Podcasts about Flew

War Room Treasury Sec. Bessent Ready For Financial Great Reset, CIA Director Ratcliffe Flew To Moscow & Warned Putin Against Striking NATO Nations, Plus Major False Flag Cyberattack Incoming

In 1999, a handful of people gathered at a dusty Namibian airfield to meet two men flying weight-shift microlights around the world. One of them was Mike Blyth. Watching from the crowd was a boy who had never left the country, whose family couldn't afford much flying, and who had no real concept of where these men had come from — only that whatever they were doing, he wanted to do it too.Twenty-five years later, JP Schulze has flown around the world himself, built the first Sling High Wing off the line — designed by the same Mike Blyth — and become one of the most distinctive filmmakers in aviation.This one took a while to make happen. We finally met at Oshkosh this year, and JP is candid about being a naturally shy person who ended up with a career in front of a camera.He grew up in Namibia with no art classes and no creative outlets, thinking in German and Afrikaans, teaching himself English from the Discovery Channel at eight years old. He was taking the controls of his dad's microlight at ten. He funded his first licence by free-diving for crayfish, selling snake venom, and restringing tennis rackets.The around-the-world trip nearly didn't happen twice. Sponsors walked after a Cirrus ditched near Hawaii and the CAPS pull ran on every news channel — nobody wanted their logo on a small plane over an ocean. So JP and Louis Cole self-funded it, and JP is honest about what that cost: the fourteen-hour legs, the multi-hour shouting match somewhere between Fiji and Kiribati, and the weight of being responsible for a non-pilot's life for the first time.In this episode:Meeting Mike Blyth in 1999 — and building his airplane twenty years laterGrowing up flying "sketchy" weight-shift trikes over the African bushWhy Southern Africa has a GA scene almost nobody expectsMoving to New Zealand at seventeen and rebuilding from scratch in a third languageMeeting Louis Cole on a sand dune and having his life change in a daySigning with Discovery, then watching the money disappearWhat flying around the world actually took — and why he'd do it againInsisting on being the first to build the Sling High Wing, then helping write the manualWhy he refuses to post weekly, and what that has cost himThe sunglasses he built because a $350 pair costs $10 to makeWhy print still matters, and what we both think is at stakeWe also recorded a second conversation about the around-the-world flight itself — that one is exclusive to the magazine, with the audio released free a year after publication.Happy Flying,JustinSupport JP - otavi.co best sunglasses for pilotsPilot to Pilot Magazine — Volume 003 is out now. Get yours at pilottopilothq.com/magSponsors — please support the people who support the show: • NEW SPONSOR ALERT I'd like to welcome AeroTow to the Pilot to Pilot sponsors! check out their AeroTow T2 Engineered for easier maneuverability, the AeroTow T2 is versatile for a variety of aircraft. Its universal cradle provides a seamless towing experience ( Pilot to Pilot listeners can save $100 by using the code in the podcast!) Avemco Insurance — Save 5% as a Pilot to Pilot listener. Call (888) 635-4297 or visit avemco.com/4297-owner (owners) or avemco.com/4297-non-owner (non-owners) • Learn more about the exciting innovations at Textron Aviation today… just go to TXTAV.com • Garmin — Plan, file, fly, log with the Garmin Pilot app • Allworth Airline Advisors — Register for their latest webinar at allworthfinancial.com/justin • Allworth Financial - https://allworthfinancial.com/airlines/lp/runway-for-retirement-webinar?utm_campaign=airlines+-+more+runway+for+retirement?lmls=Partner+Channel&lmld=Pilot+to+Pilot&ad_version=Social 

Col Kevin "Flint" Hicok commanded the 20th Fighter Wing during Operation Midnight Hammer, leading the largest Air Force wing in CENTCOM since Desert Storm. The three-part documentary series is on Afterburn Defense: Part I: https://youtu.be/MgQ_X3Td8a4 Part II: https://youtu.be/GzdL6NMYDso Part III: https://youtu.be/Xc22-2RaGSY Operation Midnight Hammer through the eyes of the people who flew it. This is the full interview with Col. Kevin Hicok, a career F-16 fighter pilot who commanded the F-16 Wild Weasels that flew Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses ahead of the B-2 strike on Iran. Before Iran, the wing fought over Yemen in Operation Rough Rider, a sustained air campaign against Houthi surface-to-air threats. What they learned there is the reason the F-16 Block 50 and the AGM-88 HARM were part of the strike package on June 21st, 2025. These interviews were recorded between December 2025 and January 2026 and preserve firsthand accounts from pilots, maintainers, intelligence officers, and logistics airmen who were there. 0:00 Intro 0:56 Commanding the Largest F-16 Wing in the Air Force 3:49 From a Small Town in Iowa to Fighter Pilot 10:02 Deploying the Whole Wing for the First Time Since Desert Storm 15:23 Operation Rough Rider and the Houthi Drone Threat 17:27 Learning About Operation Midnight Hammer 19:22 Surging 100 More Aircraft and 220 Percent More People 20:20 The Logistics Nobody Sees: Fuel, Water, and 115 Degree Heat 23:17 Sending Airmen Across the Line Into Iran 29:18 When the Last Jet Landed Have a story? Want to Connect? Advertise? https://theafterburnpodcast.com/contact/

Operation Midnight Hammer through the eyes of the F-16 Wild Weasel fighter pilots who flew into Iran. Ghost" Trembly and "Cash" Croghan were the wing and squadron weapons officers for the 55th Fighter Squadron, the F-16 Wild Weasels who flew Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses ahead of the B-2 strike on Iran. Watch the three-part documentary series on Afterburn Defense: Part I: https://youtu.be/MgQ_X3Td8a4 Part II: https://youtu.be/GzdL6NMYDso Part III: https://youtu.be/Xc22-2RaGSY They planned the F-16 portion of the strike package. In this conversation, they explain why a fourth-generation fighter flew into Iran alongside the B-2s and F-35s, how the squadron reconfigured from the Yemen fight in a matter of hours, and why nobody in the squadron believed the mission was real until it was. Before Iran, the 55th Fighter Squadron fought over Yemen in Operation Rough Rider, a sustained air campaign against Houthi surface-to-air threats. What they learned there is the reason the F-16 Block 50 and the AGM-88 HARM were part of the strike package on June 21st, 2025. These interviews were recorded between December 2025 and January 2026 and preserve firsthand accounts from pilots, maintainers, intelligence officers, and logistics airmen who were there. 0:00 Preparing the Squadron for Deployment 5:16 New Equipment: AESA Radar and the F-16 Block 50 8:52 Operation Rough Rider: Counter-UAS Over Yemen 15:31 Mission Planning on a Folding Table 21:14 Five Days Out: Nobody Believed It Was Real 28:49 Reconfiguring the Jets From Rockets to HARMs 31:45 The Night "Glitch" Shot a SAM in 8 Seconds and saved "Cash" 41:21 Why the F-16 Was the Only Jet That Could Do It 46:38 The 15-Minute Brief Before Flying Into Iran 49:47 A 300 Mile Ingress Into Iranian Airspace 1:05:50 Is That a Missile Coming Off the Ground 1:12:41 How Tight the Fuel Really Was 1:20:40 Bunker Diving and Life on the Base Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify Podcasts: Apple - https://apple.co/3dLradT Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3SAeSUr Afterburn Podcast Links: Website – https://www.theafterburnpodcast.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/theafterburnpodcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rainwaters27/?hl=en Have a story? Want to Connect? Advertise? https://theafterburnpodcast.com/contact/

Last Tuesday I spent five hours getting my daughter a passport. Five hours. Flew to Chicago. Stayed overnight. Sat in the passport office at 9:15 in the morning. And before that, four hours pulling documents together, finding out our printer was broke, and driving to go buy a printer. Who even uses printers. And that was the single best proof I've ever had that any of this actually worked. Not a revenue screenshot. Not the exit. A boring Tuesday I got to waste on purpose. We built and sold this thing. 4,600 plus coaches through IFCA. This is legitimately my last week inside the company. And I spent about eight years chasing a word I couldn't have defined for you if you'd asked me. That word is freedom. In this episode I'm going to give you the four bosses you answer to on the way to freedom, and then I'm going to put my actual numbers on the table and try to break them in front of you.   Time Stamps:   (1:08) Getting A Passport of Marlee (2:35) Arriving At Freedom (6:54) Boss #3 (9:45) Boss #4 Is You (12:00) The Freedom Formula ----------------

Hello c'est margo ! J'espère que vous allez bien ? Aujourd'hui je suis de retour pour vous donner mon avis sur le film Chinois "Fish flew away ". J'espère que l'épisode va vous plaire ! 

# Episode 157: Swedish Ghost Rockets – A Deep Dive into Declassified UAP History **Episode Summary** – In this compelling episode of the Rocky Mountain UFO Podcast, we examine recently declassified government files that illuminate decades of military and intelligence encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). From the 1946 Swedish Ghost Rocket wave to modern infrared footage of "cold orbs" over the Gulf of Oman, this presentation reveals a consistent pattern of advanced technology that defies conventional explanation. --- ## The 2021 Gulf of Oman Incident: UAPs React to Weapons Fire Among the most striking revelations in recent document releases is footage from September 2021, captured by a U.S. Special Operations Forces AC-130J gunship during a live-fire exercise over the Gulf of Oman . **Key details from the incident:** - Approximately **25 UAP instances** were observed on infrared sensors - Objects described as **"cold orbs"** approximately four feet in diameter - Speeds ranging from **250 to 1,300 miles per hour** - No detected means of propulsion - Objects appeared to **react to the aircraft firing its main cannon**, described as "similar to how dolphins playfully swim in a pod" The objects were first spotted hovering above a water-activated flare dropped as a mock target, suggesting deliberate observation of military activity . --- ## FBI Reconstructions: Massive Triangular Craft The fifth PURSUE tranche of declassified files, released August 7, 2026, includes FBI digital reconstructions of large triangular objects that have repeatedly appeared near military installations . **Notable triangular UAP sightings include:** ### Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan – 2002 At approximately 4:30 AM, a U.S. military pilot observed stars becoming obscured, revealing a massive equilateral triangular object estimated at **over 150 meters in size** – larger than any aircraft ever built . The object: - Flew from west to east at a stable speed of approximately 150 knots (277 km/h) - Emitted **no sound or light** - Maintained constant altitude - Was witnessed by a fellow pilot who asked, "Did you see that?" ### Additional Sightings - **2011 Afghanistan** – Two U.S. servicemen reported a similar triangular craft - **2023 Colorado Springs** – A former Pentagon employee described a "dark, triangular object that felt transparent" Harvard astrophysicist **Avi Loeb** noted that a 150-meter craft would exceed any known aircraft in size, lending credibility to military witnesses with decades of experience . --- ## Historical Context: The 1946 Swedish Ghost Rockets The episode traces the phenomenon back to the summer of 1946, when approximately **1,500–2,000 sightings** were recorded across Scandinavia . **Characteristics of the Ghost Rockets:** - Observed during both day and night - High-speed projectiles with ball or projectile shapes - Incandescent colors: blue, white, red, green, or yellow - Sometimes associated with noise - Observed too far away for detailed examination The Swedish Defense Staff conducted a comprehensive investigation but attributed sightings to astronomical phenomena – a conclusion that U.S. Project Blue Book and Project Grudge officers accepted without further investigation . ### The Soviet Missile Hypothesis At the time, many assumed the objects were Soviet V-2 rockets developed from captured German technology. The Soviets had active missile programs at Mittelwerk, Germany, in 1946, potentially conducting test launches toward the North Sea . However, declassified Swedish files show sightings continued even after press coverage ended, suggesting the phenomenon transcended any single explanation . --- ## Performance Characteristics Defying Known Physics Across multiple declassified documents, a consistent pattern emerges of UAPs exhibiting performance characteristics that **cannot be reconciled with known aerospace engineering** : | Characteristic | Documentation | |----------------|---------------| | 90-degree turns at high speed | Multiple military encounters | | Cold-IR objects emitting no heat | Gulf of Oman 2021 | | Hypersonic travel without sonic signatures | Various reports | | Sustained transmedium flight | Multiple sensor data | | Instantaneous acceleration | Historical and modern cases | These characteristics have been documented across **decades of multi-sensor military encounters**, sworn Congressional testimony, and the unclassified record of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence . --- ## The PURSUE Declassification Program The released documents are part of the **Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE)** , launched by the Department of War on May 8, 2026, following President Trump's February 2026 directive ordering agencies to declassify UAP and UFO records . **What's included:** - 41 files released in the fifth tranche (August 7, 2026) - 513 MB of video footage, 130 MB of documents - Materials from the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, State Department, and Office of the President - Unresolved cases spanning from the 1950s to 2026 **Official statement:** Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated, "These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation – and it's time the American people see it for themselves" . --- ## Conclusion: A Persistent Reality The cumulative evidence presented in this episode suggests that UAPs represent a **persistent reality rather than explainable errors**. From the 1946 Ghost Rockets to modern military encounters, these declassified sources demonstrate: 1. **Consistent reporting** of advanced performance characteristics across decades 2. **Active documentation** by multiple government agencies 3. **Repeated interactions** with military assets 4. **Unresolved cases** that the government cannot explain As former defense analyst Marik von Rennenkampff observed, "These new records continue to show a great deal of strange and extremely inexplicable activity in the sky" . --- **Listen to the full episode of the Rocky Mountain UFO Podcast for an in-depth analysis of these documents and the implications for our understanding of non-human technology.** *The truth is out there… and it's waiting in the Rockies.*

Everything to Know About Mitch McConnell's Wife — After She Flew to China During Ailing Senator's HospitalizationAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For the first time, the whole story of the last two years — told from the other side. In this episode: The heroine's journey — the map: the hero comes home with the treasure; the heroine realizes she is the treasure, and she is the home The launch that cracked it open: 21 yeses where 90 used to say yes — and the sentence that took over December 2024: the call that was harder than the breakup — and why it turned out to be the first brave decision of the rebirth THE VALUES AUDIT — five signs your season is a values change, not a collapse: (1) the wins land flat, (2) you're still funding your old self, (3) you envy the "wrong" people, (4) you keep changing the strategy but never question the goal, (5) "it's not working" has become a sentence instead of a fact Tonight's ten-minute exercise: your calendar + your bank statement — still, or was What ten days of silence in India returned — and what the new values are building now (new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, starting this week) Timestamps :  00:00 — Cold open: the training and the December call 03:57 — The heroine's journey: the map 05:57 — The empire years 08:19 — Values have seasons 09:21 — The whisper: "It's not working" 10:42 — Trying to fix it 12:22 — December 2024: the call 14:35 — "The first brave decision of the rebirth" 15:36 — It wasn't a failure — it was a values change 18:32 — Old strategies, new values 19:47 — The Paris apartment and the cabin 22:08 — The Values Audit: #1, the wins land flat 22:48 — #2, funding your old self 23:51 — #3, envying the wrong people 24:31 — #4, new strategy, same goal 26:27 — #5, a sentence, not a fact 27:24 — Tonight: calendar and bank statement 27:48 — India, Bali, the silence 30:07 — The return 31:57 — Money and meaning 34:02 — If you're in this season 35:54 — "You are the treasure"  

Five plane tickets to Europe. $423 total out of pocket.In this episode, I'm walking you through his entire trip, step by step and how we booked it. In this episode:Where they started (spoiler: probably right where you are now)Transfer partners behind the tripHis points stash and what points we usedResources: Webinar: https://event.webinarjam.com/g8oq9z/register/209ox6sl?webinar_id=2Best Credit Card Offers: Points Too Paradise Top OffersTravel Points Lounge: Travel Points Lounge | Points Too Paradise

Micky Papa discusses growing up in Canada, scheming to help his family, drinking when he was a teenager, jumping through the hoops to get sponsored, how Sluggo helped his family during the Christmas holiday, getting a commercial gig & paid his family's rent, getting on Blind Skateboards, getting into SLS from the Tampa Pro contest, how quad tendinitis almost took him out, Yuto staying at his house early on in his career and much more! Micky Papa Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/micky_papaBecome a Channel Member & Receive Perks: https://www.youtube.com/TheNineClub/joinNew Merch: https://thenineclub.com Sponsored By: AG1: Get a FREE Welcome Kit worth $76 when you subscribe, including 5 AG1Travel Packs, a shaker, canister, scoop & bottle of AG Vitamin D3+K2. https://drinkag1.com/nineclub LMNT: Grab a free Sample Pack with 8 flavors when you buy any drink mix or Sparkling. https://drinklmnt.com/nineclub Woodward: Purchase Adult Summer Camp with the code THENINECLUB and receive a $50 discount off of Adult Camp. https://www.woodwardpa.com/weekend-open-ride-sessions/adult-camps Monster Energy: Monster Energy's got the punch you need to stay focused and fired up. https://www.monsterenergy.com Yeti: Built for the wild, Yeti keeps you ready for any adventure. https://www.yeti.com Richardson: Custom headwear for teams, brands, and businesses crafted with quality in every stitch. https://richardsonsports.com Etnies: Get 15% off your purchase using our code NINECLUB or use our custom link. https://etnies.com/NINECLUB éS Footwear: Get 15% off your purchase using our code NINECLUB or use our custom link. https://esskateboarding.com/NINECLUB Emerica: Get 15% off your purchase using our code NINECLUB or use our custom link. https://emerica.com/NINECLUB Find The Nine Club: Website: https://thenineclub.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenineclub X: https://www.twitter.com/thenineclub Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenineclub Discord: https://discord.gg/thenineclub Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/nineclub Nine Club Clips: https://www.youtube.com/nineclubclips More Nine Club: https://www.youtube.com/morenineclub I'm Glad I'm Not Me: https://www.youtube.com/chrisroberts Chris Roberts: https://linktr.ee/Chrisroberts Timestamps (00:00:00) Micky Papa (00:03:21) Learning fakie tricks (00:05:34) Quad tendinitis almost took him out (00:18:16) Practicing for PSL (Close Friends List) (00:22:10) Getting into skateboarding (00:24:23) Jumping through the hoops to get sponsored (00:31:12) Online money making schemes (00:41:08) RDS pass (00:44:07) Tough up bringing, Drinking as a teenager (00:55:32) Scheming to help his family (00:59:59) Got a commercial gig for $3,500 & paid his family's rent (01:15:01) Coming to the States (01:19:48) Damn am & getting on Blind Skateboards (01:25:11) Reverse engineering a goal (01:30:01) Getting into SLS from the Tampa Pro contest (01:33:36) Flew down from Canada to skate a gap in malibu (01:38:09) He's a free agent (01:41:31) Ted talk (01:47:41) Yuto stayed at his house early on Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next of Kin After Stroke: When Your 19-Year-Old Has to Decide For You Kylie Ralston was 56, living alone in Sofia, Bulgaria, and getting back into shape after a divorce. Three mornings a week she ran. On the morning everything changed, she was doing a local park run with her friend Rebecca when she slowed to a walk, then tried to run again and couldn’t. “It was like the message wasn’t getting through from my brain to my legs,” she says. No headache. No fatigue. Nothing that felt like an emergency. She finished the run, registered her time, and went home. It wasn’t until she collapsed getting out of the car that anyone understood what was happening. By the time Kylie reached hospital, she had suffered a left frontoparietal haemorrhagic stroke, a spontaneous brain bleed roughly 7.5cm across, with none of the usual risk factors. No high blood pressure. No cholesterol history. No aneurysm, no AVM. She was placed in an induced coma for four days. When she woke, she couldn’t move her right side, and she couldn’t speak. What “Next of Kin” Really Means When a Stroke Hits Abroad Kylie was a permanent resident of Bulgaria, not a citizen, divorced from her daughter’s father, and living on her own. When the hospital needed someone to authorise emergency surgery, there was exactly one person available to make that call: her daughter, then 19 years old, splitting her time between her separated parents’ homes. It’s a detail easy to skim past, but it sits at the centre of this episode: next of kin isn’t a role most of us think about until a hospital needs an answer immediately. Kylie hadn’t nominated her daughter out of any formal planning process; it simply fell to her, because she was the only adult relative in the country who met the age threshold. A 19-Year-Old Signing Consent-to-Operate Forms Kylie’s friends contacted her daughter directly. She rushed to the hospital, and unconscious, unable to advocate for herself, her mother’s care now depended on decisions made by a teenager under enormous duress. Kylie’s first memory afterward is her daughter arriving in the ICU in a hairnet and scrubs, holding her hand, telling her she loved her. It’s the kind of moment that rarely makes it into conversations about stroke recovery, because the focus so often lands on rehabilitation milestones: walking, speaking, returning to work. But before any of that, someone has to be legally empowered to say yes to surgery, and for Kylie, that someone hadn’t expected the responsibility for another few decades. The Gap Between Acute Surgery and Real Rehabilitation Bulgaria’s acute care, Kylie and her friend Nicole Nott both stress, was world-class surgery within roughly two hours of the stroke, the kind of outcome her friends still describe as a miracle given the size of the bleed. What came next was a different story. In the public hospital, physiotherapy visits totalled two sessions. There was no speech therapy. After 14 days, still unable to move her right side or speak, Kylie was expected to go home. Her partner, Guido, refused to accept it, and the couple began privately funding rehabilitation themselves. This is a distinction worth sitting with if you or someone you love is navigating stroke recovery in a country or even a region with limited public rehab funding: acute survival and functional recovery are not the same fight, and they are not always resourced the same way. When a Friend Becomes the Rehab Team Nicole Nott, an occupational therapist and Kylie’s friend since they were 16, found out about the stroke through a message she initially suspected was a scam. Within days she’d cleared her schedule and flown from Australia to Bulgaria. What she found in the private rehab hospital was a caring but under-trained care team, kind staff with, as Nicole puts it, “no rehab expertise.” Nicole spent close to two weeks restructuring Kylie’s room and routine around basic stroke rehabilitation principles: approaching from Kylie’s affected right side to address her spatial inattention, built-up cutlery to force use of her weaker hand, a balloon tapped back and forth for shoulder strength, word games layered on top for speech practice, pegs and curtains repurposed into arm exercises. She also pushed back hard against hospital staff who tried to stop her from helping Kylie transfer to a shower chair or toilet, at one point being told outright she wasn’t permitted because she was a woman. Her single goal before flying home: get Kylie toileting independently again, for dignity as much as mobility. Kylie called her from Dubai airport, mid-transit, to tell her it had happened. Living With Aphasia Fourteen months on, Kylie’s right-side weakness has largely resolved. What remains, she says, is the hardest part: expressive aphasia. “I can’t express myself like I used to.” It’s a small, telling detail of the condition that even the phrase “I can’t” is itself shaped by the aphasia; the words available to describe the loss are affected by the loss. The Unexpected Gains Both women point to what came out of the crisis alongside the hardship: Kylie’s relationship with her daughter deepened. Her circle of friends in Bulgaria proved itself in ways she hadn’t anticipated. And in the rehab hospital, her partner Guido proposed something; he told her he’d already decided before the stroke but simply hadn’t gotten around to asking. If this episode raises questions about who is legally positioned to make decisions for you and whether that person actually knows it, it may be worth a conversation with your own family before a crisis forces the issue. For a deeper account of navigating identity, recovery, and unexpected transformation after stroke, Bill’s book The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened is available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If this show has helped you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Kylie Ralston: Stroke, Bulgaria, and the Friend Who Flew Across the World When Kylie had a stroke abroad, her 19-year-old daughter became her next of kin, and a friend flew in to help her recover. Bill’s Book: The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened Support the Recovery After Stroke On Patreon Highlights: 00:00 Introduction – Next of Kin After Stroke03:47 The Day of the Stroke08:55 Rehabilitation Challenges in Bulgaria16:32 Coping with Language Barriers22:08 Reflections on Healthcare Systems32:50 Setting Goals and Achievements38:29 Family Dynamics and Support Systems45:36 Finding Meaning in Recovery54:44 The Impact of Caregiving58:22 Reflections on Recovery and Gratitude Transcript: Introduction – Next of Kin After Stroke Bill Gasiamis (00:00)And one of my first horrible thoughts was, is this a dreadful hoax? Is someone, you know, is this some horrible scam? And it made me feel quite sick actually And then I rang her son who lives in Australia and he’s like, Yeah, I’m so sorry. I haven’t told you. Yes, it’s true, mum’s had a stroke. Bill Gasiamis (00:16)Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m Bill Gasiamis, and today I’m joined by two guests, Kylie Ralston and her friend Nicole Nott. Kylie was 56 living in Bulgaria when she suffered a left frontoparietal hemorrhagic stroke, a spontaneous brain bleed with none of the usual risk factors. Nicole is an occupational therapist and one of Kylie’s closest friends since they were teenagers. And when she found out what happened, she got on a plane to Bulgaria to help. In this episode, we get into what it means to have a stroke far from home in a country where you don’t speak the language, and public rehabilitation funding barely exists. We talk about who becomes your next of kin when you least expect it, what it’s like to advocate for a friend inside a hospital system that won’t always listen. And what recovery actually looks like 14 months on, before we get into it, if you want a deeper look at identity, recovery, and unexpected transformation after stroke, my book, The Unexpected Way That Stroke Became, the best thing that happened, is available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if this show has helped you And you can support it to keep me on the path of getting to a thousand episodes, you can do so At patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke Bill Gasiamis (01:37)Kylie Ralston and Nicole Nott, welcome to the podcast. lovely to be here, Bill. Thanks for having us, Bill. Kylie, tell me a little bit about what life was like before the stroke. I was very active and I had a full life and I was working full time. and I was living in Sofia in Bulgaria, in my on my own, in my own apartment. I was renting, actually. and I was getting back to fitness. So I was g getting I was running regularly. So two two or three times a week I was hitting the gym and hitting the tr the treadmill. And that had been happening for like a few month like six months or something like that. but before that I was very fit and active. What kind of work were you involved in? I was a HR work. I was a ha HR leader and so I had my own consultancy I had a team of people that I’ve managed. I had thirty five people, so and that they were people in Germany, Poland, Czechia, Portugal, France, so everywhere in in Europe, basically. Yeah. Wow, how how does an Aussie end up in Bulgaria with staff or clients in that many countries? short answer is I came here with my family, so with my ex husband. and shortly after I arrived we separated and and ultimately got divorced. and I stayed on because my daughter is here. So she was only eleven at the time and I could just couldn’t leave her. The Day of the Stroke So you were living at home with your daughter? she was sharing her time between between us both. Yeah. got it. Okay. So both parents are there. So your daughter was going backwards and forwards. On the night of the stroke or on the day of the stroke, can you take us through that? What were you experiencing? Was there anything unusual that happened that made you think something was wrong? How did it go down? I was with my friend Rebecca. And she was running ahead of me as she she was faster than me, so sh and she often often ran ahead of me. and I’d slowed down to a walk and when I started to run again or try to run again, it it was like the message wasn’t getting through from my brain to my legs. And I thought, that’s strange, that’s that’s really odd. ‘Cause I didn’t feel like tired or anything and I didn’t have a headache and well stuff like that. and I just walked through the rest of the park run. And then when Rebecca saw me coming to the finish line, she waved me over and she said, come on, let’s go register your chip. and so I did that. and she said afterwards that there was a little bit of fumbling with with my phone and there’s a there was a little bit of fumbling when I put my jacket on, but other than that, I just seemed exhausted from a run. do you recall after the experience of feeling exhausted from the run where you ended up? Did you need help? Yeah, I do. So so she didn’t notice that I wasn’t talking because I n I’m normally an endless talker, so I she didn’t notice that I wasn’t talking. And she said that that that is one thing that should have alerted her to what was happening. but it it didn’t. And so I’d caught the bus to the park run and her husband was there and so he drove me home. And I j I remember the journey home and when when we when I went to get out, I just couldn’t. And so and Mark came around to my side of the car and help tried to help me out and I just collapsed against him. And so then that so then they said, quick, something’s wrong something’s I don’t remember what they  They they said, you know, they basically took me straight to the hospital. Yeah. And also rang Guido, my now fiance, but my partner at the time. Uh-huh. So you you went from the run, attempted to go home, and then from that attempt to get you out of the car, actually into your home, it was pretty clear that that wasn’t gonna happen and you ended up in hospital. so Did you guys drive to hospital? Do you recall that? Yes. Yes. We do how far is it from your home? it’s pretty close. I don’t know about kilometres or time, but it’s but it’s like ten or fifteen minutes. Yeah, so it’s not too far. But they didn’t know what was going on, of course. They just knew something wasn’t right and then they figured one of the best things to do is just get it to a hospital. You get to the hospital Do you know what happens after that? Do you get admitted? do you get tested for anything? I suppose what I’m asking is when is the first time you realise that that you’ve had a stroke? When do they report that back? When I came out of the coma. So I was put I was put into an an induced coma straight away. so I I obviously don’t remember anything of of that. and but Rebecca’s told me afterwards. so she’s filled in the f filled in the filled in the blanks for me. and by that stage her husband thought it was a stroke. So she’s he said he said to the staff at the hospital, we think she’s having a stroke. And so yeah. So how long were you in the coma, do you know? Has somebody told you how long it was? Yeah, four four days. Four days, okay. And do you know what kind of stroke you had? Yep. I had a left Frontoparietal hemorrhagic stroke. Wow, that’s a good effort. So you had a brain bleed. Yep. Do they know what caused it? No. It was spontaneous and I didn’t have any of the risk factors. So I didn’t have high blood pressure, a history of high blood pressure, but admittedly I’d hadn’t tested my blood pressure immediately before the stroke. but you know That’s un that’s unlikely to be the cause. And I didn’t have a hi a history of high cholesterol. and so they just and I didn’t have an aneurysm and I didn’t have like what’s the other thing? The An AV AVM. AVM, yeah, I didn’t have any of that. And how old were you? Fifty six. Okay. So you had a spontaneous Bleed in the brain. That happens. People do have that happen from time to time. And sometimes they don’t have any symptoms leading up to it or anything like that. and this is the bizarre nature of like there’s an unlimited number of ways, unfortunately, for people to have a stroke. Now, you woke up in hospital four days later. What kind of deficits did you have? I couldn’t move my right side and I couldn’t speak. Okay. Now I’ve got an idea of well, I haven’t got an idea, but my mind immediately kind of says like if you’re in hospital in Bulgaria, that’s not a hospital in Melbourne. That’s not the Royal Melbourne hospital where no shit is unreal, like it’s perfect and it’s got the highest technology and it doesn’t matter how many things we can bitch and moan about the system being here like compared to Bulgaria, my expectation is that we’re world class. Perhaps that’s not the case in Bulgaria. Would you agree with that statement? I would have agreed before and my my my expat friends here would have agreed before, but now we’re all saying maybe Bulgaria is better than we thought. That’s brilliant. Awesome. Okay, so Rehabilitation Challenges in Bulgaria As far as like medical interventions and all that type of stuff, you felt like that was handled like any other world class hospital would have handled it. Yeah. In that in that s it in that stage it was. but there’s no like that was a public hospital and there’s no there’s no public funded rehab after. or or very li very little. So so that’s where that’s where Australia is ahead. So when you knew you had deficits, was there any rehabilitation whatsoever? Did you get any of that while you were still in hospital? Minimal. So the the physio came to see me twice. and so that’s so that’s all and I got no speech therapy and stuff like that. and but when I was discharged from the public hospital here and went and so they they expected me to go home from the public hospital. And so Guido said she just can’t like like what what the fuck? After how many days? After how many days, how long? Fourteen. Wow, your right side was still offline and you still had problem. Yeah. Okay. So we we just paid for paid for private rehab. got it, right. Yeah. And how long were you in private rehab for? another like two months or something like that. Right. Okay, that’s pretty cool. So i even though you couldn’t access it publicly, you were still able to Access a private now. Are you a citizen in Bulgaria? Not a citizen, a permanent resident. Okay. So do you have are you as a result of the fact that you’re a permanent resident and not a citizen, do you have different things that you are able to access because of your status? No. no. I’m it’s I have the same rights as a citizen. The only one the only right I don’t have is I’m I’m not able to vote here and I’m not I’m not able to work in other EU countries. Got it. Okay. So that’s pretty traumatizing, the whole experience, and then to have to deal with overcoming your left side and your speech deficits after the two month mark, roughly where were you at where you where you are now? Because you kinda sound pretty good. Okay. No, yeah. no and and the other thing the other thing that I must say about Bulgaria is I don’t speak Bulgarian. very very little. So that was a problem. Yeah. I can imagine, yeah. so maybe you can come in here, Nicole, and and talk about where I was at when you came to see me, because that was very very very early on in my in in the private rehab hospital. Yeah, Nicole, tell me a little bit about what it’s like to receive a phone call to find out that your friend has had a stroke. I was absolutely hellish. the way I found out is I got a message through social media from someone saying, Hey, I’m a friend of Kylie’s and she’s in hospital in Bulgaria. And one of my first horrible thoughts was, is this a dreadful hoax? Is someone, you know, is this some horrible scam? And it really, you know, it made me feel quite sick actually thinking this is that’s not someone I know. It does look like a name I’ve seen in Kylie’s kind of social media world. And then I rang her son who lives in Australia and he’s like, Yeah, I’m so sorry. I haven’t told you. Yes, it’s true, mum’s had a stroke. and I was kind of beside myself because by training I’m an occupational therapist, but Kylie and I have known each other each other since we were about 16. and it was really hard to get the information that I wanted as a friend, but also as a health professional. I was wanting to understand what kind of stroke is it? Where is it? What’s the rehab? What can we do? How’s it going? And at that stage the information that I had was that you know, it was really seriously affected the speech part of the brain and obviously the hemiplegia, the weakness down the right side and knowing that Kylie was right handed. so, you know, it’s the friendship part that your heart’s breaking and it’s also the therapist part that’s wanting the information to be able to, you know, reconcile it for myself, professionally what that was going to look like as a consequence for Kylie. Yeah, and you’re so far away, so you really can’t do anything and kind of have to like take information second hand, third hand, and be kind of in a position which is really uncomfortable for, I imagine, a friend, but also a therapist, right? So as an occupational therapist, that’s not the information you work on. You work on actual facts, scans, reports, like a whole bunch of things. So are you also playing it out in your mind? Are you kind of Doom thinking it, like are you how does it affect you personally? I think for me I was all I was really very conscious of not stressing other people. So like friends, family, because sometimes when you are a health professional, you know, you have knowledge and information and you know, you sometimes you you’re keeping that to yourself to some extent because you do know what can happen to people and you do know what consequences can be. So I was really trying not to ask too many questions of people as well. but I was seriously desperate for information. And so I remember I’d gone to a party and I didn’t really want to go because I was actually, you know, upset and stressed for Kylie. And I did end up going to a party and during the party I was really kind of outside having a bit of a downer really by a campfire. but I got a phone call or a message to say that I think you’d said some words, Kylie, and were kind of waking up. so you’re still in the acute hospital then and that you’d been able to move your leg a little bit, I think. Yeah. And you know, joy in that moment. And yeah, I felt very, very far away. And then What happens over the next few days? Like do you guys continue to communicate somehow? Do you keep getting information? Are you being updated? Yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t able to get my into my phone or my any of my devices. So I wasn’t able to able to because I couldn’t remember my password, right? And so and and I tried like d different ones and I you know I just got locked out. So and when I was able to get in then that made it it made it easier t because I was able just text short messages. So so Nicole and I kept in touch that way. and before English-speaking Before you came, Nicole, I think I was talking, but not not not as well as I am now. Yeah. So was it, Nicole, in your mind, you were always going to fly over to Bulgaria and beath your friend? Or did you guys have to work that out? Like what happened now? It’s so cool that you get to have a somebody in your corner that is also a Fred, but also a medical professional in the exact field that you’re struggling with now. Right. Like how do you just drop everything and go overseas and be with your friend? Yeah, well, very grateful that I had an up to date passport. So that was that was a good thing. Kylie, it was interesting because the texting, like if I go back and look at that history, it’s like you can see the progress in the texts. So you can see that Kylie was using kind of more single words and having struggles with spelling and putting sentences together. And then over time, you know, they became more fluent. but the thing that happened was that Kylie and I were talking and she was able to you know, she got some speech back and we were talking. And she was just saying about the rehab care that the the the kind of caring staff just seemed to have no rehab expertise. So the physios were amazing. I think they were great. There was no active speech therapy for Kylie. I think we ultimately found an English speaking speech therapist but who still had Bulgarian as a first language. And there’s very few occupational therapists in Bulgaria, seems to be some expats. And Kylie was talking to me a jab about just you know, really basic things like not being taken to the toilet. and that’s probably what broke my heart. It’s like I cannot leave her in bed, not being able to go to the toilet. I just can’t do it. And so I just said to my partner, I think I just need to go to Bulgaria. And luckily I’m self-employed. So I just kind of cleared my schedule, got on a plane and yeah, I was just I suppose I’m incredibly grateful to have the skill. incredibly grateful to have the financial ability to do it. and yeah, and the skills to do it. And you know, you don’t always get an opportunity in life to do the right thing, or sometimes you don’t make that decision and later you think, Why didn’t I do X, Y, and Z? I try not to live my life like that. I try to actually do those things. So, yeah, I got on a plane and basically arrived at the airport, got on a train straight out to see Kylie at the Rehope Hospital. You’re a real superhero. I’m very grateful to Nicole. Yeah. I rec you know, my story is kind of well, it has a similar kind of thread to it. I one of my best friends is a radiographer and he was a radiographer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital where I was a patient for nearly two and a half years because I was in and out with a number of brain hemorrhages. I had three in total in the same spot, but over two and a half years, then I had brain surgery. And I can’t tell you how many scans I had, but being a radiographer, he was the one who was in the room taking the photos through the MRI. Yeah. And then he would come out. And he would tell us what he saw in the RI, which was against the rules. that’s why I won’t name him. But but that meant that we didn’t have to wait a month to get our results and the the meeting for the results was just more of we’ll go through the process and and have the meeting. Yeah. And and and it was like and I regretted my life when at school I used to throw his books on the roof of the canteen just to mess with him going to s to class late to get in trouble. and I’ve apologised profusely for that and thanked him every day for the fact that, you know, he was able to lend his well, you know, he was able to be in the room. He was able to have that conversation with us and he was able to ease our minds. over that two and a half year period and then you won’t believe it. Like his daughter had an AVM at seventeen. And she went through that and and has recovered from that somewhat now in the last few years. and I got to be I mean I hate that I had to be this guy, but I got to be the guy that supported him through that really acute phase and There is just nothing to describe what it’s like to be able to a repay the favor. and then but B, when I was in that situation to have somebody kind of well, you know, like put their arm around me and really walk me through every stage. Me and my wife and my family walk us through every stage of that part of it, other than intervening as a brain surgeon. But he was the one that put us in char in in touch with my brain surgeon. like Everything that happened was just the most amazing experience to be able to be guided like that. And I know it’s a privilege and many people don’t get that opportunity. so I see Chris, I haven’t told him this in person. I see him as like a bit of a superhero, but he doesn’t know that. I’ve told him I love him in the way men tell each other that they love each other by s abusing him and swearing at him and telling him that the team that he follows is terrible and all that kind of stuff. Reflections on Healthcare Systems so you arrived in Bulgaria. take me from the airport to the hospital. Like what happens? How is that? Actually the flight was really good. Customs was pretty easy. There was some annoying folk in front of me who I wanted to punch in the face and tell them to hurry up, but I was just, you know, needed to to get there. Kylie’s daughter met me at the airport. And then we got the train together out to the hospital. So, you know, obviously I’m seeing my first sight of Bulgaria. I’d never been there before. so not really taking a tourist route at this point. so went out to see Kylie. And, you know, when you just eyeball someone and I, you know, just thank God I’m here, I’m in front of her. Her she’d had a shaved head. she had some pretty spectacular surgical scars, a couple of very big scabs still on her head. she looked skinny, she looked pale, she had started doing a little bit of movement and the hospital room was really kind basic and crazy. Her friends had funded a pressure mattress for her that didn’t exist. And some of these things I had been liaising with Kylie’s friends in Bulgaria about what could we do, how you know, what do we want to prevent? So we want to prevent anyone pulling on from. Her weak shoulders and like don’t let anyone pull her by the arm. this is how I want, you know, to help her with posture in bed or in sitting. and you know, like speaking in single kind of actions at a time and just take your time, say something, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just allow Kylie’s brain to, you know, take that information on board. Don’t speak for her. and when I got there, it was really clear that. She had an inattention to the right hand side as an effect from the stroke. So then I was a bit of a ball breaker, rearranging the whole room. No, no, no, no, no. Where, you know, everyone come from the right, everyone sit on the right. no cutler, you’re not allowed to have your phone in your left hand, you’re having your phone in your right hand. I’d taken some things with me from Australia to Bulgaria that I thought she might need. like some built-up cutlery, because I wanted her to use her right hand to feed herself. I took a couple of kind of activities that I thought we could do to look at some retraining for the right arm. what I’ll still bring with me, try to remember now. Benjamin. So yeah, just try kind of going into early stroke rehab principles. Yeah. Did you go there well you went there as a friend. But when you were there, were you able to be a professional and also have a conversation with the local team? Kylie and I laughing. Do you want to tell that story, Kylie? Which one are you thinking about? Where I got told off. No, I don’t remember that. well, Kylie was in act like, you know, there was still quite a lot of weakness, but she was also so determined for her own rehab. And in the system there their carers really don’t have a rehab focus. They have a I’ll provide you a meal focus and I’ll occasionally do some cleaning and I’ll occasionally change the bed linen and but really not a rehab focus. So I’ve personally found it quite easy to help Kylie to like stand move. And so the very first weekend I was there, it was a long weekend and what I didn’t realise later was that they were actually quite understaffed. Which worked in our favour because I was helping Kylie to get onto a shower chair, taking her to have a shower, us taking her to the toilet, because prior to that time they were just, you know, using pads for toileting because Kylie couldn’t stand up or move on her own. And because I’m trained, I found it very easy. She’s a lightweight person and she and I just work together and I could do that. I think it was the Tuesday, person who I refer to as Nurse Ratchet. remembering now kind of intercepted me bringing Kylie back from the bathroom to her room and just like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. What are you doing? Stop that, stop that, stop that. and you know, she and I are having a bit of a a discussion. And basically she’s refused and I’m allowed to move Kylie. So Kylie is sitting out in the corridor. I think I’d luckily kind of covered you up for privacy. and she’s like, No, you’re not allowed to move her. I’m gonna go and get the physio. I think at least forty minutes went by and then she comes back, well, okay, and I said, Look, I am a trained person, it’s easy, it’s safe. no, I’ll think about it. And then after I think another fifteen minutes she pushed your chair into the bedroom. And then I think it was probably another fifteen minutes where she just decided to move Kylie herself at that point. even though that was out of policy and the physios had to do it. And then it was all this discussion with me that you can’t do it. And in the end it was you can’t do it because you’re a woman. Not strong enough, you know. so yeah. Then Kylie and I kind of would go on clandestine missions because again, from a rehab point of view, being able to stand transfer, it’s putting all the weight through the leg, it’s giving feedback to the brain. I really wanted to make sure Kylie’s bladder and bowel were gonna work properly. And you know, sitting in bed and that’s just not ideal. So then Kylie’s like, Nicole, I want to go to the toilet. I was like, I’m banned, I’m banned, Mother Nurse Ratchet, I’m not allowed to take you. And I was like, shit. So I would go on a little mission, go look down the corridor, make sure she was nowhere to be seen. And then I quickly stole the shower chair and then I found a bucket. And so Kylie and I were doing secret Wii missions in the bedroom. until w on one of our missions I just hadn’t quite got the bucket in the right place. And so then I it was also then later on a cleaning mission. So it was it was a pretty crazy environment. yeah, just for that lack of t whole team approach to rehab. Whereas, you know, in Australia the nurses would all be rehab trained. They would be transferring someone physios would come in, speech would be coming, OTs would be coming. So I was kind of desperately trying to convince Kylie or to get her rehab to a standard where she’d be able to come back to Australia to get some more rehab. You know what’s good about this conversation other than the hilarious nature of it also is that I as an as a person who hadn’t had a stroke before my hadn’t known anyone who had a stroke before my experience, if I had come across somebody who had had a stroke, I wouldn’t have known what to look out for and what to say to support them in a situation where perhaps something was being neglected. Because I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m not a professional, right? Just like those nurses and therapists that weren’t specifically trained. Yeah. In certain things. I mean, you may as well be not only talking a different language, but you may as well be making it up as you go because as far as they know, now this is what we do for stroke patients. This is how we handle that. is it a lack of understanding of what r stroke rehabilitation requires, or is it a lack of resources, or is it a little bit of both? Do you feel in Bulgaria when you were there? I think I think it’s a lack of of all all of that but it’s the lack of maybe money. So it’s a lack of training. So th there’s there’s not enough there’s not the the nurses or the orderlies or whatever they’re called here, are are aren’t paid very much. So they so And t just like, even though I was in a private rehab hospital, so you would have expected that more. It’s you would have expected more, but I just think that they just don’t have the money to to train those people. Yeah. it wasn’t really a role, was it, Kylie? Like they really were more like housekeepers in a sense. It was more like cleaning a meals. I have to say the physios were excellent. and a lot of the physios had good English as well, which was for your rehab was so important. because again a lot of the carers they would come into the room and you know, again, just from a speech therapy point of view, in Australia, say if someone came into the room who was the person who did the menus or filled up the water bottles or the cleaners, Kyler could have spoken to all of those people and had   incidental communication the whole day in English. But because of all of those p incidental people coming in didn’t speak English, you know, reasonably in Bulgaria. it just for me, I was worried about the lack of just exposure to English language as well. So not even speech therapy, just incidental language through the day. Which is very helpful and people don’t realise how helpful it is to be able to speak to a nurse about how you’re feeling or what’s happening. Yeah. And all the usual stuff. And Kylie’s chatty and friendly and she would have just been having conversations galore, but it just it it it couldn’t be. Yeah. Yeah, it’s another another barrier. so you know when you go overseas, it’s your friend and you’re a professional. How do you handle that? Because you know, like are you emotional? Are you trying to put a lid on it? Are you allowing yourself to Gonna be emotional. How does that work? We had some killer laughs, didn’t we? I mean, I’m a joker anyway. And so, like the first time Kylie got to do a poo on the toilet, I just did a poo dance for her. So I I felt half my job was you know, cheering her up and keeping it light and having fun and chatting about stuff we would just always chat about. as well as doing as much rehab because it was very exhausting because, you know, p after a stroke, it’s very fatiguing. you know, so to Kylie was really tired and needed lots of rest. So and because I had just you know, obviously dropped tools to go over quickly, I was just working sometimes. So I just have my computer and if Kylie was asleep I’d just stay with her and and her partner Guido as well, who was there with her as well. So just, you know, emotional support wise. But Yeah, I do some work. And I stayed in Kylie’s apartment. So I w was I just stayed at her place and I I train out to see her each day at the hospital. W how many hours would you spend in hospital with her? What do you think, Kylie? you would often arrive at like ten in the morning and you wouldn’t go till like five in the evening or six in the evening. Yeah. So technically visiting hours kind of finished at six. So I just try and stay most of the day. A full shift. Yeah. Yeah. Unpaid. Unpaid labour. Slave driver. Yeah. yeah. But nah. That’s what friends are for. I very what I very much wanted to stay the whole day because I did really, really wanna like especially the toileting thing. I just really wanted that. Setting Goals and Achievements I had this bit of a goal for myself for Kylie that she would be able to take herself to the toilet before I left the country. So just from a dignity point of view, from a mobility point of view, transfers, you know, bladder control. So yeah, that was one of my big goals. And she rang me when I was in transit at Dubai Airport on my way back to Australia and said, Nicole, I just took myself to the toilet. Wow, that’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. And and I was having physio two physio sessions a d a wi a day. So I was having other than Nicole. So I was having like about one session about of about an hour in the morning and one session of about an hour in the in the afternoon. Got it. You Kylie seem like pretty mm chill, pretty calm. how are you handling it though, emotionally? How’s the aftermath Treating you because there’s a little bit of you know, there’s all that acute stuff. It’s awesome when your friend is there, but then your friend goes home, right? So how how does that transition kind of happen? Yeah, I might start crying. because I’ve just recently spent seven months in Australia. So I I went to Australia in October last year and I came back in just in May. and I had more rehab there. So I had I had student led rehab at at first and then I got in got accepted into Birch, which is the brain injury rehab community and home in Ad in Adelaide. so that’s that is is a whole team of people. So I had I had physio and I and a occupational therapist and a a e exercise physiologist and a speech therapist and stuff like that so I th that’s really good. now the most frustrating part for me is the aphasia so I I can’t I can’t express myself like I used to. Yeah. You know what I love about interviewing people who have aphasia is when they say I can’t in a sentence to describe something to me it triggers the part of the condition which doesn’t allow the words to come out. It’s so interesting. That happens so so often. And it’s just a for me, I noticed this I’m saying it just from a perspective is maybe I can’t is not the right word. I don’t know. You might remember this, you might not, but maybe I can’t is not the right word. Maybe the right word is Something that helps you get to the word that you need to get to. And okay, now that’s just me, the uneducated stroke survivor on a phasia guy. Like I don’t know about that. But it’s so interesting, it happens every time. but then Nicole goes home, you go home, your partner is kind of now taking over the caregiving role, and you still have some deficits. phage is one of them. what about your right side? How offline was it? I I also moved in with Guido after the after the stroke. So so that was that was a has was ha was and has continues to be a challenge because we’re still getting used to living together because we weren’t living together before. and I was very in very independent before. And I was living in Sofia and he and he and I now live in a in a village. So I live in in a village just outside of Sofia. And I’m not driving yet. but I was medically cleared to drive in Australia before I left. So I’m going through the process here. so anyway, all of all of those things together make it very challenging. don’t get me wrong, I I l I love him, but but you know, and and I d and and I made that decision because my apartment is was was on the fourth floor and th there was no lift. Wow. Yeah. So back to your question. When I was when I was when I came here, when I was discharged, I continued with as an outpatient and and the physio continued to come at home twice a week. So I was having more physio maybe like five times a week. and like it were ha had started to come my right side had was all already back online, but I would I was just working on building strength and and I would get still very tired. Yeah. And did your daughter end up coming to live with you as well? No. but she she at the beginning she she was my next of kin. So at the ripe old age of nineteen, she signed the consent to operate forms. yeah, so that was that was very difficult for her. I didn’t know that at the time, obviously. but yeah. And did that happen, did she become your next of kin because your former partner, her dad, and you had separated and then his that role wasn’t gonna be his anymore. It’s just passed down to the person who was the closest to you. Like how did that happen? Family Dynamics and Support Systems We’re divorced. I I’m divorced from her dad. Yeah. So he’s definitely not my next kin. Right. So that ha changed after the divorce and she was the only person you could nominate because she was over is there an age limit to the next of kin? Eighteen. Yeah. Okay. So she had hit that criteria, you nominated her and then at nineteen she got to make a decision. Which she never and you never would have expected ever for that to be a thing. I didn’t nominate her, it would just happen. So I was I I was unconscious at the time that she signed those forms. So yeah. So my friends actually contacted her. and she she rushed to the hospital. so it was all under duress. It was like this is what happened to your mum, you’re her Next of kin, whether you like it or not, you have to decide. Yeah. Far out. Okay, that’s pretty full on for a 19 year old. Yeah. Yeah, seems like she did a good job. How did she handle this whole mum’s not well situation, this stroke thing? Like how did she deal with it? she was very good. my first memory actually is of her coming into the ICU with with the with the whole, you know, the whole like the the hairnet and the mask and the and the and the what’s it called the scrubs. Scrubs, yeah. and she held my hand and said t that she loved me. so that was pretty special. And incidentally I have an a another memory of Guido coming into the ICU as well and singing singing to me. So he he said that he said that I always wanted him to sing and he refused before. And so did did I want him to sing to me now? And I squeezed his hand or on the on the left he’s was holding my left hand and I squeezed his hand and so he knelt down beside my bed and started singing. Wow. Can he actually hold the tune or is he hard to hear? Yes, see he’s he’s very musical. Okay. Thank God. If my wife had asked me to sing a w if I had asked my wife to sing, it wouldn’t have been a good experience at all for either of us. Yeah, he was he was a busker in i in his younger years. Yeah. and now he decided to come good. Fair enough. Well that that’s important. You know, things like that are important. It lightens the the mood and it makes Yeah. You kind of feel like your family’s around and that you know you know, maybe kind of things might be all right. Like it gives that glimmer of hope. Is that how you received it? Yeah, I did. yeah, but I’m also very, very determined. So I’m a I’m a very normally very strong woman and so everyone said to me that if if well not to me, but w we had a we had a group WhatsApp chat so and I was added to it later and everyone said in that that if anyone can get through this, Kylie can. Yeah. So you know when you’re told you’ve had a stroke, you wake up with all the deficits and everything. Are you like how do you take it? I woke up, couldn’t use my left side. I I did not for one minute. It did not cross my mind like for one minute that this is not a good thing. Like I mean, clearly I wasn’t able to move, etcetera. But it never kinda went a lifesaver, I’m fucked. Like I never had that happen. Me as well. yeah. I I’d I’ve never thought that. I don’t know whether I even thought that It was n like you said, that was not a good thing. I just put one foot in front of the other and or not literally, but the Yeah. Metaphorically. Yeah. Metaphorically. so one foot in front of the other and just got on with it. Yeah. Nicole, like you come across in your work, you come across a lot of different versions of patience, right? Like you get people who might just be by design more negative to a bad experience and then people that are half class full to a bad experience. Just from a professional perspective, what’s the difference like when you’re trying to rehabilitate somebody that has kind of that different mindset? From perhaps what Kylie and I described. Yeah, I mean I’m probably in the last half full camp as well. So as an OT, I suppose we always meet people where they’re at. because everyone is a combination of their past experiences, aren’t they? So and cultural things, like there’s a very significant cultural differences in how people respond to pain or disability and expectations of kind of family and I suppose cultural expectations in Australia are even about you know, what what what should be publicly available. So, you know, from an expectations point of view, I think a lot of it is based on, you know, previous experience. So as a therapist, we’re obviously there to support, you know, emotional well being, physical well being, and try and find the things for people that connect with them. So meaningful, like OTs are our absolute core is meaningful occupation. So how do we find something that’s meaningful to that person that we think is going to get them from kind of, you know, here to there and it’s gonna be very different different motivators, you know. Kylie is probably, you know, very self motivated as described. Sometimes it’s about people really have a d strong desire to get back to work, or people have a really strong family structure that they want to be able to get back to do something with their family. So finding the way or the thing hopefully that’s going to motivate them. But we certainly work with people who you know, have a high level of distress from what’s happened to them and and on an ongoing basis. One of the things I’ve got a little quote on my desk that you can’t see here, but it says, I’m still me, just a different version of me. And it’s what someone one of my clients told me recently who has MS. and often we find need to find the new version of someone. and the new meaning for someone if that, you know, needs to happen. So that’s our great challenge, I suppose. That’s a big job, especially very early on when identity is so tied up into who they were literally days ago. You know, like a week ago. The mobile person, the working person, the money making person, the father, the mother, the whatever. Finding Meaning in Recovery And then, you know, you’re dealing with a physical crisis, the existential crisis, the identity crisis, like you’re dealing with it all in the one moment, and you’re trying to get them to sort of see, well, you know, you’re still you and how we’re gonna move forward with the still you person, like we’re still gonna move forward with that person. And then later does come an adjustment of what that you looks like. did for me like it’s a massive adjustment into what me looks like. But my identity wasn’t so much tied up in a one label specifically, although, you know, I s I was the person who felt like they needed to be the main breadwinner, you know, that you know ran a business that did all these things. I I had a big strong identity. But I think one of the things this is going to sound weird or might even sound logical depending on like w who you are and why you’re listening to this podcast. But for me, the fact that my brain went offline was a really good thing because it and that allowed my emotional side to come to the fore. Like it really enabled me to see things with a different intelligence, you know, and access part of me that my emotional intelligence perhaps that I hadn’t that I perhaps suppressed previously, you know, and just battled through things. And that kind of allowed my identity to come with me, it allowed me to leave some stuff behind and allowed me to bring into my identity this emotional side of me, you know, which who cried, who got excited about new and different opportunities, you know, that my head didn’t convince me out of. You know, so there was a lot of silver linings that I didn’t I wasn’t able to iterate back then. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that it was a silver lining. But now and a few years later, after it all happened, I was definitely able to talk about those silver linings. Kylie Do you you’re fourteen months or so out, right? So maybe you’re not there yet, I don’t know. But are there some silver and I know a hundred percent Nicole was one of those silver linings, I get it. but do you see some silver linings in this whole saga? Yep. I do. my relationship with my daughter got stronger. Yep. So that was all s that was definitely a silver lining. and you know, I I’m was very grateful before, but it cemented how g how grateful I am for my circle of friends. Yeah. Kylie’s friends were amazing. Yeah. Your friends were amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Big family still in Australia is is there a big family in Australia, Kylie? Not not a big one, but my mum and dad are still still alive. So they’re they’re in Melbourne. and my sister is in on the Gold Coast and my brother is in Melbourne as well. Yeah. And my and my son is in Adelaide. Okay. So you still have some family here, but then you were able to create a community in the years before the stroke in Bulgaria. Yeah. you you were doing it a little bit tough after the stroke. Yeah. Correct. Yep. So that’s spot on. Did you Nicole tag team with some of those people as well? Yeah, so Kylie’s friends were beautiful and they were looking after me too. So When I was in Bulgaria, they were looking after me, you know, giving me dinner and what have you, and kind of giving me emotional support as well. And I think they were grateful that I was there from a skills point of view, like they were doing a beautiful job of supporting Kylie emotionally. But and I did kind of train them up a little bit in in some rehab as well, you know, how to help with approaching from the right and how to communicate and also just even doing some activities. Kylie and I had the balloon and we were tapping it back and forward to each other for strengthening up the right arm. And then we’d play some kind of word games as we were doing that for some speech therapy. So I was educating her friends around that kind of stuff. But the other thing, Kylie, that you and I have spoken about is, you know, after the stroke is knowing what’s important and how to let some sh shit go that would have been, you know, annoying or you know. focus on something and now it’s just you you just know it’s just not important. Yeah. Being able to just let crap go. Correct correct. and the other silver lining is that I got engaged. Yes. Did he propose soon after? Yes, in the in the rehab hospital. what a romantic Yeah. But he but he said that he’d already decided before the stroke that he wanted to marry be ma be married to me. So he just hadn’t got around to asking me yet. Yeah, fair enough. That stroke has a way of interrupting people’s plans and the things that they think they’re gonna do. so Nicole you normally treat your patients. They get to a stage. Usually they’re a lot better than they were when they first met you. And part of what you do is you send them off into the big wide world like a kid. I’ve grown you know, I’ve raised them, you know, like they know how to comb their hair now. And you kinda send them off and it’s kind of bittersweet, I imagine, but also a very important part that the people who you’re helping get better actually go off into the world on their own. And stop needing to be supported by you. I know there’s some people who need more support and that continues for longer and some people who don’t get enough and it and it’s never enough. But what’s it like knowing the job is not done, but you still have to leave and go home? that was heartache. I mean, Kylie and I both balled our lies out. it was a long flight home. Yeah. Yeah, it was a long flight home. with lots of reflections. I suppose the good thing at that point was Kylie was easily able to speak on the phone or message each other. So and also, you know, I think at that stage maybe I got to see the brain scan and I was just like, my god, how have you even survived this? ‘Cause I think was it about a seven centimeter bleed, Kylie? Yep. seven and a half. Yeah. To be precise. It truly felt like a a miracle. And again, full kudos to the surgeons in Bulgaria, truly, for that acute care. Because I think Kylie, I feel like you were in surgery in about within about two hours or something after the stroke, which is phenomenal. And, you know, your friends really saved your life. taking you straight to the hospital and prevented like, you know, more serious outcomes from the stroke. So yeah, so for me, I was proud of myself as well. and I, you know, I like to live my life by thinking I can look myself in the mirror. And I felt like I can really I’ve got a tear, really look myself in the mirror. Yeah. Doing the right thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You came to the need of somebody who was in need and needed specifically not only your love and support as a friend, but also your skills. Like you had the complete package for them at that time. How long did you end up staying in total? Was I ra away about just under two weeks probably with the flights and everything like that? So yeah. so yeah, leaving was leaving was horrible. But the goal of being able to go to the toilet was met. and also just the skills for, you know, skilled up a few other people and Kylie, you know, had her good networks. I also went out to Kylie’s property out in the village to have a look at any home modifications. So that was another kind of OT type role that that was done. and she’s got an amazing property out there, but it is kind of needs a bit of love and so that was also just reassuring her partner too, like reassuring Guido that no, look, Kylie’s got this. There were a few times where it was like, Nicole, I don’t want her to do this. Like I’m like Guido, she’s safe. She can do it. She’s got sitting balance. She’s okay to sit over the side of the bed. She can wiggle sideways. But he was anxious. And so again, part of my job was to reassure him to make sure that he let her do things. and didn’t step in too quickly. And so as an O T, we’re all used to like sitting on our hands and taking time and letting people struggle a bit. And it was hard for him to let Kylie struggle. So to just encourage him to let her struggle a bit so that she could do it herself and just wait. Just take the time, especially with communication. so yeah, I I kind of obviously knew there was a lot more rehab to be done, but I also had seen Kylie’s determination and that, you know, she kind of knew what to do. and and so that was I I was grateful again for that. Kylie, what was it like when your friend had to leave? I was heartbroken. The Impact of Caregiving I felt like she was a lifeline and I felt like that that had been cut because obviously she speaks English and obviously like Obviously we have a really good relationship. and I felt like I was in a like how do I describe it? In a in a sea of not n of people not understanding. So yeah, not my friends, but the hospital staff, basically. So not the not the physios. Like Nicole said, the physios were exceptional. but, you know, just the hospital staff. Yeah, just generally speaking. So did you feel like she had put you on the right path? Were you more confident with kind of where she left you as opposed to where you guys started and was that enough to kind of give you the foundation for what you needed to take responsibility for when she left? Definitely. yeah, definitely. Yeah. Man, w what a kind of interesting whole situation. You know, if this was fifty years ago, there’s no way anyone’s going anywhere to help anyone with anything. you know, like your hospital s experience in country like Bulgaria after what they’ve been through would have been completely different. You know, your s the chance of surviving telling your story is probably s you know, very much decreased. I know this is gonna sound weird, but like it’s never been a better time to have a stroke in in most of the world. Like let’s face it. the the possibilities are just endless. I’m a miracle from all the medical professionals that put all their time and effort in. I am eternally grateful to my occupational therapists and physios and surgeons and people who invent X ray machines and people who make C T scanners and The plastic bottles where drips go in, like every single thing is just an an absolute miracle of God or medicine or science or I don’t care what, like whatever you want to call it. And it just to me, it you know, here’s a really terrible situation and here and and but look at all the amazing things that came out of it. Somebody from the other side of the planet to be able to come over and intervene in that way, train people up. Like, man, it’s the Perfect like feel good story, you know. Everything’s going okay, things turn shit, and then something good comes out of it and yeah hopefully there’s more good to come, you know. Like, man, it’s just an amazing experience. I just feel really privileged to be able to hear it and share it further. No, not not not me, personally. but now that you say that I will s I will think about it now. the most thing that that Nicole and I reflect on is, you know, like like we’ve already said, how good was that my friends got me to the hospital quickly? How good was the the surgeons the surgeons because it could have all gone wrong. or gone gone a different way. so that’s the stuff we reflect on more. and just just like my amazing recovery. Reflections on Recovery and Gratitude Because I recovered so quickly and so well, like I’ve thrown everyone away here. So so my new my neurologist, my my physios, ever everyone here is like well, back then was like really surprised. So we it’s when I first walked into the n neurologist, she said, like, wow, No one expected you to recover that quickly from such a severe stroke. Yeah. That’s such a good outcome. I like to I like to think that those things wouldn’t have been possible without your most amazing superhero friend Nicole. Nicole, your final thing I’d like to kind of run by you is that your whole career you’re working towards making things better. Yep. Like for people who are going through all really difficult times. have you had you ever dealt with a family member who needed your intervention or family friend or someone like that that needed an intervention with your specific skills before this? man. yes. So when I was quite a young therapist, probably in my early twenties, my dad told me that his One of his like great aunts or cousins elderly relative had had a stroke and she was in hospital and I didn’t really know her. Like she wasn’t someone in the family that I I had knew had known. And I said to Dad, I’ll go and visit her in hospital. And and so I went to the hospital and I found out she was in this room and I walk into the room and there were four people. And I see this gorgeous little old lady who is all crumpled in her chair and squashed and nearly falling out. And I I just walked in and I was horrified. And I just walked straight over to her. And I just said, look, can I help get you more comfortable, get you into a better position? And then I realized it was it was my own relative. and I said to her, I’m Nicole, I’m John’s daughter. you know, dad’s asked me to come and see you. And and she just said the most cutest thing ever. She said, when you walked into the room. You just look so lovely and I hoped you were here to see me, but I I wouldn’t have known what I could have done to deserve that or something something dead cute. anyway, she’d had a very dense stroke and they were basically saying that she wasn’t a candidate for rehab and that she should go straight to a nursing home. And her daughter was a nurse. And she said, Nope, Mum’s not going to a nursing home and she ended up taking her home and I used to go every night after work and do rehab with her. she ended up being able to walk quite with a pretty awkward gait and a and a stick. but she got back to, yeah, walking and living at home and I just again always think that if she didn’t have her daughter, the nurse and myself, she probably would have ended up not not walking. Yeah, being in a nursing home. It’s not that quality of life. So there’s people who definitely go through that. And what I love about you sharing that part of the story is there’s people listening and they’re paying attention and maybe they haven’t been given the amount of therapy that they feel they deserve or need. And maybe that’s going to trigger people to go, you know what, stuff this, I’m gonna find a way to get more therapy, I’m gonna ask. I’m gonna hassle some people, I’m gonna be a pain in the butt to some people, I’m gonna do more. for myself to get me further. I love that you shared that part of the story. That’s kind of the unique experience that a that a a seasoned occupational therapist can kind of impart on us who are early on in the recovery about like how you need to advocate for somebody or yourself for more physical therapy. And and even if you Can’t access that people listening and watching YouTube channels. Go to YouTube. There are a ton of awesome therapists on YouTube showing people how to do exercises at home. Yeah. And I mean, I just took some really basic things. We s I, you know, stole some things out of Kylie’s flat to take in. And Guido’s son gave me some toys and we use those like stacking things to, you know, do rehab with Kylie’s hand. I took some pegs from her house and we made an activity of pegging up the curtains to do shoulder and arm rehab. So you can often do a lot without, yo

Modern-day slavery still exists—and entire families in Pakistan's brick kilns are born into debts they may never escape.In this episode, Aaron Hutchings shares how a video on TikTok led him, his wife, and his children to travel to Pakistan and help free families from generational slavery. Some had spent more than 100 years trapped in the same system. Children begin working as young as three, yet freeing an entire family can cost around $900.Aaron explains how brick-kiln slavery works, why Christians are disproportionately affected, what happens after a family is freed, and how ordinary people can make a life-changing difference.Aaron's story demonstrates courage, stewardship, faith, and answering the call to help when God places an opportunity in front of you.Subscribe for more conversations about faith, leadership, brotherhood, and living with purpose.Learn more or support Aaron's work: https://intentionalfaithfoundation.com/index.htmlFollow Men's AllianceInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/mensalliancetribe/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mensalliancetribeTiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@mensalliancetribeWebsite - https://www.mensalliancetribe.com/Explore Battlefield Coaching today and find yourself a Coach with experience overcoming a battle you are currently facing - https://battlefieldcoaching.comOrder the Book - Answer With Truth: The Ambassador's Field Manual for Leading Your Family Spiritually - https://amzn.to/3BmnuKV

On July 24, 1948, two experienced Eastern Air Lines pilots reported a terrifying encounter in the skies above Alabama. A glowing, wingless object—described as torpedo-shaped with illuminated windows and flames shooting from its rear—raced toward their passenger plane before narrowly missing it and disappearing into the clouds.The incident became one of the most significant early UFO cases investigated by the United States Air Force and reportedly helped convince some Project Sign investigators that UFOs could be interplanetary spacecraft. The Air Force later concluded that the pilots had witnessed a brilliant meteor—but the men strongly disagreed.Join Tony Sweet as he investigates the Chiles–Whitted encounter and asks: Was it a meteor, secret military technology or an intelligently controlled craft of unknown origin?Truth Be Told presents the evidence—but you decide what to believe.Stay curious and truthful.#TruthBeTold #TonySweet #UFO #UAP #UFOSighting #ChilesWhitted #UFOHistory #ProjectSign #ProjectBlueBook #AlienEncounter #UnexplainedMysteries #AviationMystery #ParanormalPodcast #OnThisDay #ClubParanormalBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/truth-be-told-with-tony-sweet-paranormal-ufos-unexplained-mysteries--3589860/support.

For years, Libbi Logan planned her life around her back pain. Could she make it to her son's basketball game? Would a road trip result in days of recovery? Was playing tennis worth the pain that would follow? Like so many people living with chronic back pain, every decision became a calculation. After years of searching for answers, trying countless treatments, and being told there were few options left, Libbi eventually found a Facebook community of patients with Bertolotti's Syndrome. That search ultimately led her to spine surgeon Dr. Colin Haines at VSI, who asked her a question that changed everything: "What do you want your life to look like?" After a comprehensive evaluation, including advanced diagnostics that uncovered the true source of her pain, Dr. Haines developed a surgical plan tailored to Libbi's unique anatomy. Today, Libbi is back on the tennis court, traveling internationally, and living the life she thought she had lost. Just six months after surgery with at VSI, Libbi: ✔ Played tennis for the first time in over three years ✔ Walked over 15,000 steps a day through Paris (with zero back pain!) ✔ Flew alone, drove 10 hours, stood on a wobbling fishing boat ✔ Is showing up, fully present, for her son's senior year of high school If you've been told there's nothing more that can be done, that your imaging looks "normal," or you're still searching for answers, Libbi's story is a reminder that oftentimes the right diagnosis changes everything. VSI® specializes in diagnosing and treating complex spine conditions, including Bertolotti Syndrome and transitional anatomy. If you're still searching for answers, you don't have to stop here.

We are coming off a great weekend, which started with a live podcast taping with all of you!  I was blown away by the energy in the room, and can't thank you all enough for coming out.  I get into your calls and we have one for the ages.  She flew across the country to meet someone for the first time, and ended up spending the weekend with his parents.  The story truly shook me, and I can't wait for a follow up. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On the world stage, Robbie Williams was doing an interview for the World Cup and SOMETHING flew out of his mouth and landed on his microphone... but it did not stop there, it got so much worse!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Americans traveled to Tehran for the funeral events of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and what happened next has shocked viewers across the country.For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial (656) 218-0931 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/nez✅ Reach out to me: https://bio.site/professornez✅ ORIGINAL MADE IN U.S.A 250TH AMERICA DESIGNS: https://professornez.myspreadshop.com/✅ Check out our Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@professornezclips▶ Support the Channel and Buy us a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/professornezEducational Commentary & Original AnalysisThis channel presents educational, lecture-style analysis created by a university professor and educator. Content focuses on contextual examination, historical background, legal frameworks, and evidence-based analysis of widely reported events, public records, and institutional processes.The approach emphasizes academic methodology, media literacy, and source-driven interpretation rather than advocacy, persuasion, or real-time news reporting. Viewers are encouraged to consult primary sources and form independent conclusions.All content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice. Views expressed are solely those of the creator.This channel may include references or links to third-party websites or products for informational purposes. Some links may be affiliate links, which may generate a commission at no additional cost to the viewer.In this video expert Professor Nez analyzes and educates on what happened and why with fact based, data based, verified and researched expertise reporting.All original content is protected by copyright. Fair use applies where permitted by law.Category: News Analysis & Educational CommentaryMethodology: This report utilizes primary source verification and comparative analysis of public records.Subject Matter Expertise: Political Strategy, Regulatory Policy, and Media Literacy.

Sponsored by Pepperstone Early 2000s. I flew from the UK to Las Vegas to sit in on a new trader intake at a prop firm. Three strategies, all working, all making the firm serious money. I went home and couldn't trade a single one of them. Not because they were bad. Because they were never going to fit me… I didn't have the capital, the stomach for size, or the appetite for spreadsheets. Took me a long time to work out the difference between "this doesn't work" and "this doesn't work for me." In this episode, I break down all three strategies (NYSE opening print fair value, ECN liquidity rebates, and pairs trading), why each one failed in my hands, and the filter I now run every new strategy through before I waste any time on it. Relevant timing, given we're currently tearing down 12 popular strategies in the Pepperstone webinar series. Some will be for you. Most won't. That's the whole point.

The longtime South Carolina senator died suddenly at the weekend. His political arc mirrored that of his Republican party in the Trump era. We ask what his death leaves behind. Frontier AI models opaquely embody a worldview and set of values; we poke the big ones, asking what they believe. And why Old Master paintings are again so popular. Guests and host:Adam Roberts, foreign editorSondre Solstad, senior data journalistAlexandra Suich Bass, culture editorJason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Lindsey Graham, Republican party, American foreign policyAI frontier models, valuesart market, Old MastersListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The longtime South Carolina senator died suddenly at the weekend. His political arc mirrored that of his Republican party in the Trump era. We ask what his death leaves behind. Frontier AI models opaquely embody a worldview and set of values; we poke the big ones, asking what they believe. And why Old Master paintings are again so popular. Guests and host:Adam Roberts, foreign editorSondre Solstad, senior data journalistAlexandra Suich Bass, culture editorJason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Lindsey Graham, Republican party, American foreign policyAI frontier models, valuesart market, Old MastersListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once you tell yourself the nearly impossible is possible and you do the work to make it happen, you stop focusing on what's possible.    So, you might turn to certain things that show you figured out the impossible.    For me, I didn't really have the best role models growing up, but I became one of those people.     I bought McLaren's and Lambos.  I've had damn near every kind you can imagine.    Flew everywhere on private jets.    And what I realized was that isn't the real me.     Proof came when the last McLaren (720) I owned didn't get driven but maybe 3 times the last 6 months I owned it, I knew I didn't need it.    It did not show proof of my success.    My kids starting asking me more about going to the Ranch and that's when I leaned in and saw the proof of what I needed to see.    I've been pouring into that more than anything........   My proof of success is in spending time with my kids......   And that's a huge success.    About the ReWire Podcast   The ReWire Podcast with Ryan Stewman – Dive into powerful insights as Ryan Stewman, the HardCore Closer, breaks down mental barriers and shares actionable steps to rewire your thoughts. Each episode is a fast-paced journey designed to reshape your mindset, align your actions, and guide you toward becoming the best version of yourself. Join in for a daily dose of real talk that empowers you to embrace change and unlock your full potential.    Learn how you can become a member of a powerful community consistently rewiring itself for success at ⁠https://www.jointheapex.com/⁠   Rise Above 

Get the full, ad-free episode here: https://www.10percenttrue.com/pricing-plans/list10PCT Episode #92 [CLIP]Former Royal Australian Air Force Hornet pilot Gary “Schlick” Skilton joins me to discuss life flying the F/A-18A Hornet during the 1990s.Before reaching fighters, Schlick spent three years flying the DHC-4 Caribou into remote Australian bush strips and the mountains of Papua New Guinea. Those experiences shaped the airmanship that helped him transition to the Hornet.We discuss the RAAF training pipeline, Hornet conversion, Australian fighter culture, BFM, early AMRAAM integration, operating without Link 16 or an IFF interrogator, exchange pilots from the US, UK and Canada, flying against MiG-29s and F-15s, and the Hornet Upgrade Program that transformed the aircraft after his departure.

Join Glenn Flickinger and the Veterans Breakfast Club for a live conversation with author Gregg Jones about his acclaimed book, Most Honorable Son: A Forgotten Hero's Fight Against Fascism and Hate During World War II. Jones tells the remarkable story of Ben Kuroki, a Japanese American farm boy from Nebraska who became one of World War II's most extraordinary airmen. At a time when more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in the United States, Kuroki fought for his country in the skies over Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific, completing 58 combat missions and becoming a powerful voice against prejudice and hate. This program explores Kuroki's wartime service, his fight to prove his loyalty, and the larger story of Japanese American patriotism, sacrifice, and resilience during World War II. Gregg Jones brings new attention to a forgotten American hero whose life challenges us to think deeply about courage, citizenship, racism, and what it means to serve. #BenKuroki #WWII #VeteransBreakfastClub

Enjoy the podcast every Friday? Support it by getting your car mods at https://bit.ly/4vtk1kyLars traveled all the way to POLAND for one of the most insane car shows on the planet. Ultrace. Now if you've been around you might know we were just in Germany for Ultrace, but Poland is where the show originated. The boys talk about that and more on todays episode of the MartiniWorks podcast! #cars #podcast #automotivePick up our Coffee here! https://bit.ly/3PIFl6JA HUGE thank you to Continental, Motegi, and Fortune Auto for being the official tire, wheel, and suspension of the MartiniWorks Podcast! Let us know if you need a set of tires or coilovers.Shop Continental tires here https://bit.ly/4ecbfAKShop Motegi wheels here https://bit.ly/4vp7VcgShop Fortune Auto suspension here https://bit.ly/4fnfqM8Check out the main channel! @MartiniWorksOfficialWe also have an unboxing channel @MartiniWorksUnboxedFollow Lars @lars.martiniworksFollow Dakota @dakotastoneeFollow Gels @akagels

The chief suspect in the murder of American mother-of-one Jamey Carney (43) flew from Ireland to Turkey within hours of her death. ­ It has now emerged that the 28-year-old man got a bus from Killarney to Dublin within three hours of the death of the New York native. ­ He then booked a last-minute flight from Dublin Airport to Istanbul in Turkey on Tuesday morning - and is now believed to be working with contacts to cross from Turkey to either Syria or Jordan. The man is understood to have extensive contacts in the region. ­ Today on this Indo Daily Extra, Tessa Fleming is joined by Irish Independent southern correspondent Ralph Riegel, to hear the latest developments. ­ We want to earn your trust and are members of the Trust Project. See our ethics policies at independent.ie/ourjournalism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's Headlines: Trump's July 4th celebrations were a disaster on every front — his Mount Rushmore speech was cancelled by a hailstorm, the National Mall events were evacuated due to severe wind and rain with guests sheltering in the African American History Museum, and his record-breaking fireworks show was obscured by its own smoke, leaving DC with the worst air quality in the world by 7am. Making it worse, Democrats released a report alleging Freedom250 was a wire fraud scheme that redirected donor money from the legitimate bipartisan America250 celebration, pressured corporate donors to switch their commitments, and diverted $75 million of the $100 million Congress allocated to parts unknown. White nationalist group Patriot Front also showed up in matching outfits, so all in all a great party. On Donaldtella's pet projects, former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, 67, was indicted on a felony destruction of property charge for pulling up liner that was already peeling — the first of at least 11 people facing legal consequences for being near a broken pool — while Interior Secretary Doug Burgum insists vandals cut gashes in it without producing a single frame of surveillance footage, and announced they'll use the same contractor to fix what the same contractor broke. On the World Cup beat, Trump called FIFA chief Gianni Infantino to get suspended American soccer player Folarin Balogun unsuspended from the World Cup, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee conveniently reversed its decision, and Trump celebrated on social media seemingly unbothered that a championship won this way won't be considered legitimate by anyone. On Mitch, it emerged that his wife Elaine Chao traveled to China to meet with the vice president just three days after he was hospitalized with cardiac arrest, with photos of her in Chinese state media discussing US-China relations. And finally, Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Michigan Senate Democratic primary, leaving establishment-backed Haley Stevens against Bernie-backed Abdul El-Sayed ahead of the August 4th primary. Resources/Articles mentioned: CNN: DC experiences ‘Code Red' air quality after massive fireworks display MSNow: White nationalists march in D.C. on July 4th AP News: Democrats accuse Trump-linked fundraisers of fraud over diverted donations for America's anniversary NYT: David Hearn, Olympian Canoeist, Is Indicted After Arrest at Trump's Reflecting Pool AP News: Trump's administration won't seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool  Yahoo: Ominous New Scaffolding Goes Up at Trump White House NBC News: U.S. star Folarin Balogun eligible to play vs. Belgium after FIFA suspends red card ban The Daily Beast: Mitch McConnell's Wife's Bizarre Move After CPR Drama Revealed Axios: McMorrow suspends Michigan Senate bid in shock move Subscribe to the Betches News Room and join the Morning Announcements group chat. Go to: betchesnews.substack.com Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary and Tyler recap their weekend in Pomona, California for the Sleeping Giant reunion shows at The Glass House. From traveling with their wives and meeting online friends in real life, to merch line chaos, pit injuries, guest vocalists, and powerful moments of worship, this episode covers the full experience of two unforgettable nights.They talk through the bands, the crowd, the Christian heavy music community, the return of Sleeping Giant, and what made the weekend feel less like just another concert and more like a reunion, a pilgrimage, and a reminder of why this music matters.

NON STOP!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this powerful interview, Avi Abelow sits down with Tim, the founder of Operation Fire Support, a remarkable volunteer initiative he launched in 2019 after learning about the devastating wildfire attacks caused by Hamas terror balloons launched from Gaza into southern Israel.Tim had never been to Israel. He is not Jewish. Yet when he saw Israeli communities under attack through acts of environmental terrorism, he decided to act.Since then, he has traveled to Israel multiple times at his own expense, leaving his family back in Australia, dedicating his time, expertise, and energy to training Israeli firefighters, emergency responders, and rapid response security teams in advanced wildfire prevention and firefighting techniques. His mission is simple: help save lives and protect communities.In this fascinating conversation, Tim explains what inspired him to get involved, why he continues returning to Israel, and what he has learned from working alongside Israelis on the front lines.We also discuss the alarming rise of Jew-hating antisemitism in Australia, the growing hostility toward Israel, and the broader cultural and societal changes taking place due to mass immigration and the spread of the red-green alliance in Australia. Tim shares his firsthand observations about how these developments are impacting everyday Australians and why he believes people must speak out before it is too late.This interview is a powerful reminder that support for Israel comes from people of conscience around the world, and that true friendship is demonstrated through action, not just words.Watch, share, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.Join Our Whatsapp Channel: https://chat.whatsapp.com/GkavRznXy731nxxRyptCMvFollow us on Twitter: https://x.com/AviAbelowJoin our Telegram Channel: https://t.me/aviabelowpulseFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pulse_of_israel/?hl=enPulse of Israel on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IsraelVideoNetworkVisit Our Website - https://pulseofisrael.com/Donate to Pulse of Israel: https://pulseofisrael.com/boost-this-video/

At his grandmother's birthday party, Bruno makes his cousins laugh with a joke about Cecilia, the cousin who always has her nose in a book. He's sure she didn't hear him, until the family gathers around the table and Cecilia's seat is empty.A story about the things we say when we think no one's listening, and what it takes to make them right.Turn this episode into a Spanish lesson, for your family or for yourself:✓ Mi Cuento ($5/mo). One story a week plus transcript, translation, and vocab guide.Join on Patreon: patreon.com/spanishstoriesforkidsHave a story idea? Email us at: hello@spanishstoriesforkids.com======En el cumpleaños de su abuela, Bruno hace reír a sus primos con un chiste sobre Cecilia, la prima que siempre tiene la nariz metida en un libro. Está seguro de que ella no lo escuchó, hasta que la familia se sienta a la mesa y la silla de Cecilia está vacía.Una historia sobre las cosas que decimos cuando creemos que nadie escucha, y lo que cuesta arreglarlas.Convierte este episodio en una lección de español, para tu familia o para ti:✓ Mi Cuento ($5/mes). Un cuento nuevo cada semana, más transcripción, traducción y guía de vocabulario.Únete en Patreon: patreon.com/spanishstoriesforkids¿Tienes una idea para un cuento? Escríbenos a hello@spanishstoriesforkids.com

This weekend edition of Czechia in 30 Minutes brings you a shortened version of another episode from Blood in Bohemia, our special series within the Czechast podcast. Together with British journalist Rob Cameron, Vít Pohanka explores the dramatic events of July 1419, when an angry crowd stormed Prague's New Town Hall and hurled councillors from its windows. The first Prague defenestration marked a turning point in Czech history and helped set the stage for the Hussite Revolution.

YT: https://youtu.be/rvVVQ3n081I This is the untold story of the F-16 pilots who flew deeper into Iran than any fourth-generation aircraft during Operation Midnight Hammer, the historic B-2 strike targeting Iran's nuclear sites with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. These were the only non-stealth jets escorting the B-2 strike package, flying over 250 nautical miles into one of the most sophisticated integrated air defense networks on Earth, well beyond the range of any personnel recovery assets. These pilots provided Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) coverage for the B-2's. When air refueling assets fell out before they even left Saudi airspace, these crews didn't abort. They improvised, redirected tankers, and executed refueling at speeds the F-16 had never done before in combat conditions. This is the first-person account from the pilots themselves. What they saw over Iran, what they were thinking at bingo fuel, and what it actually took to bring every aircraft home. Operation Midnight Hammer | F-16 SEAD | Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses | Iran nuclear strikes | Twelve Day War | 55th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron | AGM-88 HARM | Wild Weasel    Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) Prep with AFOQT Wingman https://afoqtwingman.com/Code: AFTERBURN for 10% off

She Asked Her CIO for a New Challenge at Lunch. Got a "Poison Chalice" Role. Flew to Japan in December 2019. Beat COVID by Three Weeks. PVH VP Shatabdi on Small Acts of Courage With Big Consequences. At a lunch with her CIO, she asked a simple question: "Is there a specific role where you need help? I'm ready to take a new challenge, even change my domain completely." The answer was an invitation to lead PVH's global SAP/ERP transformation across Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and North America. She had no team in Asia Pacific. She had less than two months to build one remotely from the United States. People in the room called it a poison chalice. She flew to Japan in December 2019, got the team in place, flew home in January 2020. COVID hit weeks later. She had made it by the skin of her teeth. That is one story. But Shatabdi, VP of Global Application Engineering Services at PVH Corp — home of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein — believes the more important stories are the small ones. The under-60-second moments. The ones that most senior leaders stay quiet through. In this episode, she shares both kinds. You'll learn: A woman in a meeting quietly mentioned her son kept missing his classes because someone kept scheduling meetings after 5 PM. Shatabdi backed her up in under a minute. That intervention spread into a best practice across PVH's global time zones including Hong Kong and Bangalore. Why she credits a single direct ask at a CIO lunch for the entire trajectory of her VP career, and what she said that made the difference between getting an opportunity and being overlooked. How she heard people call her new role a "poison chalice" and responded by using their doubt as fuel: "If my leaders believe in me, I should believe in myself." What happened when a co-op intern named Christopher walked into her office and told her the access request process could be simplified to save significant man hours — and added that an AI solution could auto-fill the whole thing. She was amazed. She calls it reverse mentorship. The moment her longtime colleague Brian McGrath introduced her in a room by saying "if she's in the meeting, I know it's going to go positive" — and why that kind of public acknowledgment primes an entire room to actually listen to you. The "we vs. I" leadership model she uses: collaborative "we" language for collective goals, firm "I" language for deadlines and deliverables. And why learning when to use which one took her longer than developing either. How she structures team communication across three levels — broad town halls, staff meetings that start with "how's your family?", and one-on-ones where she opens up first about her own week — to build the kind of trust that makes honest feedback land well in both directions. About Shatabdi: Vice President of Global Application Engineering Services at PVH Corp, the fashion company behind Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Shatabdi leads a global team across North America, Europe, Hong Kong, and Bangalore. She previously led e-commerce at Hitachi Consulting and at PVH before pivoting into global ERP transformation leadership.

Turbulence for Air New Zealand's US network. New data shows the airline flew more than 34 thousand empty seats between January and February. Load factors reached 75% during the peak summer – well below its target of 80–85%. Forsyth Barr Head of Research Andy Bowley told Mike Hosking the numbers are below what the airline would typically see across its network. But he says an ultra-long-haul route does have some weight limitations, and it's unknown how the load factor is affected by weight limitations. The airline is also due to have their new 787 Dreamliners on their route by December, which Bowley says will have a significantly lower number of seats, with more premium seats and less economy seats at the back of the plane. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Back in 1976, a sandwich run that topped them all, when Elvis Presley flew from Graceland to Denver for a sandwich. Of course, giant sandwiches are only one part of the world of Elvis food.Elvis Presley's “Fool's Gold” sandwich was born in Denver (Denver Post)A Dish Fit for a King (NPR)Well you can do anything but don't step on our Patreon backers' shoes

Learn how to fix your pain with our “Centralization Process” here! https://rebrand.ly/ytpainfreeSubmit an application to work with us 1:1 and learn how to fix your low back! ⁠www.therehabfix.com/low-back-program⁠To view hundreds of free low back videos please follow us on instagram at @rehabfix ⁠www.instagram.com/rehabfix⁠Low back pain is not always coming FROM your lower back… and that's exactly what I discovered after flying to Las Vegas to assess entrepreneur and podcaster Brad Lea's back pain, posture, mobility, and movement limitations.In this video, I break down the exact movement assessment he used to identify hidden mobility restrictions affecting Brad's spine health, posture, hip mobility, and overall movement quality, and show you the exercises that immediately started improving his mobility and posture FAST.If you've been dealing with:• Chronic low back pain• Tight hips and stiff lower back• Poor posture or being hunched forward• Pain when sitting too long• Hip mobility limitations• Trouble standing upright• Back stiffness when walking or lifting• Sciatica or disc-related symptoms…this video will help you understand what could REALLY be causing your pain. You'll learn:✅ Why low back pain is often a movement problem✅ How limited hip mobility can overload the lower back✅ Why posture problems are NOT always caused by weak muscles✅ The difference between spinal mobility vs hip mobility restrictions✅ How lumbar extension can improve spine health✅ Mobility exercises to improve posture and reduce stiffness✅ The hidden connection between hips, pelvis, and low back pain

A Canadian Pilot flew passenger flights for 27 years and has only just been found out. How did he get away with it for so long? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 3292 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about the Vietnam Vet Harry Pawlak Flew 700 Combat Missions Over Vietnam. The featured story is titled: Air Force Colonel Flew 700 Combat Missions Over Vietnam. It appeared … Continue reading → The post Episode 3292 – Vietnam Vet Harry Pawlak Flew 700 Combat Missions over Vietnam first appeared on Vietnam Veteran News.

James Shillinglaw of Insider Travel Report does a little more thrill seeking while parasailing in the mountains overlooking Rio de Janeiro during luxury host agency Embark Beyond's Embark Immersion meeting in Brazil. This one is a little different for us as we experience the fear—and ultimate Joy—of flight. But it illustrates the experience-driven agenda that is a big part of Embark's meeting philosophy. For more information on Embark Beyond, visit www.embarkbeyond.com.  All our Insider Travel Report video interviews are archived and available on our Youtube channel  (youtube.com/insidertravelreport), and as podcasts with the same title on: Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Listen Notes, Podchaser, TuneIn + Alexa, Podbean,  iHeartRadio,  Google, Amazon Music/Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and iTunes Apple Podcasts, which supports Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro and Castbox. 

Jason flew over Colleen's house yesterday -- really, he did! Exciting updates at Newark's airport, EWR, a whey protein shortage is jeopardizing your snacking, and Colleen updates us on the "Home Town" hotel fire See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The All Whites had one of their newest and most influential fans in the stands in Florida for today's World Cup warm-up game against Haiti. Argentine social media star Valen Scarsini, known as El Scarso, was there to meet defender Tim Payne who now has 4 million followers on social media thanks to the South American. However, New Zealand's first game since Payne put the team in the international spotlight in a new way was a 4-nil loss. Sports reporter Felicity Reid spoke to Lisa Owen.

The Suite Spot Road Trip is back! Tune in to the latest episode to hear from hospitality leaders from Choice Hotels and Newport Hospitality Group, as they celebrate the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Comfort Inn & Suites Orlando Sanford Airport.  Check out the exclusive interviews with Andre Hickman, Wayne West III, Adam Hill, & Dena Hansen, only on the Suite Spot.   Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embry, here for a special edition of the TMG Suite Spot Road Trip Series right down the road in our backyard in beautiful Sanford, Florida to visit the grand opening and Ribbon cutting event at the Comfort Inn and Suites Orlando Sanford Airport. We were invited to cover this celebratory event and talk to some of the instrumental individuals that made this property happen. Andre Hickman, the owner of the property, Wayne West III, president at Newport Hospitality. Adam Hill, VP of Operations at Newport Hospitality. And finally, Dena Hansen, Director of Sales at this beautiful, gorgeous new property opened up here. We had the privilege to cover it, bringing it to you in this episode in a busy hotel lobby celebrating the grand opening of this property. We hope you enjoy. Wayne West III: Well, welcome and thank you for coming to the celebration of the opening of this great hotel, the Comfort Inn and Suites. So make sure I get it right. Between Orlando Sanford Airport. Thank you very much. This hotel is a great example of what happens when you put a lot of smart people together and visionary people in a growing market like the Sanford Airport area. So thank you again, we’re, it’s great being here. Uh, my name is Wayne List. I’m the president of Newport Hospitality. We are honored that we get to operate a couple hotels for Andre Hickman, who I’ll reduce introduce in a little while. You’ll hear me use a couple, you’ll hear me overuse a couple words as I talk to you tonight. Really, really proud of the Hickman family. When you walk through the hotel and you see the amenities that he’s put here, how thoughtful he was and how intentional every decision was to be successful, and not just successful for him, but to make sure that all the guests are well taken care of at every touch point in the hotel, whether it’s the guest laundry or the cabana, or the pool or the exercise room. He was very, very thoughtful. I’ve, I’ve been blessed over the years and I’m trying to find my partner. Mike. Mike, I know you’re here, Mike. Yes, the tall one over here. Mike and I have opened up a lot of hotels in our years. Uh, I’m not sure we’ve opened up one Mike, that the owner was as thoughtful about every step along the way and cautious and careful and trying to do it just right for the long-term legacy of this hotel. So I’ll have to thank the Hickman family for that. If you look at the design, the finishes, the touch and the construction, the touch points are just incredible for a hotel. So the Hickman family, if you would kind of raise your hand, Andre and the Hickman family, a lot of them are over here. We want to thank you personally. I want to, I wanna talk a little bit about businesses in the area. Um, the airport obviously is, is booming. Uh, Boomba, which I know has been here a few years, but needed a desperately needed a hotel in the market. I spoke to someone the other day that was so excited. We had, they had a hotel in the market to use Go Port, one of our biggest clients here. Uh, really want to thank the community, the leadership of the community, the chamber, the folks that have joined us, um, the lending and financial partners, which really is a testament to, to Andre and his team and his legacy of all the development that he’s done. Uh, the folks from Choice Hotels are here. If they would raise their hand, I’ll lose you in the back. We have Joe, who is the leader of the Choice Hotel, sys the choice, comfort in hotels system. So great to have you with us. Uh, I wanna thank some people particularly too personally here. You’ve met Mike Clinger. He raised his hand. We have a lot of our people here that worked really, really hard with Andre to get this right. Andre did the hard work. We came in behind him and tried to fill in where our responsibility of opening up a great hotel. But I’ve got Sandra Lucas here. I saw Sandra and her husband, Sandra’s in charge of revenue for about two thirds or a third of our portfolio of 36 hotels. Uh, Adam, Adam, where are you? Adam Hill. Adam is the back. Adam is the vice President of operation for this hotel. Reports to Andre about the hotel. Uh, Whitney Ties is Whitney is in the back. Whitney’s our, our chief commercial officer and senior vice president, also an owner along with Mike and I, Mike Pinger. You’ve met, uh, Matthew Hoffman, who I hope all of y’all have met, is the general manager of this great hotel, the back, Dina Hansen, who everybody needs to beat tonight because we want her to book business with you. She’s our director of sales of both of our hotels. And part of the remarks I’ll make is about, you know, why Sandford, we’re the first hotel, I guess this close to the airport anyway. I know there’s a couple of other hotels in the market, but we don’t pay a lot of attention to those. I’m sorry if I’m offending some of the owners and general managers that are here, but that’s the truth. Uh, the airport’s booming. Andre’s had this in his line of sight for a long time and waited for the time to be right. Uh, it’s always difficult building a hotel. It’s always difficult putting a great amount of equity down and then a year, a year and a half of, of painful getting it to the birth thing, right? Yeah. Not nine months, but a true year and a half. So we thank you for that. We thank all of our partners that are here. Thank you very much for showing up. This hotel I mentioned a little earlier, has a lot of amenities, whether it’s our shuttle to the airport, whether it’s the outdoor pool, the cabana, um, the, if you haven’t seen the exercise room, we have 36 hotels. Many of them are larger than this. None of them has an exercise room that has the quality touches and is as large as that. We’re gonna be super attracted to sporting groups that are going to Baba. We’re excited about joining and, and partnering with them. I, I will tell you, as Andre built this hotel, it was all about the messaging of getting it right for his family, our guests, and our team members. So it wasn’t just about Andre. He really made the decisions based on what, how he’s gonna be successful here is taking great care of our guests and great care of our team members. I hope you all will come back. Join us lots and lots in your relatives here, your colleagues here, your weddings, events here. So thank you very much. It is really my honor. Now to introduce you to Andre Hickman, who is the developer of this property. Probably many of you know Andre. He, he’s done several other ventures in this market. We have another great hotel. We operate him for him in Sanford. But it really is just an honor and a pleasure to be here with y’all to do this grand opening. Uh, again, it was so thoughtful and so intentional. When you walk around, those things don’t happen by accident. Those things happen because this gentleman here was thoughtful about it and really tried to produce the best hotel he could in this market. So thank you very much. It was great talking to a lot of y’all. Tonight I’ll let Andre take takeover. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot live at the grand opening of the Comfort Inn & Suites, Orlando Sanford Airport here with the owner Andre. Andre, passion project, multi-year project. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears coming. We’re here finally at the grand opening, the ribbing front. How are you feeling right now? Andre Hickman: I’m ecstatic. Yeah, it’s been a long time in the making from the first phone call to finding the property and signing the franchise and, and, uh, just very blessed to be here today. Ryan Embree: A lot of choice representation, because this is really a star property for the comfort brand. Talk to us about the words I keep hearing is intentionality, very deliberate on all the amenities where even things you were talking about in your speech over here about even where parking spaces were. Talk to us about, you know, the passion behind this project and why you wanted to make it so intentional and so deliberate. Andre Hickman: Well, it was a labor of love a lot of years in the making. Yeah. Uh, we’re near the airport and so we did a little bit of theming with the, the metal and the, and the airplane wings and the, the portico. Uh, we did a lot of extra features. We, we had another com We have another comfort in in Sanford, and I wanted to do things a little different. Yeah. And so I went bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. So bigger pool, bigger deck, barbecue grill area, bigger lobby, taller ceilings, bigger rooms, bigger bathrooms. Um, we wanted to do a walk-in shower. I really don’t like curtains and, and glass doors. And I said, you know, if we can make a, a walk-in shower and a comfort in, that’d be quite a feat. And so a lot of design work, and we’re really pleased with how it came out. Ryan Embree: Yeah. I love doing these types of episodes and grand openings and talking to owners like yourself because you don’t get these stories sometimes in the background of the labor of love, like you speak of in the background. Now I’m a resident of Seminole County, here in Oviedo, but we’re here in Sanford, just right up the road, yet a couple Sanford City officials here, also welcoming this new business. Talk about, uh, the special place in your heart and location. Just, just a couple miles from the airport closest actually to the airport right now. Andre Hickman: We’re very fortunate to have county and city commissioners here today. Several choice representatives. Flew in to see the new hotel. Uh, we’re here by the airport. We had some airport folks here. It’s, uh, quite a, quite a unique spot because we’re located almost halfway between the Sanford Airport entrance as well as the Boomba Sports Complex. Yeah. And I think we’re in a unique spot to, to hopefully capture, uh, visitors from both those markets. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. That’s what you want. And it is the, uh, be able to attract all in every segment. Um, congratulations here on this project, Andre. Again, labor of love. It turned out perfect. We’ll let you get back to your grand opening party. Thank you so much for visiting with us. Andre Hickman: Thank you. Speaker 4: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. We are here at the grand opening at the Comfort Inn and Suites, Orlando Sanford Airport here with Wayne West, the third. Wayne, we saw you out in Hunter a couple years, uh, weeks, months ago. In Atlanta. Here we are in Sanford, Florida. Beautiful property opening up here. Tell us a little bit about this project. Wayne West III: Well, this is the second project for this owner we’ve operated for, for 25 years. Great owner. Takes great care of the guest, take great care of my team members, and obviously build a beautiful hotel. And the word I will use for Andre Hickman, the owner developer, is that it was so thoughtful about this property and every little nuance of it is intentional to take great care of the guest. Whether it’s a sports team coming into the boom by complex, or whether it’s distressed gas staying at the airport, which is only quarter of a mile away, the airport entrance. He was just so intentional and so thoughtful about every aspect of the property at his own expense. Yeah. He really put a lot more into this than the typical choice hotel. Ryan Embree: We talked right now, we talked at Hunter about, right now it’s about strategic growth for Newport and it needs to be the right partner. Wayne West III: Yeah. Ryan Embree: Why was this project and this owner the right project for you at Newport? Wayne West III: Well, actually we’ve been blessed enough to, to work for Andre for 25 years. When he started talking about this three years ago, he involved us from the very beginning. He was, he would come out to the site and look at it. He would talk about what the drivers were going to be, what he wanted to do to take care of those drivers. And frankly, he needed to be financially successful, but he’s put a tremendous amount of equity time and energy and effort into this to get to this product. Yeah. So he is a perfect partner for us. He’s a perfect partner for Seminole County. He’s a perfect partner for all the business around him. Ryan Embree: It’s absolutely beautiful property. Very unique. Like I said in his speech, he was actually talking about, you know, using some dry erase on some parking lots. That’s how, you know, how intentional and deliberate each decision there. We love that in hospitality, right. ’cause sometimes now they get accused of just the big box hotel. This certainly doesn’t fit that bill. Wayne West III: No. And I think if you would talk to the choice people, this is the showcase for them though. This is an example of an owner that did it right.And in some cases, what above and beyond their brand standards, just to make sure the guests are taken great care of. Ryan Embree: Love to see it, continue to see those guest expectations elevated and love to see. Can’t wait to see the feedback that everyone gets. Appreciate you taking the time to spend some time. Wayne West III: Great to do that. Thank you again. Good being with you. Ryan Embree: Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot at the Comfort Inn & Suites Orlando Sanford Airport here with Adam. Adam, thank you so much for taking the time. Wonderful project, beautiful property. Just spoke to Wayne about really the high level relationship between ownership and Newport Hospitality Group. You’re the boots on the ground. You’re a little bit closer to the project. Talk to us a little bit about the story. ’cause it, you know, it didn’t just spread out of the ground. That’s a labor of love, right? Adam Hill: This project is probably 10 plus years in the making. I mean, the Hickman family, started one of the drawing board literally over 10 plus years ago. It’s one of our longest standing partners. They’ve been with Newport for almost 30 years. So for them to take this and do it, I mean, Andre painstakingly worked over the plans. They were written. I came on board about three years ago. And I was like, we’re never gonna get this over the finish line. So then we went from the site and we started with moving some dirt excavating, getting the walls up, moving it. And I mean, the project has just come to life in the last two and a half years. It’s ridiculous. But I mean, just to see all the love and hard work that the Hickman family have put into it is just amazing. This is probably the best choice product out there. You’re not gonna see a Comfort Inn like this. It’s very unique for 107 rooms, all the square footage, every room is meticulously designed to be exceptional. Ryan Embree: Absolutely an incredible story. A beautiful property here. 10 plus years in a challenging environment. Right now for hospitality. Talk to us about, you know, having that communication with ownership with the contractors, making sure even the GM, the agent, the director of sales, who’s probably planning these rooms before the hotel’s even open, trying to get some groups in here. So talk us through a little bit about that process and how that communication is key to. Adam Hill: So I think we’re very fortunate in this market. I mean, like I said, we’ve been here almost 30 years. We’ve established great grounds, great roots with the businesses that are here. We knew that the businesses were gonna grow. Even during COVID, this hotel did not suffer. I mean, this hotel did extremely well. And they’re talking about our sister hotel in the market. But, so when we knew when this room was gonna be built, we knew with Boomba right here, the airport growing, there was an opportunity. We seized that opportunity. I know there’s several other hotel projects that were planned. They’ve never got off the ground. We got this off the ground and I mean, we were able to get the financing behind it. We were able to get a solid GC that had never built a hotel before. And I mean, this is a hotel that a GC did not ever built. So I mean, it was a very, like, the stars aligned. We got a perfect team. So just tremendously happy with how it happened. Ryan Embree: The excitement was matched. We had a couple representatives from the city of Sanford talking about this property and it was equally matched because they’re excited about the airport being right here. And that’s gotta be great for the location. How is that kind of working with the city in tandem with them to help a project like this move across the finish line? Adam Hill: So I, again, our partnership extends beyond just the Newport team. So Dena serves on the Seminole County Chamber of Commerce board of Directors. We have Andre who serves on the sports district for Seminole County, so forth. So we’re very connected. We’re a very community partner. We make sure that we’re very active in our community by giving back. So, I mean, that’s opened a lot of doors for us too, where we don’t really have a major challenge of getting our head in with city leaders. ’cause we give back at the communities that we work in. Ryan Embree: Love that. That’s hospitality at its core, right? So, Adam, appreciate it. Congratulations on the property. Congratulations on the project. Biggest celebration for you as well. We’ll let you get back to it. Thank you so much for joining us. Adam Hill: Thank you. I appreciate it. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot at the beautiful Comfort Inn and Suites Orlando Sanford Airport here with Dena, Director of Sales. You have now become the envy of every director of sales in this area. ’cause you have the nicest, most beautiful property here. Thank you for having us at your grand opening and ribbon cutting. Talk to us about this passion project. It’s just absolutely gorgeous here. Here we are in the lobby. Dena Hansen: Thank you. Well, thank you for coming and celebrating with us. Our property has really been built and created by design for those travelers coming in, not only for cruises, but the sports teams that are traveling in. We are about a mile from Boombah Sports Complex, and they have a lot of different tournaments, whether it’s baseball, lacrosse, field hockey, so lots of comfort here. We have 107 rooms. Most of them are double queens. Again, thinking of those families coming in, and I like to say it’s like Texas over here. Everything’s bigger. The pool is bigger, the deck is bigger. There’s a cabana with some lounge seating. There are two barbecue grills with patio seats as well. So if you don’t wanna go out and spend that money on food at a restaurant, uh, you’re welcome to go to Publix, which is two miles down the road, grab some food and just grill it up and have a good time. Ryan Embree: What type of traveler segment are you really getting interest from and like, inquiries for groups? Dena Hansen: Yeah. So in the beginning, a lot of wedding blocks, a lot of reunions, obviously a lot of sports blocks coming in for boombah but most recently the word has gotten out from corporate companies and they’re wanting some corporate rates. They wanna utilize our meeting space. So it’s, it’s kind of ebbs and ebb and flows a little bit. But very exciting. Ryan Embree: This location has really been starved for something here. We had a couple of city officials here that were talking about this and so happy they were equally as excited to be opening this up because the airport is growing so much. What is some of the feedback that you’ve been hearing? You’ve already have some guests in here we’ve seen coming in and out of the lobby doors. What is some of the feedback that you’ve been hearing so far from maybe the individual travelers and then maybe some of the groups that you’ve hosted here as well? Dena Hansen: Yeah. So positive feedback all around. I don’t think I’ve heard one negative thing about the hotel. They enjoy the space. They love the pool area, especially for families that have littles. There’s a sun shelf on the pool. So it’s easier for them to watch the kids. Just the extra space and how wide and open and comforting everything is is amazing. Somebody actually said they love our sheets. Ryan Embree: Okay. Yeah. That’s a new one too. Awesome. Well, I wanna wrap up by just talking about maybe the relationship that as a DOS you gotta have really good relationships and connections with local businesses. Obviously the community. Seminole County, I’m a resident of Seminole County, right down the road. So, talk to us a little bit about how you’ve been able to build those and give back to the community and how they’ve supported you, and vice versa. Dena Hansen: Yeah. So, not only are we a part of both Seminole County Chamber and the Sanford Chamber. I’m on the board of Directors for the Sanford Chamber as well. And doing that it is really all about building the relationships, maintaining contact and just helping each other out and partnering together. That’s really what it’s about. So if, if they need a meeting space, we actually house the Sanford Chamber breakfast, weekly breakfast meetings for Q3. We’ll be here every Wednesday from 7:30AM – 9:00AM. Shameless plug. But yeah, relationship building, it’s mandatory. Nobody wants to do business with somebody you don’t know. You wanna know that you’re gonna be taken care of. And when you walk through those doors, I guarantee you from the moment you step through to the moment you leave, we have you. Ryan Embree: That’s hospitality. Dena Hansen: Living hospitality at its best at Comfort Inn & Suites Orlando Sanford Airport. Ryan Embree: Dena, thank you so much. Thank you. Congratulations. We’ll let you get back to the party here. Thank you. And celebrate this incredible property. Dena Hansen: Thank you very much. Ryan Embree: To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.

This week the gang tackles the legend of “Lawnchair Larry” - the guy who basically did Up, but with a lawn chair, weather balloons, and absolutely zero Pixar-level forethought.

This week, Luke and Chelsea cover the movie that came and went, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come! The loooong awaited follow up to the first one that came out in 2019. Let's see if this felt worth the wait! This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

***The challenge with recording remotely with three people is that sometimes the wifi just doesn't cooperate. There are a few moments where the audio overlaps slightly. We apologize that we weren't able to fully fix it in post-production.***What does it really look like to fly a family of five to Singapore in business class using points and miles? In this episode, we sit down with one of our amazing listeners, Gretchen, to break down exactly how she made this bucket-list trip happen using smart award flight strategies, transferable points, and a whole lot of persistence. We talk through the best ways to search for award availability and why flexibility is everything when planning international family travel. Gretchen also shares a very scary scam that could have turned out WAY worse without the a great credit card company in her corner! She also tells us what it was actually like exploring Singapore with kids, including must-do experiences like Gardens by the Bay, incredible skyline views, and even seeing Indonesia from across the water. If you've ever dreamed of taking your family on a huge international adventure without paying cash prices, this episode is packed with practical tips, inspiration, and real-world advice to help you make it happen.Girl's Trip Interest Form (April 7-10, 2027)Mentioned in this Episode:Gretchen's Singapore/Thailand Blog PostList of Airline Customer Service NumbersFor Thailand/Singapore Questions email Gretchen.navy@gmail.comFind Us On Online:Sign Up for the Y! Wonder Travel NewsletterWonderland on Points Youtube ChannelMary Ellen | JoFacebook GroupAffiliate Links:Seats.AeroCardpointersHalara (use code "Wonderland" for 10% off)Tobiq 15%Our Favorite Credit CardsOur Favorite Travel NecessitiesWe receive a small commission when you choose to use any of our links to purchase your products or apply for your cards! We SO appreciate when you choose to give back to the podcast in this way!

Get the full, ad-free episode here:10 Percent True Memberships10PCT EP87 Marty “Pappy” Brogli – A-10 Desert StormMarty “Pappy” Brogli joins 10 Percent True to tell the story of flying the A-10 Warthog in Operation Desert Storm.From Cold War preparation and the long deployment to the Gulf, to tank killing, SAMs, AAA, and losing friends in combat, Pappy delivers an extraordinarily candid account of what it was really like to fly the Hog in one of the most dangerous air wars in history.This is not the sanitised version of Desert Storm. Pappy talks honestly about fear, humour, squadron culture, survival, morality, and the reality of combat at low level in an aircraft built to take punishment – and sometimes barely survive it.Along the way, he shares remarkable stories of crippled aircraft, manual reversion landings, near disasters, and the unique camaraderie of the A-10 community.If you've ever wondered what Desert Storm looked and felt like through the eyes of an A-10 pilot, this is one you won't want to miss.

Dom and D are back with another episode of Everyone Needs an Aquarius. The conversation begins with a look into the subconscious, unpacking a vivid dream involving purgatory and Greek mythology that serves as a jumping-off point for a discussion on rebirth and personal evolution. From there, the duo provides a crucial update on the Kelvin Evans trial regarding the theft of unreleased Beyoncé music before shifting focus to the latest cultural headlines. The episode gets into the heated details of the recent Kevin Hart roast, where Dom offers a candid critique of "lazy" humor and addresses the controversial jokes aimed at Sheryl Underwood and the underlying issues of colorism in comedy. The discussion continues with the practical implications of the Spirit Airlines shutdown and what it means for travelers before moving into a skeptical look at the credentials and missing dissertation of Dr. Cheyenne Bryant. Finally, the show explores the chilling dynamics of the Nature Boy cult and the psychology of control, closing out with a teaser for next week's historical deep dive into John Brown. 0:00 Welcome & The Purgatory Dream 4:11 Interpreting Dreams: Death vs. Rebirth 8:11 Family Plot Twists & MySpace Memories 10:36 Update: The Beyoncé Music Theft Trial 13:16 Kevin Hart Roast: Comedy or Just Offensive? 24:27 Roast Etiquette, Colorism, & Sheryl Underwood 36:51 The End of Spirit Airlines & Delta's New Rules 48:37 Investigating Dr. Cheyenne Bryant's Credentials 56:15 Deep Dive: The Cult of Nature Boy Brand new voicemail: ‪(314) 649-3113‬ Subscribe to the Everyone Needs an Aquarius Patreon https://bit.ly/3tXnnCz  Email the show at straightolc@gmail.com           Follow SOLC Network online Instagram: https://bit.ly/39VL542                                    Twitter: https://bit.ly/39aL395                                     Facebook: https://bit.ly/3sQn7je                            To Listen to the podcast Podbean https://bit.ly/3t7SDJH                                YouTube http://bit.ly/3ouZqJU                                Spotify http://spoti.fi/3pwZZnJ                                Apple http://apple.co/39rwjD1                                                         IHeartRadio http://ihr.fm/2L0A2y 

In this episode, Meghan and Melisa give advice having hard conversations in friendships. They also discuss going to space camp, eyesight, Jeopardy!, Easter plans, Juggalos, Bridgerton (per usual), and Elena Taber drama. Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Subscribe to But Am I Watching? Apple  Spotify Subscribe to Don't Blame Me! Apple Spotify Call In for DBM - 310-694-0976 (3 minutes or less) Write In for DBM - meghanpodcast@gmail.com (300 words or less) DBM Submission Form Buy Our Merch https://crowdmade.com/collections/sister-sign Follow Us! instagram.com/meghanandmelisa @meghanrienks instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/diamondmprint.productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

0:00 Intro 0:06 Mole 2:30 Lesson 5:14 Stroke 8:24 Dumped 11:04 Snack 12:55 Cat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices