Podcasts about Federation

Things get gloriously weird as we dive into "Wedding Bell Blues," the second episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3. After a three-month time jump, the Enterprise is docked at Starbase One for the Federation's 100th anniversary, but Spock has something more personal on his mind: the return of Nurse Chapel. Unfortunately for him, she's not alone. Enter Chapel's date, Dr. Roger Korby, her old mentor, and the unfortunate spark for Spock's emotional tailspin. What begins as an awkward love triangle quickly warps into a full-blown rom-com fever dream. Spock wakes up engaged to Chapel, the crew is prepping for a wedding instead of a centennial celebration, and reality itself seems to be playing fast and loose with the facts. While some members of the crew are blissfully swept up in the festivities, others start to sense something is very, very off--especially a confused and suspicious Dr. Korby. We'll dig into the emotional core of the episode, including Ethan Peck's fantastic performance as a Vulcan barely holding himself together, and how Strange New Worlds continues to blend genres without losing its heart. Director Jordon Canning, who brought us last season's rom-com "Charades," once again balances comedy, sci-fi, and surprising depth in a story that explores how emotions shape our reality.

In this powerful episode, the hosts welcome Danny Labin, CEO of the Jewish Federation of the Desert, for a conversation spanning his global experiences and local commitments. From producing Sesame Street in over 25 countries to navigating life in Lithuania and leading major philanthropic efforts in Israel, Labin's journey reflects a life dedicated to education, cultural understanding, and community service. He shares gripping first-hand accounts of being in Israel during missile attacks, the complex realities of humanitarian work in times of crisis, and the Federation's mission to support both Jewish and non-Jewish communities across the Coachella Valley and beyond. Listeners will hear how empathy, resilience, and connection fuel Labin's vision for fostering meaningful engagement and building inclusive community experiences. With stories that weave together humor, history, and heartfelt purpose, this episode offers inspiration and insight into the work of creating a better world for all.Takeaways:· Danny Labin's diverse career includes producing Sesame Street in over 25 countries.· He lived in Lithuania for two years, working on Jewish community initiatives.· Firsthand experiences in Israel during missile attacks shaped his leadership perspective.· The Jewish Federation of the Desert aids both Jewish and non-Jewish communities locally.· More than 90% of Jewish Family Service recipients are not Jewish.· Labin emphasizes Tikun Olam—repairing the world—as a guiding principle.· His vision includes expanded programs, community events, and educational travel to Israel.· Leadership during crises requires balancing on-the-ground action with serving local community needs.#BigConversationsLittleBarPodcast #PatrickEvans #RandyFlorence #SkipsLittleBar #McCallumTheatre #MutualBroadcastingSystem #CoachellaValleyResidents #SkipPaige #DannyLabin #JewishFederationoftheDesert #SesameStreet #Lithuania #HumanitarianAid #TikunOlam #CommunityLeadership #IsraelSupport #Philanthropy #CoachellaValley #GlobalImpact #EducationThroughMedia

We sit with Tom Cheney, Director of Marketing at the Atlantic Salmon Federation. We discuss his life chasing salmon on Canada's east coast, talk about his role at the ASF, issues facing salmon, and more.  For over 75 years, ASF's work has been driven by what wild Atlantic salmon need to survive and thrive. Our changing climate demands action now. How can you help? Every donation, membership purchase, or subscription to our updates helps us build momentum. Get involved: https://www.asf.ca/  Check out Rock Plastic Salmon: https://www.rockplasticsalmon.com/   HOW TO HELP SO FLY: Please go leave us a review on APPLE PODCASTS. It really helps our show get out there, which means we get to make MORE episodes.  Thank you to our sponsors: Drift Outfitters Redington Chums Costa Muskoka Brewery Hooké   Podcast Intro Theme Song Music: “Favela Beat“ by Birocratic (www.birocratic.com) The song used in our podcast was licensed via Birocratic License v05.2016. For info on how you can use this music in your project, check out ⁠http://www.birocratic.com/license-app.⁠ To download Birocratic's 60+ song discography, visit http:// birocratic.bandcamp.com. Thanks to all our listeners.  

Union Federation EP.222: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3 - EP.05: "Through The Lens Of Time" Watch: Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork Listen: Union Federation Audio Podcast Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation Welcome to the Union Federation Podcast on the Fandom Podcast Network & BQN Network, where we discuss both Star Trek and The Orville. Your Union Federation crew return to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, with the new (2025) 10 episode season 3! On this  episode we discuss:  Union Federation EP.222: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3 - EP.05: "Through The Lens Of Time"   Until next time on the Union Federation Podcast, "Live Long & Prosper" & "We Are, Without A Doubt, The Weirdest Ship In The Fleet!"   Union Federation Podcast Contact Info. Hailing frequencies are now open........   Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork   Union Federation: A Star Trek and The Orville Podcast Feed: Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation   Facebook: The Union Federation: A Star Trek and Orville Podcast Group. Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/323504344789120   - Fandom Podcast Network Master Audio Feed: https://fpnet.podbean.com/ - Fandom Podcast Network is on ALL major podcasts platforms. - Email: theunionfederation@gmail.com - Instagram: @UnionFederationPodcast / https://www.instagram.com/unionfederationpodcast/ - X (Twitter) : @unionfedpodcast / https://x.com/UnionFedPodcast - Bluesky: @fanpodnetwork / https://bsky.app/profile/fanpodnetwork.bsky.social Host & Guest Contact Info: - Kyle Wagner on X: @AKyleW / Instagram & Threads: @Akylefandom / @akyleW on Discord / @Ksport16: Letterboxd / Blue Sky: @akylew - Amy Nelson on X: @MissAmyNelson / Instagram: @amynelson522 / Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts & @CounselorAmy - Hayley Stoddart on Instagram & Bluesky: @trekkie01D - Kevin Reitzel on X / Instagram / Threads / Discord & Letterboxd: @spartan_phoenix / Bluesky: @spartanphoenix   Where to Find BQN: Instagram: @BQNpodcasts Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts Facebook: The BQN Collective (listener's group) Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bqnpodcast   #FandomPodcastNetwork #FPNet #FPN #UnionFederation #UnionFederationPodcast #BQN #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsSeason3 #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsThroughTheLensOfTime #ThroughTheLensOfTime #AmyNelson #HayleyStoddart #KyleWagner #KevinReitzel

­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women's Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent struggle against oil spills and environmental destruction in the Niger-Delta Nigeria in the 90s. The Federation of Ogoni Women Activists (FOWA) emerges to charge forward the course of sovereignty for both humans and the Niger-Delta ecosystem. The nonviolent resistance of the Ogoni Women through prayer meetings, fasting, and singing for community mobilisation epitomises a "love in action" (Dube, 2025) strategy to identity negotiation in the face of dehumanisation. The book, Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice, is a voyage into the history of the Ogoni tribes of the Niger-Delta, their lives, their ordeals of racism in their home nation with highlights of experiences of African immigrant women, the racialised refugees abroad, who fled from their home nation to seek sovereignty. The book builds on contemporary frameworks and adopts interdisciplinary approaches to unveil the outstanding revolutionary efforts of the Ogoni women in the Niger-Delta. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam's greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is assessesible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women's Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent struggle against oil spills and environmental destruction in the Niger-Delta Nigeria in the 90s. The Federation of Ogoni Women Activists (FOWA) emerges to charge forward the course of sovereignty for both humans and the Niger-Delta ecosystem. The nonviolent resistance of the Ogoni Women through prayer meetings, fasting, and singing for community mobilisation epitomises a "love in action" (Dube, 2025) strategy to identity negotiation in the face of dehumanisation. The book, Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice, is a voyage into the history of the Ogoni tribes of the Niger-Delta, their lives, their ordeals of racism in their home nation with highlights of experiences of African immigrant women, the racialised refugees abroad, who fled from their home nation to seek sovereignty. The book builds on contemporary frameworks and adopts interdisciplinary approaches to unveil the outstanding revolutionary efforts of the Ogoni women in the Niger-Delta. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam's greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is assessesible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women's Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent struggle against oil spills and environmental destruction in the Niger-Delta Nigeria in the 90s. The Federation of Ogoni Women Activists (FOWA) emerges to charge forward the course of sovereignty for both humans and the Niger-Delta ecosystem. The nonviolent resistance of the Ogoni Women through prayer meetings, fasting, and singing for community mobilisation epitomises a "love in action" (Dube, 2025) strategy to identity negotiation in the face of dehumanisation. The book, Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice, is a voyage into the history of the Ogoni tribes of the Niger-Delta, their lives, their ordeals of racism in their home nation with highlights of experiences of African immigrant women, the racialised refugees abroad, who fled from their home nation to seek sovereignty. The book builds on contemporary frameworks and adopts interdisciplinary approaches to unveil the outstanding revolutionary efforts of the Ogoni women in the Niger-Delta. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam's greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is assessesible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women's Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent struggle against oil spills and environmental destruction in the Niger-Delta Nigeria in the 90s. The Federation of Ogoni Women Activists (FOWA) emerges to charge forward the course of sovereignty for both humans and the Niger-Delta ecosystem. The nonviolent resistance of the Ogoni Women through prayer meetings, fasting, and singing for community mobilisation epitomises a "love in action" (Dube, 2025) strategy to identity negotiation in the face of dehumanisation. The book, Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice, is a voyage into the history of the Ogoni tribes of the Niger-Delta, their lives, their ordeals of racism in their home nation with highlights of experiences of African immigrant women, the racialised refugees abroad, who fled from their home nation to seek sovereignty. The book builds on contemporary frameworks and adopts interdisciplinary approaches to unveil the outstanding revolutionary efforts of the Ogoni women in the Niger-Delta. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam's greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is assessesible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women's Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent struggle against oil spills and environmental destruction in the Niger-Delta Nigeria in the 90s. The Federation of Ogoni Women Activists (FOWA) emerges to charge forward the course of sovereignty for both humans and the Niger-Delta ecosystem. The nonviolent resistance of the Ogoni Women through prayer meetings, fasting, and singing for community mobilisation epitomises a "love in action" (Dube, 2025) strategy to identity negotiation in the face of dehumanisation. The book, Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice, is a voyage into the history of the Ogoni tribes of the Niger-Delta, their lives, their ordeals of racism in their home nation with highlights of experiences of African immigrant women, the racialised refugees abroad, who fled from their home nation to seek sovereignty. The book builds on contemporary frameworks and adopts interdisciplinary approaches to unveil the outstanding revolutionary efforts of the Ogoni women in the Niger-Delta. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam's greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is assessesible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

In episode 142 of White Canes Connect, Lisa Bryant takes the lead to interview co-host David Goldstein and NFB of PA President Lynn Heitz about our experiences at the 2025 NFB National Convention in New Orleans. We share highlights from Pennsylvania's strong showing — 56 attendees, 10 first-timers, four national scholarship finalists, and a Jernigan Leadership graduate. Lynn and David reflect on the energy of the general sessions, memorable speeches, and some lively debates during resolutions. We also talk about the bustling — and slightly oddly laid-out — exhibit hall, where Pennsylvania sold out of chocolate-covered pretzels. From the opening ceremony's brass band and very cool Whozit beads to reconnecting with Federation friends and meeting new ones, the week was packed with learning, networking, and a few surprises — including a fire alarm that cleared the ballroom mid-vote. We also touch on standout presentations on AI, Social Security, and blindness research, plus the banquet speech from President Mark Riccobono. You'll also hear reflections from first-time attendees Denise, Clarence, and Parri, each sharing their most memorable convention moments. Whether you were there or not, this episode captures the energy, camaraderie, and purpose that make national convention such a powerful experience. Show notes at https://www.whitecanesconnect.com/142    NFB of PA State Convention Registration is Open Registration is now open for the 2025 NFB of PA State Convention in Harrisburg from November 13 to November 16 at the Best Western Premier! Learn more at https://www.nfbofpa.org/state-convention/. Go directly to the registration form at https://www.nfbofpa.org/register/. An Easy Way to Help the NFB of PA Support the NFB of PA with every purchase at White Cane Coffee Company by going to https://www.whitecanecoffee.com/ref/nfbp. When you use that link to purchase from White Cane Coffee, the NFB of PA earns a 10% commission! Share the link with your family and friends! Listen to Erin and Bob Willman from White Cane Coffee on episode 072 of White Canes Connect. Donate to the NFB of PA Like what you hear on White Canes Connect? Support us and donate to the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania, visit https://www.NFBofPA.org/give/. We Want to Hear Your Story Reach out with questions and comments, or share ideas! We want to hear from you. Call us at (267) 338-4495 or at whitecanesconnect@gmail.com. Follow White Canes Connect Find out why White Canes Connect is currently ranked at #13 of the 100 Best Visually Impaired Podcast. Find the show on: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/white-canes-connect/id1592248709  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YDQSJqpoteGb1UMPwRSuI  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pablindpodcast  Visit our website at https://www.whitecanesconnect.com/.

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Simone Turchetti, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, at The University of Manchester in the UK. It's 80 years since the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan to surrender at the end of the Second World War. We hear from a British prisoner of war who was in Nagasaki at the time.Then, the son of musician Dmitri Shostakovich tells of his famous father's confrontation with Stalin in the 1930s. Also, the story of a man who survived an 8.6 magnitude earthquake that shook the Himalayan mountains in 1950.Plus, Singapore's tense and tearful 1965 separation from the Federation of Malaysia and the detective who tracked down the gang responsible for Brazil's biggest bank heist.Contributors: Simone Turchetti - Professor of the History of Science and Technology, at The University of Manchester. Maxim Shostakovich – son of musician Dmitri Shostakovich Manjeet Kaur- remembering Singapore independence in 1965. Antonio Celso Dos Santos – detective in Brazil Plus, archive recording of Geoff Sherring, a British prisoner of war in Nagasaki and Frank Kingdon-Ward who survived an earthquake that shook the Himalayan mountains in 1950.(Photo: Nuclear explosion over Nagasaki. Credit: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

BONUS DISCUSSION:  Jackson Gleghorn, graduate student in history in History at Miami University, Ohio, joins the "ROI" team to discuss, "The Worker Sportsmen:  Ideology And Practice In The British Workers Sports Federation 1930-1936."The host for the 622nd episode of "ROI" is Terri Toppler, and the history buffs are Brett Monnard and Ed Broders.Opinions expressed in this program are those of the hosts and the guest(s), and not necessarily those of KALA-FM or St. Ambrose University. This program is recorded at KALA-FM, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa, USA!

Jackson Gleghorn, graduate student in history in History at Miami University, Ohio, joins the "ROI" team to discuss, "The Worker Sportsmen:  Ideology And Practice In The British Workers Sports Federation 1930-1936."The host for the 622nd episode of "ROI" is Terri Toppler, and the history buffs are Brett Monnard and Ed Broders.Opinions expressed in this program are those of the hosts and the guest(s), and not necessarily those of KALA-FM or St. Ambrose University. This program is recorded at KALA-FM, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa, USA!

The first part of my interview with Janet, plus Cornish choughs and the Gaia TrustJoybringer - played by Federation (1981)Graham Hawke, David Bray, Al Nance, Jon Hooper, Steve Treadwell, Sally Rowe.

On 9 August 1965 Singapore announced it had left the Federation of Malaysia and become an independent sovereign state. Explaining the separation at a news conference, the prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was overcome with emotion.Fifty years later in 2015, Catherine Davis spoke to Manjeet Kaur who was 15-years-old when Singapore became independent. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina's Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall' speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler's List; and Jacques Derrida, France's ‘rock star' philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world's oldest languages.(Photo: Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, announcing secession from the Federation of Malaysia. Credit: John Cantwell/AP Photo)

Celebrating a retirement at a gala filled with good vibes!

Union Federation EP.221: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3 - EP.04: "A Space Adventure Hour" Watch: Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork Listen: Union Federation Audio Podcast Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation Welcome to the Union Federation Podcast on the Fandom Podcast Network & BQN Network, where we discuss both Star Trek and The Orville. Your Union Federation crew return to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, with the new (2025) 10 episode season 3! On this  episode we discuss:  Union Federation EP.221: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3 - EP.04: "A Space Adventure Hour"   Until next time on the Union Federation Podcast, "Live Long & Prosper" & "We Are, Without A Doubt, The Weirdest Ship In The Fleet!"   Union Federation Podcast Contact Info. Hailing frequencies are now open........   Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork   Union Federation: A Star Trek and The Orville Podcast Feed: Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation   Facebook: The Union Federation: A Star Trek and Orville Podcast Group. Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/323504344789120   - Fandom Podcast Network Master Audio Feed: https://fpnet.podbean.com/ - Fandom Podcast Network is on ALL major podcasts platforms. - Email: theunionfederation@gmail.com - Instagram: @UnionFederationPodcast / https://www.instagram.com/unionfederationpodcast/ - X (Twitter) : @unionfedpodcast / https://x.com/UnionFedPodcast - Bluesky: @fanpodnetwork / https://bsky.app/profile/fanpodnetwork.bsky.social Host & Guest Contact Info: - Kyle Wagner on X: @AKyleW / Instagram & Threads: @Akylefandom / @akyleW on Discord / @Ksport16: Letterboxd / Blue Sky: @akylew - Amy Nelson on X: @MissAmyNelson / Instagram: @amynelson522 / Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts & @CounselorAmy - Hayley Stoddart on Instagram & Bluesky: @trekkie01D - Kevin Reitzel on X / Instagram / Threads / Discord & Letterboxd: @spartan_phoenix / Bluesky: @spartanphoenix   Where to Find BQN: Instagram: @BQNpodcasts Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts Facebook: The BQN Collective (listener's group) Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bqnpodcast   #FandomPodcastNetwork #FPNet #FPN #UnionFederation #UnionFederationPodcast #BQN #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsSeason3 #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsASpaceAdventureHour #ASpaceAdventureHour #AmyNelson #HayleyStoddart #KyleWagner #KevinReitzel

Mitt Walker, director of Governmental and Agriculture Programs and the Federation's national lobbyist, explains how the American Relief Plan and the Big Beautiful Bill impacts farmers in Alabama.Find out more about our sponsor, Alabama Ag Credit, and also about Alabama Farmers Federation.

Graham talks about his time at Wadebridge Scjool and the pop group Federation Joybringer - played by Federation (1981)Graham Hawke, David Bray, Al Nance, Jon Hooper, Steve Treadwell, Sally Rowe.

Season 5: Episode 212 In this episode of North American Ag Spotlight, Chrissy Wozniak is joined by Jaime Jerrels, Senior Director of Policy and Outreach at the Florida Farm Bureau Federation, to discuss one of the most powerful and overlooked challenges in agriculture today: farmer mental health. Florida Farm Bureau, in partnership with UF/IFAS and the Mind Your Melon Foundation, has released its first-ever statewide mental health report—and the findings are deeply personal, alarming, and a call to action.Jaime brings more than just her professional insights to the conversation. Raised on a peanut and cattle farm in Levy County and now raising five children on that same land with her husband, she speaks from the heart—both as a policy advocate and as a woman of faith. Her passion for standing in the gap for farmers who often carry the weight of the world in silence is rooted in her belief that agriculture is more than an industry—it's a mission field.The conversation goes far beyond statistics, touching on hurricanes, financial stress, isolation, and the unique burdens of rural life. Jaime shares her firm belief that faith, prayer, and community can bring healing and strength where it's needed most. She encourages struggling producers to lean on their relationship with God, seek out trusted connections, and remember that telehealth and other support tools are available—and confidential.Chrissy and Jaime also explore the critical role churches, Farm Bureau, and peer-to-peer relationships play in restoring connection and hope to those silently struggling.Learn more and view the full 2025 Mind Your Melon Farmer Wellbeing Survey at: https://www.floridafarmbureau.orgNorth American Ag is devoted to highlighting the people & companies in agriculture who impact our industry and help feed the world. Subscribe at https://northamericanag.comWant to hear the stories of the ag brands you love and the ag brands you love to hate? Hear them at https://whatcolorisyourtractor.comDon't just thank a farmer, pray for one too!Send us a textSubscribe to North American Ag at https://northamericanag.com

TRANSGENDER LOSES IT! EXPLODES after World Darts Federation BANS Transgenders from women's category!

Lisa Krahn stops by the Front Porch.

Send us a textMelanie Leech CBE, British Property Federation CEO joins Anna Clare Harper.In Anna's words:‘35% of no new homes is still nothing.'People love to blame planning for our housing crisis.But it's only half the story.You also need to:Tackle construction cost inflationManage skills and labour shortagesNavigate new regulations (eg building safety, net zero)Make the numbers work with 35% ‘affordable' requirementsI loved chatting with Melanie Leech CBE, Chief Executive of the British Property Federation, about the blockers and opportunities in real estate today.Melanie is one of those rare leaders who instantly earns trust: diplomatic, clear and genuinely passionate about making things better - not just talking about it. Key takeaways include:Policy stability matters as much as policy content.Housing remains investable and is evolving fast. Those who understand new delivery and ownership models (e.g. for-profit RPs, JVs) will unlock huge opportunities. The new Building Safety Regime is a major bottleneck. Emerging leaders must understand how these rules affect delivery timelines and project viability.Guest website: https://bpf.org.uk/about-us/board/Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-leech-58053218/Host LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaclareharper/Host website: greenresi.com 

Childcare providers say that they are being forced to pull out of a Government funding scheme...The Core Funding Grant was set up back in 2022 to help childcare providers with operating costs. However, to avail of this, providers had to commit to a fee freeze…Owners say that given soaring costs over the last number of years, along with wider challenges, they are now being forced to up their fees and in turn pull out of the grant scheme.Joining Kieran to discuss this is one of those making this decision - Rebecca Fleury, who runs six premises across Donegal, as well as Elaine Dunne, from the Federation of Early Childhood Providers.Later, Kieran is also joined by Claire Kerrane, Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Children and TD for Roscommon / Galway.

Media Research Center's Curtis Houck, National Review and Humanize Today's Wesley Smith, Federation for American Imigration Reform's Ira Mehlman, State Senator Andre Jacque, Sheriff David Clarke, State Representative Lindee Brill

The President of the Victorian Farmer's Federation claims the Victorian Government must rethink the viability of the VNI West Transmission Project.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe Federation of Super Earth, commonly referred to as Super Earth, The Federation or Super Earth Federation, is the largest faction in the Milky Way, consisting of 259 planets grouped into 55 Sectors. Super Earth follows a system of government called Managed Democracy, in which Citizens must fill out a form from which a computer algorithm will take the answers and produce who they truly want to vote for. The population of the Federation is centered around Super Earth, with colonial outposts of various sizes scattered about the galaxy. The  Super Earth Armed Forces (SEAF) have billions of active personnel and an elite  Helldiver Corps, several millions strong.Support the show

“Shuttle to Kenfori” With Captain Batel facing the possibility of becoming an extra in the 1980s miniseries V, Doctor M'Benga and Spock hatch a plan (no pun intended) to save her by using a rare chimera blossom to combine the residual Gorn DNA in her body with her human DNA. The catch? That very special episode of Blossom only airs in one place, a planet once disputed by the Federation and Klingons. Captain Pike, wanting to play a role in saving his girlfriend, kicks Spock off the mission and assigns himself to accompany M'Benga. When they arrive on Kenfori, they find themselves in an episode of The Walking Dead. But escaping the zombies won't be as easy as they think, thanks to the arrival of Bytha, daughter of Klingon ambassador/mass murderer Dak'Rah, who is determined to exact vengeance on M'Benga. In this episode of Saddle Up! hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our journey through Strange New Worlds with “Shuttle to Kenfori.” We discuss the continuation of M'Benga's story, future paths for Batel, designing TOS-inspired Klingons, insubordination, and a few creative ideas we maybe should keep to ourselves. Chapters Intro (0:00:00) An "Under the Cloak of War" Sequel (00:04:25) The Walking Dead (00:08:59) No Signs of Life (00:14:36) Crafting Klingons (00:21:09) Gorn to Be with You (00:28:10) Insubordinate Ortegas (00:36:02) Trek As a YA Novel (00:41:33) Final Thoughts and Ratings (00:48:03) Closing (00:57:21) Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Union Federation EP.220: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: - Season 3 - EP.03: Shuttle to Kenfori Watch: Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork Listen: Union Federation Audio Podcast Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation Welcome to the Union Federation Podcast on the Fandom Podcast Network & BQN Network, where we discuss both Star Trek and The Orville. Your Union Federation crew return to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, with the new (2025) 10 episode season 3! On this  episode we discuss:  Union Federation EP.220: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: - Season 3 - EP.03: Shuttle to Kenfori   Until next time on the Union Federation Podcast, "Live Long & Prosper" & "We Are, Without A Doubt, The Weirdest Ship In The Fleet!"   Union Federation Podcast Contact Info. Hailing frequencies are now open........   Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork   Union Federation: A Star Trek and The Orville Podcast Feed: Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation   Facebook: The Union Federation: A Star Trek and Orville Podcast Group. Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/323504344789120   - Fandom Podcast Network Master Audio Feed: https://fpnet.podbean.com/ - Fandom Podcast Network is on ALL major podcasts platforms. - Email: theunionfederation@gmail.com - Instagram: @UnionFederationPodcast / https://www.instagram.com/unionfederationpodcast/ - X (Twitter) : @unionfedpodcast / https://x.com/UnionFedPodcast - Bluesky: @fanpodnetwork / https://bsky.app/profile/fanpodnetwork.bsky.social Host & Guest Contact Info: - Kyle Wagner on X: @AKyleW / Instagram & Threads: @Akylefandom / @akyleW on Discord / @Ksport16: Letterboxd / Blue Sky: @akylew - Amy Nelson on X: @MissAmyNelson / Instagram: @amynelson522 / Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts & @CounselorAmy - Hayley Stoddart on Instagram & Bluesky: @trekkie01D - Kevin Reitzel on X / Instagram / Threads / Discord & Letterboxd: @spartan_phoenix / Bluesky: @spartanphoenix   Where to Find BQN: Instagram: @BQNpodcasts Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts Facebook: The BQN Collective (listener's group) Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bqnpodcast   #FandomPodcastNetwork #FPNet #FPN #UnionFederation #UnionFederationPodcast #BQN #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsSeason3 #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsShuttleToKenfori #ShuttleToKenfori #AmyNelson #HayleyStoddart #KyleWagner #KevinReitzel

“Shuttle to Kenfori” With Captain Batel facing the possibility of becoming an extra in the 1980s miniseries V, Doctor M'Benga and Spock hatch a plan (no pun intended) to save her by using a rare chimera blossom to combine the residual Gorn DNA in her body with her human DNA. The catch? That very special episode of Blossom only airs in one place, a planet once disputed by the Federation and Klingons. Captain Pike, wanting to play a role in saving his girlfriend, kicks Spock off the mission and assigns himself to accompany M'Benga. When they arrive on Kenfori, they find themselves in an episode of The Walking Dead. But escaping the zombies won't be as easy as they think, thanks to the arrival of Bytha, daughter of Klingon ambassador/mass murderer Dak'Rah, who is determined to exact vengeance on M'Benga. In this episode of Saddle Up! hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our journey through Strange New Worlds with “Shuttle to Kenfori.” We discuss the continuation of M'Benga's story, future paths for Batel, designing TOS-inspired Klingons, insubordination, and a few creative ideas we maybe should keep to ourselves. Chapters Intro (0:00:00) An "Under the Cloak of War" Sequel (00:04:25) The Walking Dead (00:08:59) No Signs of Life (00:14:36) Crafting Klingons (00:21:09) Gorn to Be with You (00:28:10) Insubordinate Ortegas (00:36:02) Trek As a YA Novel (00:41:33) Final Thoughts and Ratings (00:48:03) Closing (00:57:21) Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Guest: Star Queen's Park Bureau Chief, Robert Benzie Last week, Canada's premiers wrapped up their annual Council of the Federation meeting in Ontario's cottage country, against the backdrop of serious political and economic pressure. With Trump's threat of tariffs on August 1 looming large, and Prime Minister Mark Carney facing his first major leadership test, the summit was framed as a show of strength and unity. But was that solidarity real behind the scenes? And how prepared are the provinces for an unpredictable trade fight with Trump? Toronto Star Queen's Park Bureau Chief Robert Benzie joins This Matters to break it all down. 

This week, we look over the Federal Convention of 1897, and see what delegates are elected from each colony and what key issues they believe will affect Australia's Federation as we gear up for the referendums of 1898 and 1899.

Jeremy Williamson, head of private wealth and markets at Craigs Investment Partners, recently claimed there was momentum building for Kiwis to move away from investing in property - but one expert has suggested differently. Matt Ball from the Property Investors Federation acknowledged people were getting more savvy about outside investments and that the property market was changing, but claimed the nation's love affair with property wasn't over. "I think the property market has changed, thanks to some initiatives from the Government and I think people will start to take a bit of a different approach. I don't buy this whole - property investment isn't a productive activity." LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Summer rewind: Scott Demark, President and CEO of Zibi Community Utility, joins thinkenergy to discuss how our relationship with energy is changing. With two decades of expertise in clean energy and sustainable development, Scott suggests reimagining traditional energy applications for heating and cooling. He shares how strategic energy distribution can transform urban environments, specifically how district energy systems optimize energy flow between buildings for a greener future. Listen in.   Related links   ●     Scott Demark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-demark-83640473/ ●     Zibi Community Utility: https://zibi.ca/ ●     Markham District Energy Inc: https://www.markhamdistrictenergy.com/ ●     One Planet Living: https://www.bioregional.com/one-planet-living ●     Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ ●     Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en   To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405    To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl    To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/  --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited    Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa    Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod  ---- Transcript: Trevor Freeman  00:00 Hi everyone. Well, summer is here, and the think energy team is stepping back a bit to recharge and plan out some content for the next season. We hope all of you get some much needed downtime as well, but we aren't planning on leaving you hanging over the next few months, we will be re releasing some of our favorite episodes from the past year that we think really highlight innovation, sustainability and community. These episodes highlight the changing nature of how we use and manage energy, and the investments needed to expand, modernize and strengthen our grid in response to that. All of this driven by people and our changing needs and relationship to energy as we move forward into a cleaner, more electrified future, the energy transition, as we talk about many times on this show. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back with all new content in September. Until then, happy listening.   Trevor Freeman  00:55 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com, Hi everyone. Welcome back one of the overarching aspects of the energy transition that we have talked about several times on this show is the need to change our relationship with energy, to rethink the standard way of doing things when it comes to heating and cooling and transportation, et cetera. This change is being driven by our need to decarbonize and by the ongoing evolution and improvement of technology, more things are becoming available to us as technology improves. On the decarbonization front, we know that electrification, which is switching from fossil fuel combustions to electricity for things like space and water heating, vehicles, et cetera, is one of the most effective strategies. But in order to switch out all the end uses to an electric option, so swapping out furnaces and boilers for heat pumps or electric boilers, switching all gas cars to EVs, et cetera, in order to do that in a way that is affordable and efficient and can be supported by our electricity grid. We need to think about multi strategy approaches, so we can't just continue to have this one way power grid where every home, every business, every warehouse or office tower satisfies all of its energy needs all the time directly from the grid with no adaptability. That isn't the best approach. It's not going to be affordable or efficient. We're not going to be able to do it fast enough. The multi strategy approach takes into account things like distributed energy resources, so solar and storage, et cetera, which we've talked about many times on this show, but it also includes approaches like district energy. So district energy is rethinking how energy flows between adjacent buildings, looking for opportunities to capture excess energy or heat from one source and use that to support another, and that is the focus of today's conversation to help us dive into this topic, I'm really happy to welcome Scott demark to the show. Scott has been a champion of sustainability, clean energy solutions and energy efficiency in the Ottawa real estate and development industry for over 20 years now, he has overseen many high performance development projects, and was one of the driving forces behind the Zibi development in downtown Ottawa, and most applicable for today's conversation the renewable district energy system that provides heating and cooling to the Zibi site. Scott is the president and CEO of the Zibi community utility, as well as a partner at Theia partners. Scott the Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks. Nice to see you. Trevor, so Scott, why don't we start with definitions are always a good place to start. So when we talk about a district energy system, give us a high level overview of what exactly that means.   Scott Demark  04:15 Sure a district energy system is, is simply the connection or interconnection of thermal energy sources, thermal energy sinks. And so really, in practical terms, it means, instead of buildings having their own furnace and cooling system, buildings connect to a hydronic loop. A hydronic loop is just pipes filled with water, and then the heat or the cooling is made somewhere else, and that heat or lack of heat cooling is in a pipe. They push the pipe to the building, and then the pipe extracts the heat, or rejects the heat to that loop. And so it's simply an interconnection of. Uh, as it forces in sinks for federal energy.   Trevor Freeman  05:03 And I guess one of the important concepts here is that buildings often create heat, not just through a furnace or not just through the things that are meant to create heat, but, you know, server racks, computer server racks, generate a lot of heat, and that heat has to go somewhere. So oftentimes we're cooling buildings to remove heat that's being created in those buildings, and then other buildings nearby need to be heated in order to make that space comfortable.   Scott Demark  05:31 Is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. Trevor, so, a an office building in the city of Ottawa, big old government office building, you'll see a pretty big plume on the roof in the wintertime. That's not just kind of the flue gas from a boiler, but rather it is actually chillers are running inside to make cooling, and they're just selling that heat to the atmosphere, even on the coldest day of the year. So it's people, you know, people are thermal load. Computers are thermal load, and so is solar gain. You know, January is pretty dark period for us, meaning low angle sun, but by this time in a year, you know, at the end of February, there's a lot of heat in that sun. So a glass building absorbs a lot of sun an office building will lead cooling on the sunny side of that building a lot of the time, even in the dead of   Trevor Freeman  06:18 winter, yeah. So a district system, then, is taking advantage of the fact that heat exists, and we don't necessarily need to either burn fossil fuels, or, even if it's a, you know, a clean system, we don't have to expend energy to create heat, or create as much heat if we could move that heat around from where it's kind of naturally occurring to where we need   Scott Demark  06:41 it. That's right at the very core of a district energy system. You're going to move heat from a place that it's not wanted to a place that it is wanted. And so in our example of the office building, you know, on the February day with the sun shining in and the computers all running, that building's getting rid of heat. But right next door, say, there's a 20 story condo. Well, that 20 story condo needs heating and it also needs domestic hot water. So year round, domestic hot water represents 30, 35% of the heating load of any residential building, so at all times. So a district energy system allows you to take that heat away from the office building and give it to the residential building, instead of making the heat and and dissipating that heat to the atmosphere in the office building. So, yeah, it's, it's really a way to move, you know, from sources to sinks. That's, that's what a district energy system does well.   Trevor Freeman  07:37 So we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but let's dive right into, you know, we talk a lot on the show about the energy transition this, this push to one, move away from fossil fuel combustion to meet our energy needs, and two, shifting from a kind of static, centralized energy system like we have right now, big generators, large transmission lines, et cetera, to more of a two way flow, distributed energy system. What is the role of district energy systems within that transition? How do they help us get closer to that sort of reality that we talk about?   Scott Demark  08:15 I think the biggest way that they help is economies of scale. Okay, so by that, I'll explain that. Imagine there's a lot of technology that's been around a long time that is very scalable to the building level, but most of them are fossil fire. Okay, so the the cheapest way to heat a building in Ottawa is to put a gas fired boiler in. That's the cheapest capital cost, first cost, and it's also the cheapest operating cost, is to put a gas boiler in that industry is well established. There's lots of trades who could do it. There's lots of producers who make the boilers. When you start to try and think about the energy transition and think about what you may do to be different, to be lower carbon, or to be zero carbon, those industries are, are just starting right? Those industries don't exist. They don't have the same depth, and so they don't have the same cost structure, and oftentimes they don't scale well down to the building. And therefore a district energy system aggregates a bunch of load, and so you can provide a thermal energy so at scale that becomes affordable. And that is, you know, a very good example of that would be where, you know, you might want to go and and recover heat from some process. And we'll talk about Zibi as the example. But if you want to go recover heat from some process and bring it in, it doesn't make sense to run a pipeline to a source to heat one building. You can't make financial sense of it, but if you're heating 20 buildings, that pipeline, all of a sudden makes sense to take waste heat from somewhere, to move it somewhere else. The other advantage is that truly, district energy systems are agnostic to their inputs and outputs for heat. So once you. Establish that hydronic loop, that interconnection of water pipes between buildings. What the source and what the source is doesn't matter. So you may have, at one point, built a district energy system, and Markham District Energy System is a great example of this. Markham district energy system was built on the concept of using a co generation facility. So they burned natural gas to make electricity. They sold electricity to the grid, and they captured all the waste heat from that generation, and they fed it into a district energy system. Well here we are, 20 plus years later, and they're going to replace that system, that fossil fired system Augment, not fully replaced, but mostly replace that system with a sewer coupled energy recovery and drive those heat recovery chillers to a sewer system. So they're putting a very green solution in place of a former fossil solution. They don't to rip up the pipes. They don't have to change anything in the buildings. They only have to change that central concept now, again, Markham could never do that at a one building scale. They're only that at the community scale.   Trevor Freeman  11:08 So you mentioned, I want to pick on something you said there. You talked about a sewer heat energy system. They're pulling heat from the sewer. Just help our listeners understand high level kind of, why is there heat there for us to pull like, what's the what's the source there?   Scott Demark  11:26 Yeah, so when we shower, when we flush toilets, all, all of that is introducing heat into a sewer system. So we're collecting heat from everybody's house into the sewer system. The sewer system also sits below the frost line. So call it Earth coupled. You know, it's the earth in Ottawa below the frost line sits around eight, eight and a half c and so at that temperature and the temperature of flushing toilets we we essentially get a sewer temperature in the on the coldest day of the year, but it's around 1010, and a half degrees Celsius. And obviously, for lots of the year, it's much warmer than that. And so I think, you know, a lot of people are kind of familiar with the concept of geo exchange energy, or that. Lot of people call it geothermal. But geo exchange where you might drill down into the earth, and you're taking advantage of that 888, and a half degrees Celsius. So you're exchanging heat. You can reject heat to the earth, or you can absorb heat from the earth. Well, this is the same idea, but you accept or reject from this sewer. But because the sewer is relatively shallow, it is cheaper to access that energy, and because it's warm, and on the coldest day, a couple of degrees make a big difference. Trevor and most of the years so much warmer, you're really in a very good position to extract that heat, and that's all it is. You. You are just accepting or rejecting heat. You don't use the sewage itself. It doesn't come into your building. You have a heat exchanger in between. But that's what you do.   Trevor Freeman  12:58 I agree. And we've talked before on the show about the idea that you know, for an air source, heat pump, for example, you don't need a lot of heat energy to extract energy from the air. It can be cold outside, and there is still heat energy in the air that you can pull and use that to heat a building, heat water, whatever. So same concept, except you've got a much warmer source of energy, I guess. Yeah, exactly. And you know, Trevor, when you look at the efficiency curves of those air source heat pumps, you know, they kind of drop off a cliff at minus 20. Minus 22 In fact, you know, five or six years ago, they that that was dropping off at minus 10. So we've come a long way in air source heat pumps. But imagine on that coldest, coldest day of the year, you're still your source is well above zero, and therefore your efficiency. So the amount of electricity you need to put into the heat pump to get out the heat that you need is much lower, so it's a way more efficient heat exchange. Great. Thanks for that, Scott. I know that's a bit of a tangent here, but always cool to talk about different ways that we're coming up with to heat our buildings. So back to district energy, we've talked through some of the benefits of the system. If I'm a building owner and I'm have the decision to connect to a system that's there, or have my own standalone, you know, traditional boiler, whatever the case may be, or even in a clean energy want to heat pump, whatever. What are the benefits of being on a district system versus having my own standalone system for just my building?   Scott Demark  14:30 Yeah, so when you're wearing the developers hat, you know they're really looking at it financially, if they have other goals around sustainability. Great that will factor into it, but most of them are making decisions around this financially. So it needs to compete with that. That first cost that we talked about the easiest ways, is boilers, gas fired boilers is the cheapest way. And so they're going to look to see it at how. Does this compare to that? And so I think that's the best way to frame it for you. And so the difference here is that you need to install in your building a cooling system and a heating system. In Ottawa, that cooling system is only used for a few months a year, and it's very expensive. It takes up space, whether you're using a chiller and a cooling tower on the roof, or using a dry cooler, it takes up roof space, and it also takes up interior space. If you do have a cooling tower, you have a lot of maintenance for that. You need to turn it on and turn it off in the spring, on and fall, etc, just to make sure all that happens. And you need to carry the life cycle of that boiler plant you need to bring gas infrastructure into your building. You generally need to put that gas boiler plant high in your building, so, so up near the top, and that's for purposes of venting that properly. Now, that's taking real estate, right? And it's taking real estate on the area that's kind of most advantageous, worth the most money. So you might lose a penthouse to have a boiler and chiller room up there. And you also, of course, lose roof space. And today, we really do try to take advantage of those rooftop patios and things. Amenities are pretty important in buildings. And so when I compare that to district energy at the p1 level p2 level in your building, you're going to have a small room, and I really do mean small where the energy transfer takes place, you'll have some heat exchangers. And small you might have a space, you know, 10 or 12 feet by 15 to 18 feet would be big enough for a 30 story tower. So a small room where you do the heat exchange and then Trevor, you don't have anything in your building for plant that you would normally look after. So when you look at the pro forma for owning your building over the lifetime of it, you don't have to maintain boilers. You don't have to have boiler insurance. You don't have to maintain your chillers. You don't have to have lifecycle replacement on any of these products. You don't need anybody operating, those checking in on the pressure vessels. None of that has to happen. All of that happens on the district energy system. So you're really taking something you own and operate and replacing that with a service. So district energy is a service, and what, what we promised to deliver is the heating you need and the cooling you need. 24/7 you second thing you get is more resilience. And I'll explain that a little bit. Is that in a in a normal building, if you if the engineers looked at it and said you need two boilers to keep your building warm, then you're probably going to install three. And that is kind of this n plus one sort of idea, so that if one boilers goes down, you have a spare and you need to maintain those. You need to pay for that. You need to maintain those, etc. But in district energy system, all that redundancy is done in the background. It's done by us, and we have significantly more redundancy than just n plus one in this example. But overall, you know, if you have 10 buildings on your district energy system, each of those would have had n plus one. We don't have n plus 10 in the plant. And so overall, the cost is lower, I would say, if you look at it globally, except the advantages you do have better than N plus one in the plan, so we have higher resiliency at a lower cost.   Trevor Freeman  18:26 So we know there's no such thing as a miracle solution that works in all cases. What are the the best use cases for district energy system? Where does it make a lot of sense.   Scott Demark  18:37 Yeah, in terms some, in some ways the easiest thing, spray work doesn't make sense. So, so it doesn't make sense in sprawling low rise development. So the cost of that hydronic loop, those water pipes, is high. They have to fit in the roadway. It's civil work, etc. And so you do need density. That doesn't mean it has to be high rise density. You know, if you look at Paris, France, six stories, district energy, no problem. There's there's lots and lots of customers for that scale of building. It doesn't have to be all high rise, but it does. District energy does not lend itself well to our sprawling style of development. It's much more suited to a downtown setting. It also kind of thrives where there's mixed use, you know, I think the first example we're talking about is office building shedding heat, residential building needing heat, you know, couple that with an industrial building shedding heat. You know, the these various uses, a variety of uses on a district energy system is the best because its biggest advantage is sharing energy, not making energy. And so a disparity of uses is the best place to use that, I think the other, the other thing to think about, and this is harder in Canada than the rest of the world. Is that, you know, it's harder on a retrofit basis, from a cost perspective, than it is in a in a new community where you can put this in as infrastructure, day one, you're going to make a big difference. And I'll, you know, give a shout out to British Columbia and the Greater Vancouver area. So the district, you know, down in the Lower Mainland, they, they kind of made this observation and understood that if they were going to electrify then District Energy gave economies of scale to electrify that load. And they do a variety of things, but one of the things they do is, is kind of district geo exchange systems, so, so big heat pumps coupled to big fields, and then bring heat a bunch of buildings. But these are Greenfield developments Trevor. So as they expand their suburbs, they do need to build the six stories. They very much have kind of density around parks concepts. So now Park becomes a geo field, density around the geo field, but this infrastructure is going in the same time as the water pipes. It's going in at the same time as the roads, the sidewalks, etc, you can dramatically reduce your cost, your first cost related to that hydro loop, if you're putting it in the same time you're doing the rest of the services.   Trevor Freeman  21:15 So we're not likely to see, you know, residential neighborhoods with single family homes or multi unit homes, whatever, take advantage of this. But that sort of low rise, mid rise, that's going to be more of a good pick for this. And like you said, kind of development is the time to do this. You mentioned other parts of the world. So district energy systems aren't exactly widespread. In Canada, we're starting to see more of them pop up. What about the rest of the world? Are there places in the world where we see a lot more of this, and they've been doing this for a long time?   Scott Demark  21:47 Yeah. So I'd almost say every everywhere in the northern hemisphere, except North America, has done much more of this. And you know, we really look to kind of Scandinavia as the gold standard of this. You look to Sweden, you look to Denmark, you look to Germany. Even there's, there's a lot of great examples of this, and they are typically government owned. So they are often public private partnerships, but they would be various levels of government. So you know, if you, if you went to Copenhagen, you'd see that the municipality is an owner. But then their equivalent of a province or territory is, is actually a big part of it, too. And when they built their infrastructure ages ago, they did not have an easy source of fossil fuels, right? And so they need to think about, how can we do this? How can we share heat? How can we centralize the recovery of heat? How can we make sure we don't waste any and this has just been ingrained in them. So there's massive, massive District Energy loops, interconnecting loops, some owned by municipalities, some of them probably, if you build a factory, part of the concept of your factory, part of the pro forma of your factory is, how much can I sell my waste heat for? And so a factory district might have a sear of industrial partners who own a district energy loop and interfaces with the municipal loop, all sort of sharing energy and dumping it in. And so that's, you know, that's what you would study. That's, that's where we would want to be. And the heart of it is just that, as I said, we've really had, you know, cheap or, you know, really cheap fossil fuels. We've had no price on pollution. And therefore what really hasn't needed to happen here, and we're starting to see the need for that to happen here.   Trevor Freeman  23:46 It's an interesting concept to think of, you know, bringing that factory example in, instead of waste heat or heat as a byproduct of your process being a problem that you need to deal with, something, you have to figure out a way to get rid of it becomes almost an asset. It's a it's a, you know, convenient commodity that's being produced regardless, that you can now look to sell and monetize.   Scott Demark  24:10 Yeha, you go back to the idea of, like, what are the big benefits of district energy? Is that, like, if that loop exists and somebody knows that one of the things the factory produces is heat, well, that's a commodity I produce, and I can, I can sell it if I have a way to sell it right here, you know, we're going to dissipate it to a river. We may dissipate it to the atmosphere. We're going to get rid of it. Like you said, it's, it's, it's waste in their minds, and in Europe, that is absolutely not waste.   Trevor Freeman  24:36 And it coming back to that, you know, question of, where does this make sense? You talked about mixed use, and it's also like the, you know, the temporal mixed use of someone that is producing a lot of heat during the day, when the next door residential building is empty, then when they switch, when the factory closes and the shift is over and everybody comes home from work. So that's when that building needs heat, that's when they want to be then taking that heat two buildings next to each other that both need heat at the same time is not as good a use cases when it's offset like that.   Scott Demark  25:10 Yeah, that's true. And lots of District Energy Systems consider kind of surges and storage. I know our system at CB has, has kind of a small storage system related to the domestic hot water peak load. However, you can also think of the kilometers and kilometers and kilometers of pipes full of water as a thermal battery, right? So, so you actually are able to even out those surges you you let the temperature the district energy system rise when that factory is giving all out all kinds of heat, it's rising even above the temperature you have to deliver it at. And then when that heat comes, you can draw down that temperature and let the whole district energy system normalize to its temperature again. So you do have an innate battery in the in the water volume that sits in the district energy system, very cool.   Trevor Freeman  26:04 So you've mentioned Zibi a couple of times, and I do want to get into that as much as we're talking about other parts of the world. You know having longer term district energy systems. Zibi, community utility is a great example, right here in Ottawa, where you and I are both based of a district energy system. Before we get into that, can you, just for our listeners that are not familiar with Zibi, give us a high level overview of of what that community is, its location, you know, the goals of the community, and then we'll talk about the energy side of things.   Scott Demark  26:34 Sure. So Zibi was formerly Domtar paper mills. It's 34 acres, and it is in downtown Ottawa and downtown Gatineau. About a third of the land masses is islands on the Ontario side, and two thirds of the land mass is on the shore, the north shore of the Ottawa River in Gatineau, both downtown, literally in the shadows of Parliament. It is right downtown. It was industrial for almost 200 years. Those paper mills shut down in the 90s and the early 2000s and my partners and I pursued that to turn it from kind of this industrial wasteland, walled off, fenced off, area that no one could go into. What we're hoping will be kind of the world's most sustainable urban community, and so at build out, it will house, you know, about six, 7000 people. It will be four and a half million square feet, 4.24 point 4, million square feet of development. It is master planned and approved and has built about, I think we're, at 1.1 million square feet. So we're about quarter built out now. 10 buildings are done and connected to the district energy system there. And really, it's, it's an attempt to sort of recover land that was really quite destroyed. You can imagine it was a pretty polluted site. So the giant remediation plan, big infrastructure plan, we modeled this, this overall sustainability concept, over a program called one planet living which has 10 principles of sustainability. So you know, you and I are talking a lot about carbon today, but there's also very important aspects about affordability and social sustainability and lifestyle, and all of those are incorporated into the one planet program, and encourage people to look up one planet living and understand what it is, and look at the commitments that we've made at CV to create a sustainable place. We issue a report every year, kind of our own report card that's reviewed by a third party, that explains where we are on our on our mission to achieve our goal of the world's most sustainable   Trevor Freeman  28:57 community. Yeah. And so I do encourage people to look at one planet living. Also have a look at, you know, the Zibi website, and it's got the Master Plan and the vision of what that community will be. And I've been down there, it's already kind of coming along. It's amazing to see the progress compared to who I think you described it well, like a bit of an industrial wasteland at the heart of one of the most beautiful spots in the city. It was really a shame what it used to be. And it's great to see kind of the vision of what it can become. So that's awesome.   Scott Demark  29:26 Yeah, and Trevor, especially now that the parks are coming along. You know, we worked really closely with the NCC to integrate the shoreline of ZV to the existing, you know, bike path networks and everything. And, you know, two of the three shoreline parks are now completed and open to the public and and they're stunning. And, you know, so many Ottawa people have not been down there because it's not a place you think about, but it's one of the few places in Ottawa and Gatineau where you can touch the water, you know, like it's, it's, it's stunning. Yeah, very, very cool.   Trevor Freeman  29:57 Okay, so the. The the next part of that, of course, is energy. And so there is a district energy system, one of the first kind of, or the most recent big energy. District Energy Systems in Ottawa. Tell us a little bit about how you are moving energy and heating the Zibi site.   Scott Demark  30:17 Yeah. So, first I'll say, you know, we, we, we studied different ways to get to net zero. You know, we had, we had a goal of being a zero carbon community. There are low carbon examples, but a zero carbon community is quite a stretch. And even when you look at the Scandinavian examples, the best examples, they're missing their they're missing their energy goals, largely because some of the inputs that are District Energy System remain fossil, but also because they have trouble getting the performance out of the buildings. And so we looked at this. We also know from our experience that getting to zero carbon at the building scale in Ottawa is very, very difficult. Our climate's tough, super humid, super hot summer, very cold, very dry, winter, long winter. So it's difficult at the building scale. It's funny Trevor, because you'd actually have an easier time getting to zero carbon or a passive house standard in affordable housing than you do at market housing, and that's because affordable housing has a long list of people who want to move in and pay rents. You can get some subsidies for capital, and the people who are willing to pay rent are good with smaller windows, thicker walls, smaller units, and pass trust needs, all those kinds of things. So when down at Zibi, you're really selling views. You're competing with people on the outside of Zibi, you're building almost all glass buildings. And so it's really difficult to find a way to get to zero carbon on the building scale. So that moved us to district energy for all the reasons we've talked about today already. And so when we looked at it for Zibi, you really look at the ingredients you have. One of the great things we have is we're split over the border. It's also a curse. But split over the border is really interesting, because you cannot move electricity over that border, but you can move thermal energy over that border. And so for us, in thinking about electrifying thermal energy, we realized that if we did the work in Quebec, where there is clean and affordable electricity, we could we could turn that into heat, and then we could move heat to Ontario. We could move chilled water to Ontario. So that's kind of ingredient, one that we had going for us there. The second is that there used to be three mills. So originally, don't target three mills. They sold one mill. It changed hands a few times, but It now belongs to Kruger. They make tissue there so absorbent things, Kleenexes and toilet paper, absorbent, anything in that tissue process. That's a going concern. So you can see that on our skyline. You can see, on cold days, big plumes of waste heat coming out of it. And so we really saw that as our source, really identified that as our source. And how could we do that? So going back to the economies of scale, is could we send a pipeline from Kruger, about a kilometer away, to Zibi? And so when we were purchasing the land, we were looking at all the interconnections of how the plants used to be realized. There's some old pipelines, some old easements, servitudes, etc. And so when we bought the land, we actually bought all of those servitudes too, including a pipeline across the bridge. Canadian energy regulator licensed across the bridge into Ontario. And so we mixed all these ingredients up, you know, in a pot and came up with our overall scheme. And so that overall scheme is is relatively simple. We built an energy recovery station at Kruger where, just before their effluent water, like when they're finished in their process, goes back to the river. We have a heat exchanger there. We extract heat. We push that heat in a pipe network over to Zibi. At Zibi, we can upgrade that heat using heat recovery chillers to a useful temperature for us, that's about 40 degrees Celsius, and we push that across the bridge to Ontario, all of our buildings in Ontario then have fan coil units. They use that 40 degree heat to heat buildings. The return side of that comes back to Quebec. And then on the Quebec side, we have a loop. And all of our buildings in the Quebec side then use heat pumps so we extract the last bit of heat. So imagine you you've returned from a fan coil, but you're still slightly warm. That slightly warm water is enough to drive a heat pump inside the buildings. And then finally, that goes back to Kruger again, and Kruger heats it back up with their waste heat and comes back. So that's our that's our heating loop. The cooling side is coupled to the Ottawa River. And so instead of us, we. Rejecting heat to the atmosphere through cooling towers. Our coolers are actually coupled to the river. That's a very tight environmental window that you can operate in. So we worked with the Ministry of the Environment climate change in Quebec to get our permit to do it. We can only be six degrees difference to the river, but our efficiency is on average, like on an annual basis, more than double what it would be to a cooling tower for the same load. So we're river coupled, with respect to cooling for the whole development, and we're coupled to Kruger for heating for the whole development. And what that allows us to do is eliminate fossil fuels. Our input is clean Quebec electricity, and our output is heating and cooling.   Trevor Freeman  35:44 So none of the buildings, you know, just for our listeners, none of the buildings have any sort of fossil fuel combustion heating equipment. You don't have boilers or anything like that. Furnaces in these in these buildings?   Scott Demark  35:54 No boilers, no chillers, no. that's awesome. And   Trevor Freeman  35:58 That's awesome. And just for full transparency, I should have mentioned this up front. So the Zibi community utility is a partnership between Zibi and Hydro Ottawa, who our listeners will know that I work for, and this was really kind of a joint venture to figure out a different approach to energy at the Zibi site.   Scott Demark  36:16 Yeah, that's right. Trevor, I mean the concept, the concept was born a long time ago now, but the concept was born by talking to hydro Ottawa about how we might approach this whole campus differently. You know, one of hydro Ottawa companies makes electricity, of course, Chaudière Falls, and so that was part of the thinking we thought of, you know, micro grids and islanding this and doing a lot of different things. When Ford came in, and we were not all the way there yet, and made changes to Green Energy Act, it made it challenging for us to do the electricity side, but we had already well advanced the thermal side, and hydro, you know, hydro makes a good partner in this sort of thing, when a when a developer tells someone, I'd like you to buy a condo, and by the way, I'm also the district energy provider that might put some alarm bells up, but you put a partnership in there with a trusted, long term utility partner and explain that, you know, it is in the in the public interest. They're not going to jack rates or mess with things, and then obviously just hydro has had such a long operating record operating experience that they really brought sort of an operations and long term utility mindset to our district energy system.   Trevor Freeman  37:35 So looking at a system like the Zippy community utility or other district energy systems. Is this the kind of thing that can scale up over time? And, you know, I bring this up because you hear people talk about, you know, a network of district energy systems across a city or across a big geographic area. Are these things that can be interconnected and linked, or does it make more sense as standalone district energy systems in those conditions that you talked about earlier.   Scott Demark  38:06 Very much the former Trevor like and that's, you know, that's where, you know, places like Copenhagen are today. It's that, you know, there was, there was one district energy system, then there was another, then they got interconnected, then the third got added. And then they use a lot of incineration there in that, in that part of the world, clean incineration for garbage. And so then an incinerator is coming online. And so that incinerators waste heat is going to be fed with a new district energy loop, and some other factory is going to use the primary heat from that, and then the secondary heat is going to come into the dictionary system. Disciplinary system. So these things are absolutely expandable. They're absolutely interconnectable. There are temperature profiles. There's modern, modern thoughts on temperature profiles compared to older systems. Most of the old, old systems were steam, actually, which is not the most efficient thing the world. But that's where they started and so now you can certainly interconnect them. And I think that the example at Zibi is a decent one, because we do have two kinds of systems there. You know, I said we have fan coil units in in the Ontario side, but we have heat pumps on the other side. Well, those two things, they can coexist, right? That's there. Those two systems are operating together. Because the difference, you know, the difference from the customer's perspective in those two markets are different, and the same can be true in different parts of the city or when different sources and sinks are available. So it is not one method of doing district energy systems. What you do is you examine the ingredients you have. I keep saying it, but sources and sinks? How can I look at these sources and sinks in a way that I can interconnect them and make sense? And sometimes that means that a source or a sink might be another district energy system.   Trevor Freeman  39:59 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, systems that maybe work in parallel to each other, in cooperation with each other. Again, it's almost that temporal need where there's load high on at one point in time and low on the other point in time. Sharing is a great opportunity.   Scott Demark  40:14 Yeah, absolutely great.   Trevor Freeman  40:17 Okay, last question for you here, Scott, what is needed, maybe from a regulatory or a policy lens to encourage more implementation of district energy systems. How do we see more of these things happen here in Canada or in   Scott Demark  40:32 North America? The best way to put this, the bureaucracy has been slow to move, is, is what I'll say, and I'll use Zibi as that example. When we, when we pitched the district energy system at Zibi, we had to approach the City of Ottawa, and we had to approach the city of Gatineau, the City of Ottawa basically said to us, No, you can't put those in our streets. Engineering just said, no, no, no, no. And so what we did at Zibi is we actually privatized our streets in order to see our vision through, because, because Ottawa wasn't on board, the city of Gatineau said, Hmm, I'm a little worried. I want you to write protocols of how you will access your pipes, not our pipes. I want to understand where liability ends and starts and all of this kind of stuff. And we worked through that detail slowly, methodically, with the city of Gatineau, and we came to a new policy on how district energy could be in a public street and Zibi streets are public on the Gatineau side today. You know, come forward 10 years here, and the City of Ottawa has a working group on how to incorporate District Energy pipes into streets. We've been able to get the City of Ottawa to come around to the idea that we will reject and accept heat from their sewer. You know, hydro Ottawa, wholly owned company of the City of Ottawa, has an active business in district energy. So Trevor, we've come really far, but it's taken a long time. And so if you ask me, How can we, how can accelerate district energy, I think a lot of it has to do with the bureaucracy at municipalities. And you know, we're we see so much interest from the Federation of Canadian municipalities, who was the debt funder for ZCU. We have multiple visits from people all over Canada, coming to study and look at this as an example. And I'm encouraged by that. But it's also, it's also not rocket science. We need to understand that putting a pipe in a street is kind of a just, just a little engineering problem to solve, whereas putting, you know, burning fossil fuels for these new communities and putting in the atmosphere like the genies out of the bottle, right? Like and unfortunately, I think for a lot of bureaucrats, the challenge at the engineering level is that that pipe in the street is of immediate, complex danger to solving that problem, whereas it's everybody's problem that the carbons in the atmosphere. So if we could accelerate that, if we could focus on the acceleration of standards around District Energy pipes and streets, the rights of a district energy company to exist, and not to rant too much, but give you an example, is that a developer is required to put gas infrastructure into a new community, required, and yet you have to fight to get a district energy pipe in the street. So there needs to be a change of mindset there, and, and we're not there yet, but that's where we need to go.   Trevor Freeman  43:54 Yeah. Well, the interesting, you know, in 10 years, let's talk again and see how far we come. Hopefully not 10 years. Hopefully it's more like five, to see the kind of change that you've seen in the last decade. But I think that the direction is encouraging. The speed needs a little bit of work. But I'm always encouraged to see, yeah, things are changing or going in the right direction, just slowly. Well, Scott, we always end our interviews with a series of questions to our guests, so as long as you're okay with it, I'll jump right into those. So the first question is, what is a book you've read that you think everybody should read?   Scott Demark  44:29 Nexus, which is by Harari. He's the same author that wrote sapiens. Lots of people be familiar with sapiens. And so Nexus is, is really kind of the history of information networks, like, how do we, how do we share and pass information? And kind of a central thesis is that, you know, information is, is neither knowledge nor truth. It is information, and it's talking a lot about in the age of AI. Uh, how are we going to manage to move information into truth or knowledge? And I think it, you know, to be honest, it kind of scared the shit out of me reading it kind of how, how AI is impacting our world and going to impact our world. And what I thought was kind of amazing about it was that he, he really has a pretty strong thesis around the erosion of democracy in this time. And it's, it was, it was really kind of scary because it was published before the 2024 election. And so it's, it's really kind of a, both a fascinating and scary read, and I think really something that everybody should get their head around.   Trevor Freeman  45:47 It's, yeah, there's a few of those books recently that I would clear or classify them as kind of dark and scary, but really important or really enlightening in some way. And it kind of helps you, you know, formalize a thought or a concept in your head and realize, hey, here's what's happening, or gives you that kind of the words to speak about it in this kind of fraught time we're in. So same question, but for a movie or a show, is there anything that you think everybody should watch.   Scott Demark  46:16 That's harder, I think, generally from watching something, it's for my downtime or own entertainment, and pushing my tastes on the rest of the world, maybe not a great idea. I if I, if I'm, if I'm kind of doing that, I tend to watch cooking shows, actually, Trevor so like, that's awesome. I like ugly, delicious. I love Dave Chang. I like, I like mind of a chef creativity partnership. So those kind of things I'd say more so if there was something to like that, I think somebody else should, should watch or listen to, I have, I have a real love for Malcolm Gladwell podcast, revisionist history. And so if I thought, you know, my watching habits are not going to going to expand anybody's brain, but I do think that Malcolm's perspective on life is really a healthy it's really healthy to step sideways and look at things differently. And I would suggest, if you have never listened to that podcast. Go to Episode One, season one, and start there. It's, it's, it's fantastic.   Trevor Freeman  47:26 Yeah, I agree. I'll echo that one. That's one of my favorites. If we were to offer you or not, but if we were to offer you a free round trip flight, anywhere in the world, where would you go?   Scott Demark  47:38 That's hard, so much flight guilt. You know.   Trevor Freeman  47:42 I know it's a hard assume that there's carbon offset to it.   Scott Demark  47:47 It's an electric plane.   Trevor Freeman  47:48 That's right, yeah.s   Scott Demark  47:49 My family, had a trip planned in 2020 to go to France and Italy. My two boys were kind of at the perfect age to do that. It would have been a really ideal trip. And so I've still never been to either those places. And if I had to pick one, probably Italy, I would really like to see Italy. I think it would be a fantastic place to go. So probably, probably Italy.   Trevor Freeman  48:12 My favorite trip that I've ever done with my wife and our six month old at the time was Italy. It was just phenomenal. It was a fantastic trip. Who's someone that you admire?   Scott Demark  48:25 I have a lot of people. Actually have a lot of people in this in this particular space, like, what would I work in that have brought me here to pick to pick one, though I'd probably say Peter Busby. So. Peter Busby is a mentor, a friend, now a business partner, but, but not earlier in my career. Peter Busby is a kind of a one of the four fathers, you know, if you will, of green design in Canada. He's an architect, Governor General's Award winning architect, actually. But I think what I what I really, really appreciate about Peter, and always will, is that he was willing to stand up in his peer group and say, Hey, we're not doing this right. And, you know, he did that. He did that in the early 80s, right? Like we're not talking he did it when it cost his business some clients. He did it when professors would speak out against him, and certainly the Canadian Association of architecture was not going to take any blame for the shitty buildings that have been built, right? And he did it, and I remember being at a conference where Peter was getting a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian architects Association. And so he's standing up, and people are all super proud of him. They're talking about his big life. And he. He, he, he kind of belittled them all and said, You're not doing enough. We're not doing enough like he's still he's still there. He's still taking the blame for where things are, and that things haven't moved fast enough, and that buildings are a massive part of our carbon problem, and probably one of the easier areas to fix. You know, we're talking about electric planes. Well, that's a that's a lot more difficult than it is to recover energy from a factory to heat a community, right? I admire him. I learned things from him all the time. He's got a great book out at the moment, actually, and, yeah, he'd be right up there on my in my top list, awesome.   Trevor Freeman  50:44 What is something about the energy sector or its future that you're particularly excited about?   Scott Demark  50:48 You wished you asked me this before the election. I'm feeling a little dark. Trevor, I think there needs to be a price on pollution in the world needs to be a price on pollution in America, in Canada, and I'm worried about that going away. In light of that, I'm not I'm not super excited about different technologies at the moment. I think there are technologies that are helping us, there are technologies that are pushing us forward, but there's no like silver bullet. So, you know, a really interesting thing that's coming is kind of this idea that a small nuclear reactor, okay, very interesting idea. You could see its context in both localized electricity production, but all the heat also really good for district entry, okay, so that's an interesting tech. It obviously comes with complications around security and disposal, if you like, there's our nuclear industry has been allowed to drink like, it's all complicated. So I don't see one silver bullet in technology that I'm like, That's the answer. But what I do see, I'll go back to what we were talking about before is, you know, we had to turn this giant ship of bureaucracy towards new solutions. Okay, that's, that's what we had to do. And now that it's turned and we've got it towards the right course, I'm encouraged by that. I really am. You know, there are champions. And I'll, I'll talk about our city. You know, there's champions in the City of Ottawa who want to see this happen as younger people have graduated into roles and planning and other engineering roles there. They've grown up and gone to school in an age where they understand how critical this climate crisis is, and they're starting to be in positions of power and being in decision making. You know, a lot of my career, we're trying to educate people that there was a problem. Now, the people sitting in those chairs, it, they understand there's a problem, and what can they do about it? And so I am, I am excited that that the there is a next generation sitting in these seats, making decisions, the bureaucracy, the ship is, is almost on course to making this difference. So, so I do think that's encouraging. We have the technology. We really do. It's not rocket science. We just need to get through, you know, the bureaucracy barriers, and we need to find ways to properly finance it.   Trevor Freeman  53:22 Great. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. Scott, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate this conversation and shedding a little bit of light, not just on the technical side of district energy systems, but on the broader context, and as you say, the bureaucracy, the what is needed to make these things happen and to keep going in that right direction. So thanks a lot for your time. I really appreciate it.   Scott Demark  53:43 Thank you, Trevor, good to see you.   Trevor Freeman  53:45 All right. Take care.   Trevor Freeman  53:47 Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or a guest, you can always reach us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com.

The Government's aiming to strike a balance between cutting red tape and keeping people safe on work sites. Officials are consulting with the construction sector on changing rules on scaffolding. Workplace Relations and Safety Minister, Brooke van Velden, says over-compliance makes jobs cost more - and take more time. Building Industry Federation chief executive Julien Leys says health and safety is important to the sector, and a balance needs to be struck. "Everyone hates scaffolding as much as they hate road cones, but we shouldn't forget that that scaffolding is there for a reason and any height can be dangerous." LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pike and M'Benga make a desperate trip to a forbidden former Federation outpost to find a flower for a patient. Matt and Pete board 303 “Shuttle to Kenfori.”Thanks as always to everyone who supports the podcast by visiting Patreon.com/PhantasticGeek.Share your feedback by emailing PhantasticGeek@gmail.com, commenting at PhantasticGeek.com, or tweeting @PhantasticGeek.MP3

We at Urbanist Media (and the Urban Roots podcast) are excited to have, yet again, celebrated Juneteenth with Cincinnati Public Radio.This year, we produced brand new ⁠Juneteenth Cincinnati Shorts⁠: weekly, 90-second tributes to people and places important to Cincinnati Black history and African American history. This one is all about the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs…—Tucked away on Chapel Street in Walnut Hills, this short takes you to the Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, which, for over a century, has continued to serve as a hub for Black women's activism. Founded in 1904 by Mary Fletcher Ross, the Federation united local clubs to provide education and social services that, at the time, weren't available to the Black community. In 1925, members purchased the Hannaford-designed mansion on Chapel Street that still stands today, transforming it into a lasting symbol of resilience, sisterhood, and civic leadership.Listen to the entire archive (2023-2025) on Cincinnati Public Radio's website: https://cinradio.org/juneteenth-special-programming-from-urbanist-media/—Juneteenth Cincinnati Shorts is brought to you by Urbanist Media's Urban Roots podcast team: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel (Executive Producer / Host & Narrator), Tania Mohammad (Producer / Story Editor), Vanessa Maria Quirk (Story Editor), and Connor Lynch (Audio Editor / Mixer).

Now that the gang's back together, it's time to continue the hunt for Starfleet and the Federation in "People of Earth"! But it turns out the titular people have become real jerks and are under attack by mysterious space jerks, and the "Discovery" crew is caught in the middle of it all! Meanwhile Stamets finds someone new to be smug at. Also this week: unsubtle costume coding, music choices, and the post-Apocalypse! [Earth: 00:40; blog: 43:42] [someone else broke it, we're just living in the aftermath: https://sshbpodcast.tumblr.com/post/789902267480424448/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-binge-it]

“Hegemony, Part II” With part of his crew abducted in cold blood and orders to stand down and stay on the Federation side of the demarcation line, Captain Pike must balance duty as a Starfleet officer with duty as a leader responsible for the lives under his command. As La'an, Ortegas, M'Benga, and Sam Kirk fight their way out of the serpents' den, Spock and Chapel prepare for some unorthodox surgery to save Captain Batel's life while Uhura and Una hatch a plan to rescue their kidnapped crewmates. After preparing for ramming speed, the Enterprise punches back at the big lizards in their backyard and uncovers a surprise in another battle at the binary stars. The ultimate solution? Put the lizards to sleep and kick the can down the road. Sound familiar? In this episode of Saddle Up! hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our journey through Strange New Worlds with the Season 3 premiere, “Hegemony, Part II.” We discuss the challenge of continuing a story after a two-year break, the character progressions, the potential end of the Gorn threat, and the familiar nature of the resolution. Chapters Intro (0:00:00) Picking Up the Story (00:03:15) Gorn Your Own Way (00:12:56) Bye Bye Gornie (00:18:41) Spock and Chapel (00:27:08) Martin Quinn's Scotty (00:40:18) Done with the Gorn? (00:48:04) Final Thoughts and Ratings (00:50:10) Closing (00:53:14) Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Union Federation EP.219: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3 - EP.01: Hegemony, Part II & EP.02: Wedding Bell Blues Watch: Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork Listen: Union Federation Audio Podcast Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation Welcome to the Union Federation Podcast on the Fandom Podcast Network & BQN Network, where we discuss both Star Trek and The Orville. Your Union Federation crew return to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, with the new (2025) 10 episode season 3! On this  episode we discuss: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3 - EP.01: Hegemony, Part II & EP.02: Wedding Bell Blues.   Until next time on the Union Federation Podcast, "Live Long & Prosper" & "We Are, Without A Doubt, The Weirdest Ship In The Fleet!"   Union Federation Podcast Contact Info. Hailing frequencies are now open........   Fandom Podcast Network YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FandomPodcastNetwork   Union Federation: A Star Trek and The Orville Podcast Feed: Link: https://fpnet.podbean.com/category/union-federation   Facebook: The Union Federation: A Star Trek and Orville Podcast Group. Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/323504344789120   - Fandom Podcast Network Master Audio Feed: https://fpnet.podbean.com/ - Fandom Podcast Network is on ALL major podcasts platforms. - Email: theunionfederation@gmail.com - Instagram: @UnionFederationPodcast / https://www.instagram.com/unionfederationpodcast/ - X (Twitter) : @unionfedpodcast / https://x.com/UnionFedPodcast - Bluesky: @fanpodnetwork / https://bsky.app/profile/fanpodnetwork.bsky.social Host & Guest Contact Info: - Kyle Wagner on X: @AKyleW / Instagram & Threads: @Akylefandom / @akyleW on Discord / @Ksport16: Letterboxd / Blue Sky: @akylew - Amy Nelson on X: @MissAmyNelson / Instagram: @amynelson522 / Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts & @CounselorAmy - Hayley Stoddart on Instagram & Bluesky: @trekkie01D - Kevin Reitzel on X / Instagram / Threads / Discord & Letterboxd: @spartan_phoenix / Bluesky: @spartanphoenix   Where to Find BQN: Instagram: @BQNpodcasts Bluesky: @bqnpodcasts Facebook: The BQN Collective (listener's group) Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bqnpodcast   #FandomPodcastNetwork #FPNet #FPN #UnionFederation #UnionFederationPodcast #BQN #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsSeason3 #HegemonyPartII  #WeddingBellBlues #AmyNelson #HayleyStoddart #KyleWagner #KevinReitzel

“Hegemony, Part II” With part of his crew abducted in cold blood and orders to stand down and stay on the Federation side of the demarcation line, Captain Pike must balance duty as a Starfleet officer with duty as a leader responsible for the lives under his command. As La'an, Ortegas, M'Benga, and Sam Kirk fight their way out of the serpents' den, Spock and Chapel prepare for some unorthodox surgery to save Captain Batel's life while Uhura and Una hatch a plan to rescue their kidnapped crewmates. After preparing for ramming speed, the Enterprise punches back at the big lizards in their backyard and uncovers a surprise in another battle at the binary stars. The ultimate solution? Put the lizards to sleep and kick the can down the road. Sound familiar? In this episode of Saddle Up! hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our journey through Strange New Worlds with the Season 3 premiere, “Hegemony, Part II.” We discuss the challenge of continuing a story after a two-year break, the character progressions, the potential end of the Gorn threat, and the familiar nature of the resolution. Chapters Intro (0:00:00) Picking Up the Story (00:03:15) Gorn Your Own Way (00:12:56) Bye Bye Gornie (00:18:41) Spock and Chapel (00:27:08) Martin Quinn's Scotty (00:40:18) Done with the Gorn? (00:48:04) Final Thoughts and Ratings (00:50:10) Closing (00:53:14) Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

After the events of "Hegemony Part I & II", Strange New Worlds pivots, as it has in the past, to a more whimsical episode. Don't let "Wedding Bell Blues" fool you, this episode is still full of drama. The awkward arrival of Nurse Chapel after a 3 month fellowship with Dr. Korby leaves Spock in an awkward position as she brings home a "date" for the celebration of the Federation's Centennial birthday. What ensues following her arrival is drama, a love triangle, and a VERY surprising 'Wedding Planner' who would appear to be more than meets the eye....especially at the end.

Technical assistance for quail managers comes in many forms. Some “talk a good game” while others deliver the goods. Join Dr. Dale and his special guest Garry Stephens, CEO of Wildlife Habitat Federation, as they dissect the “form & function” of conservation delivery.

In this episode of the podcast, we sit down with Bill Gaiotti, the newly elected president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs. Bill is not only a passionate advocate fighting to protect and preserve our rights as hunters here in the Northeast, but he's also a diehard deer hunter with decades of experience in the big woods of Vermont and Pennsylvania. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation — from the legislative battles sportsmen are facing today, to Bill's personal hunting stories and lessons learned in some of the toughest deer country around. Whether you're interested in the politics that impact our way of life, or you just love a good mountain buck story, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

Being Jewish podcast host Jonah Platt—best known for playing Fiyero in Broadway's Wicked—joins People of the Pod to discuss his journey into Jewish advocacy after October 7. He reflects on his Jewish upbringing, challenges media misrepresentations of Israel, and shares how his podcast fosters inclusive and honest conversations about Jewish identity. Platt also previews The Mensch, an upcoming film he's producing to tell Jewish stories with heart and nuance. Recorded live at AJC Global Forum 2025. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: Untold stories of Jews who left or were driven from Arab nations and Iran People of the Pod:  Latest Episodes:  Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War: The Dinah Project's Quest to Hold Hamas Accountable Journalist Matti Friedman Exposes Media Bias Against Israel John Spencer's Key Takeaways After the 12-Day War: Air Supremacy, Intelligence, and Deterrence Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of the Interview: Manya Brachear Pashman:   Jonah Platt: is an award winning director of theater and improv comedy, an accomplished musician, singer and award winning vocal arranger. He has been on the Broadway stage, including one year as the heartthrob Fiyero in Wicked and he's producing his first feature film, a comedy called The Mensch. He also hosts his own podcast, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt:, a series of candid conversations and reflections that explore the many facets of Jewish identity.  Jonah is with us now on the sidelines of AJC Global Forum 2025. Jonah, welcome to People of the Pod. Jonah Platt:   Thank you so much for having me, happy to be here.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So tell us about your podcast. How is being Jewish with Jonah Platt: different from Jewish with anyone else? Jonah Platt:   That's a great question. I think it's different for a number of ways. I think one key difference is that I'm really trying to appeal to everybody, not just Jews and not just one type of Jews. I really wanted it to be a very inclusive show and, thank God, the feedback I've gotten, my audience is very diverse. It appeals to, you know, I hear from the ultra orthodox. I hear from people who found out they were Jewish a month ago. I hear from Republicans, I hear from Democrats. I hear from non Jews, Muslims, Christians, people all over the world. So I think that's special and different, especially in these echo-chambery, polarized times online, I'm trying to really reach out of that and create a space where the one thing we all have in common, everybody who listens, is that we're all well-meaning, good-hearted, curious people who want to understand more about our fellow man and each other.  I also try to really call balls and strikes as I see them, regardless of where they're coming from. So if I see, let's call it bad behavior, on the left, I'll call it out. If I see bad behavior on the right, I'll call it out. If I see bad behavior from Israel, I'll call it out. In the same breath that I'll say, I love Israel, it's the greatest place.  I think that's really unfortunately rare. I think people have a very hard time remembering that we are very capable of holding two truths at once, and it doesn't diminish your position by acknowledging fault where you see it. In fact, I feel it strengthens your position, because it makes you more trustworthy. And it's sort of like an iron sharpens iron thing, where, because I'm considering things from all angles, either I'm going to change my mind because I found something I didn't consider. That's going to be better for me and put me on firmer ground.  Or it's going to reinforce what I thought, because now I have another thing I can even speak to about it and say, Well, I was right, because even this I checked out, and that was wrong. So either way, you're in a stronger position. And I feel that that level of sort of, you know, equanimity is sorely lacking online, for sure.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Our podcasts have had some guests in common. We've had Dara Horn, Sarah Hurwitz, you said you're getting ready to have Bruce Pearl. We've had Coach Pearl on our show. You've also had conversations with Stuart Weitzman, a legendary shoe designer, in an episode titled Jews and Shoes. I love that. Can you share some other memorable nuggets from the conversations you've had over the last six months? Jonah Platt:   I had my dad on the show, and I learned things about him that I had never heard about his childhood, growing up, the way his parents raised him. The way that social justice and understanding the conflict and sort of brokenness in the world was something that my grandparents really tried to teach them very actively, and some of it I had been aware of, but not every little specific story he told. And that was really special for me. And my siblings, after hearing it, were like, We're so glad you did this so that we could see Dad and learn about him in this way. So that was really special.  There have been so many. Isaac Saul is a guy I had early on. He runs a newsletter, a news newsletter called Tangle Media that shows what the left is saying about an issue with the right is saying about an issue, and then his take. And a nugget that I took away from him is that on Shabbat, his way of keeping Shabbat is that he doesn't go on social media or read the news on Shabbat. And I took that from him, so now I do that too.  I thought that was genius. It's hard for me. I'm trying to even start using my phone period less on Shabbat, but definitely I hold myself to it, except when I'm on the road, like I am right now. When I'm at home, no social media from Friday night to Saturday night, and it's fantastic.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   It sounds delightful. Jonah Platt:   It is delightful. I highly recommend it to everybody. It's an easy one.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So what about your upbringing? You said you learned a lot about your father's upbringing. What was your Jewish upbringing? Jonah Platt:   Yeah, I have been very blessed to have a really strong, warm, lovely, Jewish upbringing. It's something that was always intrinsic to my family. It's not something that I sort of learned at Hebrew school. And no knock on people whose experience that is, but it's, you know, I never remember a time not feeling Jewish. Because it was so important to my parents and important to their families. And you know, part of the reason they're a good match for each other is because their values are the same.  I went to Jewish Day School, the same one my kids now go to, which is pretty cool. Manya Brachear Pashman:  Oh, that's lovely. Jonah Platt:   Yeah. And I went to Jewish sleepaway camp at Camp Ramah  in California. But for me, really, you know, when I get asked this question, like, my key Jewish word is family. And growing up, every holiday we spent with some part of my very large, amazing family. What's interesting is, in my city where I grew up, Los Angeles, I didn't have any grandparents, I didn't have any aunts or uncles or any first cousins. But I feel like I was with them all the time, because every holiday, someone was traveling to somebody, and we were being together. And all of my childhood memories of Jewish holidays are with my cousins and my aunts and my uncles and my grandparents. Because it was just so important to our family. And that's just an amazing foundation for being Jewish or anything else, if that's your foundation, that's really gonna stay with you. And my upbringing, like we kept kosher in my house, meat and milk plates. We would eat meat out but no pork, no shellfish, no milk and meat, any of that. And while I don't ascribe to all those things now, I'm grateful that I got sort of the literacy in that.  In my Jewish Day School we had to wrap tefillin every morning. And while I don't do that now, I'm glad that I know how to do that, and I know what that looks like, and I know what that means, even if I resisted it very strongly at the time as a 13 year old, being like what I gotta wrap this up every day. But I'm grateful now to have that literacy. And I've always been very surprised to see in my life that often when I'm in a room with people, I'm the most observant in the room or the most Jewish literate in the room, which was never the case in my life.  I have family members who are much more observant than me, orthodox. I know plenty of Orthodox people, whatever. But in today's world, I'm very grateful for the upbringing I had where, I'll be on an experience. I actually just got back from one in Poland. I went on a trip with all moderate Muslims from around the North Africa, Middle East, and Asia, with an organization called Sharaka. We had Shabbat dinner just this past Friday at the JCC in Krakow, and I did the Shabbat kiddush for everybody, which is so meaningful and, like, I'm so grateful that I know it, that I can play that role in that, in special situations like that.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So you've been doing a lot of traveling. Jonah Platt:  Yes. Manya Brachear Pashman:   I saw your reflection on your visit to Baku, Azerbaijan. The largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. And you went with the Jewish Federation's National Young leadership cabinet. Jonah Platt:   Shout out to my chevre. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And you posted this reflection based on your experience there, asking the question, how much freedom is too much? So can you walk our listeners through that and how you answered that question? Jonah Platt:   Yes. So to be fair, I make very clear I don't have the answer to that question definitively, I just wanted to give people food for thought, and what I hoped would happen has happened where I've been getting a lot of people who disagree with me and have other angles at which they want to look and answer this question, which I welcome and have given me a lot to think about.  But basically, what I observed in Azerbaijan was a place that's a little bit authoritative. You know, they don't have full freedom of the press. Political opposition is, you know, quieted, but there's no crime anywhere. They have a strong police presence on the streets. There are security cameras everywhere, and people like their lives there and don't want to mess with it.  And so it just got me thinking, you know, they're an extremely tolerant society. It's sort of something they pride themselves on, and always have. It's a Muslim majority country, but it is secular. They are not a Muslim official country. They're one of only really two countries in the world that are like that, the other being Albania. And they live together in beautiful peace and harmony with a sense of goodwill, with a sense of national pride, and it got me thinking, you know, look at any scenario in our lives. Look at the place you work, look at the preschool classroom that your kid is in.  There are certain rules and restrictions that allow for more freedom, in a sense, because you feel safe and taken care of and our worst instincts are not given space to be expressed. So that is what brought the question of, how much freedom is too much. And really, the other way of putting that is, how much freedom would you be willing to give up if it meant you lived in a place with no crime, where people get along with their neighbors, where there's a sense of being a part of something bigger than yourself. I think all three of which are heavily lacking in America right now that is so polarized, where hateful rhetoric is not only, pervasive, but almost welcomed, and gets more clicks and more likes and more watches. It's an interesting thing to think about.  And I heard from people being like, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this question. I don't know the answer, but it's really interesting. I have people say, you're out of your mind. It's a slippery slope. The second you give an inch, like it's all going downhill. And there are arguments to be made there.  But I can't help but feel like, if we did the due diligence, I'm sure there is something, if we keep the focus really narrow, even if it's like, a specific sentence that can't be said, like, you can't say: the Holocaust was a great thing. Let's say we make that illegal to say, like, how does that hurt anybody? If that's you're not allowed to say those exact words in that exact sequence, you know. So I think if it's gonna be a slippery slope, to me, is not quite a good enough argument for Well, let's go down the road and see if we can come up with something. And then if we decide it's a slippery slope and we get there, maybe we don't do it, but maybe there is something we can come to that if we eliminate that one little thing you're not allowed to say, maybe that will benefit us. Maybe if we make certain things a little bit more restrictive, it'll benefit us. And I likened it to Shabbat saying, you know, on Shabbat, we have all these restrictions. If you're keeping Shabbat, that's what makes Shabbat special, is all the things you're not allowed to do, and because you're not given the quote, unquote, freedom to do those things, you actually give yourself more freedom to be as you are, and to enjoy what's really good about life, which is, you know, the people around you and and having gratitude. So it's just something interesting to think about.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   It's an interesting perspective. I am a big fan of free speech. Jonah Platt:   As are most people. It's the hill many people will die on. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Educated free speech, though, right? That's where the tension is, right? And in a democracy you have to push for education and try to make sure that, you know, people are well informed, so that they don't say stupid things, but they are going to say stupid things and I like that freedom. Did you ever foresee becoming a Jewish advocate? Jonah Platt:   No. I . . . well, that's a little disingenuous. I would say, you know, in 2021 when there was violence between Israel and Gaza in the spring over this Sheik Jarrah neighborhood. That's when I first started using what little platform I had through my entertainment career to start speaking very, you know, small things, but about Israel and about Jewish life, just organically, because I am, at the time, certainly much more well educated, even now, than I was then.  But I was more tuned in than the average person, let's say, and I felt like I could provide some value. I could help bring some clarity to what was a really confusing situation at that time, like, very hard to decipher. And I could just sense what people were thinking and feeling. I'm well, tapped into the Jewish world. I speak to Jews all over the place. My, as I said, my family's everywhere. So already I know Jews all over the country, and I felt like I could bring some value. And so it started very slowly. It was a trickle, and then it started to turn up a little bit, a little bit more, a little bit more. I went on a trip to Israel in April of 2023. It's actually the two year anniversary today of that trip, with the Tel Aviv Institute, run by a guy named Hen Mazzig, who I'm sure, you know, well, I'm sure he's been on the show, yeah.  And that was, like, sort of the next step for me, where I was surrounded by other people speaking about things online, some about Jewish stuff, some not. Just seeing these young, diverse people using their platforms in whatever way, that was inspiring to me. I was like, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna start using this more.  And then October 7 happened, and I couldn't pull myself away from it. It's just where I wanted to be. It's what I wanted to be spending my time and energy doing. It felt way too important. The stakes felt way too high, to be doing anything else. It's crazy to me that anybody could do anything else but be focusing on that. And now here we are. So I mean, in a way, could I have seen it? No. But have I sort of, looking back on it, been leaning this way? Kinda. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Do you think it would've you would've turned toward advocacy if people hadn't been misinformed or confused about Israel? Or do you think that you would've really been more focused on entertainment.  Jonah Platt:   Yeah, I think probably. I mean, if we lived in some upside down, amazing world where everybody was getting everything right, and, you know, there'd be not so much for me to do. The only hesitation is, like, as I said, a lot of my content tries to be, you know, celebratory about Jewish identity. I think actually, I would still be talking because I've observed, you know, divisions and misunderstandings within the Jewish community that have bothered me, and so some of the things I've talked about have been about that, about like, hey, Jews, cut it out. Like, be nice to each other. You're getting this wrong.  So I think that would still have been there, and something that I would have been passionate about speaking out on. Inclusivity is just so important to me, but definitely would be a lot lower stakes and a little more relaxed if everybody was on the same universe in regards to Israel. Manya Brachear Pashman:   You were relatively recently in Washington, DC. Jonah Platt:   Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman:   For the White House Correspondents Dinner. I was confused, because he just said he was in Krakow, so maybe I was wrong. Jonah Platt:   I flew direct from Krakow to DC, got off the plane, went to the hotel where the dinner was, changed it to my tux, and went downstairs for the dinner.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Wow. Jonah Platt:   Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Are you tired? Jonah Platt:   No, actually, it's amazing. I'll give a shout out. There's a Jewish businessman, a guy named Andrew Herr, who I was in a program with through Federation called CLI in LA, has started a company called Fly Kit. This is a major shout out to Fly Kit that you download the app, you plug in your trip, they send you supplements, and the app tells you when to take them, when to eat, when to nap, when to have coffee, in an attempt to help orient yourself towards the time zone you need to be on. And I have found it very useful on my international trips, and I'm not going to travel without it again. Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Wow. White House Correspondents dinner. You posted some really thoughtful words about the work of journalists, which I truly appreciated. But what do American journalists get wrong about Israel and the Jewish connection to Israel?  Jonah Platt:   The same thing that everybody who gets things wrong are getting wrong. I mean, we're human beings, so we're fallible, and just because you're a journalist doesn't make you immune to propaganda, because propaganda is a powerful tool. If it didn't work, people wouldn't be using it. I mean, I was just looking at a post today from our friend Hen Mazzig about all the different ways the BBC is getting things horribly, horribly wrong. I think part of it is there's ill intent. I mean, there is malice. For certain people, where they have an agenda. And unfortunately, you know, however much integrity journalists have, there is a news media environment where we've made it okay to have agenda-driven news where it's just not objective. And somehow it's okay for these publications that we've long trusted to have a story they want to tell. I don't know why that's acceptable. It's a business, and I guess maybe if that, if the dollars are there, it's reinforcing itself. But reporters get wrong so much. I'd say the fundamental misunderstanding that journalists as human beings get wrong, that everybody gets wrong, is that Jews are not a group of rich, white Europeans with a common religion. That's like the number one misunderstanding about Jews. Because most people either don't know Jews at all on planet Earth. They've never met one. They know nothing about it except what they see on the news or in a film, or the Jews that they know happen to maybe be white, rich, European ancestry people, and so they assume that's everybody. When, of course, that's completely false, and erases the majority of Jews from planet Earth. So I think we're missing that, and then we're also missing what Israel means to the Jewish people is deeply misunderstood and very purposefully erased.  Part of what's tricky about all of this is that the people way behind the curtain, the terrorists, the real I hate Israel people agenda. They're the ones who plant these seeds. But they're like 5% of the noise. They're secret. They're in the back. And then everybody else, without realizing it, is picking up these things. And so the vast majority of people are, let's say, erasing Jewish connection to Israel without almost even realizing they're doing it because they have been fed this, because propaganda is a powerful tool, and they believe it to be true what they've been told.  And literally, don't realize what they're doing. And if they were in a calm environment and somebody was able to explain to them, Hey, here's what you're doing, here's what you're missing, I think, I don't know, 75% of people would be like, holy crap. I've been getting this wrong. I had no idea. Maybe even higher than 75% they really don't know. And that's super dangerous. And I think the media and journalism is playing a major role in that. Sometimes things get, you know, retracted and apologized for. But the damage is done, especially when it comes to social media. If you put out, Israel just bombed this hospital and killed a bunch of doctors, and then the next day you're like, Oops, sorry, that was wrong. Nobody cares. All they saw was Israel bombed a bunch of doctors and that seed's already been planted. So it's been a major issue the info war, while you know, obviously not the same stakes as a real life and death physical war has been as important a piece of this overall war as anything. And I wouldn't say it's going great. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Did it come up at all at the Correspondent's Dinner, or more of a celebration? Jonah Platt:   No, thank God. Yeah. It was more of a celebration. It was more of just sort of it was cool, because there was no host this year, there was no comedian, there was no president, he didn't come. So it was really like being in the clubhouse with the journalists, and you could sense they were sort of happy about it. Was like, just like a family reunion, kind of a vibe, like, it's just our people. We're all on the same page. We're the people who care about getting it right. We care about journalistic integrity. We're here to support each other. It was really nice. I mean, I liked being sort of a fly on the wall of this other group that I had not really been amongst before, and seeing them in their element in this like industry party, which was cool.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Okay, so we talked about journalists. What about your colleagues in the entertainment industry? Are you facing backlash from them, either out of malice or ignorance?  Jonah Platt:   I'm not facing any backlash from anybody of importance if I'm not getting an opportunity, or someone's written me off or something. I don't know that, you know, I have no idea if I'm now on somebody's list of I'm never gonna work with that guy. I don't know. I don't imagine I am. If I am, it says way more about that person than it does about me, because my approach, as we've discussed, is to try to be really inclusive and honest and, like, objective. And if I get something wrong, I'll delete it, or I'll say I got it wrong. I try to be very transparent and really open that, like I'm trying my best to get things right and to be fair.  And if you have a problem with that. You know, you've got a problem. I don't have a problem. So I wouldn't say any backlash. In fact, I mean, I get a lot of support, and a lot of, you know, appreciation from people in the industry who either are also speaking out or maybe too afraid to, and are glad that other people are doing it, which I have thoughts about too, but you know, when people are afraid to speak out about the stuff because of the things they're going to lose. Like, to a person, maybe you lose stuff, but like, you gain so many more other people and opportunities, people who were just sort of had no idea that you were on the same team and were waiting for you to say something, and they're like, Oh my God, you're in this with me too. Great, let's do something together, or whatever it is. So I've gotten, it's been much more positive than negative in terms of people I actually care about. I mean, I've gotten fans of entertainment who have nasty things to say about me, but not colleagues or industry peers.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So you would declare yourself a proud Zionist. Jonah Platt:   Yes. Manya Brachear Pashman:   But you wrote a column in The Forward recently over Passover saying, let's retire the word Zionist. Why?  Jonah Platt:   Yes. I recently wrote an op-ed and actually talked about on my pod as well about why I feel we should retire the word Zionism. Not that I think we actually are. It's pretty well in use. But my main reasoning was, that the way we all understand Zionism, those of us who actually know what it is, unlike a lot of people –is the belief that Jews should have self determination, sovereignty in some piece of the land to which they are indigenous. We have that. We've had it for almost 80 years. I don't know why we need to keep using a word that frames it as aspirational, that like, I believe we should have this thing. We already have it.  And I feel by sort of leaving that sentence without a period, we're sort of suggesting that non-existence is somehow on the table. Like, if I just protest enough, Israel's going to stop existing. I want to slam that door closed. I don't think we need to be the, I believe that Israel should exist people anymore. I think we should be the I love Israel people, or I support Israel people. I'm an Israel patriot. I'm a lover of Israel, whatever the phrase may be. To me, the idea that we should continue to sort of play by their framework of leaving that situation on the table, is it only hurts us, and I just don't think we need it. Manya Brachear Pashman:   It lets others define it, in their own terms.  Jonah Platt:   Yeah, we're playing, sort of by the rules of the other people's game. And I know, you know, I heard when I put that out, especially from Israelis, who it to them, it sort of means patriot, and they feel a lot of great pride with it, which I totally understand. But the sort of more universal understanding of what that word is, and certainly of what the Movement was, was about that aspirational creation of a land, that a land's been created. Not only has it been created, it's, you know, survived through numerous wars, it's stronger than ever. You know, third-most NASDAQ companies in the world. We need to just start talking about it from like, yeah, we're here. We're not going anywhere, kind of a place. And not, a we should exist, kind of a place. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So it's funny, you said, we all know what Zionism is. And I grinned a little bit, because there are so many different definitions of Zionism. I mean, also, Zionism was a very inclusive progressive ideology packaged in there, right, that nobody talks about because it's just kind of not, we just don't talk about it anymore.  So what else about the conversation needs to change? How do we move forward in a productive, constructive way when it comes to teaching about Jewish identity and securing the existence of Israel? Jonah Platt:   In a way, those two things are related, and in a way they're not. You can have a conversation about Jewish identity without necessarily going deep down the Israel hole. But it is critical that people understand how central a connection to Israel is, to Jewish identity. And people are allowed to believe whatever they want. And you can be someone who says, Well, you know, Israel is not important to me, and that's okay, that's you, but you have to at least be clear eyed that that is an extreme and fringe position. That is not a mainstream thing. And you're going to be met with mistrust and confusion and anger and a sense of betrayal, if that's your position.  So I think we need to be clear eyed about that and be able to have that conversation. And I think if we can get to the place where we can acknowledge that in each other. Like, dude, have your belief. I don't agree with it. I think it's crazy. Like, you gotta at least know that we all think you're crazy having that idea. And if they can get to the base, we're like, yeah, I understand that, but I'm gonna believe what I'm gonna believe, then we can have conversations and, like, then we can talk. I think the, I need to change your mind conversation, it doesn't usually work. It has to be really gently done. And I'm speaking this as much from failure as I am from success. As much as we try, sometimes our emotions come to the fore of these conversations, and that's–it's not gonna happen. You know, on my pod, I've talked about something called, I call the four C's of difficult conversation. And I recently, like, tried to have a conversation. I did not adhere to my four C's, and it did not go well. And so I didn't take my own advice. You have to come, like, legitimately ready to be curious to the other person's point of view, wanting to hear what they have to say. You know, honoring their truth, even if it is something that hurts you deeply or that you abhor. You can say that, but you have to say it from a place of respect and honoring. If you want it to go somewhere. If you just want to like, let somebody have it, go ahead, let somebody have it, but you're definitely not going to be building towards anything that. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So before I let you go, can you tell us a little bit about The Mensch? Jonah Platt:   Yeah, sure. So the Mensch is one of a couple of Jewish entertainment projects I'm now involved with in the last year, which, you know, I went from sort of zero to now three. The Mensch is a really unique film that's in development now. We're gonna be shooting this summer that I'm a producer on. And it's the story of a 30 something female rabbi in New Mexico who, life just isn't where she thought it would be. She's not connecting with her congregation. She's not as far along as she thought things would be. Her synagogue is failing, and there's an antisemitic event at her synagogue, and the synagogue gets shut down. And she's at the center of it. Two weeks later, the synagogue's reopening. She's coming back to work, and as part of this reopening to try to bring some some life and some juzz to the proceedings, one of the congregants from the synagogue, the most eccentric one, who's sort of a pariah, who's being played by Jennifer Goodwin, who's a fantastic actress and Jewish advocate, donates her family's priceless Holocaust-era Torah to the synagogue, and the rabbi gets tasked with going to pick it up and bring it. As things often happen for this rabbi, like a bunch of stuff goes wrong. Long story short, she ends up on a bus with the Torah in a bag, like a sports duffel bag, and gets into an altercation with somebody who has the same tattoo as the perpetrator of the event at her synagogue, and unbeknownst to the two of them, they have the same sports duffel bag, and they accidentally swap them. So she shows up at the synagogue with Jennifer Goodwin, they're opening it up, expecting to see a Torah, and it's full of bricks of cocaine. And the ceremony is the next day, and they have less than 24 hours to track down this torah through the seedy, drug-dealing, white nationalist underbelly of the city. And, you know, drama and hilarity ensue. And there's lots of sort of fun, a magic realism to some of the proceedings that give it like a biblical tableau, kind of sense. There's wandering in the desert and a burning cactus and things of that nature.  So it's just, it's really unique, and what drew me to it is what I'm looking for in any sort of Jewish project that I'm supporting, whether as a viewer or behind the scenes, is a contemporary story that's not about Jews dying in the Holocaust. That is a story of people just being people, and those people are Jewish. And so the things that they think about, the way they live, maybe their jobs, even in this case, are Jewish ones. But it's not like a story of the Jews in that sense. The only touch point the majority of the world has for Jews is the news and TV and film. And so if that's how people are gonna learn about us, we need to take that seriously and make sure they're learning who we really are, which is regular people, just like you, dealing with the same kind of problems, the same relationships, and just doing that through a little bit of a Jewish lens. So the movie is entertaining and unique and totally fun, but it also just happens to be about Jews and rabbis. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And so possible, spoiler alert, does the White Nationalist end up being the Mensch in the end? Jonah Platt:   No, no, the white nationalist is not the mensch. They're the villain.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   I thought maybe there was a conversion moment in this film. Jonah Platt:   No conversion. But sort of, one of the themes you take away is, anybody can be a mensch. You don't necessarily need to be the best rabbi in the world to be a mensch. We're all fallible, flawed human beings. And what's important is that we try to do good and we try to do the right thing, and usually that's enough. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Well, I thought that kind of twist would be… Jonah Platt:   I'll take it up with the writer.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Well, Jonah, you are truly a mensch for joining us on the sidelines here today. Jonah Platt:   Thank you. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Safe travels, wherever you're headed next.  Jonah Platt:   Thank you very much. Happy to be with you.   

“Prime Factors” 30th-anniversary reflections Having heard stories about Voyager—a ship of aliens from another part of the galaxy, lost in a world so far from home—the Sikarians decide to assist. Drawing in Voyager with a distress signal, their leader, Gath, offers a helping hand. He ain't got a clue how to get them out, but he does think he knows what they need: a little pleasure. When Janeway accepts the offer of shore leave for the crew, Harry quickly finds a girl who's hot for stories and then finds himself miles and miles from nowhere, on the planet Alastria, 40,000 light years away. It turns out the Sikarians have a spacial trajector that can zip them around the quadrant. And with everyone on the planet hot for stories, the crew might just be able to trade all the Federation's literature for a quick ride home. In this episode of To The Journey, hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our 30th-anniversary retrospective that will take you through all of Star Trek: Voyager, one episode at a time. In this installment, we discuss “Prime Factors” and how the story challenges the principles of the crew while bringing opposing views together as it leverages the promise of the series premise. Chapters Intro (00:00:00) Not Entirely Pleasurable (00:02:13) On the Other Side of the Fence (00:13:00) Conflicting Priorities (00:16:49) Can't Tech That Tech (00:25:23) Can't Flirt with Harry (00:29:25) Desperately Seeking Stories (00:31:55) Tuvok's Betrayal (00:37:45) Final Thoughts and Ratings (00:48:23) Closing (00:52:53) Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

At this year's Velo-city conference in Gdansk, the theme was “Energizing Solidarity,” in honor of the city's history as the cradle of the Solidarity labor movement that helped bring down Communism in Poland. Velo-city is an incredibly good-mood event put on each year by the European Cyclists' Federation, where people come from all over the world to share best practices in urban cycling, and to connect with their fellow advocates, elected officials, and other members of the wider cycling community.  Sarah talked with advocates, government officials, and researchers how bicycles build solidarity as people around the world fight for democracy and our planet's health. Support The War on Cars on Patreon and receive exclusive access to ad-free versions of regular episodes, Patreon-only bonus content, Discord access, invitations to live events, merch discounts and free stickers! ***Our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, will be published on October 21, 2025 by Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Pre-order now.*** Purchase tickets for our Life After Cars publication party and live show at The Bell House in Brooklyn on October 28th. The Patreon presale for our November 5th show at Town Hall in Seattle with City Nerd begins on Wednesday, July 16th. More shows will be announced soon. The War on Cars is produced with the generous support of the Helen & William Mazer Foundation. This episode was sponsored by Cleverhood and Xtracycle.   SHOW NOTES Check out all the great work that the European Cyclists' Federation does. Velo-city 2026 will be in Rimini, Italy. Thanks to Anthony Lau of Cyclehoop for the audio from the Cave Rave. Learn more about the Shawlands Bike Bus in Glasgow. Check out Bike Ottawa. E-Bike City Zurich imagines a city that deprioritizes cars. Find out about the COP Bike Ride for climate awareness. Read about Dr. Ian Walker's motonormativity research, along with fun facts about his other life as an ultradistance athlete. Learn more about Melissa and Chris Bruntlett.    

Send us a textShow: Deadly SinsEpisode: Season 4 Episode 7Jeremy and Jessica Myers were young and in love. Married at 20 and parents soon after, the couple had a hard time paying the bills. More trouble comes their way when a secret militia puts a hit out on Jessica and Jeremy. Thank goodness Jeremy decided to take out a shit ton of life insurance on his wife.  Support the showCheck out our website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/837988 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/itsalwaysthehusbandpodcast Like our Facebook page and join our group!! Instagram: @itsalwaysthehusbandpodcast Twitter: @alwaysthehubs Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ItsAlwaysTheHusband?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=776055218 Theme song by Jamie "I'm Gonna Kill You, Bitch" Nelson

Hassan El-Tayyeb of the Friends Committee on National Legislation returns with an update on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the growing movement to end U.S. support for the assault. Then, Mackenzie Knight Boyle from the Federation of American Scientists walks us through the scale and secrecy of the U.S. nuclear weapons program — and the risks it poses to the world. Finally, constitutional scholar Bruce Fein joins us to call out the unchecked power and ethical failures of the Supreme Court.Hassan El-Tayyab is the lead lobbyist on Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Mr. El-Tayyab co-chairs the U.S. Ceasefire Coalition and leads the Friends Committee's work to end the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, advocate for Palestinian human rights, and advance diplomacy with Iran.(The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) militarizes aid and is run by private armed contractors. It violates all these principles of neutrality, independence, impartiality. And we even saw the GHF's own executive director, Jake Wood, resign in protest in May, saying that he couldn't work in a way that didn't adhere to these humanitarian principles.Hassan El-TayyabMackenzie Knight-Boyle is a Senior Research Associate for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, where she co-authors the Nuclear Notebook––an authoritative open-source estimate of global nuclear forces and trends.Probably the scariest false alarm was in 1979, A training cassette that was simulating a massive attack with nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union on the United States was mistakenly entered into the primary computer system of North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD. And it was then broadcast to other command centers as if it was going out in the National Command Authority alert system. And because of that, the proper procedures were followed for a situation like this, where the fighter jets took off. The nuclear bombers, carrying nuclear weapons, were put into the sky, missile crews were put on high alert, which means the missiles are ready to launch within seconds. And the president's doomsday plane, which is essentially the war room in the sky for the president in emergency situations, was also put into the air. And it took six minutes for them to realize that this was a training cassette that had been mistakenly put into the system.Mackenzie Knight-BoyleBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.There can be good faith disagreements over the interpretation of the Constitution. But when you have a course of action which so systematically shows a favoritism towards limitless executive power towards corporations as well with regard to money and politics, no longer does it seem to be a matter of good faith, a disagreement, but it's a matter of advancing the partisan political interests of the president, the presidency, and that is, I think, an impeachable offense.Bruce Fein (on impeaching Supreme Court justices)News 7/4/251. The New York City Board of Elections has released the final results in the Democratic Mayoral primary – after accounting for reallocation of votes via ranked-choice tabulations. The final results are stunning. Zohran Mamdani, up by approximately seven points on election night, has emerged with a whopping 12-point victory over disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Perhaps even more impressive, Mamdani completely reshaped the electorate. According to the New York Times, he turned out young people in record numbers to the point that the largest voter bloc in this election was 18–29-year-olds, a complete reversal of usual trends.2. Speaking of reversing trends, it is worth reviewing Zohran's victory in light of the groups he won by large margins. Namely men, including young men of all backgrounds, as well as Latino and Asian voters, per Jacobin. These are groups that Democrats have notably lost ground with, including in New York City, and have devoted considerable resources to winning back to their coalition. Zohran's win therefore should give Democrats a new sense of optimism and they should seek to embrace the winning course that he has charted.3. Of course, being the Democratic Party, they are instead doing the opposite. Despite his earthquake victory, few high-profile New York Democrats have endorsed Zohran. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has not, nor has Governor Kathy Hochul, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, or other powerful New York House Democrats like Gregory Meeks. The other U.S. Senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, has been openly hostile, calling Zohran “permissive [of] violence against Jews,” in an interview with Brian Lehrer on WNYC. This is of course racist, inflammatory and flatly untrue. Under pressure from other Democrats, Gillibrand retracted her statement, and “apologized for mischaracterizing Mamdani's record and for her tone on the call,” according to POLITICO. This however gives us a taste of the kind of dirty tricks and defamatory rhetoric the party could deploy against Mamdani between now and November.4. That said, Zohran is picking up significant backing locally – an indication that those actually on the ground know which way the wind is blowing. On Monday, Mamdani was endorsed by the NYC Central Labor Council-AFL-CIO. The NYCCLC is “the nation's largest regional labor federation…[bringing] together 300 unions… [and representing] more than 1 million workers.” On Tuesday, he won the endorsement of New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who represents Westchester, according to reporter Vaughn Golden. Zohran has already earned the endorsement of New York Attorney General Tish James. Expect this divergence between national and local Democratic figures to continue.5. In stark contrast to Zohran, whose political brand is defined by seemingly endless energy, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman shocked observers this week when he complained about having to do the bare minimum as a U.S. Senator. According to Rolling Stone, during Senate deliberations on the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Fetterman was quoted saying “I just want to go home. I've missed our entire trip to the beach.” Fetterman's comments are particularly galling seeing as he has been chronically absent from Senate hearings, committee meetings and even votes. In other words, Fetterman is complaining about doing the bare minimum for the people of Pennsylvania, but is failing to do even that.6. The bill did of course pass, with Vice-President JD Vance voting to break a 50-50 tie vote in the Senate. On Twitter, Vance justified his vote from criticism regarding its massive cuts to Medicaid by saying “The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass.” AOC called his vote, “An absolute and utter betrayal of working families.”7. In more news related to the bill, Trump and Elon Musk have been trading threats regarding its passage. On Monday, TIME reported Elon Musk tweeted, “If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uni-party, so that the people actually have a voice.” Musk added, “Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame…they will lose their primary next year, if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” Musk has also reportedly thrown his financial weight behind Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, perhaps the most vocal critic of Trump in the House Republican caucus. Trump is already backing a primary challenge against Massie; Musk intervening on the other side has turned this race into a climactic proxy battle between the two figures once called “co-presidents.”8. Trump, for his part, threatened to deport Elon Musk. Asked about this directly, Trump told reporters, “We'll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies,” per USA Today. This is of course true. Musk's companies have received billions in corporate welfare from the federal government over the years. It is unclear how much the stock value of, for instance Tesla, would suffer from the money faucet being turned off.9. Entertaining as Trump's threats to deport Musk are however, we should not lose sight of the ever-darker reality of deportation setting in nationwide. NOLA.com reports “An Iranian woman who has lived in the United States for 47 years, has no criminal record, and is married to a US citizen was detained by ICE as she gardened outside her New Orleans home.” Expect to hear more stories of secret police rounding up law abiding Americans in the days to come.10. Finally, in more positive news, Reuters reports China is quietly moving to rebuild Cuba's energy grid. This report notes that “Officials…announced China was participating in a project to modernize Cuba's entire electrical grid, with 55 solar parks to be built in 2025, and another 37 by 2028, for a total of 2,000 MW - a massive undertaking that, when complete, would represent nearly two-thirds of present-day demand.” Cuba joined China's international infrastructure development program Belt and Road in 2018. This report notes that China is taking on the development role that Russia formerly played in Havana, but has been unable to deliver on since it embarked on its special military operation-turned-quagmire in Ukraine. Cuba's energy grid has experienced continue failures for the past several years for myriad reasons, exacerbated by Trump's increasingly draconian sanctions regime. This is just another example of a reality becoming increasingly clear to much of the world: the U.S. tears down developing countries' infrastructure, China helps build it up.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe