, it's only... advertising billboard and now it's only a scientific platform and so this is very interesting and the last things we have done in 2024 no this year in 2025 is to use the balloon for global climate change. As you know, we have two main gas pollutants for the climate change, CO2 and CH4. And the balloon is a perfect platform to measure evolution on CO2 and CH4. So we are working with a European group named ICOS. gathering all the best laboratories in Europe, who are making a huge study on how CO2 and CH4 how they are in each city.Jerome Giacomoni: And Paris has been chosen as a pilot city. So we are very glad to work with them. And so now the Balloon is also working on climate change. And we will have big, big, big LED screen. So we make some technology sometime, as you said, to inform people on the temperature elevation in Europe and in the world. And the news are very bad, as everybody knows.Andy Povey: But that's fascinating. I love the integration you've been able to take from this unique proposition and apply it to different markets, different problems.Jerome Giacomoni: You know, Andy, I think we have to exit from the box. My message to... all people who are listening to us.Jerome Giacomoni: Okay, passenger rides is very important. It's a key market for many of us. But sometimes we can use... another way to find new flow of revenue, like advertising, and we can be also helpful to our other citizens, like working freely for scientists to make measurements on pollutants of the air. This helps with both air quality and also climate change.Andy Povey: It's a beautiful concept, Jerome. I love it. Love it.Andy Povey: So, final question. Your experiences are obviously very unique. What advice would you have for a venue and possibly a smaller venue that doesn't have the resources to be able to build something 150 metres high or put something 150 metres into the air? What advice would you give them on how to make a compelling experience for visitors?Jerome Giacomoni: I really believe that you have to stick on your roots, okay? I mean that people want authenticity.Jerome Giacomoni: And as you know, we are very keen on balloons, as you can imagine. So we make in our, you know, Paris, it's in Paris where you have the first flight. Yeah. In 1783. Montgolfier, brothers. Yes, with the Montgolfier brothers, with Charles, the scientist. So we really stick on our roots. And I think where you are in Brittany, where you are in Japan, you have to follow your own road and your own path. By feeling what could be the good idea, but also what is your feeling inside you. You need to have something different that you feel very confident with.Andy Povey: Beautiful final thought, Jerome, I like it a lot. So listeners, stay authentic and be passionate.Jerome Giacomoni: Exactly, the right word is passionate.Paul Marden: Next up, let's get some soundbites from the show floor.Rheanna  Sorby: My name's Rheanna. I'm Marketing and Creative Director for the Seasonal Group. We are curators of Christmas magic all year round. Wow, wow.Paul Marden: So you make Christmas special?Rheanna  Sorby: We're the Christmas elves.Paul Marden: Awesome, awesome. I can see you've got such a great set of stands. What have you got here that you're exhibiting for the first time?Rheanna  Sorby: We have Santa's Enchanted Express, which is a three-minute experience that transports customers and guests from a very festive train station to the North Pole in just under three minutes. So it's quite a Christmas miracle. And it also transports on nine pallets. So it's a great return on investment for customers there if it's 24 people on. We also have our elevator experience, which went viral last year. And then we have VR, animatronics, and a lot of our famous items, like the snowman here, just dressed as a little, it's some sort of operator.Paul Marden: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we don't have a lot of luck with lifts at the moment because the team got stuck in a lift yesterday for about 45 minutes. Stop it. We got rescued by the... Well, I didn't get in the lift. I walked because there wasn't enough room. But two of them had to be rescued by the fire brigadeRheanna  Sorby: Okay, so this might be triggering. Well, you know.Paul Marden: Oh, no, I found it hilarious.Paul Marden: I was hugely supportive on the outside, yelling into them.Paul Marden: But Santa won't let me get stuck in a lift today, will he? Absolutely not.Rheanna  Sorby: No, there's an emergency exit. Excellent.Paul Marden: So what's new and innovative then about the Santa Express? What are you bringing to market?Rheanna  Sorby: So a lot of our clients, we sell business to business. They're struggling to get people into shopping centres and we're finding that we need to create retail theatre. So that is something I see as a massive trend moving forward. People want nostalgia. They want an experience, something memorable. But also our customers need a way to return investment as well. So they hopefully will spend something with us and then ticket the experience. So that's something that we're pivoting our business towards. Trying to create a brand new experience every year. A lot of people are struggling nowadays, cost of living.Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely.Rheanna  Sorby: It's difficult, so we're trying to find a way that brings the Christmas magic to people's doors.Paul Marden: We are, where are we at the moment? We're in September, so we've still got a couple of months left before Christmas 2025, but that must be over for you.Rheanna  Sorby: No, the quality of the street is on the shelves. It's already happening. The install season starts literally on Monday for us. Really? Yes. When we get back, we land and then we start installing.Paul Marden: And so this is the busy time. So let's talk about Christmas 2026. What are the trends that you see coming along at that point?Rheanna  Sorby: Whimsical, whimsical. So we've got Wicked number two coming out. And we've also had all like the Whoville, that sort of style, the Grinch. So imagine pastels, furry trees, things that don't quite make sense, a lot of whimsical wonderland, I would say, trend-wise. But equally immersive experiences and how we can bring magic to you.Paul Marden: Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you ever so much. Rheanna, it's been lovely to meet you. Thank you for coming on the podcast. And let's go and visit Santa in his lift, shall we? Yeah, excellent.Paul Marden: And here it is. So we are surrounded by suites in an old-fashioned lift. And there's our doors closed.Paul Marden: Oh, how amazing is this? We're going up.Paul Marden: Ice like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Great Glass Elevator. This is amazing. We're up over the clouds. Just stunning. There's a train there. I think we're going to follow into the tunnel after the train. Yes.Paul Marden: Got cold, now we're underground. Now we're in the tunnel.Paul Marden: And I think this might be Santa's factory.Paul Marden: Let's get ready.Paul Marden: Merry Christmas. The big man's chair as well. Can I take a seat in the big man's chair? Ho, ho, ho.Sohret Pakis: Hi, Paul. My name is Shorhet Pakis. I'm the brand ambassador for Polin Waterparks.Paul Marden: What are you launching this year at IAAPA? What's new for you?Sohret Pakis:Last year, we have won two big awards for a themed water slide, which is... Stingray it was in Nantes in France and it was something big because you know it was like Europeans best water slide number one and I have a brass ring award winner about two million number one but last night in Porta Ventura Stingray has won the second time best water slide of Europe award. But we have something new about it. Last year when I was telling about Stingray, it was an eight-person slide. This year we have something new. Now the capacity went up to 10, especially when we're talking about all these queue management issues. So that's something wonderful. And also, you ask, what is new? This year, we have something very exciting. A parrot-themed stingray. It's the same slide, but it's parrot-themed.Sohret Pakis: It's coming to Dubai by January. It's going to be open.Paul Marden: So can I ask you, what makes that innovative? What's new about that?Sohret Pakis: Actually, it's a very specifically themed waterslide. You know that POLIN has been pioneer in RTM manufacturing and U-texture. It's kind of a composite material technology which we can make waterslides look.  Look like a character, actually. We are the company who did this first because we said that storytelling is very important. Yes, but you know, slides are just slides. So we just wanted the slides look like the characters in that story. Of course, behind that, there is huge material technology, composites technology, design technologies. Actually, that's the time when we introduced King Cobra years ago. And now with Stingray, we took it much further. So actually, the team looks perfectly like a Stingray, but at the same time, it's a water slide with so many features. It has two big towers and between the towers, there's a bridge. From each tower, two slides start with a very special mist roofing and very special bridge where you can just see what's happening all over the slide.Paul Marden: So the queuing experience is enriched so it doesn't feel quite so long and boring because you can watch what everyone is doing.Sohret Pakis: It is, yes.Paul Marden: Super impressive. So we have been asking everybody to think about what are their predictions for 2026?Sohret Pakis: Everybody is talking about AI. Everybody is talking about immersive. So AI, of course, will make a huge difference in operation, especially.Paul Marden: In what way?Sohret Pakis: Actually, in guest satisfaction, because personalisation is very important in our industry. Whoever comes to the park, they are the heroes at the park. And so actually, if the park can make them feel that they are the heroes, truly— if that's their birthday, if that's their wedding anniversary, so whatever. If the park can make you feel that you're special, and thanks to technology, now it's possible.Paul Marden: Absolutely. That's so interesting. Thank you so much for your insights and for joining us on Skip the Queue. Thank you.Thomas Collin: I'm Thomas, I'm from VEX Solutions, so we are a VR company at the start, and now we're going to the arcade with mixed reality as well. Okay, so that's a nice link. What are you launching here at IAFA? So here for the first time we are introducing VEX Party Dash. The Party Dash is a mixed reality arcade machine. So automated, people can go on it, play on it. You have two huge screens that are really highly interactive. You can walk on the screen, you can touch the screen. The goal is really to make you moving. So that's what we want to do with the Dash.Paul Marden: That's amazing, isn't it? So we're watching people at the moment. You can see lights up on the floor that they're stepping on and on the wall.Thomas Collin: What is really the key aspect of this product is that it's highly attractive. People, they just go around, they stop by it, they want to try it. Actually, we can say, 'Hey, come and try it,' because we watch you, we see you. So we can say, 'Hey, come and try it.' And people stop by, they play it. It's highly immersive, but also highly active. Yes. You're just not standing on an arcade, sitting down. No, you're really moving around. So, this is really good for kids and families. Absolutely. That's what we see.Paul Marden: So, where do you see this being used? What sort of attractions will take this?Thomas Collin: Actually, with this product, it can go either in the attraction side or either at the arcade side. So, you can play it as one game, and you can play a three-minute game like an arcade, or you can actually book for 15 minutes. Since there is not a single game, but multiple games, you can play different games, you can play different levels inside the main gate. So you have a high replayability. Because we want you to come back, we want to attract the gamers, and then make them come back.Paul Marden: 15 minutes with this much activity sounds like quite a tall order. It's a workout.Thomas Collin: It's a workout. It's a workout. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Peter Cliff: Hi, my name is Pete Cliff. I'm from Conductr. We're here in Barcelona and it's so exciting to be back at IAAPA. Now, what we're super excited about this year is talking about our collaboration with Norwegian Cruise Lines on Great Stirrup Cay. It's their new water park. It's a great project. We're excited to talk to people about it. It's also lovely to be back in Barcelona. It's been, I think, about six years since we were last back here, and it's always one of my favourite European cities for IAPA. It's great to meet with people from the industry, reconnect with old colleagues and friends, and really see what's happening. There's a huge amount of innovation and special projects that are launching all over the show floor. So yeah, great to be back, and can't wait to see what the future of the themed entertainment industry has to offer.Laura Baxter: My name is Laura Baxter. You may know me as the girl with the purple jumpsuit on LinkedIn. I am the head of marketing for Black Gang Shine, but have most recently just announced that I've gone into freelancing and I've launched your CMO.Paul Marden: And I have to say, the jumpsuits work because I was about 50 metres behind you earlier on and I spotted the Your CMO logo on the back of the jumpsuit, so well done for that. We've talked to a lot of suppliers with stands that are exhibiting. From your perspective, this is your first time stepping over to the dark side and coming to an IAPA. What's the experience like for you? What are you here to get out of the show?Laura Baxter: I'd say it's twofold. Mainly it is for networking. Obviously anybody who's anyone in the industry is here. But also, it's inspiration because I want to be able to talk about new and exciting stuff with... Potential clients that I may have and ideas still for Black Gang as well. So, when you walk around show floor, which is just so vibrant and there's so much going on everywhere—you turn, you can draw inspiration from so many of the suppliers here.Paul Marden: What have you seen that's innovative?Laura Baxter: There's a huge amount of stuff being done with tech and it's very interesting because I think that's where a lot of people are going to think that they need to go, because that's the way of the world now, and the next generation don't know life off of a screen and they're expecting to have these incredible digital experiences.Laura Baxter: I'm not convinced that is the way to go. But yes, it's still impressive tech. So for me, there are things that I stand back out and look at and I'm like, 'Whoa, that's really, really cool.'Laura Baxter: I'm not so sure it's potentially what consumers want, though, controversially.Paul Marden: It's really hard, isn't it? Because as a parent of young kids, you want them off the tech as much as you possibly can. But you need a hook. To be able to attract them, don't you? So there's been some amazing stuff here that bridges that gap between the real world and the tech world. So, summer season 2025 is over. What are your predictions about summer 26 and what operators should be thinking about right now?Laura Baxter: It's a really tough market, we all know that. Budgets are tight for households, so there is an awful lot more thought going into their spending and what they're doing and where they're choosing to take that little bit of disposable money that they do have. Therefore actually I don't think next year operators should be thinking about huge innovations or new attractions. I think they need to strip back to basics and nail their customer service. I think guest expectations now are so high. because they're parting with money that is a little bit more precious to them than perhaps if they don't leave at the end of that day having had a good experience they feel ripped off they're going to go straight to review platforms they're going to let it all out and actually you need to be focusing on making sure that every single touch point with that customer is bang on and we're talking pre-visit as well from the your website journey to buying it to the follow-up emails to the pre-visit emails to that first person they meet on front of house to the ride operators to the events team if you have that kind of entertainment on park if you are not nailing your experienceLaura Baxter: You are going to lose out well.Paul Marden: I think we should end it right there. That there is a nugget of gold.Paul Marden: So I am here with co-host Andy Povey and our good friend Josh Haywood from Crealy down in Devon.Josh Haywood: Hello.Paul Marden: It's the end of day two. What have you seen, Josh? What's blown your socks off?Josh Haywood: Good couple of days so far. We're probably into 40,000 steps, which is great. I think technology is the thing that struck me this week so far. Just the small changes that some of the operators and some of the manufacturers are putting into their existing kits. So, for example, I attended a seminar this morning about bowling. and normally temping bowling is temping bowling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now there's augmented reality, and they've got features on the lanes, and it's not about just taking all the pins down, it's taking pin one and six out, and all those things they're trying to do to reinvent older, more traditional attractions, which I think I find really interesting. Yeah. I think some of the seasonality stuff, the Christmas and Halloween stuff has been really good. We sat on a train and went on a journey and the seats rumbled and the sound and the visual effects, they were great.Paul Marden: I saw that. There was no room for me to go and sit on that train. It was amazing.Josh Haywood: I thought that was really good. And, you know, I've been really impressed with generally the show. I think you can get around it all as well. It feels really friendly. I think the sun shining always helps as well. It's not too tough, is it?Paul Marden: I mean, the last time we were in Barcelona, we were all wearing face masks. Absolutely, yes. So it's really refreshing to be back here. And not have that.Josh Haywood: Absolutely. And not have to queue to get in as well. I think that was interesting on the first day.Paul Marden: Oh, did they see you and then just wave you through?Josh Haywood: Red carpet was up for, of course, award-winning theme park and resort. Paul Marden: Mr. Hayward. Did you say award? Winnie and obviously you're on the back of your two awards in the theme park awards last week. How was that? And then we've got some really exciting news from Creeley.Josh Haywood: I saw it at the press this morning. Yes, so a couple of things happened last week. So first of all, we had our anniversary 25 years of Maximus the Coaster. The Vekoma Coaster, 25 years. The first coaster in Devon. It was Devon's first coaster, over half a million riders later. It's done 2 million miles around the track. It's great. So we did a sort of event for that, and we used it to sort of make some announcements about future attractions, which I'll tell you about in a minute. But then we went to the Theme Park Awards last week at Wickste Park, where... We've been the recipients of a few bronze and silvers, and we go being little old us and hope for the best. And then the award I really wanted to win was one of two: the best for families and the best for value. And when the family award came up, they said, 'In bronze is such and such, in silver.' And I was like, 'Well, there you go.' That's all that's left for another year. And then when they said the win at gold was cruelly for best for families, we were delighted. I got a bit emotional about it. I think we would just work so hard over the years to be the best in the Southwest, certainly. And certainly since we put Sootyland in as well. We won the award for Toddlers.Josh Haywood: So it was a double wham. And within 10 minutes as well. It wasn't separated. Within 10 minutes, I just got my breath back from the first one. And then we were up on stage again taking that second award. Oh, it's tough, isn't it? Which was great, yeah. Multi-award winning. Multi-award winning theme parking resort. Devon's finest. Most right in Devon. We're just going to... absolutely bleep the hell out of this for the next 12 months because who knows we may not win it again so we'll just shout from the treetops about this and then we also won thanks to martin rose and rose events uh silver for best entertainment event for the city show It's still very popular, the legacy brand. People love the Sooty show. And as I said at the awards, we sell loads of those puppets. People love a Sooty and a Sweep. So it's been a really good collaboration for us.Paul Marden: We were at our first away day for our Merak team back a few months ago down at Creeley, and I found a little sooty puppet underneath the lectern. I was absolutely chuffed to bits. And there he was, just sitting at the front of the away day, watching everything going on with Sue next to him.Josh Haywood: He's still popular. We understood when we put Cityland in, it wasn't going to be Peppa Pig. world and we didn't think for a minute we'd even sort of get to those heights of Thomas Land at Drayton Manor but it certainly hit a chord with the older market certainly the nannies and the granddads who remember such from when they were kids and you know it's a legacy brand and it works but what we have done really well is sort of corner that market for younger children and toddlers and we Sort of took some comments over the last 12 to 18 months that we may be missing the mark when it comes to the 8 to 12-year-olds, which we were pretty good at five or six years ago. So we've decided this year that we're going to invest in some thrill attractions. So we've just launched news that we've got two new rides going in next year. One, I can't tell you exactly because we're still going under. Got some planning issues, but we're going to have the Southwest tallest ride and the Southwest first inverted ride. So a multi-million pound investment going in and hopefully that will give us another boost that we need to kick on again. We've still got new accommodation going in. We'll still be doing new events and shows for next year.Josh Haywood: So it's going to be a bumper year for Crealy. Absolutely.  I really look forward to that.Paul Marden: I look forward to you being on the launch ride.Paul Marden: Me down on the ground watching and videoing.Josh Haywood: What they have said, which is really interesting, we spoke to an operator, there's only one other ride like it in the UK, and that operator said, whatever you do, make sure when you put the ride in, you fit a hose pipe and a tap right in. Because you may be washing the seats down more than you would usually on your current ride. So, yeah, it certainly will add that next level of ride experience to our family market.Paul Marden: Yeah, I think that's super important, isn't it? Mr. Povey, what have you seen today that has blown your socks off?Andy Povey: I'm really looking for the place to go and get some more soft, comfortable socks. I've walked so much. I've stood around and listened to so many fantastic talks, had so many brilliant conversations. I'm done. My feet hurt. I need to sit down and have a beer.Paul Marden: Well, I hate to break it to you, but there's another day left. And there's still more interviews to do. Still more opportunities for us to get some interesting stories on Skip the Queue.Andy Povey: Look forward to that.Paul Marden: Gentlemen, I think we're about done. So thank you ever so much. It has been a joy. And Mr. Povey, see you back here tomorrow. Josh, wonderful as always.Josh Haywood: Maybe see you at OrlandoPaul Marden: Oh. Absolutely, yeah.Josh Haywood: We'll do it againPaul Marden: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you liked it, leave a comment in Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If you didn't, let us know on hello@skipthequeue.fm. Today's episode was a team effort for Sami and Emily from Plaster, Steve from Folland Co., as well as Claire and Wenalyn from Skip the Queue HQ. We're back again tomorrow for more fun from IAAPA, including Andreas Andersen from Liseberg, one of Scandinavia's most visited parks. See you all tomorrow. The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

Skewed and Reviewed look at game news and updates on The Fantastic Four, Batman, Sony, Star Wars, and More. 00:00 News and Updates 04:07 Sony State of Play 11:27 Fantastic 4 news 19:01 The Batman: Part II 25:20 Mandalorian movie

THE FANTASTIC POUR Brett welcomes fellow Ward Hill Terry to the Fantasti-Lounge to talk Nexus! We enjoy a refreshing end-of-summer Gin Cocktail and read Nexus issue #9. Join us in the Fantasti-Lounge as we discuss: Is Nexus the hero or villain of his story? Who would make up Terry's indy comics superhero team? Does one of Terry's favorite bands have their house in the middle of their street? And much, much more! Secret Pour-igins: Gin Cocktail: Killer Poodle Ingredients 2 ounces gin 1/2 ounce lime juice 1/2 ounce simple syrup 6 mint leaves 3 cucumber slices tonic water Garnish Cucumber Mint Sprig Instructions In a cocktail shaker, muddle the cucumber, mint and simple syrup until the cucumber offers no more resistance. Fill the shaker with ice, then pour in the lime juice and gin. Shake until the cocktail is thoroughly chilled, about 20 seconds. Strain the mixture over ice into a Collins or rocks glass. Top with tonic water Garnish with a sprig of mint, and cucumber slice if you'd like Non-Alcoholic Killer Poodle Ingredients 1/2 ounce lime juice 1/2 ounce simple syrup 6 mint leaves 3 cucumber slices tonic water Garnish Cucumber Mint Sprig Instructions In a cocktail shaker, muddle the cucumber, mint and simple syrup until the cucumber offers no more resistance. Fill the shaker with ice, then pour in the lime juice. Shake until the cocktail is thoroughly chilled. Strain the mixture over ice into a Collins or rocks glass. Top with tonic water Garnish with a sprig of mint, and cucumber slice if you'd like Comic: Nexus #9, First Comics, 1985 Fantasti-Lounge House Band music: Stop Calling Me Frank "My Baby Is An Axe Murder From Wisconsin" Check out their Band Camp page for more 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

The Raw after a disappointment Did they give those saudi rings back or only the belts? Fantastic promo with with Seth and Cody, above and beyond How is Waller not dead Is Steph the new big thing for the company Bi polar Bayley, eh JD bumps like he died The Auska Io saga I guess Jey doesn't have a concussion AmericanoS Rea is in the new Avatar movie now Subscribe on patreon.com/LingusMafia for ad-free and video versions of the show, exclusive PPV/PLE reviews and bonus shows including every Wrestlemania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, and Saturday Night's Main Event ever. Get access to over 10 years of podcasts! Stay connected: All our social media (@LingusMafia) links can be found here: https://linktr.ee/lingusmafia We have merch! Shirts, hoodies, stickers and more: lingusmafiashop.printify.me/ Drop us an email with comments or questions: lingusmafia@gmail.com Check our YouTube out at Wrestle Lingus Show! Remember to leave a comment and rate the show wherever you get your podcast from, we gotta get the word out there, we aren't too proud to beg, please? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the Fact or Fantasy Podcast, Chase and Kyle dive deep into the latest Superman film, the first film in the new DC Universe, exploring its themes, character dynamics, and the impact of public perception on heroes. They discuss Superman's vulnerabilities, the manipulation by Lex Luthor, and the introduction of new characters like the Hammer of Boravia, the Justice Gang consisting of Hawk Girl, Guy Gardener's Green Lantern, and Mr. Fantastic, the Daily Planet's Jimmy, Perry White, Lois Lane, Steve, and Kat, Martha and Jon Kent, and of course, Lex Luthor. The conversation also touches on the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane, highlighting the complexities of their interactions and the challenges Superman faces in a world that questions his motives. Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the film's narrative and character development. Takeaways Superman's vulnerability makes him relatable. His humanity is central to his character. The film explores Superman's internal struggles. Superman's actions are driven by empathy. His relationships highlight his human side. The story challenges the invincible hero trope. Superman's moral dilemmas are explored. The narrative emphasizes personal growth. Superman's journey is both external and internal. The film offers a nuanced portrayal of heroism Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Superman and the Podcast 02:46 Engagement with Listeners and Reviews 05:54 Superman's Opening Sequence and Initial Struggles 11:41 Superman's Healing and Parental Messages 17:08 Superman's Vulnerability and Pain 22:57 Superman's Return to Action and the Hammer of Boravia 28:46 Lex Luthor's Manipulation and Control 34:22 The Kaiju Battle and Justice Gang's Arrival 40:10 Clark Kent's Daily Life and Relationship with Lois Lane 45:55 Lois Lane's Interview with Superman 51:51 Public Perception and Lex's Deception 57:24 Conclusion and Reflection on Superman's Journey

In this episode, Ryan Koo and Jourdan Aldredge explore what makes the 20th edition of Fantastic Fest so crucial for genre and indie filmmakers. They discuss the festival's unique energy, audience connection, and events, spotlight standout films like Shelby Oaks, Sisu: Road to Revenge, Black Phone 2, Luger, Vicious, Primate, Whistle, Coyotes, and others. The conversation culminates in a new initiative—Fantastic Pitches—marking a shift in the fest's ecosystem from exhibiting work to helping get new projects made. In this episode, No Film School's Ryan Koo and Jordan Aldridge discuss: How Fantastic Fest blends genre film exhibition with audience experience, making film festivals more fun, accessible, and communal. The importance of seeing what genre filmmakers are doing with limited resources—especially horror, fantasy, action—and how those constraints often spawn creative solutions. Highlights of films at Fantastic Fest 2025: Shelby Oaks (Chris Stuckmann's debut), Sisu: Road to Revenge, Black Phone 2, Vicious, Primate, Whistle, Coyotes, The Piano Accident, and Luger among others, with a look at what makes them stand out visually, tonally, and in terms of audience response. The exciting new Fantastic Pitches competition: structure, reward (including a $100,000 funding prize, guaranteed premiere, distribution, post‑production support), what it means for early‑stage projects, and how such programs shift festivals from merely showing films toward incubating them. Practical advice for filmmakers: how to attend Fantastic Fest (buy early, badge types, use online ticket systems), pro tips for navigating ticket demand, the importance of authenticity in genre work, and why festivals like Fantastic that lean into live audience momentum are more important now than ever. Memorable Quotes: “It is the 20th year of the Fantastic Fest … Fantastic Fest equals FunTastic Fest.” “If you come from an authentic place of loving horror movies … I think the audience will always connect with it.” “It's really a vital experience now more than ever, especially for genre films, which play so well theatrically.” “Fantastic Pitches was fantastic. The pitches really were fantastic … for the first time when this event happened for the first time.” Resources: Fantastic Fest 2025 — Full Film Guide & Lineup Sisu: Road to Revenge Black Phone 2 Vicious Coyotes The Piano Accident Luger Shelby Oaks Primate Whistle Find No Film School everywhere: On the Web: No Film School Facebook: No Film School on Facebook Twitter: No Film School on Twitter YouTube: No Film School on YouTube Instagram: No Film School on Instagram  

On this week's Vogue & Amber: Vogue's eyeing up Amber's new Adidas, Amber breaks up with her therapist (thanks to Vogue), and hypnotherapy doesn't quite go to plan. Winnie's not feeling his best, so Vogue's getting sentimental with pawprint jewellery, and considering taxidermy.Plus, stepping in dog poo, the quest for perfect hotel pillows, Vogue rubbing shoulders with Elizabeth Hurley at The Pig, outrageous rug cleaning prices, drag shows with sparklers in unexpected places, and in Agony Amb: should you take a dream job in Zurich?Watch us on Youtube! CLICK HERE! or search Vogue & AmberRemember, if you want to get involved you can:Email us at vogueandamberpod@global.com OR find us on socials @voguewilliams, @ambrerosolero @vogueandamberpodListen and subscribe to Vogue & Amber on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Anbern R. Guarrine: a partner of The Guarrine Group (tGG), a global training company based in Illinois. tGG has facilitated team building, leadership, and organizational development workshops around the world for over 30 years. tGG partners with excellent facilitators who help groups have FUN, which is a hallmark of tGG Anbern R. Guarrine calls herself a "Facilitator of Family Play." By facilitating games, she helps participants gain insights about their strengths, their relationships with peers, and how they can use their skills to move forward in their professional and professional lives. As a partner in tGG, Anbern enjoys challenging herself by taking on uninteresting topics and developing them into fun, game-based learning modules. She is Gallup trained in Strengths Coaching and has received the Family Firm Institute (FFI) Certificate in Family Business Advising. She enjoys sharing best practices with professionals of various disciplines and continually grows her understanding of the consulting space. You can find out more at: https://www.theguarrinegroup.com/       Transcript:  00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host, now in this fourth season  of the Founder's Sandbox podcast. This monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs, business owners who learn about 00:33 building resilient, purpose-driven, and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. My guests also share this mission and actually working with entrepreneurs and um business owners  to also work on those aspects, each in their own manner. My guests are  founders,  professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, or large. 01:02 to make change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest on topics that's gonna touch on their, you know, why they do what they do today. And we are recreating a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one business owner at a time to build a better world. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Anberne Guarrine. Guarrine? 01:31 Anberne Guarrine. Yes, Anberne Guarrine. um And she is, thank you, Anberne, for joining the podcast today as CEO and founder, the co-founder of the Guarine Group out of Illinois. As the founder sandbox host, Brenda McCabe and blogger, I often have guests who speak about playfulness and innovation. 01:59 And I write about the hidden value  that playfulness brings to innovation and creativity in teams. When Anber was introduced to me by a fellow guest, um she truly brings uh the playfulness that is used in the  business environment to a next level. As facilitator of family play, think listeners. We're team building. 02:27 rubber ducks and beach balls meet second and third generation family business owners. So I am absolutely delighted to have you here today. Thank you, Ann-Bern.  Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so excited.  Fantastic. So  I would love you to share with uh my listeners the origin story. I mean, how did  you use playfulness  in the business environment in a very structured 02:56 manner now you're going on I believe 10 years  with the Guarine group working with family owned businesses. What was the origin? What was that seed that you had in your mind? Thank you. Yeah, so when I was in college undergrad  is psychology and  I learned that I like working with groups. Okay. And so while I was 03:21 you know, doing my day job  of whatever it was that I was doing, I knew that I always gravitated towards doing team buildings and leadership programs. And so  at some point I said, you know what, I should start making this a business. And so the entrepreneurial spirit came in and I created a training company with a friend of mine. And so we were doing team buildings and leadership and communication programs. 03:51 We had corporate groups. We also had  government contracts.  And at some point, it was really all fun. I was doing what I wanted to do, but at some point there was just a tug in the heart, know, in my spirit. I was looking for something more. I was looking for sustainable impact because I was thinking as fun and as wonderful as our experience is with the groups that I was doing. 04:20 I just felt like  there's gotta be something more. There's gotta be more sustainable  impact. And around that time, my business partner's brother  said, you know, I'm going into inheritance planning. I'm thinking maybe my clients need some team building.  And  you know, I know a whole lot about team building and groups. 04:46 I did not know a whole lot about families and especially families who own businesses together. That's  a whole different dynamics. And so my, my business partner and I,  you know,  went through what resources can we get? And we found that there is a group that actually does this  for a living. Yes. They do family business consulting. And so  we both got our certificate for family business advising. 05:15 And then we hit the ground running. um But we cannot shake off our fun activities and our games. We can't shake it off. And so we took it with us in the family boardroom. And that's how I got started. And I still use rubber ducks and beach balls and whatnot. Right. And later on in the interview, you'll talk about what a typical engagement looks like, right, with the Guarani group. 05:45 in which uh you not only touch on  the family use family play, right playfulness, but you also get into kind of the um Constitution of the family. So let's carry on. Let's carry on. You know, what have you found is unique  about the family business experience? Unlike working for the corporates, right?  What is that? I don't know secret sauce. 06:12 that are the uniqueness that you've had to kind of curate your business around? Yeah, so what I found out  is that uh family businesses actually live in three ecosystems, okay, whether they're aware or not, there's the ecosystem of the family. There's the ecosystem of the business. And then there's the ecosystem of  ownership. 06:41 And those three systems have different values. They protect those values differently and they have different goals. So let me explain this. If you think about your family, you think about your objective is to support the growth and development of everyone in the family. Your values are love, unconditional regard, you know, you want everybody to thrive. There's  all of that  social. 07:10 Connections. Yes. When you think about the business experience, you think about people, what are their contributions? How can they help this business grow? We're thinking of keeping the business for the long term. You know, you're making decisions for the long term. And so  you're thinking of profit. You're thinking of growing the company. So those are the values and those are your mindsets, right?  As an owner, oh 07:38 If you are investing in the business, you're thinking of  what's my ROI?  How can I get as much profit in a short period of time? And so those are the values and the objectives. Now, if you think  of all these three circles as not just individual circles, but connected kind of like a Venn diagram. Yes, like a Venn diagram.  A family business is right in the middle of it. 08:04 So you're making decisions, thinking about the family, thinking about ownership, thinking about the business. And  whether you're aware of it or not, you're making the, you have different hats that you're wearing, right? And so what we do as family consultant or consultants to family businesses is we help you kind of untangle that and kind of understand this is my situation and these are my goals for the family, my goals for the business. 08:34 there could be some friction there, but there's also a unity there. And so just the awareness and the appreciation of your unique experience. So uh how do  you, is it typically the CEO, the chairman? um Is it the general counsel? Again, because you're working on uh family wealth um creation,  who is the typical 09:03 uh decision maker that would get engaged with a querying group? So sometimes the people, yeah, no, that's a great question.  Sometimes the people that  make the decision are actually not sometimes not always not the people that have the title. 09:26 So sometimes it is the people that are in the family ecosystem that are not necessarily part of the business or not necessarily owners, but they have a big say in terms of the family dynamics. Interesting. So a confidential mentor is it maybe general counsel, so an outside they're already an outside advisor to the family.  It could be because sometimes when you're very close to the situation,  you 09:54 don't know what you don't know, right? Right, right. Yes. um Sometimes on the rare occasion, there are family leaders who are very in tune to what their family needs and they're constantly looking out, right?  But sometimes there have to be somebody  else that is not currently involved in the day-to-day that says, hey, you might want to have a conversation with this person. Right. 10:24 That makes sense.  Yeah.  Particularly as some family companies evolved to bring in professional management, right? So there are probably many, many aspects or many entry points. All right, you're 10 years into uh the great chlorine group. uh I would love to ask, you know, what are some best practices, right, that you've identified without revealing the names of the businesses? But what have you found to be 10:55 best practices  in, I guess, G2,  G3, right? Yes. um Before I say anything, I want to preface it to say that you see one family business, you just see one family business, so they're not all the same. But there is a thread that is common.  And I'd  like to say three things. So first  is, there is a clear 11:22 and conscious separation  of the family ecosystem and the business ecosystem. And they have two separate government structures. Okay. So for the business, you have your board, have, you know, typically the board would have an independent non-family member that sits on the board.  They have regular meetings that are prepared and scheduled. 11:50 And in the same manner,  the family also has that type of family governance structure. So not as formal as the family board, but you do have what they call a family council. Yes. So it could be a  council of cousins, a council of  siblings, all branches are represented. And this is a way for the family to keep the business of being a family. Right. And so they talk about um 12:19 They talk about uh family gatherings. They talk about traditions.  They talk about, you know, family fun, you know, what do we do,  birthdays and all of that thing. um And so, yeah, so this is, so they're very conscious about keeping the two separate. Yes. So that's the first one. I think the  next um best practice would be that they have a shared purpose. 12:50 They know why are we in business together?  Or why are we hanging out together? What is our what is the legacy that we are leaving in the world? So they have they're very connected to that. And they're, they acknowledge it and they articulate it. And I think that's a great  best practice that I've Yeah, I guess I would call that purpose, right? Purpose. Yes, driven. And it's shared purpose, or purpose. 13:18 And I think the third one would be that they have  a sense of what their values are. Okay.  guides them. And so where their purpose kind of helps them soar and go into the future, their values kind of keep them grounded. Oh, so that they don't just fly away where the wind blows. Does that make sense? It's it does. um I had never it doesn't the at the 13:48 I don't work with family businesses, right? So it's,  I've seen this in very well run  growth companies. They, right? um The shared practice  or the leaving a legacy is typically the founding team, right? Whereas it's a family here.  So I do see a lot of similarities.  And I love your  sharing that values,  it keeps them grounded while the 14:17 shared purpose, right?  Is kind of their long term vision soaring. Yes.  Well, we'll get to meanings of purpose driven later. And I'm certain you'll come back to this. All right. Thank you for sharing that best practices. Now, what does a typical engagement look like? Are you playing all day long?  Or how does play come into how right or  more? um 14:47 Seriously, how would we've already talked about how you may be retained for an engagement, but what would be a typical engagement or typical engagements, right? Depending on the stage  of uh evolution of that, family business. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So  we start with finding out what the goals of the family is.  So we talk to individual members. What is it that you want? What are you? 15:14 engaging us for? Are you engaging us for just one day of family fun, which is great?  Are you trying to clarify your values or are you trying to  go deeper dive and create a family constitution? Okay.  And in all of those,  I always lean on my experiential learning background where I take, you know, the the  fun tools, the rubber ducks and the beach balls and the plastic balls. 15:43 sticks  and we play  and I  get everybody to kind of break that ice and forget their hats, know, the  CEO hat or the accounting hat or  whatever hats you have to kind of shed that a little bit and be more human.  And  once we get to that level, then we can talk about,  what are your goals? If your goal is trying to clarify your values, 16:13 what is it when you were playing earlier, how did your value show up? You know,  or when we're talking about a family constitution, we talk about, you know, how do we pass on things from one generation to the next? So when you were passing on the beach ball, how what made it successful? Let's look at that. And are there ways that we can make sure that we do those similar things  as we pass on the baton from  one generation to the next? And,  yeah, and so m 16:43 A typical engagement could be  one day,  we'll do fun and then we'll talk about why does that matter? Okay. Or it could be more deeper dive. And at the end of the day, we have a family constitution that everybody can sign and commit that we can then turn over to their legal counsel to make it more legally binding. Right, right.  So it could be anywhere from three months to six. 17:11 to 12 months, right, depending on the level of engagement and the actual oh whether it's to G2 G3, right, the complexity. Yes. Oh, and these  engagements by  design are probably in person. Okay. Is that correct? They have to be right? Particularly? 17:38 Yeah, so we in the beginning, there's when we're trying to kind of get everybody on board, we could do it online, we could do zoom. But the actual engagement, it will have to be we all have to be breathing the same air. Right?  Yes. Yeah, there's something to be said about sharing the space. There's something to be said about being in the same place. 18:06 being able to touch somebody, being able to hear their laughter real time in the same room. There's just something about that. Yes, that comes from a practitioner's  experience and been  worrying from the worrying group.  And facilitating, I would say good governance and family businesses. 18:32 I just that just occurred to me while we're talking, right? I was so set on playfulness, but also it's really about achieving good corporate governance because you alluded to something here. Well, you know, what does a typical family constitution comprise? What is the comprised of family constitution? Yeah, that's a really good question. So, yeah, so we first off, we define what does family mean to everybody? 18:58 And then we talk about, you know, what are the family practices that we want to keep? So,  um, so that's the, so again, when, when I was talking about the three ecosystems,  the family constitution is meant to kind of  set the stage for governance structures for each of the three ecosystems. Okay. So for the family, what are our values? What are the, what's our legacy? What is our history? 19:27 know, m what is our hopes and dreams for  the family members? Do we have an educational program for, you know, understanding what our history is about? um If there are people that are coming in as married-ins  or in-laws, how do we kind of educate them into our culture? And so that's the family piece.  For the business piece,  we talk about 19:54 What is our hiring process for family members? Do we hire straight out of college? Do they have to have so many years of experience? And then we talk about the tricky things like, okay, do they have  job  evaluation?  Do they have an annual performance reviews? What happens if they don't quite meet the standard? um Can they work directly under their parents? 20:23 know, or their siblings, you know. So, one of these questions that are potential sticky spots, we talk about them ahead of time before  you're actually in that situation and then  all the emotions are wrapped up in  both the brainstorming, trying to figure out the solution, and then you're also in the thick of it. 20:47 So I mentioned the family system, the business system, and then in the ownership system, we talk about things like, do you even have a shareholder's agreement? What happens if somebody wants to sell their shares?  And how do we figure out what the  value of the shares are?  What's the process going to be like? How long will it take? we pay them immediately, or do we want to think about  long term? 21:14 Do the other siblings or the other family members have the right of first refusal?  Can they just share, you know, all these things. Right.  So we talk about those things again, hopefully before you meet the situation, you already have systems in place that allows the family to say, Oh, you know what? We've talked about this. This is our process. This is what we're going to do. Or if we don't have a process. 21:39 then we say, this is our decision-making matrix. This is how we're going to come up with decisions. Because you can't potentially talk about everything. No. There are emotions involved.  Yes. Possibly on a greater scale than in a private company, right?  Yes. so  we recognize that. And so we create systems. How do we make decisions together  if we come up with or if we find ourselves in a situation that we haven't anticipated? 22:10 you know, preparing for your node. Yes, I wonder, you know, why do you continue to have the role of play in your toolkit? Right? Gosh, that's a wonderful question. I see it at the beginning, but do you use it throughout? Just? Yeah. Why is that part of your toolkit? Yes, because it's fun. And, and I, I now say fun, as in both 22:39 F-U-N and also F-U-N-N.  So a friend and colleague of ours,  the late Carl Runke, he  is known, very well known and a  key individual in creating adventure programming.  He coined the term  F-U-N-N, meaning functional understanding, not necessary. Sometimes we do fun things because we have to have fun. 23:09 know, we don't need that said,  my husband in his career as an outdoor education um specialist and director,  he took Carl's idea of FUNM and said, Okay, what if fun has an acronym? And he came up with fundamental universal need. Okay, and he said, it's very basic, as basic as food and water and shelter, the sense of I need to have fun. Like if you look at 23:39 children all over the world, you give them a stick and mud and they're clean, right? And so it's fundamental, it's universal and it's a need.  And  with  neuro-psychology um and all these studies, we now know that FUN is actually a very good tool, not only for brain development for children, but also for neuroplasticity for grownups, right? So if we want to keep our brains fresh, m 24:09 we need to play and it's a need,  right? Right, almost like biological.  And we learn so much better and so much easier when we're in a state of play. So when we're talking about creating a family governance structure,  if the family doesn't know what that is, if the family is not used to having a formal meeting talking about family matters,  it's really hard  to learn that unless you're in a state of 24:38 play.  And so that's the reason why I use play because it brings down the boundaries.  Take the hats off, you know, so you're not formal. You're engaged. You're engaged with your whole body, your whole mind and your soul. Okay, it's easier to learn about the other person and it's easier to learn new skills and new mindsets when you're in a state of play. So yeah, and uh 25:07 I like sharing this story. Einstein  had said when he was, when he gets  stuck in a problem,  he steps away from it and he does something that's not related at all to the problem that he's doing. So sometimes he plays the violin or  he tickers around and he says something about  activating that different part of your brain.  Helps him so that when he goes back, 25:36 and looks at the same problem that he was stuck in, it kind of changes his mindset and he finds different ways to solve that situation. And so if I'm thinking, you know what, if it works for Einstein, it should probably work for us, for ordinary people, right? You heard it here on the founder's sandbox. I love that. You know, I know that quite a few, like mathematicians, scientists, 26:05 even composers, Beethoven like walking, right? Being in nature is an area that foments their creativity. I hadn't thought of that or hadn't heard about the Einstein like stepping away, maybe playing violin, maybe just right doing another activity. Why not play? Why not plenty? Right? Yes. No shame adults. We can increase and improve our neuroplasticity. 26:35 Yes.  Being playful. Yes. Thank you. Can I share with you a story? Yes. So one time I was doing, you know, the typical activities that I was doing.  And  one time a family member in the midst of all the laughter and the like  really big shouts and all of that. And he just said, you know what? I don't remember the last time I played with my siblings.  Oh. 27:03 And this was the time that they got to do that  with their parents. Their parents were all in on the fun. it's like, that is such a gift.  It is such a gift for them to have that experience, but it's a gift, a privilege that I got to see that. And so, yes, it is fun. Wow. Wow. I almost, okay. I got emotional. 27:33 Thank you.  I would like you to have uh this opportunity to provide information  on how to contact you, your group.  This information will be in the show notes. So take it on that, please.  Yeah. Yeah. So our website is the Guarrien group. That's G like George, U-A-R-R-I-N like Nancy. 28:02 Theguarriengroup.com and my email is Anbern, N like Nancy,  B-E-R-N like Nancy at Theguarrienroup.com. That's the best way to get a hold of me. 28:19 But I  like to bring my guests back to my sandbox so we can be playful.  No, seriously, um I am passionate in my own work um with  growth stage companies to provide uh good corporate governance practices while scaling, while finding or increasing the purpose,  and um really 28:48 building that resiliency. And I like to ask each of my guests, you know, what does the term resilience mean to you and your own practice? Yeah. So to me, resilience is like, think of a river that's flowing. Okay.  Even if you put a boulder in front of it, it's going to find its way. It's going to keep going to where it wants to go. Yeah. And to me, that's resilience. Wow. Beautiful. 29:19 and very  visual, I can imagine a boulder and a river. How about purpose driven enterprise? What's purpose driven? ah Purpose driven, I feel like it's our ability to know that our time on this earth is limited.  Okay, we have a role to play. And so  what is my role? And that kind of gives me 29:48 a sense of direction. What am I in this world for?  Wow. 29:59 And that goes for individuals, businesses, families, organizations.  Yeah, I guess you could interchange role with legacy. Yes. Right. Oh, I like that. I like that. Well, you just said it here. And I'm just taking notes. uh And I listen. That's my gift is to my guests.  Final. Well, second to last question, scalable growth. What's scalable? So how can you 30:28 scale those. I imagine you in your daily work, generation two, generation three, that's you think about this a lot. Yes. I think scalable  is creating the right foundation. Okay. So that when  as you grow,  your if your foundation is strong, then you can build on top of it anyway, in any way, however big you want to build. So I feel like scalable growth has to be 30:58 on a good foundation.  You know what you're about.  You're rooted in your values. And so you can grow exponentially. Nice. Last question. Yes. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Gosh, did talking with you savor or satisfy my fundamental universal need? Yes, it did. And we didn't have to revert to  rubber ducks. 31:27 Right? No rubber ducks.  No. Thank you.  So to my listeners, if you like this episode with Anne-Bern Guarine, sign up for the monthly release where founders,  professional service providers, and business owners  share their experience on how to build with strong corporate governance, resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven companies to make profits for good. 31:55 Signing off for this month. Thank you again, Anne-Bern. It was a true pleasure to have you here. My gosh, I had so much fun. Thank you.    

In episode 12, Scott, Paul and Tom USA Hockey Executive Director and General Manager John Vanbiesbrouck to the show!  Join us on ITHSWpodcasts.Podbean.com, or wherever you get your favorite podcast! For more, click like and subscribe and go to ITHSWpodcasts.podbean.com Episode 12 of 26 episodes  

Join Nick Lamagna on The A Game Podcast with his guest Eric Brewer, The King of Novations and the originator of the now famous "Brewer Method!"  He is a TRUE disruptor in the industry who ended up being one of the most respected real estate investors in the game.  Fighting out of Pennsylvania after leaving behind a life in the military and in car sales he has taken away the excuse for others that they can't do tons of deals in a small local market. He has built an incredibly successful investing operation taking down various real estate assets through multiple strategies from flips, to wholesale, to creative finance deals and of course his crown jewel, Novations!  He has turned his focus to expanding into other markets and even seeking strategic partnerships and is on a mission of expansion!  He has built the confidence to grow his real estate business into other areas through proven systems and processes with a strong skillset in leadership and daily sales training on sharpening his acquisitions teams. His company, Ramp REI is making a name for themselves helping YOU sharpen your teams' skills so you can beat the competition and thrive as a real estate investor.  Fantastic discussion with someone showing us that good guys can still WIN and you will not want to miss this episode.  Go back in the vault and check out his first appearance as well for some killer real estate investing details! Topics for this episode include: ✅  How to know when your business is ready for scaling ✅ How to find rockstars to work for you ✅ How to adapt and pivot for any changes and regulations ✅ Tips to becoming a better leader for your business ✅ A great way to overcome fear and self doubt + More! See the show notes to connect with all things Eric! Connect with Eric Brewer: brewermethod.com Eric Brewer on Instagram Eric Brewer On LinkedIn Eric Brewer on Youtube Eric Brewer on Twitter Eric Brewer on TikTok    Connect with RampRei: www.ramprei.com Ramp REI on Facebook Ramp REI on Instagram   Connect with Integrity First Home Buyers: www.integrityfirsthomebuyers.com The Brewer Method on Facebook Integrity First Home Buyers on Facebook Integrity First Homebuyers on Instagram Integrity First Homebuyers on Youtube --- Connect with Nick Lamagna www.nicknicknick.com Text Nick (516)540-5733 Connect on ALL Social Media and Podcast Platforms Here FREE Checklist on how to bring more value to your buyers

Today's guest is a ProvenAmazonCourse.com and coaching student who is thrilled with his results so far! It's another great interview with a student who started just a few months ago and is getting great results as we head into Fall 2025. He has a full-time job so he can't work more than a few hours per week, but he's aiming to finish the year with $20K in total sales at great margins - and from there the sky is the limit!   He has so much encouragement to share and really breaks down what's he experienced so far very well. He's a big fan of 3pMercury, his coaches, ProvenAmazonCourse.com training and the culture of our free facebook community and events!   You'll be encouraged and inspired as well as Gus and Jim spend time talking about the powerful personal story of triumph over tragedy and the remarkable story of Khang - the creator of 3PMercury software.   eCommerce Accounting LLC Cindy Smith's Proven Accounting Training inside our Proven Amazon Course has helped thousands of you, and her team can handle your books completely, plus help with income tax prep and tax planning. Remote, professional, eCommerce-focused. Visit bit.ly/ECAMeet to schedule a time with her team today.   Watch this episode on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/dwYSApzkpjw   Show note LINKS:   Get a coach from the same team as today's guest - SilentJim.com/bookacall   3pmercury.com/friends - The best price on 3PMercury.com software   SilentJim.com/bookacall - Schedule a FREE, customized and insightful consultation with my team or me (Jim) to discuss your e-commerce goals and options.   My Silent Team Facebook group. 100% FREE! https://www.facebook.com/groups/mysilentteam - Join 82,000 + Facebook members from around the world who are using the internet creatively every day to launch and grow multiple income streams through our exciting PROVEN strategies! There's no support community like this one anywhere else in the world!   ProvenAmazonCourse.com - The comprehensive course that contains ALL our Amazon training modules, recorded events and a steady stream of latest cutting edge training including of course the most popular starting point, the REPLENS selling model. The PAC is updated free for life!   SilentJim.com/kickstart - The low cost step-by-step group coaching classes for new ProvenAmazonCourse.com students   SilentJim.com/360 - The most comprehensive Keepa training course you'll find. Note: This course is now included inside the ProvenAmazonCourse.com library!   SilentSalesMachine.com - Text the word “free” to 507-800-0090 to get a free copy of Jim's latest book in audio about building multiple income streams online (US only) or visit SilentJim.com/free11   3pmercury.com/friends - Best price on 3PMercury   SilentJim.com/ess   SilentJim.com/ungating - A great article in our Facebook group about "ungating" for new sellers   Arbitrage card - Purchase discounted gift cards and track them automatically: SilentJim.com/giftcards   PrepCenterNetwork.com - Find a prep center that works for you   JeffSchick.com. - For a few dollars per month, put an Amazon policy and legal team to work for you   QuikFinds - http://silentjim.com/q   Seven Core Competencies YouTube training series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQqz94y9eLjxaja1KHiP-mJxlJSBcyukX   Episode 754 of this podcast - A favorite of Jim's had a huge impact on today's guest https://silentjim.com/podcast/episode-754-fully-automated-oa-replens-business-doing-multiple-seven-figures   ProvenAmazonCourse.com/legends - A community of our more successful students who've formed a smaller mastermind consisting of a few hundred members.     Today's guest: Gus Anderson

This Time on the Force Five Podcast:Host Jason Kleeberg is joined by author Ryan Estrada to revisit a topic once talked about on Force Five - single location films. These are the stories that take place in one area, that trap us in a house, a room, a bathroom, a pool, a coffin—and force filmmakers to get creative in tight spaces. Done right, they can be some of the most tense, inventive, and unforgettable movies you'll ever see.PatreonHead to https://www.patreon.com/forcefive to access older episodes, reviews, giveaways and talk flicks with me!Connect with Ryan EstradaFor everything Ryan Estrada, use this link: https://www.ryanestrada.com/Stay Connected with Force Five

On episode #150, I sit down with Matthew J. Trafford to talk about his short fiction collection Runs in the Blood. We explore the grounded fantastic—where everyday life meets the surreal—and how queerness, family, and myth shape his stories.  Books Discussed: This is It – Matthew FoxEndling - Maria RevaHow to Restore A Timeline - Peter CounterThe Hounding - Xenobe PurvisCuckoo – Gretchen Felker-MartinOther Books Mentioned:How to Survive A Bear Attack - Claire CameronA Truce That Is Not Peace - Miriam ToewesSwing Low, A Life - Miriam ToewsMonsters - Claire DedererFind Matthew J. Trafford:  IG @MatthewJTraffordKnitting and crafting: IG @ FairygodfatherknitsYouTube Fairygodfatherknits Support the showGet your Books Are My People coffee mug here!I hope you all have a wonderfully bookish week!

In a bid to get caught up on podcasts, Alan & Keith recorded a mammoth length episode, covering everything from April to July 2025! It was so big, it's been carved into 3 parts.For part 1 its a pop culture chat as we look into everything we've been enjoying from the world of TV and movies including Thunderbolts, Superman, Fantastic 4 and more!Please don't forget to like and subscribe, and leave us a review if you like what we do!

Robert Foster is an award-winning international speaker, author, mental health advocate, and host of the hit podcast called Shut Up and Grind, who is on a mission to help others conquer self-doubt and embrace their struggles as a foundation for success.  Robert firmly believes that our past struggles are not our failures; instead, they are our superpowers. He has had more than his share of personal struggles which he has overcome, defining him as a warrior for the strength and resilience of the human spirit.       From overcoming a life-changing knee injury after being told he would never run or jump again to completing over 190 obstacle races and winning 16 gold medals in track and field, Robert defied the odds and has proven the power of resilience. His journey includes donating a kidney to his sister, watching his father pass away, and rebuilding his life from challenges that could have stopped him in his tracks. Instead, it ignited a fire and a passion in him which he now shares with others to help them do the same.  Download this powerful, high energy, informative, and entertaining episode to hear Robert's inspirational and transformative story and discover how we can all unlock the power of the resilience, tenacity, and strength of the human spirit. Fantastic story!   Connect with Robert: https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Up-GRIND-Overcoming-Speaking-ebook/dp/B0DLV8ZR1L https://robertbfoster.com/ https://x.com/RBF_Fitness https://www.youtube.com/@RBF7499 https://www.instagram.com/robert_b_foster/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-foster-740a9bab/ https://www.tiktok.com/@robertbfoster  

Leonora Carrington was a prodigious artist closely associated with major surrealists of the 1930s. Though only sporadically in print until recently, her writing has helped cement her cult status, not least The Hearing Trumpet (1974). Before her family consign her to an old-age facility, nonagenarian Marian Leatherby is gifted a hearing trumpet with almost magical capabilities. Her institutionalisation leads to much eavesdropping, a Grail quest, descent into the underworld and an apocalyptic ice age. Joyous, disturbing and subversive, The Hearing Trumpet is full of themes and images that populate Carrington's artwork and other writing. Both Marina and Chloe knew Leonora Carrington, and in this episode they reflect on the ways her personality inflected her work. Their reading of The Hearing Trumpet reveals her humour, her visionary imagination and her attention to the boundaries between inner and outer realties. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Chloe Aridjis: A Leonora Carrington A to Z https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/april/a-leonora-carrington-a-to-z Alice Spawls: On Leonora Carrington https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n08/alice-spawls/at-tate-liverpool Edmund Gordon: Save the feet for later https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n21/edmund-gordon/save-the-feet-for-later Next episode: Marina and Chloe discuss J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition and Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve.

BROKEN SEA AUDIO PRESENTS: Beneath the Planet of the Apes Based upon situations and characters from the Novel By Pierre Boulle and the SHOOTING SCRIPT- May 5, 1967 of “PLANET OF THE APES”- Original Screenplay by Michael Wilson. As well as the ideas of Mort Abrahams and the screenplay's and drafts of Beneath the Planet of the Apes by Paul Dehn, December 20, 1968 and (final shooting script) April 10, 1969, as well as ideas the book (Beneath the Planet of the Apes), adapted from the written by: Michael Avallone. Adapted for Audio and extended ideas/situations imagined by Bill Hollweg, January 26, 2008. This is a work of Fan Fiction, a celebration of the films I adore in Audio for the Simians everywhere… THIS EPISODE: Taylor and Nova, having left the corroding Statue of Liberty behind, travel deeper into the desolate Forbidden Zone and find the ruins of a once great city… A city built by man: 2,000 years ago… CAST: LAWGIVER/CORNELIUS: MARK KALITA TAYLOR: BILL HOLLWEG HERULE: JOHN DANE VENUSIA: ROBIN CARISLE ALBINIA (Mutant): SHANNON HILCHE MENDEZ (Mutant): JACK WARD This is a work of fan-fiction based on characters and universe created by Pierre Boulle, a tribute to one of the greatest sci-fi series of all time! No copyright infringement is intended. If you like this audio dramatization - go out and get the official books, movies and other works dealing with Planet of the Apes - they are FANTASTIC! NOTE! This show is rated PG-13 for parental guidance 13. 

Need Daily Energy? Say “no way” to gummies! And don't miss the following topics that Terry will also discuss on this show: Keep Your Puppy Cancer Free Polyphenols Prevent Anxiety The Cholesterol Number You SHOULD Care About! Overtreated Prostate Cancer

Memorable moments on matchday one in the Champions League: Eintracht Frankfurt stormed to the top of the table, Borussia Dortmund had an 8-goal frenzy in Turin, and Bayern dismantled the reigning Club World champions. Meanwhile, in the Bundesliga, Kasper Hjulmand has Leverkusen back on track, thanks to the golden foot of Grimaldo. The next coaching position is already vacant as Gladbach coach Gerardo Seoane gets the boot after a listless loss to Bremen. Late drama in Freiburg, and super late drama in Wolfsburg.

This week on the HowToBBQRight Podcast, we're riding high in our pick'em league lately (00:25)! We also had an absolute BLAST on our recent trip to Oxford to watch the Rebels play (02:30)! Malcom's been talkin' about firing up a caveman-style ribeye, and Steve Reichling has a recipe we're dying to try (08:45). Even though Malcom's the face of HowToBBQRight, he's had his fair share of behind-the-scenes fails (13:15)... and we're sharing a few good ones. We break down why the Primo Ceramic Grill might be your next must-have cooker (18:28). Malcom also tested out Cajun Power Worcestershire Sauce in a beef tenderloin recipe—and it turned out dang good (19:10)! Ever tried the viral microwave egg hack? We gave it a shot (23:00). We tried Billy's Boudin this weekend—spoiler alert: it was FANTASTIC (27:49). We dive into whether you should use a foil boat, butcher paper, or go naked when smoking brisket (31:45). If you're in the market for a wireless meat thermometer, the ThermoWorks RFX might be exactly what you need (37:40). We also debate: is using a chimney starter really necessary for lighting coals (41:13)? Over in our community, James shared his smoked chicken thigh taco recipe—and we've GOT to try it (45:20). Plus, y'all sent in your favorite Bloody Mary mixes, and Bloody Revolution is next up on our list (47:11). If you're ever in Memphis, you must check out Porch & Parlor—seriously, don't skip it (49:22)! Ever heard of smoked butter? We learned about it, and now, Malcom wants to try it (53:19). And finally, we tackle the big question: are those pricey smoking pecan pellets really worth it (55:47)?

This week, Kat and Jocelyn discuss the improbable Will Smith hit, HANCOCK! We discuss super sad plotlines, the fact that this was written by (of all people) VINCE GILLIGAN, and Kat makes a confusing comparison.   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. Head over to www.masterclass.com/ihateit to get 15% off any annual membership.   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.

Bob opens the show with a great monologue on AG Pam Bondi and her attack on free speech, hate speech and more. Bob continues to talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jess here. My guest this week is Jeff Selingo, an author and speaker I've admired for a long time. His work on college, college admissions and the transition to work and life in emerging adulthood are essential reads for anyone looking to understand what want and need in higher education and life. His books, There is Life After College, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions and his forthcoming book, Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You are all essential reads for teens and emerging adults as well as parents of teens and emerging adults. I adore all three, but I wanted to talk with Jeff about a few aspects of his writing: how he created a speaking career, finds his topics, and how on earth he gets people to talk about topics that tend to be shrouded in secrecy behind very high walls (such as college admissions). Check out Jeff's newsletter, Next, and Podcast, Future UKJ here, as you probably know, to tell you that if you're not listening to the Writing the Book episodes Jenny Nash and I have been doing, you should be. Jenny's working on her latest nonfiction, and I'm working on my next novel, and we're both trying to do something bigger and better than anything we've done before.We sit down weekly and dish about everything—from Jenny's proposal and the process of getting an agent to my extremely circular method of creating a story. We are brutally honest and open—even beyond what we are here. Truly, we probably say way too much. And for that reason, Writing the Book is subscriber-only.So I'm here saying: subscribe. That's a whole 'nother episode a week, and always a juicy one—plus all the other good subscriber stuff: the First Pages: BookLab, Jess's From Author to Authority series, and whatever else we come up with. (It varies enough that it's hard to list it all.) Plus, of course, access whenever we run The Blueprint—which, I don't know, might be soon.That's all I've got. So head to amwritingpodcast.com, get yourself signed up, and come listen to Writing the Book. Then talk to us. Tell us—tell us about your book writing and what's going on. We really want to hear from y'all.Thanks a lot. And Subscribe!Transcript below!EPISODE 465 - TRANSCRIPTKJ Dell'AntoniaHowdy, listeners—KJ here, as you probably know—to tell you that if you're not listening to the Writing the Book episodes Jennie Nash and I have been doing, you should be. Jennie is working on her latest nonfiction, and I'm working on my next novel, and we're both trying to do something bigger and better than anything we've done before. We sit down weekly and dish about everything from Jennie's proposal and the process of getting an agent to my extremely circular method of creating a story. We are brutally honest and open—even beyond what we are here. Truly, we probably say way too much, and for that reason, Writing the Books is subscriber-only. So I'm here saying: subscribe. That's a whole other episode a week, and always a juicy one—plus there's all the other good subscriber stuff: the First Page Booklab, Jess' From Author to Authority series, and whatever else we come up with, which kind of varies enough that it's hard to list out. Plus, of course, access to whenever we run the Blueprint, which—I don't know—it's going to be soon. That's all I got. So head to AmWritingpodcast.com, get yourself signed up and come listen to Writing the Book, and then talk to us. Tell us—tell us about your book writing and what's going on. We really want to—we want to hear from y'all. Thanks a lot, and please subscribe.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey, it's Jess Lahey, and welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, poetry, proposals, queries, nonfiction, fiction—all the stuff. In the end, this is the podcast about getting the work done. And in the beginning of this podcast, our goal was to flatten the learning curve for other writers. So I am super excited about who I have today. Oh—quick intro. I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, as you can find the work of my guest there too. So my guest today is someone that I have looked up to for a long time, and someone I use as sort of a—to bounce things off of and to think about how I do my work and how to do my work better. Jeff Selingo, thank you so much for coming to on the show. Jeff is the author of a couple of books that I'm a huge—In fact, I can look over at my bookshelf right now and see all of his books on getting into college, why college is not the end point. He has a new book coming out that we're going to be talking about—really; it's coming out real as soon as this podcast comes out. And I'm just—I'm a huge fan, Jeff. Thank you so, so much for coming on the pod.Jeff SelingoJust the same here—and I'm a huge fan of this podcast as well. It's on my regular rotation, so...Jess LaheyOh yay.Jeff SelingoI am thrilled, as always, to be here.Jess LaheyIt's—it's changed over the years, and now that we have four different, you know, co-hosts, there's sort of different takes on it. We've got, like, Sarina—the business side, and Jess—the nonfiction geek side, and KJ—the fiction side, and Jennie—the nuts-and-bolts editor side. So it's been really fun for us to sort of split off. But what I wanted to talk to you about today are a couple of different things. Your book Who Gets In and Why is—um , on the podcast, we talk about dissecting other people's work as a way... In fact, I was talking to my daughter about this yesterday. She's writing a thesis—what she hopes will be one chapter in a book. And I was saying, you know, one of the things you can do is go dissect other books you think are really well constructed—books that are reaching the same, similar audience. And your book, Who Gets In and Why, I think, is essential reading for anyone who's writing interview based, and specifically nonfiction around attempting to get their arms around a process. And a process that—for you—what I'm really interested about in this book is a process that's usually, you know, guarded and kind of secret. And no one wants to let you in for real on all the moving parts and how the decisions are made, because the college admissions process is—it's an inexact recipe. It depends on where you are, it depends on the school, but everyone wants the secret. Like, Jeff, just get me the secrets of how to get in. So how do you approach people who are, in a sense, some ways, secret-keepers and guardians of the secret sauce—to mix metaphors? How do you get those people to agree to be a part of a book—not just to be interviewed, but to actually put themselves out there and to put the sausage-making out there in a book, which can be a huge leap of faith for any organization or human being?Jeff SelingoYeah, and I think it's definitely harder now than it was when I did Who Gets In and Why. I think it's harder than when, you know, other people have been inside the process—whether it's, you know, Fast Food Nation, with the, you know, the fast food industry, which is a book that I looked up to when I was writing, Who Gets In and Why. I think it's—people just don't trust writers and journalists as much as they used to. So I think that's—a lot of this is really trust. First of all, you have to approach organizations that trust their own process. When people ask me, “Why these three schools?” You know, I approached 24 schools when I wrote, Who Gets In and Why, and three said yes. Twenty-one said no. And when I describe the people who said yes and why they said yes, they trusted their own process. And they also trusted me. But the first thing they did was trust their own process.. And so when I heard later on from people who had said no to me—and I would, you know, talk to them, you know, off the record about why they said no—there was always something about their process, their admissions process, that they didn't trust. They were getting a new, like, software system, or they had new employees that they didn't really quite know, or they were doing things—it's not that they were doing things wrong, but that, you know, it was at the time when the Supreme Court was making a decision about affirmative action, and they didn't quite know how that would play, and so they didn't quite trust it—and then how that, obviously, would be used by me. So the first thing you have to do is think about organizations that really believe in themselves, because they're going to be the ones that are going to talk about themselves externally. And then you just have to build trust between them and you. And that just takes—unfortunately, it takes time. And as a book author or a reporter, you don't always have that on your side.Jess LaheySo when—were some of these cold? Like of the 24, were all of these cold? Were some of these colder? Did you have an in with some of these?Jeff SelingoI had an in with most of them, because I had been covering—I mean, that's the other thing. You know, trust is built over time, and I had been covering higher ed for almost 25 years now. So it was just that they knew me, they knew of me, they knew of my work. I had other people vouch for me. So, you know, I had worked with other people in other admissions offices on other stories, and they knew people in some of these offices, so they would vouch for me. But at the end—so, you know, it ended up being Emory, Davidson and the University of Washington. It was really only Davidson where I knew somebody. Emory and University of Washington—I kind of knew people there that were the initial door opener. But beyond that, it was just spending time with them and helping them understand why I wanted to tell the story, how I thought the story would put play out, and getting them to just trust the process.Jess LaheyThere's also something to be said for people who have some enthusiasm for the greater story to be told—especially people who have an agenda, whether that's opening up admissions to the, quote, “whole student” as opposed to just their test scores, or someone who feels like they really have something to add to the story. Both of the people who I featured in The Addiction Inoculation and who insisted on having their real names used said, you know, there's just—there's a value for me in putting this story out there and finding worth in it, even though for these two people, there was some risk and there was embarrassment, and there's, you know, this shame around substance use disorder. But these two people said, you know, I just think there's a bigger story to be told, and I'm really proud to be a part of that bigger story. So there is a selling aspect also to, you know, how you position what it is you're doing.Jeff SelingoAnd there's—so there's a little bit of that, and that was certainly true here. The admissions deans at these places were longtime leaders who not only trusted their own process but understood that the industry was getting battered. You know, people were not trusting of admissions. They felt like it was a game to be played. And there was definitely a larger story that they wanted to tell there. Now truth be told—and they've told this in conferences that I've been at and on panels that I've moderated with them—there was also a little bit of they wanted to get their own story out, meaning the institutional story, right? Emory is competing against Vanderbilt, and Davidson is a liberal arts college in the South, when most liberal arts colleges are in the Northeast. So there was a little bit of, hey, if we participate in this, people are going to get to know us in a different way, and that is going to help us at the end—meaning the institution.Jess LaheyDo you have to? Did you? Was there a hurdle of, we really have, you know, this is some PR for us, too. So did that affect—I mean, there's a little bit of a Heisenberg thing going on here. Did the fact that you were observing them change, you think, anything about what they did and what they showed you?Jeff SelingoIt's an interesting thing, Jess. It's a great question, because I often get that. Because I was—you know, originally, I wanted to do one office. I wanted to be inside one institution. And when all three of them kind of came back and said, yes, we'll do this—instead of just choosing one of them—I thought, oh, this is interesting. We have a small liberal arts college. We have a big, private urban research university. We have a big public university in the University of Washington. So I wanted to show—kind of compare and contrast—their processes. But that also meant I couldn't be in one place all the time. There's only one of me, and there's three of them, and they're in different parts of the country. So clearly I was not there every day during the process. And somebody would say to me, oh, well, how do you know they're not going to do X, Y, and Z when you're not there? And I quickly realized that they had so much work to do in such a short amount of time that they couldn't really—they couldn't really game the system for me. After a while, I just became like a painting on the wall. I just was there. And in many cases, they didn't even notice I was there—which, by the way, is where you want to be—because they would say things, do things, without realizing sometimes that a reporter was present. And there's the opening scene of the book, which is just a fantastic—in my opinion, one of my favorite scenes in the book—right where they're talking about these students and so forth, and in a way that is so raw and so natural about how they did their work. If they knew I was in the room at that point—which of course they did—but if they really perceived my being there, that would have been really hard to pull off.Jess LaheyDid they have, did you guys have an agreement about off the record moments or anything like that? Or was there and speaking of which, actually, was there any kind of contract going into this, or any kind of agreement going into this?Jeff SelingoI basically told them that there would be no surprises. So everything was essentially on the record unless they explicitly said that, and that was usually during interviews, like one-on-one interviews. But while I was in the room with them, there was really nothing off the record. There couldn't be because it was hard to kind of stop what they were doing to do that. The only thing I promised was that there would be no surprises at the end. So when the book was done, during the fact-checking process, I would do what The New Yorker would do during fact-checking. I wouldn't read the passages back to them, but I would tell them basically what's in there, in terms of it as I fact-checked it. And so they really kind of knew, for the most part—not word for word—but they kind of knew what was in the book before it came out.Jess LaheyI like that term—no surprises. It's a real nice blanket statement for, look, I'm not looking to get—there's no gotcha thing here.Jeff SelingoThere's no gotcha, exactly...Jess LaheyRight. Exactly.Jeff SelingoThis was not an investigative piece. But there were things that, you know, I'm sure that they would have preferred not to be in there. But for the most part, during the fact-checking process, you know, I learned things that were helpful. You know, sometimes they would say, oh, that's an interesting way of—you know, I would redirect quotes, and they would want to change them. And I said, well, I don't really want to change direct quotes, because that's what was said in that moment. And then they would provide context for things, which was sometimes helpful. I would add that to the piece, or I would add that to the book. So at the end of the day—again—it goes back to trust. And they realized what I was trying to do with this book. It's also a book rather than an article. Books tend to have permanence. And I knew that this book would have, you know, shelf life. And as a result, I wanted to make sure that it would stand the test of time.Jess LaheyYeah, I've been thinking a lot about your new book—your book that's just coming out as this is getting out into the world—called Dream School. And by the way, such a great title, because one person's dream school is not another's. But like, my daughter happens to be at, I think, the perfect school for her, and my son went to the perfect school for him—which, by the way, wasn't even his first choice. And in retrospect, he said, I'm just so glad I didn't get into that other place—my, you know, early decision place—because this other place really was the perfect match. And I think that's why I love that title so much, because I spend a lot of time trying to help parents understand that their dream may not necessarily be their child's dream. And what makes something a dream school may, you know—in fact, in terms of time—my daughter was applying to colleges just coming out of COVID. Like, she had never been to a school dance. She'd never—you know—all that kind of stuff. So for me, the dream looked very different than maybe it would have four years prior, thinking I was going to have a kid that had the opportunity to sort of socially, you know, integrate into the world in a very different way. So I love that. And is that something that—how did—how do your ideas emerge? Did it emerge in the form of that idea of what is a dream school for someone? Or—anyway, I'll let you get back to...Jeff SelingoYeah. So, like many follow-up books, this book emerged from discussing Who Gets In and Why. So I was out on the road talking about Who Gets In and Why. And I would have a number of parents—like, you know when you give talks, people come up to you afterwards—and they say, okay, we love this book, but—there's always a but. And people would come up to me about Who Gets In and Why, and they would be like, love the book, but it focused more on selective colleges and universities. What if we don't get into one of those places? What if we can't afford one of those places? What if we don't really want to play that game, and we want permission? And this—this idea of a permission structure came up very early on in the reporting for this book. We need to be able to tell our friends, our family, that it's okay, right? You know how it is, right? A lot of this is about parents wanting to say that their kid goes to Harvard. It's less about going to Harvard, but they could tell their friends that their kid goes to Harvard. So they wanted me to help them create this permission structure to be able to look more widely at schools.Jess LaheyI like that.Jeff SelingoSo that's how this came about, and then the idea of Dream School—and I'm fascinated by your reaction to that title. Because the reaction I've been getting from some people is—you know—because the idea, too many people, the idea of a dream school, is a single entity.Jess LaheyOf course.Jeff SelingoIt's a single school; it's a single type of school. And what—really, it's a play on that term that we talk about, a dream school. In many ways, the dream school is your dream, and what you want, and the best fit for you. And I want to give you the tools in this book to try to figure out what is the best match for you that fulfills your dreams. It's kind of a little play on that—a little tweak on how we think about the dream and dream school. And that's really what I'm hoping to do for this book—is that, in some ways, it's a follow-up. So you read Who Gets In and Why, you decide, okay, maybe I do want to try for those highly selected places. But as I tell the story early on in in Dream School. A. It's almost impossible to get into most of those places today—even more so than five or six years ago. And second, many of the students that I met—young adults that I met in reporting Dream School—ended up at, you know, fill-in-the-blank: most popular school, brand-name school, highly selective school, elite school—whatever you want to put in that blank—and it wasn't quite what they expected. And so that's another story that I want to tell families in this book—is that, hey, there's a wider world out there, and there is success to be had at many of these places.Jess LaheyThere's something I say occasionally, that I have to take the temperature of the room, just because I—you know, you and I speak at some fairly similar places, like, you know, the hoity-toity private schools that—you know, everyone's just go, go, go, do, do, do, achieve, achieve, achieve. And every once in a while, I like to insert—I like to, number one, tell them that my college was, I think, perfect for me. I went to my safety school. I went to the University of Massachusetts and had an extraordinary experience. But I'm a very certain kind of person, and maybe for another—like, for example, my daughter, when we were looking at schools, our state school was just too big for her. It just—she was going to get lost. It wasn't going to work very well. But the thing I like to say when I can, when I feel like the audience is ready to hear it is: What if it's a massive relief if you don't have an Ivy kid? If you have a kid who's not going to get into an Ivy school, isn't it a relief to say that's not what we're aiming for here, and we can actually find a place that's a great fit for my kid? And that sometimes goes over really well. For a few people, they'll come up and thank me for that sort of reframing afterwards. But for some people, that is just not at all what they want to hear.Jeff SelingoAnd it's—you know, it's really hard. And I think you go back to audience, and—you know—most people make money on books kind of after the fact, right? The speaking, as you mentioned, and things like that. And it's interesting—this book, as I talk to counselors about it, high school counselors—oh, they're like, this is perfect. This is the message I've been trying to get through to parents. Then I talk to the parents—like, I'm not quite sure this message will work in our community, because this community is very focused on getting into the Ivy League and the Ivy Plus schools?Jess LaheyYes, but that's why your title is so brilliant. Because if you're getting—and I talk a lot about this, I don't know if you've heard, I've talked about this on the podcast—that with the substance use prevention stuff, it's hard for me to get people to come in. So I use The Gift of Failure to do that, right? So you've got this title that can get the people in the seats, and then you, in your persuasive and charismatic way, can explain to them why this is a term that may—could—use some expanding. I think that's an incredible opportunity.Jeff SelingoAnd it's important, too—early on, my editor told me, “Jeff, don't forget, we're an aspirational society.” And I said—I told, I said, “Rick,” I said, “I'm not telling people not to apply in the Ivy League. I'm not saying they're terrible schools. I'm not saying don't look at those places.” All I'm saying is, we want to expand our field a little bit to look more broadly, more widely. So we're not saying don't do this—we're saying, do “do” this. And that's what I'm hoping that this book does.Jess LaheyWell, and the reality is, people listen to the title. They don't read the subtitle, because subtitles are long, and they have a great use—but not when you're actually talking about a book with someone. And so what they're going to hear is Dream School, and I think that's a fantastic way to position the book. But since you opened up the topic, I also—I am right now mentoring someone who is attempting to sell a book while also planning for a speaking career, which, as you know, is something that I did concurrently. How did you—did you know you wanted to do speaking when you were first writing your books? Or is this something that sort of came out of the books themselves?Jeff SelingoIt just came out of the books. You know, the first book, which was College (Un)bound, which was 2012, sold better than I expected, but it was aimed at a consumer audience. But who ended up reading that were college leaders, presidents and people work at colleges. So I had a very busy schedule speaking to people inside the industry. Then I turned my—you know, the second book, There Is Life After College— really turned it to this parenting audience, which was a very new audience to me, and that really led to me to, you know, Who Gets In and Why, and now this book. The difference—and I'm always curious to talk to parenting authors like you—is that college, you know, people—even the most aspirational people in life, I understand, you know, people in certain cities think about preschool, what preschool their kid's going to get into to get into the right college—but in reality, they're going to read a college book when their kids are in high school. And that is the more challenging piece around, you know, I—unlike most parenting authors who have a wider audience, because a lot of the issues that face parents face parents when they have toddlers, when they have pre-teens, when they have teens. Obviously, some parenting authors just focus on teens, I get that.But this book really has kind of a short life in terms of the audience. And so what we're trying to do—so think about it: Who Gets In and Why— it's still in hardcover. Has never been published in paperback, largely because there's a new audience for it every year, which is fantastic...Jess LaheyYeah, I was going to mention that. That is the massive upside. And for me, it's usually a four-year sort of turnover in terms of speaking anyway.Jeff SelingoYeah, you're right. And so the nice thing on the speaking front is that I have almost a new audience every year, so I could continue to go back to the same schools...Jess LaheyRight.Jeff Selingo...every year, which has been really helpful—with a slightly different message, because the industry is also changing, and admissions is changing as a result. So, no, I—the speaking came afterwards, and now I realize that that's really kind of how you make this thing work. I couldn't really have a writing career without the speaking piece.Jess LaheySince figuring that out—and I guess assuming that you enjoy doing it, as I hope you do—is that something that you're continuing to market on your own?Jeff SelingoYes. So that's what we're doing. You know, one of the big changes from the last book is that we have developed a—you know, we built a customer relationship management system under our newsletter. So we use HubSpot, which is, you know, like Salesforce. It's something like that And so we've now built a community that is much stronger than the one that I had five years ago. That's a community of parents, of counselors, of independent counselors. So we just know so much more about who we serve, who our readers are, and who will ask me to come speak to their groups and things like that. So that, to me, has been the biggest change since the last book compared to this book. And it has enabled us—and it's something that I would highly encourage authors to do. I don't think they have to go out and buy one of these big, robust systems, but the more you know about your readers and build that community, the more that they're going to respond to you. They really want to be with you in some way. They want to read your books. They want to come to your webinars. They want to listen to your podcasts. They want to see you speak. They want to invite you to speak. And building that community is incredibly important to having that career, you know, after the book comes out.Jess LaheyIt's also for marketing purposes. So Sarina Bowen—again, brilliant at this. he way she does that is, she slices and dices her mailing list into all kinds of, like, where the reader came from—is this someone who's, you know, more interested in this, did I—did I meet them at this conference, you know, how did I acquire this name for my list? And she does a lot of marketing very specifically to those specific lists, and that information is amazing. And I think so many of us tend to think just—and I have to admit that this is where I spend most of my time—is just getting more emails in your newsletter. Owning, you know, the right—because it's an honor of being able to reach out to those people and have them be interested in what you have to say. But that's your—I may have to have you come back to talk specifically about that, because it's increasingly—as we're doing more of the marketing for our books—I think that's the future for people who want to keep things going.Jeff SelingoAnd that's—you know, that is the reality today. That's why proposals sell. Because people—you know, publishers really want people with platforms. And if you're not a superstar, there are very few of those out there, you need to figure out another way to build that platform. And so marketing yourself is critically important, and I've learned that from book one. You know, people would say, “Well, you're always just selling your book.” And I said, “Well, if I don't sell it, no one else,” right? So at some point, the publisher—you know, there's only so much the publisher is going to do. And they don't really have the tools that you do. And more than that, Jess, like, you understand your audience. Sarina understands her audience, right? Like, we understand our audiences in ways that publishers, who are doing, you know, dozens and dozens of books a year, just don't get.Jess LaheyRight. No, absolutely.Jeff SelingoLike, no offense against them. I think they're doing really good work. But it's just—it's hard for them, I think, to really understand, well, who's going to really read this book?Jess LaheyAnd I love the idea of using the questions you get. As you know, I tend to take the questions that I get and turn them into videos or—and I do answer all the emails—but I keep a spreadsheet of what those questions are so that I can slice and dice it in various ways. And they're fascinating. And that shapes like, oh wow, I had no idea so many people—like, I had no idea that so many kids were actually interested in knowing whether or not the caffeine—amounts of caffeine that they're drinking—are healthy, or how to get better sleep. Because if you ask their parents, they're like, “Oh no, they don't care about sleep,” or, “They just drink so much coffee and they don't care.” And yet what you hear from the kids is such a different story. And the thing that I also love is the idea of, you know, what that dream school concept means to the actual kid applying. You've probably heard this before, but I needed some symbolic way to let my kids know that this was not, in the end, my decision, and how important this decision was for them in terms of becoming adults. And so I said, the one thing I will never do is put a sticker for a school on the back of my car. Because your choice of where to become a young, emerging adult is not—I don't—that's not my currency to brag on as a parent. It's too important for that. And so people go nuts over that. They're like, “But that's what I really want—is that sticker on the back of the car!” And so I have to be careful when I talk about it, but for my kids, that was my one symbolic act to say, this is about your growth and development, and not my bragging rights. And I think that's a hard message.Jeff SelingoI think that's really important—especially, I have two teens at home. And I think this is a whole topic for another conversation around, you know, most parenting authors are also parents at the same time that they're doing this—advice out to everybody else. And I—I'm very aware of that. I'm also very aware of the privacy that they deserve. And so that's an—it's a fine line. It's a hard line to walk, I will say, for authors, because people—they want to know about you. And they ask you a lot of questions—like, especially around college—like, “Well, where are your kids applying? Where are they going to go?” Like, “Oh, I bet you—especially this book, where I'm encouraging parents to think more broadly—well, you're probably giving that advice to everybody else, but you're not going to follow that, surely, right?” So it's—you just have to—it's hard when you're in this world that you're also part of every day.Jess LaheyIt's really tough. And things have gotten a lot more complicated—as listeners know, I have a trans kid, and that means that everything that I've ever written about that kid is out there. Some of it changeable, a lot of it—most of it—not. And would I do it again? I don't—I don't think so. And that—you know, that's been a journey. But it's also been—you know, we can't know what we don't know. I don't know—it's a tough one. But I really admire your—that's why I throw my safety school thing out there all the time. I'm like, “Look, you know, I went to the place that saved my parents a boatload of money and allowed me to do stuff like traveling that I never would have had the ability to do if I hadn't gone to my state school. And my priorities were big, and adventures, and lots of options.” And I'm very, very clear that standing up for myself was something that I wanted to learn how to do more. On the other hand, that's not been the priority for both of my kids, so... Can I just—I want to ask one quick college question, just because it's—in reading all of your books, this comes up for me over and over again. How do you help parents see the difference between their dream and their kid's dream—or their goals and their kid's goals? And how do you dance that line, which I think is a very easy place to lose readers, lose listeners, because they just shut down and they say, “That's not something I want to mess with. This is too important to me.”Jeff SelingoIt's a fine line. It's a difficult line to walk. At some point I have to realize who's the you that you're speaking to. And I even say this in the introduction of the new book—it's largely parents. They're the readers. I know that—I hope their kids will read it. Maybe—maybe they will, maybe they won't, and maybe they'll read it as a family. But I'm really speaking to the families, and I want them to understand that college especially is an emotional good. It's something many of us—you're talking about your undergraduate experience. I'm not going to ask you how long ago that was, but my undergraduate experience...Jess LaheyI'm 55. So it's been a long time ago.Jeff SelingoAnd I'm 52, right? So same here. But we have this—you know, most people, because of the audiences I tend to speak to, they're not first-generation students, right? They're mostly parents. You know, most of the parents in the audience went to college themselves, and for many of them it was a transformative experience, like it was for me.People met their—they met their lifelong friends, they met their partners, they decided what they wanted to do in life. It was— it was this experience we all think it is. And as a result, I think a lot of parents put that then on their kids. “Well, this was a transforming experience for me, so it definitely has to be a transformative experience for you. Oh, and by the way, these are all the mistakes I made in doing that. I want to make sure you don't make any of those.”Jess LaheyAnd, by the way, no pressure, but this is going to be—this is where you're going to meet your best friends, your spouse. It's the best years of your life, so don't sacrifice even a second of it.Jeff SelingoYeah. And then I...Jess LaheyNo pressure.Jeff SelingoNo pressure. And not only that, but it is—it is something we bought a very long time ago. I'm always amazed when—sometimes we go to the Jersey Shore on vacation, and I'll be out on a walk on the beach in the morning, and I'll see people wearing, you know, college shirts, sweatshirts. And, you know, some of these people are old—much older than I am. And I say, “Oh”—you know, we'll start to have a conversation, and I'll say, “Oh, so does your grandkid, you know, go to X school?” Terrible assumption on my part, I know. But they say, “No, that's where I went.” And it's amazing to me—these are people in their 70s and 80s—because I'm the only other person out that early walking—and they love this thing so much that they're still kind of advertising it. But it was so different back then. And that's the thing that I—going back to your question—that's the thing I try to explain to parents. You can guide this. You can put guardrails up. You might have to put guardrails up about money and location and all that other stuff. But college has changed so much that—don't try to make this your search. You had your chance. You did your search. It worked out. It didn't work out. You would have done things differently. I think that's all great advice to give to your kids. But this is their life. This is their staging ground. They have to learn. And again, it's also different. Like, part of what I hope my books do is to try to explain to people—who, you know, kind of dip in and dip out of higher ed just when their kids are applying—that it's very different than when they applied and went to college.Jess LaheyThe thing I like to mention a lot is that people in admissions read so many applications that they can tell when something is sincere and something is personal and smacks of a kid, as opposed to when something smacks of a parent. That is a very different application. It's a very different essay—which is the thing that I guess I have the most experience with. But—so I am just so incredibly grateful to you for this book. I'm so grateful that there's evidence that people will actually agree to be interviewed, even in thorny situations like college admissions, which—I don't know. I'm still in awe of the fact that you got anyone to say yes. But—and I heavily—I heartily, heartily recommend Dream School to anyone who's listening. I just—I don't even have anyone applying to college, and I think it's just a fascinating topic, because the idea of where we become who we're going to be, and how we prime lots of other stuff that's going to happen later on in our life—I think that's a fascinating topic. So thank you so much for writing about it. Thank you for writing about it with such empathy and such interest. That's the other thing—is you can tell when someone really is interested in a topic when you read their book. And thank you for providing a book that I recommend all the time as a blueprint—as a dissection book—for people writing nonfiction, heavily interviewed nonfiction. So thank you, so, so much. Where can people find you if they want you to come speak, if they want you—if they want to find your books—where can people find you?Jeff SelingoPretty simple. Jeffselingo.com is my website, and you can also follow me on most social—handle is @jeffselingo, as in Jeff. And I just love hearing from readers. As you know, books change lives, and I love hearing the stories when readers tell me they read something in a book and they acted on it. It's just the most beautiful thing.Jess LaheyYeah, it's the best. I get videos occasionally; too, of like little kids doing things their parents didn't think they could do. And—“Look! Look! They did this thing!” It's just—it's an amazing and place of privilege. You have a newsletter also…Jeff SelingoI do. Called Next. It comes out twice a month.Jess LaheyIt's Fantastic!Jeff SelingoOh, well, thank you. And I have a podcast also called Future U— that's more around the kind of the insider-y nature of higher ed and how it works. But a lot—I know a lot of families listen to it to try to understand this black box that is college. So that's called Future U as in U for university.Jess LaheyThe reason I love the podcast so much is, a lot of what parents get exposed to when they're doing the college admissions process are those graphs—scatter graphs of like, where do your numbers intersect with the expectations of this school—and it's a real human version of that. It's a human version of how that black box operates.Jeff SelingoAnd at the end of the day, as I always remind parents, it's a business. You might have this emotional tie to college, but if you don't—if you don't—and you know a mutual friend of ours, Ron Lieber, who writes for The New York Times around...Jess LaheyHe's the best! The best!Jeff SelingoCollege finances, right? He always reminds people of this too. I don't remind them as often as he does, and I probably should. It's this—you're buying a consumer product. And you have to act as a consumer. Yes, you can have an emotional tie and a love for this place, but this is a big purchase, and you have to approach it like that.Jess LaheyDid you see his most recent piece about, yeah, taking some time and seeing—seeing what kind of offers you can get? I loved it. I love Ron's approach to—he's just a great guy. And his books are fantastic. Thank you again, so much. I'm going to let you get on with your day, but I'm always grateful for you. And good luck with the launch of Dream School.I will be out applauding on pub day for you.Jeff SelingoAppreciate it. Thank you, Jess.Jess LaheyAll right, everyone—until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output—because everyone deserves to be paid for their work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

In this introductory episode to their new series on the Parables of Jesus, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb explore the profound theological significance of Christ's parables. Far from being mere teaching tools to simplify complex ideas, parables serve a dual purpose in God's redemptive plan: revealing spiritual truth to those with "ears to hear" while concealing these same truths from those without spiritual illumination. This episode lays the groundwork for understanding how parables function as divine teaching devices that embody core Reformed doctrines like election and illumination. As the hosts prepare to journey through all the parables in the Gospels, they invite listeners to consider the blessing of being granted spiritual understanding and the privilege of receiving the "secrets of the kingdom" through Christ's distinctive teaching method. Key Takeaways Parables are more than illustrations—they are comparisons that reveal kingdom truths to those with spiritual ears to hear while concealing truth from those without spiritual illumination. Jesus intentionally taught in parables not to simplify his teaching but partly to fulfill Isaiah's prophecy about those who hear but do not understand, confirming the spiritual condition of his hearers. The ability to understand parables is itself evidence of God's sovereign grace and election, as Jesus states in Matthew 13:16: "Blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear." Parables vary in form and function—some are clearly allegorical while others make a single point, requiring each to be approached on its own terms. Proper interpretation requires context—understanding both the original audience and the question or situation that prompted Jesus to use a particular parable. Parables function like Nathan's confrontation of David—they draw hearers in through narrative before revealing uncomfortable truths about themselves. Studying parables requires spiritual humility—recognizing that our understanding comes not from intellectual capacity but from the Spirit's illumination. Understanding Parables as Revelation, Not Just Illustration The hosts emphasize that parables are fundamentally different from mere illustrations or fables. While modern readers often assume Jesus used parables to simplify complex spiritual truths, the opposite is frequently true. As Tony explains, "A parable fundamentally is a comparison between two things... The word parable comes from the Greek of casting alongside." This distinction is crucial because it changes how we approach interpretation. Rather than breaking down each element as an allegorical component, we should first understand what reality Jesus is comparing the parable to. The parables function as a form of divine revelation—showing us kingdom realities through narrative comparison, but only those with spiritual insight can truly grasp their meaning. This is why Jesus quotes Isaiah and explains that he speaks in parables partly because "seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear nor do they understand" (Matthew 13:13). The Doctrine of Election Embedded in Parabolic Teaching Perhaps the most profound insight from this episode is how the very form of Jesus' teaching—not just its content—embodies the doctrine of election. Jesse notes that "every parable then implicitly teaches a doctrine of election," because they reveal spiritual truth to some while concealing it from others. This isn't arbitrary but reflects spiritual realities. The hosts connect this to Jesus' words in Matthew 13:16: "Blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear." This blessing comes not from intellectual capacity or moral superiority but from God's sovereign grace. Tony describes this as "the blessing in our salvation and in our election that we are enabled to hear and perceive and receive the very voice and word of God into our spirit unto our salvation." The parables thus become a "microcosm" of Reformed doctrines like election, regeneration, and illumination. When believers understand Jesus' parables, they're experiencing the practical outworking of these doctrines in real time. Memorable Quotes "The parables are not just to illustrate a point, they're to reveal a spiritual point or spiritual points to those who have ears to hear, to those who've been illuminated by the spirit." - Tony Arsenal "Jesus is giving this message essentially to all who will listen to him... And so this is like, I love the way that he uses that quote in a slightly different way, but still to express the same root cause, which is some of you here because of your depravity will not be able to hear what I'm saying. But for those to whom it has been granted to come in who are ushered into the kingdom, this kingdom language will make sense." - Jesse Schwamb "But blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. There's a blessing in our salvation and in our election that we are enabled to hear and perceive and receive the very voice and word of God into our spirit unto our salvation." - Tony Arsenal About the Hosts Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb are the regular hosts of The Reformed Brotherhood podcast, where they explore Reformed theology and its application to Christian living. With a conversational style that balances depth and accessibility, they seek to make complex theological concepts understandable without sacrificing nuance or biblical fidelity. Transcript [00:00:45] Introduction and New Series Announcement [00:00:45] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 460 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse. [00:00:54] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother. [00:00:59] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. New series Time, new series. Time for the next seven years that, that's probably correct. It's gonna be a long one. New beginnings are so great, aren't they? And it is. [00:01:10] Jesse Schwamb: We've been hopefully this, well, it's definitely gonna live up to all the hype that we've been presenting about this. It's gonna be good. Everybody's gonna love it. And like I said, it's a topic we haven't done before. It's certainly not in this format. [00:01:23] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And you know what, just, um, as a side note, if you are a listener, which you must be, if you're hearing this, uh, this is a great time to introduce someone to the podcast. [00:01:33] Tony Arsenal: True. Uh, one, because this series is gonna be lit as the kids say, and, uh, it's a new series, so you don't have to have any background. You don't have to have any previous knowledge of the show or of who these two weird guys are to jump in and we're gonna. [00:01:53] Tony Arsenal: Talk about the Bible, which is amazing and awesome. And who doesn't love to talk about the Bible. [00:01:58] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's correct. That's what makes these so good. That's how I know, and I could say confidently that this is gonna be all the hype and more. All right, so before we get to affirmations and denials, all the good ProGo, that's part and parcel of our normal episode content. [00:02:12] Jesse Schwamb: Do you want to tell everybody what we're gonna be talking about? [00:02:16] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I'm excited. [00:02:17] Introducing the Parables Series [00:02:17] Tony Arsenal: So we are gonna work our way through, and this is why I say it's gonna take seven years. We are gonna work our way through all of the parables. Parables, [00:02:25] Jesse Schwamb: the [00:02:25] Tony Arsenal: gospels and just so, um, the Gospel of John doesn't feel left out. [00:02:30] Tony Arsenal: We're gonna talk through some of the I am statements and some of that stuff when we get to John. 'cause John doesn't have a lot of parables. Uh, so we're gonna spend time in the synoptic gospels. We're gonna just walk through the parables one by one. We're taking an episode, sometimes maybe two, sometimes 10, depending on how long the parable is and how deep we get into it. [00:02:47] Tony Arsenal: We're just gonna work our way through. We're gonna take our time. We're gonna enjoy it. So again, this is a great time to start. It's kinda the ground floor on this and you thing. This could really be its own podcast all by itself, right? Uh, so invite a friend, invite some whole bunch of friends. Start a Sunday school class listening to this. [00:03:04] Tony Arsenal: No, don't do that. But people have done that before. But, uh, grab your bibles, get a decent commentary to help prep for the next episode, and, uh, let's, let's do it. I'm super excited. [00:03:14] Jesse Schwamb: When I say para, you say Abel Para, is that how it works? Para? Yeah. I don't know. You can't really divide it. Pairable. If you jam it together, yes. [00:03:24] Jesse Schwamb: You get some of that. You can say, when I say pair, you say Abel p [00:03:27] Tony Arsenal: Abel. [00:03:31] Jesse Schwamb: And you can expect a lot more of that in this series. But before we get into all this good juicy stuff about parables, and by the way, this is like an introductory episode, that doesn't mean that you can just skip it, doesn't mean it's not gonna be good. We gotta set some things up. We wanna talk about parables general generally, but before we have that good general conversation, let's get into our own tradition, which is either affirming with something or denying against something. [00:03:54] Affirmations and Denials [00:03:54] Jesse Schwamb: And so, Tony, what do you got for all of us? [00:03:58] Tony Arsenal: Mine is kind of a, an ecclesial, ecclesiastical denial. Mm-hmm. Um, this is sort of niche, but I feel like our audience may have heard about it. And there's this dust up that I, I noticed online, uh, really just this last week. Um, it's kind of a specific thing. There is a church, uh, I'm not sure where the church is. [00:04:18] Tony Arsenal: It's a PCA church, I believe it's called Mosaic. The pastor of the church, the teaching elder, one of the teaching elders just announced that he was, uh, leaving his ministry to, uh, join the Roman Catholic Church, which, yes, there's its own denial built into that. We are good old Protestant reformed folks, and I personally would, would stick with the original Westminster on the, the Pope being antichrist. [00:04:45] Tony Arsenal: But, um, that's not the denial. The denial is that in this particular church. For some unknown reason. Uh, the pastor who has now since a announced that he was leaving to, uh, to convert to Roman Catholicism, continued to preach the sermon and then administered the Lord's supper, even though he in the eyes, I think of most. [00:05:08] Tony Arsenal: Reformed folk and certainly historically in the eyes of the reformed position was basically apostate, uh, right in front of the congregation's eyes. Now, I don't know that I would necessarily put it that strongly. I think there are plenty of genuine born again Christians who find themselves in, in the Roman Catholic, uh, church. [00:05:27] Tony Arsenal: Uh, but to allow someone who is one resigning the ministry right in front of your eyes. Um, and then resigning to basically leave for another tradition that, that the PCA would not recognize, would not share ecclesiastical, uh, credentials with or accept their ordination or any of those things. Um, to then just allow him to admit, you know, to administer the Lord's Supper, I think is just a drastic miscarriage of, uh, ecclesiastical justice. [00:05:54] Tony Arsenal: I dunno if that's the right word. So I'm just denying this like. It shows that on a couple things like this, this. Church this session, who obviously knew this was coming. Um, this session does either, does not take seriously the differences between Roman Catholic theology and Protestant theology, particularly reformed theology, or they don't take seriously the, the gravity of the Lord's supper and who should and shouldn't be administering it. [00:06:22] Tony Arsenal: They can't take both of those things seriously and have a fully or biblical position on it. So there's a good opportunity for us to think through our ecclesiology, to think through our sacrament and how this applies. It just really doesn't sit well and it's not sitting well with a lot of people online, obviously. [00:06:37] Tony Arsenal: Um, and I'm sure there'll be all sorts of, like letters of concern sent to presbytery and, and all that stuff, and, and it'll all shake out in the wash eventually, but just, it just wasn't good. Just doesn't sit right. [00:06:48] Jesse Schwamb: You know, it strikes me of all the denominations. I'm not saying this pejoratively. I just think it is kind of interesting and funny to me that the Presbyterians love a letter writing campaign. [00:06:56] Jesse Schwamb: Like that's kind of the jam, the love, a good letter writing campaign. [00:07:00] Tony Arsenal: It's true, although it's, it's actually functional in Presbyterianism because That's right. That's how you voice your concern. It's not a, not a, a rage letter into the void. It actually goes somewhere and gets recorded and has to be addressed at presbytery if you have standing. [00:07:17] Tony Arsenal: So there's, there's a good reason to do that, and I'm sure that that will be done. I'm sure there are many. Probably ministers in the PCA who are aware of this, who are either actually considering filing charges or um, or writing such letters of complaints. And there's all sorts of mechanisms in the PCA to, to adjudicate and resolve and to investigate these kinds of things. [00:07:37] Jesse Schwamb: And I'd like to, if you're, if you're a true Presbyterian and, and in this instance, I'm not making light of this instance, but this instance are others, you. Feel compelled by a strong conviction to write such a letter that really you should do it with a quill, an ink. Like that's the ultimate way. I think handwritten with like a nice fountain pen. [00:07:54] Jesse Schwamb: There's not, yeah. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like that's, that is a weighty letter right there. Like it's cut to Paul being like, I write this postscript in my own hand with these big letters. Yeah, it's like, you know, some original Presbyterian letter writing right there. [00:08:07] Tony Arsenal: And then you gotta seal it with wax with your signe ring. [00:08:10] Tony Arsenal: So, and send it by a carrier, by a messenger series of me messengers. [00:08:14] Jesse Schwamb: Think if you receive any letter in the mail, handwritten to you. Like for real, somebody painstakingly going through in script like spencerian script, you know, if you're using English characters writing up and then sealing that bad boy with wax, you're gonna be like, this is important. [00:08:30] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, this, even if it's just like, Hey, what's up? Yeah, you're gonna be like, look at this incredible, weighty document I've received. [00:08:36] Tony Arsenal: It's true. It's very true. I love it. Well, that's all I have to say about that to channel a little Forrest Gump there. Uh, Jesse, what are you affirming or denying tonight? [00:08:44] Jesse Schwamb: I'm also going to deny against, so this denial is like classic. [00:08:49] Jesse Schwamb: It's routine, but I got a different spin on it this time, so I'm denying against. The full corruption of sin, how it appears everywhere, how even unbelievers speak of it, almost unwittingly, but very commonly with great acceptance. And the particularity of this denial comes in the form of allergies, which you and I are talking about a lot of times. [00:09:09] Jesse Schwamb: But I was just thinking about this week because I had to do some allergy testing, which is a, a super fun experience. But it just got me think again, like very plainly about what allergies are. And how an allergy occurs when your immune system, like the part of your body responsible for protecting your body that God has made when your immune system mistakes like a non-harmful substance like pollen or a food or some kind of animal dander for a threat, and then reacts by producing these antibodies like primarily the immunoglobulin E. [00:09:36] Jesse Schwamb: So here's what strikes me as so funny about this in a, in a way that we must laugh. Because of our, our parents, our first parents who made a horrible decision and we like them, would make the same decision every day and twice in the Lord's day. And that is that this seems like, of course, such a clear sign of the corruption of sin impounded in our created order because it seems a really distasteful and suboptimal for human beings to have this kind of response to pollen. [00:10:03] Jesse Schwamb: When they were intended to work and care in a garden. So obviously I think we can say, Hey, like the fact that allergies exist and that it's your body making a mistake. [00:10:13] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:10:13] Jesse Schwamb: It's like the ultimate, like cellular level of the ubiquity of sin. And so as I was speaking with my doctor and going through the, the testing, it's just so funny how like we all talk about this. [00:10:25] Jesse Schwamb: It's like, yeah, it's, it's a really over-indexed reaction. It doesn't make any sense. It's not the way the world is supposed to be, but nobody's saying how is the world supposed to be? Do you know what I mean? Like, but we just take it for granted that that kind of inflammation that comes from like your dog or like these particles in the air of plants, just trying to do a plant stew and reproduce and pollinate that, that could cause like really dramatic and debilitating. [00:10:49] Jesse Schwamb: Responses is just exceptional to me, and I think it's exceptional and exceptional to all of us because at some deep level we recognize that, as Paul says, like the earth, the entire world is groaning. It's groaning for that eschatological release and redemption that can only come from Christ. And our runny noses in our hay fever all prove that to some degree. [00:11:09] Jesse Schwamb: So denying against allergies, but denying against as well that ubiquity of corruption and sin in our world. [00:11:15] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I just have this image in my head of Adam and Eve, you know, they're expelled outta the garden and they, they're working the ground. And then Adam sneezes. Yes. And Eve is like, did your head just explode? [00:11:28] Tony Arsenal: And he's like, I don't know. That would've been a, probably a pretty terrifying experience actually. [00:11:33] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's that's true. So imagine like you and I have talked about this before, because you have young children, adorable. Young children, and we've talked about like the first of everything, like when you're a child, you get sick for the first time, or you get the flu or you vomit for the first time. [00:11:45] Jesse Schwamb: Like you have no idea what's going on in your body, but imagine that. But being an adult. [00:11:49] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, where you can process what's going on, but don't have a framework for it. [00:11:52] Jesse Schwamb: Yes, exactly. So like [00:11:54] Tony Arsenal: that's like, that's like my worst nightmare I think. [00:11:55] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. It's like, to your point, 'cause there, there are a lot of experiences you have as an adults, even health wise that are still super strange and weird. [00:12:01] Jesse Schwamb: But [00:12:02] Tony Arsenal: yeah, [00:12:02] Jesse Schwamb: you have some rubric for them, but that's kind of exactly what I was thinking. What if this toiling over your labor is partly because it's horrible now because you have itchy, watery eyes or you get hives. Yeah. And before you were like, I could just lay in the grass and be totally fine. And now I can't even walk by ragweed without getting a headache or having some kind of weird fatigue. [00:12:23] Jesse Schwamb: Like I have to believe that that was, that part of this transition was all of these things. Like, now your body's gonna overreact to stuff where I, I, God put us in a place where that wouldn't be the case at all. [00:12:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Sometimes I think about like the first. Time that Adam was like sore or like hurt himself. [00:12:42] Tony Arsenal: True. Like the, just the, just the terror and fear that must have come with it. And sin is serious stuff. Like it's serious effects and sad, sad, sad stuff. But yeah, allergies are the worst. I, uh, I suffered really badly with, uh, seasonal allergies. When I was a a kid I had to do allergy shots and everything and it's makes no sense. [00:13:03] Tony Arsenal: There's no rhyme or reason to it, and your allergies change. So like you could be going your whole life, being able to eat strawberries and then all of a sudden you can't. Right? And it's, and you don't know until it happens. So [00:13:14] Jesse Schwamb: what's up with that? [00:13:15] Tony Arsenal: No good. [00:13:16] Jesse Schwamb: What's up with that? So again, imagine that little experience is a microcosmic example of what happens to Adam and Eve. [00:13:24] Jesse Schwamb: You know, like all these things change. Like you're, you're right. Suddenly your body isn't the same. It's not just because you're growing older, but because guess what? Sins everywhere. And guess what, where sin is, even in the midst of who you are as physically constructed and the environment in which you live, all, all totally change. [00:13:40] Jesse Schwamb: So that, that's enough of my rants on allergies. I know the, I know the loved ones out there hear me. It's also remarkable to me that almost everybody has an allergy of some kind. It's very, it's very rare if you don't have any allergies whatsoever. And probably those times when you think you're sick and you don't have allergies could be that you actually have them. [00:13:57] Jesse Schwamb: So it's just wild. Wild. [00:14:02] Tony Arsenal: Agreed. Agreed. [00:14:03] Theological Discussion on Parables [00:14:03] Tony Arsenal: Well, Jesse, without further ado, I'm not, I, maybe we should have further ado, but let's get into it. Let's talk about some parable stuff. [00:14:13] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, let's do it again. When I say pair, you say able pair. [00:14:17] Tony Arsenal: Able. [00:14:20] Jesse Schwamb: When I say [00:14:21] Tony Arsenal: para you say bowl. [00:14:24] Jesse Schwamb: That's what I was trying to go with before. [00:14:26] Jesse Schwamb: It's a little bit more, yeah, but you gotta like cross over like we both gotta say like that middle syllable kind of. Otherwise it's, it sounds like I'm just saying bowl. And [00:14:34] Tony Arsenal: yeah, there's no good way to chant that. Yeah, we're work. This is why Jesse and I are not cheerleaders. [00:14:39] Jesse Schwamb: We're, we're work shopping everybody. [00:14:40] Jesse Schwamb: But I agree with you. Enough of us talking about affirmations, the denials in this case, the double double denial. Let's talk about parables. So the beauty of this whole series is there's gonna be so much great stuff to talk about, and I think this is a decent topic for us to cover because. Really, if you think about it, the parables of Jesus have captivated people for the entirety of the scriptures. [00:15:06] Jesse Schwamb: As long, as long as they were recorded and have been read and processed and studied together. And, uh, you know, there's stuff I'm sure that we will just gloss over. We don't need to get into in terms of like, is it pure allegory? Is it always allegory? Is it, there's lots of interpretation here. I think this is gonna be our way of processing together and moving through some of these and speaking them out and trying to learn principally. [00:15:28] Jesse Schwamb: Predominantly what they're teaching us. But I say all that because characters like the prodigal son, like Good Samaritan, Pharisees, and tax collector, those actually have become well known even outside the church. [00:15:40] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And [00:15:40] Jesse Schwamb: then sometimes inside the church there's over familiarity with all of these, and that leads to its own kind of misunderstanding. [00:15:46] Jesse Schwamb: So, and I think as well. I'm hoping that myself, you and our listeners will be able to hear them in a new way, and maybe if we can try to do this without again, being parabolic, is that we can kind of recreate some of the trauma. In these stories. 'cause Jesus is, is pressing upon very certain things and there's certainly a lot of trauma that his original audiences would've taken away from what he was saying here. [00:16:13] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. Even just starting with what is a parable and why is Jesus telling them? So I presume that's actually the best place for us to begin is what's the deal with the parables and why is this? Is this Jesus preferred way of teaching about the kingdom of God. [00:16:30] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and I think, you know, it bears saying too that like not all the parables are alike. [00:16:35] Tony Arsenal: Like true. We can't, this is why I'm excited about this series. You know, it's always good to talk through the bible and, and or to talk through systematic theology, but what really excites me is when we do a series like this, kind of like the Scott's Confession series, like it gives us a reason. To think through a lot of different disciplines and flex like exercise and stretch and flex a lot of different kinds of intellectual muscles. [00:17:00] Tony Arsenal: So there's gonna be some exegetical work we have to do. There's gonna be some hermeneutical work we're gonna have to do, probably have to do some historical work about how the parables have been interpreted in different ways. Yes, and and I think, so, I think it's important to say like, not every parable is exactly the same. [00:17:14] Tony Arsenal: And this is where I think like when you read, sometimes you read books about the, the parables of Christ. Like you, you'll hear one guy say. Well, a parable is not an allegory. Then you'll hear another guy say like, well, parables might have allegorical elements to it. Right. Now if one guy say like, well, a parable has one main point, and you'll have another guy say like, well, no, actually, like parables can have multiple points and multiple shades of meaning. [00:17:37] Tony Arsenal: And I think the answer to why you have this variance in the commentaries is 'cause sometimes the parables are alleg. [00:17:44] Jesse Schwamb: Right. And [00:17:44] Tony Arsenal: sometimes they're not allegorical. Sometimes they have one main point. Sometimes there's multiple points. So I think it's important for us to just acknowledge like we're gonna have to come to each parable, um, on its own and on its own terms. [00:17:57] Tony Arsenal: But there are some general principles that I think we can talk about what parables are. So parables in general are. Figurative stories or figurative accounts that are used to illustrate, I think primarily used to illustrate a single main point. And there may be some subpoints, but they, they're generally intended to, uh, to illustrate something by way of a, of a narrative, a fictional narrative that, uh, helps the reader. [00:18:27] Tony Arsenal: Uh, or the hearer is just, it's also important that these were primarily heard, these are heard parables, so there are even times where the phrasing of the language is important in the parable. Um, they're helping the, the hearer to understand spiritual truth. And this is where I think it's it's key, is that this is not just. [00:18:48] Tony Arsenal: When we're talking about the parables of Christ, right? There's people tell parables, there's all sorts of different teachers that have used parables. Um, I, I do parables on the show from time to time where I'll tell like a little made up story about a, you know, a situation. I'll say like, pretend, you know, let's imagine you have this guy and he's doing this thing that's a form of a parable when I'm using. [00:19:08] Tony Arsenal: I'm not, it's not like a makeup made up story. It's not asaps fables. We're not talking about like talking foxes and hens and stuff, but it's illustrating a point. But the parables of Christ are not just to illustrate a point, they're to reveal a spiritual point or spiritual points to those who have ears to hear, to those who've been illuminated by the spirit. [00:19:29] Tony Arsenal: And I just wanna read this. Uh, this is just God's providence, um, in action. I, um, I've fallen behind on my reading in The Daily Dad, which is a Ryan Holiday book. This was the reading that came up today, even though it's not the correct reading for the day. Uh, it's, it's for September 2nd. We're recording this on September, uh, sixth. [00:19:48] Tony Arsenal: Uh, and the title is, this is How You Teach Them. And the first line says, if the Bible has any indication, Jesus rarely seemed to come out and say what he meant. He preferred instead to employ parables and stories and little anecdotes that make you think. He tells stories of the servants and the talents. [00:20:03] Tony Arsenal: He tells stories of the prodigal son and the Good Samaritan. Turns out it's pretty effective to get a point across and make it stick. What what we're gonna learn. Actually that Jesus tells these stories in parables, in part to teach those who have spiritual ears to hear, but in part to mask the truth That's right. [00:20:24] Tony Arsenal: From those who don't have spiritual ears to hear, oh, online [00:20:26] Jesse Schwamb: holiday. [00:20:27] Tony Arsenal: So it's not as simple as like Jesus, using illustration to help make something complicated, clearer, right? Yes. But also, no. So I'm super excited to kind of get into this stuff and talk through it and to, to really dig into the parables themselves. [00:20:42] Tony Arsenal: It's just gonna be a really good exercise at sort of sitting at the feet of our master in his really, his preferred mode of teaching. Um, you know, other than the sermon on the Mount. There's not a lot of like long form, straightforward, didactic teaching like that most of Christ's teaching as recorded in the gospels, comes in the form of these parables in one way or another. [00:21:03] Tony Arsenal: Right. And that's pretty exciting to me. [00:21:05] Jesse Schwamb: Right. And there's so many more parables I think, than we often understand there to be, or at least then that we see in like the headings are Bible, which of course have been put there by our own construction. So anytime you get that. Nice short, metaphorical narrative is really Jesus speaking in a kind of parable form, and I think you're right on. [00:21:25] Jesse Schwamb: For me, it's always highlighting some kind of aspect of the kingdom of God. And I'd say there is generally a hierarchy. There doesn't have to be like a single point, like you said. There could be other points around that. But if you get into this place where like everything has some kind of allegory representation, then the parable seems to die of the death of like a million paper cuts, right? [00:21:40] Jesse Schwamb: Because you're trying to figure out all the things and if you have to represent something, everything he says with some kind of. Heavy spiritual principle gets kind of weird very quickly. But in each of these, as you said, what's common in my understanding is it's presenting like a series of events involving like a small number of characters. [00:21:57] Jesse Schwamb: It is bite-sized and sometimes those are people or plants or even like inanimate objects. So like the, yeah, like you said, the breadth and scope of how Jesus uses the metaphor is brilliant teaching, and it's even more brilliant when you get to that level, like you're saying, where it's meant both to illuminate. [00:22:13] Jesse Schwamb: To obfuscate. That is like, to me, the parable is a manifestation of election because it's clear that Jesus is using this. Those who have the ears to hear are the ones whom the Holy Spirit has unstopped, has opened the eyes, has illuminated the hearts and the mind to such a degree that can receive these, and that now these words are resonant. [00:22:32] Jesse Schwamb: So like what a blessing that we can understand them, that God has essentially. Use this parabolic teaching in such a way to bring forward his concept of election in the minds and the hearts of those who are his children. And it's kind of a way, this is kind of like the secret Christian handshake. It's the speakeasy of salvation. [00:22:52] Jesse Schwamb: It's, it's coming into the fold because God has invited you in and given you. The knowledge and ability of which to really understand these things. And so most of these little characters seemed realistic and resonant in Jesus' world, and that's why sometimes we do need a little bit of studying and understanding the proper context for all those things. [00:23:12] Jesse Schwamb: I would say as well, like at least one element in those parables is a push. It's in, it's kind of taking it and hyping it up. It's pushing the boundaries of what's plausible, and so you'll find that all of this is made again to illuminate some principle of the kingdom of God. And we should probably go to the thing that you intimated, because when you read that quote from, from Ryan Holiday, I was like, yes, my man. [00:23:34] Jesse Schwamb: Like he's on the right track. Right? There's something about what he's saying that is partially correct, but like you said, a lot of times people mistake the fact that, well, Jesus. Is using this language and these metaphors, these similes, he speaks in parables because they were the best way to get like these uneducated people to understand him. [00:23:57] Jesse Schwamb: Right? But it's actually the exact opposite. And we know this because of perhaps the most famous dialogue and expression and explanation of parables, which comes to us in Matthew 13, 10 through 17, where Jesus explains to his disciples exactly why he uses this mode of teaching. And what he says is. This is why I speak to them of parables because seeing they do not see and hearing, they do not hear they nor do they understand. [00:24:24] Jesse Schwamb: So, so that's perplexing. We should probably camp there for just a second and talk about that. Right, and, and like really unpack like, what is Jesus after here? Then if, like, before we get into like, what do all these things mean, it's almost like saying. We need to understand why they're even set before us and why these in some ways are like a kind of a small stumbling block to others, but then this great stone of appreciation and one to stand on for for others. [00:24:47] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and I think you know, before we, before we cover that, which I think is a good next spot. A parable is not just an illustration. Like I think that's where a lot of people go a little bit sideways, is they think that this is effectively, like it's a fable. It's like a made up story primarily to like illustrate a point right. [00:25:09] Tony Arsenal: Or an allegory where you know, you're taking individual components and they represent something else. A parable fundamentally is a, is a, a comparison between two things, right? The word parable comes from the Greek of casting alongside, and so the idea is like you're, you're taking. The reality that you're trying to articulate and you're setting up this parable next to it and you're comparing them to it. [00:25:33] Tony Arsenal: And so I like to use the word simile, like that's why Christ says like the kingdom of God is like this. Yes. It's not like I'm gonna explain the kingdom of God to you by using this made up story. Right on. It's I'm gonna compare the kingdom of God to this thing or this story that I'm having, and so we should be. [00:25:49] Tony Arsenal: Rather than trying to like find the principles of the parable, we should be looking at it and going, how does this parable reflect? Or how is this a, um, how is this an explanation? Not in the, like, I, I'm struggling to even explain this here. It's not that the cer, the parable is just illustrating a principle. [00:26:10] Tony Arsenal: It's that the kingdom of God is one thing and the parable reveals that same one thing by way of comparison. Yes. So like. Uh, we'll get into the specifics, obviously, but when the, when the, um, lawyer says, who is my neighbor? Well, it's not just like, well, let's look at the Good Samaritan. And the Good Samaritan represents this, and the Levite represents this, and the priest represents this. [00:26:32] Tony Arsenal: It's a good neighbor, is this thing. It's this story. Compared to whatever you have in your mind of what a good neighbor is. And we're gonna bounce those things up against each other, and that's gonna somehow show us what the, what the reality is. And that's why I think to get back to where we were, that's why I think sometimes the parables actually obscure the truth. [00:26:53] Tony Arsenal: Because if we're not comparing the parable to the reality of something, then we're gonna get the parable wrong. So if we think that, um, the Good Samaritan. Is a parable about social justice and we're, we're looking at it to try to understand how do we treat, you know, the, the poor people in Africa who don't have food or the war torn refugees, you know, coming out of Ukraine. [00:27:19] Tony Arsenal: If we're looking at it primarily as like, I need to learn to be a good neighbor to those who are destitute. Uh, we're not comparing it against what Jesus was comparing it against, right? So, so we have to understand, we have to start in a lot of cases with the question that the parable is a response to, which oftentimes the parable is a response to a question or it's a, it's a principle that's being, um, compare it against if we get that first step wrong, uh, or if we start with our own presuppositions, which is why. [00:27:50] Tony Arsenal: Partially why I think Christ is saying like, the only those who have ears to hear. Like if you don't have a spiritual presupposition, I, I mean that, that might not be the right word, but like if you're not starting from the place of spiritual illumination, not in the weird gnostic sense, but in the, the. [00:28:07] Tony Arsenal: Genuinely Christian illumination of the Holy Spirit and inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. If you're not starting from that perspective, you almost can't get the parables right. So that's why we see like the opponents of Christ in the Bible, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, constantly. They're constantly confused and they're getting it wrong. [00:28:26] Tony Arsenal: And, and even sometimes the disciples, they have to go and ask sometimes too, what is this parable? Wow, that's right. What is, what does this mean? So it's never as simple as, as what's directly on the surface, but it's also not usually as complicated as we would make it be if we were trying to over-interpret the parable, which I think is another risk. [00:28:44] Jesse Schwamb: That's the genius, isn't it? Is that I I like what you're saying. It's that spiritual predisposition that allows us to receive the word and, and when we receive that word, it is a simple word. It's not as if like, we have to elevate ourselves in place of this high learning or education or philosophizing, and that's the beauty of it. [00:29:03] Jesse Schwamb: So it is, again, God's setting apart for himself A, a people a teaching. So. But I think this is, it is a little bit perplexing at first, like that statement from Jesus because it's a bit like somebody coming to you, like your place of work or anywhere else in your family life and asking you explicitly for instruction and, and then you saying something like, listen, I, I'm gonna show you, but you're not gonna be able to see it. [00:29:22] Jesse Schwamb: And you're gonna, I'm gonna tell you, but you're not gonna be able to hear it, and I'm gonna explain it to you, but you're not gonna be able to understand. And you're like, okay. So yeah, what's the point of you talking to me then? So it's clear, like you said that Jesus. Is teaching that the secrets, and that's really, really what these are. [00:29:37] The Secrets of the Kingdom of God [00:29:37] Jesse Schwamb: It's brilliant and beautiful that Jesus would, that the, the son of God and God himself would tell us the secrets of his kingdom. But that again, first of all by saying it's a secret, means it's, it's for somebody to guard and to hold knowledge closely and that it is protected. So he says, teaching like the secrets of the kingdom of God are unknowable through mere human reasoning and intuition. [00:29:56] Jesse Schwamb: Interestingly here though, Jesus is also saying that. He's, it's not like he's saying no one can ever understand the parables, right, or that he intends to hide their truth from all people. [00:30:07] Understanding Parables and God's Sovereign Grace [00:30:07] Jesse Schwamb: Instead, he just explains that in order to highlight God's sovereign grace, God in his mercy has enlightened some to whom it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. [00:30:17] Jesse Schwamb: That's verse 11. So. All of us as his children who have been illuminated can understand the truth of God's kingdom. That is wild and and that is amazing. So that this knowledge goes out and just like we talk about the scripture going out and never returning void, here's a prime example of that very thing that there is a condemnation and not being able to understand. [00:30:37] Jesse Schwamb: That condemnation comes not because you're not intelligent enough, but because as you said, you do not have that predisposition. You do not have that changed heart into the ability to understand these things. [00:30:47] Doctrine of Election and Spiritual Insight [00:30:47] Jesse Schwamb: This is what leads me here to say like every parable then implicitly teaches a doctrine of election. [00:30:53] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, because all people are outside the kingdom until they enter the Lord's teaching. How do we enter the Lord's teaching by being given ears to hear. How are we understanding that? We have been given ears to hear when these parables speak to us in the spiritual reality as well as in just like you said, like this general kind of like in the way that I presume Ryan Holiday means it. [00:31:12] Jesse Schwamb: The, this is like, he might be exemplifying the fact that these stories. Are a really great form of the ability to communicate complex information or to make you think. [00:31:21] The Power and Purpose of Parables [00:31:21] Jesse Schwamb: So when Jesus says something like The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, wow, we, you and I will probably spend like two episodes just unpacking that, or we could spend a lot more, that's beautiful that that's how his teaching takes place. [00:31:34] Jesse Schwamb: But of course it's, it's so much. More than that, that those in whom the teaching is effective on a salvation somehow understand it, and their understanding of it becomes first because Christ is implanted within them. Salvation. [00:31:46] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:48] Parables as More Than Simple Teaching Tools [00:31:48] Tony Arsenal: I think people, and this is what I think like Ryan Holiday's statement reflects, is people think of the parables as a simple teaching tool to break down a complicated subject. [00:32:00] Tony Arsenal: Yes. And so, like if I was trying to explain podcasting to a, like a five-year-old, I would say something like, well, you know. You know how your teacher teaches you during class while a podcast is like if your teacher lived on the internet and you could access your teacher anytime. Like, that might be a weird explanation, but like that's taking a very complicated thing about recording and and RSS feeds and you know, all of these different elements that go into what podcasting is and breaking it down to a simple sub that is not what a parable is. [00:32:30] Tony Arsenal: Right? Right. A parable is not. Just breaking a simple subject down and illustrating it by way of like a, a clever comparison. Um, you know, it's not like someone trying to explain the doctrine of, of the Trinity by using clever analogies or something like that. Even if that were reasonable and impossible. [00:32:50] Tony Arsenal: It's, it's not like that a parable. I like what you're saying about it being kind of like a mini doctrine of election. It's also a mini doctrine of the Bible. Yes. Right. It, it's right on. [00:33:00] The Doctrine of Illumination [00:33:00] Tony Arsenal: It's, it's the doctrine of revelation. In. Preached form in the Ministry of Christ, right? As Christians, we have this text and we affirm that at the same time, uh, what can be known of it and what is necessary for salvation can be known. [00:33:19] Tony Arsenal: By ordinary means like Bart Iman, an avowed atheist who I, I think like all atheists, whether they recognize it or not, hates God. He can read the Bible and understand that what it means is that if you trust Jesus, you'll be saved. You don't need special spiritual insight to understand that that is what the Bible teaches, where the special spiritual. [00:33:42] Tony Arsenal: Insight might not be the right word, but the special spiritual appropriation is that the spirit enables you to receive that unto your salvation. Right? To put your trust in. The reality of that, and we call that doctrine, the doctrine of illumination. And so in, in the sense of parables in Christ's ministry, and this is, this is if you, you know, like what do I always say is just read a little bit more, um, the portion Jesse read it leads way into this prophecy or in this comment, Christ. [00:34:10] Tony Arsenal: Saying he teaches in parable in order to fulfill this prophecy of Isaiah. Basically that like those who are, uh, ate and are apart from God and are resistant to God, these parables there are there in order to confirm that they are. And then it says in verse 16, and this is, this is. [00:34:27] The Blessing of Spiritual Understanding [00:34:27] Tony Arsenal: It always seems like the series that we do ends up with like a theme verse, and this is probably the one verse 16 here, Matthew 1316 says, but blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. [00:34:40] Tony Arsenal: And so like there's a blessing. In our salvation and in our election that we are enabled to hear and perceive and re receive the very voice and word of God into our spirit unto our salvation. That is the doctrine of of election. It's also the doctrine of regeneration, the doctrine of sanctification, the doctrine. [00:35:03] Tony Arsenal: I mean, there's all of these different classic reformed doctrines that the parables really are these mic this microcosm of that. Almost like applied in the Ministry of Christ. Right. Which I, I, you know, I've, I've never really thought of it in depth in that way before, but it's absolutely true and it's super exciting to be able to sort of embark on this, uh, on this series journey with, with this group. [00:35:28] Tony Arsenal: I think it's gonna be so good to just dig into these and really, really hear the gospel preached to ourselves through these parables. That's what I'm looking forward to. [00:35:38] Jesse Schwamb: And we're used to being very. Close with the idea that like the message contains the doctrine, the message contains the power. Here we're saying, I think it's both. [00:35:47] Jesse Schwamb: And the mode of that message also contains, the doctrine also contains the power. And I like where you're going with this because I think what we should be reminding ourselves. Is what a blessing it is to have this kind of information conferred to us. [00:36:01] The Role of Parables in Revealing and Concealing Truth [00:36:01] Jesse Schwamb: That again, God has taken, what is the secrets that is his to disclose and his to keep and his to hold, and he's made it available to his children. [00:36:08] Jesse Schwamb: And part of that is for, as you said, like the strengthening of our own faith. It's also for condemnation. So notice that. The hiding of the kingdom through parables is not a consequence of the teaching itself. Again, this goes back to like the mode being as equally important here as the message itself that Christ's teaching is not too difficult to comprehend as an intellectual matter. [00:36:27] Jesse Schwamb: The thing is, like even today, many unbelievers read the gospels and they technically understand what Jesus means in his teaching, especially these parables. The problem is. I would say like moral hardness. It's that lack of spiritual predilection or predisposition. They know what Jesus teaches, but they do not believe. [00:36:47] Jesse Schwamb: And so the challenge before us is as all scripture reading, that we would go before the Holy Spirit and say, holy Spirit, help me to believe. Help me to understand what to believe. And it so doing, do the work of God, which is to believe in him and to believe in His son Jesus Christ and what he's accomplished. [00:37:02] Jesse Schwamb: So the parables are not like creating. Fresh unbelief and sinners instead, like they're confirming the opposition that's already present and apart from Grace, unregenerate perversely use our Lord's teaching to increase their resistance. That's how it's set up. That's how it works. That's why to be on the inside, as it were, not again, because like we've done the right handshake or met all the right standards, but because of the blood of Christ means that the disciples, the first disciples and all the disciples who will follow after them on the other hand. [00:37:33] The Complexity and Nuances of Parables [00:37:33] Jesse Schwamb: We've been granted these eyes to see, and ears to hear Jesus. And then we've been given the secrets of the kingdom. I mean, that's literally what we've been given. And God's mercy has been extended to the disciples who like many in the crowds, once ignorantly and stubbornly rejected God and us just like them as well in both accounts. [00:37:49] Jesse Schwamb: So this is, I think we need to settle on that. You're right, throughout this series, what a blessing. It's not meant to be a great labor or an effort for the child of God. Instead, it's meant to be a way of exploring these fe. Fantastic truths of who God is and what he's done in such a way that draw us in. [00:38:07] Jesse Schwamb: So that whether we're analyzing again, like the the lost coin or the lost sheep, or. Any number of these amazing parables, you'll notice that they draw us in because they don't give us answers in the explicit sense that we're used to. Like didactically instead. Yeah. They cause us to consider, as you've already said, Tony, like what does it mean to be lost? [00:38:26] Jesse Schwamb: What does it mean that the father comes running for this prodigal son? What does it mean that the older brother has a beef with the whole situation? What does it mean when Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed? How much do we know about mustard seeds? And why would he say that? Again, this is a kind of interesting teaching, but that illumination in the midst of it being, I don't wanna say ambiguous, but open-ended to a degree means that the Holy Spirit must come in and give us that kind of grand knowledge. [00:38:55] Jesse Schwamb: But more than that, believe upon what Jesus is saying. I think that's the critical thing, is somebody will say, well, aren't the teaching simple and therefore easy to understand. In a sense, yes. Like factually yes, but in a much greater sense. Absolutely not. And that's why I think it's so beautiful that he quotes Isaiah there because in that original context, you the, you know, you have God delivering a message through Isaiah. [00:39:17] Jesse Schwamb: Uh. The people are very clear. Like, we just don't believe you're a prophet of God. And like what you're saying is ridiculous, right? And we just don't wanna hear you. This is very different than that. This is, Jesus is giving this message essentially to all who will listen to him, not necessarily hear, but all, all who are hear Him, I guess rather, but not necessarily all who are listening with those spiritual ears. [00:39:33] Jesse Schwamb: And so this is like, I love the way that he, he uses that quote in a slightly different way, but still to express the same root cause, which is some of you here. Because of your depravity will not be able to hear what I'm saying. But for those to whom it has been granted to come in who are ushered into the kingdom, this kingdom language will make sense. [00:39:54] Jesse Schwamb: It's like, I'm going to be speaking to you in code and half of you have the key for all the code because the Holy Spirit is your cipher and half of you don't. And you're gonna, you're gonna listen to the same thing, but you will hear very different things. [00:40:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the other thing I think is, is interesting to ponder on this, um. [00:40:12] The Importance of Context in Interpreting Parables [00:40:12] Tony Arsenal: God always accommodates his revelation to his people. And the parables are, are, are like the. Accommodated accommodation. Yeah. Like God accommodates himself to those he chooses to reveal himself to. And in some ways this is, this is, um, the human ministry of Christ is him accommodating himself to those. [00:40:38] Tony Arsenal: What I mean is in the human ministry of the Son, the parables are a way of the son accommodating himself to those he chooses to reveal himself to. So there, there are instances. Where the parable is said, and it is, uh, it's seems to be more or less understood by everybody. Nobody asks the question about like, what does this mean? [00:40:57] Tony Arsenal: Right? And then there are instances where the parable is said, and even the apostles are, or the disciples are like, what does this parable mean? And then there's some interesting ones where like. Christ's enemies understand the parable and, and can understand that the parable is told against them. About them. [00:41:13] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. So there, there's all these different nuances to why Christ used these parables, how simple they were, how complicated they were. Yes. And again, I think that underscores what I said at the top of the show here. It's like you can't treat every parable exactly the same. And that's where you run into trouble. [00:41:28] Tony Arsenal: Like if you're, if you're coming at them, like they're all just simple allegory. Again, like some of them have allegorical elements. I think it's fair to look at the, the prodigal son or the, the prodigal father, however you want to title that. And remember, the titles are not, generally, the titles are not, um, baked into the text itself. [00:41:46] Tony Arsenal: I think it's fair to come to that and look at and go, okay, well, who's the father in this? Who's the son? You know, what does it mean that the older son is this? Is, is there relevance to the fact that there's a party and that the, you know, the older, older, uh, son is not a part of it? There's, there's some legitimacy to that. [00:42:02] Tony Arsenal: And when we look at Christ's own explanation of some of his parables, he uses those kinds, right? The, the good seed is this, the, the seed that fell on the, the side of the road is this, right? The seed that got choked out by the, the, um, thorns is this, but then there are others where it doesn't make sense to pull it apart, element by element. [00:42:21] Tony Arsenal: Mm-hmm. Um, and, and the other thing is there are some things that we're gonna look at that are, um. We're gonna treat as parables that the text doesn't call a parable. And then there are some that you might even look at that sometimes the text calls a parable that we might not even think of as a normal parable, right? [00:42:38] Tony Arsenal: So there's lots of elements. This is gonna be really fun to just dig stuff in and, and sort of pick it, like pull it apart and look at its component parts and constituent parts. Um, so I really do mean it if you, if you're the kind of person who has never picked up a Bible commentary. This would be a good time to, to start because these can get difficult. [00:42:59] Tony Arsenal: They can get complicated. You want to have a trusted guide, and Jesse and I are gonna do our, our work and our research on this. Um, but you want someone who's more of a trusted guide than us. This is gonna be the one time that I might actually say Calvin's commentaries are not the most helpful. And the reason for that is not because Calvin's not clear on this stuff. [00:43:17] Tony Arsenal: Calvin Calvin's commentaries on the gospel is, is a harmony of the gospels, right? So sometimes it's tricky when you're reading it to try to find like a specific, uh, passage in Matthew because you're, you, everything's interwoven. So something like Matthew Henry, um, or something like, um, Matthew Poole. Uh, might be helpful if you're willing to spend a little bit of money. [00:43:38] Tony Arsenal: The ESV expository commentary that I've referenced before is a good option. Um, but try to find something that's approachable and usable that is reasonable for you to work through the commentary alongside of us, because you are gonna want to spend time reading these on your own, and you're gonna want to, like I said, you're gonna want to have a trust guide with you. [00:43:55] Tony Arsenal: Even just a good study bible, something like. The Reformation Study Bible or something along those lines would help you work your way through these parables, and I think it's valuable to do that. [00:44:06] Jesse Schwamb: Something you just said sparked this idea in me that the power, or one of the powers maybe of good fiction is that it grabs your attention. [00:44:15] The Impact of Parables on Listeners [00:44:15] Jesse Schwamb: It like brings you into the plot maybe even more than just what I said before about it being resonant, that it actually pulls you into the storyline and it makes you think that it's about other people until it's too late. Yeah. And Jesus has a way of doing this that really only maybe the parable can allow. [00:44:30] Jesse Schwamb: So like in other words, by the time you realize. A parable is like metaphorical, or even in a limited case, it's allegorical form you've already identified with one or more of the characters and you're caught in the trap. So what comes to my mind there is like the one Old Testament narrative, virtually identical, informed to those Jesus told is Nathan's parable of the You lamb. [00:44:52] Jesse Schwamb: So that's in like second Samuel 12, and I was just looking this up as you were, as you were speaking. So in this potentially life and death move for the prophet Nathan confronts King David. Over his adultery with, or depending on how you see it, rape of Bathsheba, and then his subsequent murder of her husband Uriah, by sending him to the front lines of battle. [00:45:10] Jesse Schwamb: So he's killed. And so in this parable that Nathan tells Uriah is like the poor man. Bathsheba is like the Yu a and the rich man obviously represents David. If you, you know what I'm talking about, go back and look at second Samuel 12. And so what's interesting is once David is hooked into that story, he cannot deny that his behavior was unjust as that of the rich man in the story who takes this UAM for himself and he, which he openly. [00:45:38] Jesse Schwamb: Then David openly condemns of course, like the amazing climax of this. And as the reader who has. Of course, like omniscient knowledge in the story, you know, the plot of things, right? You're, you're already crying out, like you're throwing something, you know, across the room saying like, how can you not see this about you? [00:45:53] Jesse Schwamb: And of course the climax comes in when Nathan points the finger at David and declares, you are the man. And that's kind of what. The parables due to us. Yes. They're not always like the same in accusatory toward us, but they do call us out. This is where, again, when we talk about like the scripture reading us, the parable is particularly good at that because sometimes we tend to identify, you know, again, with like one of the particular characters whom we probably shouldn't identify with, or like you said, the parable, the sower. [00:46:22] Jesse Schwamb: Isn't the Christian always quick to be like, I am the virtual grounds? Yeah. You still have to ask like, you know, there is not like a Paul washer way of doing this, but there is like a way of saying like, checking yourself before you wreck yourself there. And so when Jesus's parables have lost some of that shock value in today's world, we maybe need to contemporize them a little bit. [00:46:43] Jesse Schwamb: I, and I think we'll talk about that as we go through it. We're not rewriting them for any reason that that would be completely inappropriate. Think about this though. Like the Jew robbed and left for dead. And you know the story of the Grace Samaritan may need to become like the white evangelical man who is helped by like the black Muslim woman after the senior pastor and the worship leader from the local reformed church passed by like that. [00:47:05] Jesse Schwamb: That might be the frame, which we should put it to try to understand it whenever we face a hostile audience that this indirect rhetoric of compelling stories may help at least some people hear God's world more favorably, and I think that's why you get both like a soft. And a sharp edge with these stories. [00:47:20] Jesse Schwamb: But it's the ability to, to kind of come in on the sneak attack. It's to make you feel welcomed in and to identify with somebody. And then sometimes to find that you're identifying entirely with a character whom Jesus is gonna say, listen, don't be this way, or This is what the kingdom of God is, is not like this. [00:47:35] Jesse Schwamb: Or again, to give you shock value, not for the sake of telling like a good tale that somehow has a twist where it's like everybody was actually. All Dead at the end. Another movie, by the way, I have not seen, but I just know that that's like, I'll never see that movie because, can we say it that the spoiler is, is out on that, right? [00:47:54] Tony Arsenal: Are we, what are we talking about? What movie are we talking about? [00:47:56] Jesse Schwamb: Well, I don't, I don't wanna say it. I didn't [00:47:57] Tony Arsenal: even get it from your description. Oh. [00:47:59] Jesse Schwamb: Like that, that movie where like, he was dead the whole time. [00:48:02] Tony Arsenal: Oh, this, that, that, that movie came out like 30 years ago, Jesse. Oh, seriously? [00:48:06] Jesse Schwamb: Okay. All right. [00:48:06] Tony Arsenal: So Six Sense. [00:48:07] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. That movie came out a long time ago. [00:48:10] Jesse Schwamb: So it's not like the parables are the sixth sense, and it's like, let me get you like a really cool twist. Right. Or like hook at the end. I, and I think in part it is to disarm you and to draw you in in such a way that we might honestly consider what's happening there. [00:48:22] Jesse Schwamb: And that's how it reads us. [00:48:24] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that's a good point. And, and. It bears saying there are all sorts of parables all throughout the Bible. It's not just Jesus that teaches these, and they do have this similar effect that they, they draw you in. Um, oftentimes you identify it preliminarily, you identify with the wrong person, and it's not until you. [00:48:45] Tony Arsenal: Or you don't identify with anyone when you should. Right. Right. And it's not until the sort of punchline or I think that account with Nathan is so spot on because it's the same kind of thing. David did not have ears to hear. [00:48:58] Jesse Schwamb: Right. Until he had That's good point. Ears [00:49:00] Tony Arsenal: to hear. [00:49:00] Jesse Schwamb: Good point. [00:49:01] Tony Arsenal: And he heard the point of the parable. [00:49:03] Tony Arsenal: He understood the point of the parable and he didn't understand that the parable was about him, right? It's like the ultimate, I don't know why you're clapping David, I'm talking about you moment. Um, I'm just have this picture of Paul washer in like a biblical era robe. Um, so I think that's a enough progam to the series. [00:49:20] Preparing for the Series on Parables [00:49:20] Tony Arsenal: We're super excited we're, we'll cover some of these principles again, because again, different parables have to be interpreted different ways, and some of these principles apply to one and don't to others, and so we'll, we'll tease that out when we get there next week. We're gonna just jump right in. [00:49:34] Tony Arsenal: We're gonna get started with, I think, um, I actually think, you know, in the, the providence of, of the Holy Spirit and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and then obviously the providence of God in Christ's ministry, the, the parable that kind of like frames all of the other parables,

On this episode of Mega Dads Live Antonio is raving about the totally-normally-named Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster!

A SPECIAL TREAT THIS WEEK, REFINER!!We're having so much fun talking to 'Severance' production people, we're taking another week off from the re-watch to get in a FANTASTIC interview. Kick back and enjoy a really fun discussion with Tansy Michaud from the 'Severance' graphics department. Tanys is the lead designer for 'Severance.' She's been doing this since before there were any Lumon hallways. She created the Lumon Logo!! (plus DOZENS of other iconic items from the show).We'll get into the tall weeds talking about graphic design and the indelible mark Tansy has left on the show!  ***A BIG 'thank you' to Research Volunteer/Producer Refiner Vinny P. Vinny has been providing outstanding research and information during the Season Two Rewatch Episodes.Huge thanks to Adam Scott, star of 'Severance' and host of the Severance Podcast for recording a custom intro for "Severed." Make sure to check out 'The Severance Podcast w/Ben Stiller & Adam Scott" wherever you found this one!A big 'thank you' to friend of the pod Kier Eagan, er I mean Marc Geller! Marc both sat for an interview (make sure to check it out) AND recorded some great bumpers as Kier himself. Follow Marc on Instagram @geller_marc.Support the show on Patreon! (Click here)APPLE PODCAST LISTENERS: If you are enjoying "Severed: The Ultimate 'Severance' Podcast" please make sure to leave a 5-star rating (and, if you want, a review telling others to give it a try). Higher rated podcasts get better placement in suggestion lists. It helps more "Severance" fans find the show. Thanks!!! (Unfortunately, I can't respond to any questions or comments made in Apple Podcast Reviews. Send those to: SeveredPod@gmail.com)Season 2 of "Severance" kicked off 1/17/2025 and ran through 3/20/2025. The Second Season of the "Severed" Podcast Rewatch Episodes kicked off on April 24th, 2025. To support the Severed Podcast: (www.patreon.com/SeveredPod) Join the fun on our Facebook page @SeveredPod. I always try to keep page followers  updated on news about the show. Also, let's talk!! Comments? Theories? Corrections? I LOVE 'EM!! Send to: SeveredPod@gmail.comPLEASE MAKE SURE TO SHARE THE PODCAST WITH YOUR FRIENDS WHO ARE 'SEVERANCE' FANS. THE SHOW GROWS THROUGH WORD OF MOUTH!!Needing your own copies of the Lexington Letter and Orientation Booklet? I've got you covered with downloadable PDFs of both documents:LETTER: LEXINGTONLETTER-TheLetter.pdf HANDBOOK: LEXINGTONLETTER-MDROrientationHandbook.pdfYou haven't completely watched 'Severance' until you've listened to 'Severed'.