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Some cloudless night in September, when the air is clear, you may see birds flying across the yellow face of the moon! September is peak migration time for millions of songbirds heading south from North America to more tropical latitudes. Nocturnal migrants of the same species, such as orioles, warblers, sparrows, and tanagers, call as they fly, enabling flock-mates to stick together. Many of these flight calls are distinctive, enabling those with an excellent ear to identify them as they pass. Listen to this show in Spanish here. More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
We're back another Recent Romantasy Reads episode, book besties!We're breaking down our latest reads and sharing what we loved, what worked for us, and which books we think are worth adding to your TBR :)Books discussed in this episode:✨ The Poison Daughter by Sheila Masterson✨ Fury Bound by Sable Sorensen✨ A Requiem for Fallen Stars by Hazel S. Wilkes✨ Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer✨ Between Tides & Thunder by Leena Kazak✨ Web of Vows and Vengeance by Aria Ashbrook✨ This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews✨ The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow✨ Beneath by Ariel SullivanOur other Book Rec Episodes!✨ Love the show? Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode! Leaving us a rating and review is one of the best ways to support the podcast and help more fantasy romance readers find our book club! ✨Join the Flights of Fantasy community:PatreonWebsiteInstagramTikTokFollow along for episode updates, book recommendations, theories, reactions, and all things romantasy!
For once the emergency isn't an English one… Aatif Nawaz joins us as Pakistan send home nine of their touring party before the third and final test at Edgbaston. Flights have been booked for seven players and two coaches, including their head coach. Aatif is here to ask the big questions… Where's the accountability? Who sacks the sackers? What about dinner with the King? Will Ghazi Ghori, gatecrasher of last week's episode, now be keeping wicket?Plus Richard Thompson, Roy Hodgson, Sir John Major and ITV top brass all have the honour of meeting Mattchin.
My gap year was supposed to be boring. Instead I've taken 19 flights before summer even ended, and somehow I still feel more rested than I have in years.This episode is part of my summer read-aloud series, where I'm sharing personal essays straight from my Substack. This one's about what happened when the "spacious, do-nothing" gap year I planned turned into a calendar full of tennis lessons, swim classes, and last-minute flights, and why I had to stop judging myself for it.In this episode, you'll hear…Why I planned a year of "blank space" and ended up busier than ever, just in a totally different wayThe real difference between being chronically online and busy versus chronically offline and busy (and why one feels so much better than the other)What happens to my brain, my relationships, and my sense of reality when I spend too much time onlineThe moment I realized what I was actually feeling wasn't guilt about overcommitting. It was judgmentClick here to find the full show notes and transcript for this episode.EPISODE RESOURCES:Subscribe to Sam's SubstackRead today's essay My gap year was supposed to be boringGet Sam's book When I Start My Business, I'll Be HappyGet Sam's weekly newsletter, Sam's SidebarIf you have a question you'd like Sam to answer on a future podcast episode, you can submit it here.Click here to be notified when new episodes of On Your Terms® come outCONNECT:Get Sam's weekly newsletter, Sam's SidebarFollow Sam on InstagramFollow Sam on YouTubeSubscribe to Sam's SubstackTake Sam's free legal workshop "5 Steps to Legally Protect & Grow Your Online Business"DISCLAIMER
Register for our free masterclass on the tools you need to level up your points gamehttps://webinar.geobreezetravel.com/?utm_source=youtube Timestamps:00:00 Why First Class00:49 Convenience Perks01:45 Next Level Lounges02:55 Iconic Onboard Experiences03:53 Routes Are Limited05:26 Build Trips Around Space07:01 Guide and Resources07:43 Finding Award Availability09:02 Status and Outsourcing09:58 Know Your Aircraft11:41 Taxes Fees and Upgrades14:12 Points Value Rules15:04 Wrap Up You can find Julia at: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geobreezetravel/ ➤ Credit card links: https://www.geobreezetravel.com/cards Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. The content of this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
London is one of those destinations you can visit again and again and still find something new to explore. In this episode, the Points Talk Squad shares how they use points and miles to plan trips to London, from booking flights and finding the right hotel to making the most of everything the city has to offer. The Squad breaks down different strategies for getting to London on points, including how they think about balancing points, taxes and fees, positioning flights, and nonstop options. They also share some of their favorite London hotel options for different types of travelers, along with tips for choosing where to stay based on your trip goals. You can find links to resources mentioned in this episode plus the transcript here: pointstalksquad.com/195 If you're looking for even more Points Talk®, featuring the latest news in points, miles, and credit cards, behind-the-scenes insights, and a monthly Ask Us Anything episode—subscribe to Points Talk® Premium: https://pointstalk.supercast.com/ Ready to get started with NEARLY FREE travel? Click here for the exact offers we would sign up for this month: https://pointstalksquad.lpages.co/bestoffers/ Points Talk® is also on YouTube! You can watch this episode here: youtube.com/@pointstalksquad Let us know what you want to hear on the podcast by sending us a DM on Instagram: instagram.com/pointstalksquad
Register for our free masterclass on the tools you need to level up your points gamehttps://webinar.geobreezetravel.com/?utm_source=youtube Timestamps:00:00 Why Documentation Matters01:05 Meet Lisa Jarvis02:22 Filing Claims Step by Step05:37 Credit Card vs Insurance08:08 Best Cards and Covered Reasons12:03 Trip Delay Coverage Hacks15:14 Passenger Rights Explained18:32 The Zero Cost Policy22:23 Odd Scenarios and Add Ons31:23 Exclusions and Risky Activities34:06 Liability and Rental Cars38:05 Resources and Wrap UpYou can find Julia at: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geobreezetravel/ ➤ Credit card links: https://www.geobreezetravel.com/cards You can find Lisa at:➤ Website: https://www.chasingmemories.co/ ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chasingmemories.co/ Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. The content of this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
With summer winding down and our two oldest boys preparing to leave for college, I could feel the familiar pull of time. The family dinners, random conversations and beautiful chaos of having four teenagers under one roof won't last forever. So, with three boys still home, still available and, somewhat remarkably, still willing to take an adventure with Dad, we did something impractical: We cashed in airline miles, called a friend for help with tickets and booked a last-minute trip to New York City to watch our Cardinals play the Yankees. Total time in New York: less than 14 hours. Flights were delayed. Traffic was brutal. The hotel wasn't ready. The weather was stifling. Lines into the stadium were long. The Cardinals won two of three games that series. Naturally, we attended the one they lost. And as if that weren't painful enough, one of my own children walked out of Yankee Stadium wearing a brand-new Yankees jersey over his Cardinals shirt, sporting a fake New York accent and an enormous smile. By almost every measure, the trip was imperfect. And yet, later that night, after gyros in Midtown, ice cream and a long walk back to the hotel, I realized something: It had been perfect. Let me explain.
In today's episode of The Quiz, we're testing your knowledge on everything from stargazing astronomy to top-ranked university programs. Can you answer these? Night Sky Constellations: You can easily spot them in the clear evening sky, but do you know which pair of well-known celestial formations come in both "Big" and "Little" versions? Iconic Lyrics: "There must be some kind of way outta here..." begins one of the most famous tracks in rock history, but do you know which legendary singer-songwriter originally wrote and recorded it? Top Tech Universities: U.S. News & World Report ranks higher-education programs across the nation, but do you know which Pennsylvania university tied with M.I.T. for the top spot in Artificial Intelligence? Play. Share. Listen, with FOX on Games podcast host, Eammonn Dignam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In Episode 425 of Aviation News Talk, Max talks with retired Air Force General David Brubaker about STEM Flights, a nonprofit organization that pairs middle- and high-school students with volunteer pilot mentors for free, one-on-one aviation experiences designed to introduce them to careers in aviation, aerospace, engineering, and other STEM fields. STEM Flights grew out of Brubaker's own experience after retiring from the Air Force in 2005. During his military career, he flew aircraft including the F-4 and F-16 and finished his career with an assignment at the Pentagon. After retiring, he became active in general aviation and began taking young people flying. But Brubaker didn't simply give them airplane rides. He expected them to participate. They helped with navigation, looked at the instrumentation, worked with the radios, and often took the controls themselves. Years later, he began hearing back from some of those young people. Several had gone on to study aviation, aerospace, engineering, and other technical subjects. One young woman eventually earned her ratings, joined the West Virginia Air National Guard, and became a C-130 pilot. Those experiences helped Brubaker recognize that pilots could have an enormous influence on the career choices of young people simply by sharing aviation with them in a meaningful way. His children encouraged him to turn what he was doing informally into a nonprofit, and STEM Flights was launched in 2018. Today, STEM Flights connects students with volunteer pilot mentors around the country. Students don't simply show up at an airport for a free ride. They apply to the program, receive a recommendation, select a mission based on their interests, and complete homework before being paired with a pilot. That preparation is part of what makes STEM Flights different. Brubaker describes the program as a more intensive, personal experience than a typical introductory airplane ride. A student is paired one-on-one with a pilot mentor, and the pilot learns about the student's interests before the flight. On the day of the mission, they discuss safety and learning objectives, preflight the airplane, and then head into the air. Once they reach a safe altitude, the student usually gets the controls. They may learn about navigation, aircraft instrumentation and communications, and Brubaker says he likes to have each student make at least one radio call. But the most powerful moment often comes when the student realizes that he or she is actually flying the airplane. Brubaker tells the story of one reluctant young man whose mother encouraged him to participate. On the ground, the student appeared completely uninterested, and Brubaker wondered whether the flight would accomplish anything. Then they took off. Within minutes of taking the controls, the boy came alive. He started participating, asking questions, and enthusiastically flying the airplane. A couple of weeks later, Brubaker received a letter from the boy's mother. She explained that her son had approached life believing it was better not to try than to try and fail. Flying an airplane—something he never imagined he could possibly do—changed his perception of what he might be capable of accomplishing. That experience illustrates why STEM Flights is about more than simply recruiting future pilots. Students have gone on to pursue aircraft maintenance, avionics, aerospace engineering, military aviation, and other technical fields. Brubaker says dozens have attended universities with aviation or engineering programs, and STEM Flights continues supporting students after their flights through a program called Flight Following. Flight Following connects participants with information about scholarships, flight schools, grants, Civil Air Patrol, and other organizations and programs that can help them continue toward aviation and STEM careers. For pilots listening to Aviation News Talk, one of the most important parts of the conversation is how they can participate. STEM Flights calls its volunteers "pilot mentors," and you don't need to be a flight instructor. Brubaker says pilots generally need a private pilot certificate, at least 250 hours of flight time, appropriate medical and aircraft qualifications, and a background check. You don't necessarily need to own an airplane either. Some pilot mentors rent aircraft or belong to flying clubs, and in some areas STEM Flights has arrangements with local flight schools. The organization has pilot mentors in 49 states, but matching students with available pilots remains a constant challenge. At the time of the interview, Brubaker said roughly 115 young people were waiting to be paired with pilots. After a career that included fighter jets, simulated air combat and pulling nine Gs, Brubaker says mentoring young people offers a different kind of satisfaction. Military flying was intensely focused on accomplishing a mission. STEM Flights provides an opportunity to give something back. And for a general aviation pilot wondering how to help strengthen the future of aviation, the concept is remarkably simple. Share your airplane. Share your experience. Put a young person at the controls. And you may help launch an aviation career that otherwise never would have begun. If you're getting value from this show, please support the show via PayPal, Venmo, Zelle or Patreon. Support the Show by buying a Lightspeed ANR Headsets Max has been using only Lightspeed headsets for nearly 25 years! I love their tradeup program that let's you trade in an older Lightspeed headset for a newer model. Start with one of the links below, and Lightspeed will pay a referral fee to support Aviation News Talk. Lightspeed Delta Zulu Headset $1299NEW – Lightspeed Zulu 4 Headset $1099 Lightspeed Zulu 3 Headset $949Lightspeed Sierra Headset $749 My Review on the Lightspeed Delta Zulu Send us your feedback or comments via email If you have a question you'd like answered on the show, let listeners hear you ask the question, by recording your listener question using your phone. News Stories Pilots, Flight Attendants Have Greater Risk of Radiation-Related Cancer Death Than Other Professions Louisiana Blocks ADS-B Landing Fees FAA Orders Rotax Gearbox Inspections FAA Invites Comments on Flightdeck Controls Draft AC Laredo Youth Pilot Program Draws More Than 1,000 Applicants Pentastar Aviation FBO Introduces Wingwalking Robots Mentioned on the ShowBuy Max Trescott's G3000 Book Call 800-247-6553 UAV News Talk - Archer Aviation episode NTSB News Talk - episode #36 Go-Arounds Are Awesome website STEM Flights Free Index to the first 282 episodes of Aviation New Talk So You Want To Learn to Fly or Buy a Cirrus seminars Online Version of the Seminar Coming Soon – Register for Notification Check out our recommended ADS-B receivers, and order one for yourself. Yes, we'll make a couple of dollars if you do. Get the Free Aviation News Talk app for iOS or Android. Check out Max's Online Courses: G1000 VFR, G1000 IFR, and Flying WAAS & GPS Approaches. Find them all at: https://www.pilotlearning.com/ Social Media Like Aviation News Talk podcast on Facebook Follow Max on Instagram Follow Max on Twitter Listen to all Aviation News Talk podcasts on YouTube or YouTube Premium "Go Around" song used by permission of Ken Dravis; you can buy his music at kendravis.com If you purchase a product through a link on our site, we may receive compensation.
Register for our free masterclass on the tools you need to level up your points gamehttps://webinar.geobreezetravel.com/?utm_source=youtube Timestamps:00:00 Challenge Beta Update00:38 Pick Your Audience02:05 Set Realistic Expectations03:44 Practice Through Iteration05:26 Invest in Search Tools08:03 Tools Have Limits09:28 Time Money Tradeoffs11:27 No Silver Bullet11:57 Consistency Over 30 Days13:40 Wrap Up And FeedbackYou can find Julia at: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geobreezetravel/ ➤ Credit card links: https://www.geobreezetravel.com/cards Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. The content of this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
THE WAIT IS OVER, BOOK BESTIES. We're here with a very special ACOTAR EMERGENCY EPISODE
Find us on social media: Facebook & InstagramEmail us: hello@thetinlounge.comDiscussion:How cruising keeps its head above waterFall Travel Is Surging, Far-Out Bookings Are on the Rise and More Luxury Trends From VirtuosoAs heard on Excess Baggage:The Travel Institute introduces course on booking air travelAPT Travel Group Introduces Two River Cruise Ships for North American MarketALG Vacations Adds Tern to Travel Advisor ToolsReport: Gen Z Trusts Online Reviews Over Hotel Brand NamesHolland America Prepares for More Astronomical Voyages in 2027Marriott Agrees to Convert Three All-Inclusive Resorts in Playa del CarmenGood News for Travelers: Prices on Flights, Hotels, Rentals Finally Dropping
Register for our free masterclass on the tools you need to level up your points gamehttps://webinar.geobreezetravel.com/?utm_source=youtube Timestamps:00:00 What Is Gyoza Flights01:15 Meet Jason01:45 Points Journey Origins03:23 Project Sunrise Explained04:45 Earning Qantas Points06:28 US Transfer Partners07:34 Best Qantas Redemptions08:37 Domestic Flying Reality10:13 Qantas Status Culture11:37 Cabin Experience Review16:27 Emirates With Qantas20:07 Change Fees Pitfalls21:27 Partner Sweet Spots24:09 Jetstar Using Points25:29 Geoza Demo Setup26:02 Regional Search Explained27:26 Reading Results and Taxes27:56 Caching and Booking Links28:49 Velocity Filters and Qatar31:55 Trip Builder and Stops33:32 Self Transfer Stitching36:56 Qantas Pricing Reality Check40:17 Qantas Reward Finder Build43:22 Transparency and Points Accounting45:17 Where to Try It46:18 Wrap Up and Travel BanterYou can find Julia at: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geobreezetravel/ ➤ Credit card links: https://www.geobreezetravel.com/cards You can find Jason at:➤ Gyoza Flights: https://gyozaflights.com/ ➤ Qantas Flight Reward Finder: https://flightrewardfinder.qantas.com/ ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gyozaflights/ ➤ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gyoza-flights/ ➤ Jason's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncooper/ Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. The content of this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
We're officially diving into Part One of Lion and the Deathless Dark by Carissa Broadbent! We're breaking down the expanded worldbuilding, Kyrene and Septimus's deliciously slow-burn dynamic, shocking revelations, devastating emotional moments, and the action-packed quest that made this our favorite Crowns of Nyaxia installment since The Serpent and the Wings of Night!SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE CROWNS OF NYAXIA SERIES!!✨ Love the show? Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode! Leaving us a rating and review is one of the best ways to support the podcast and help more fantasy romance readers find our book club! ✨Join the Flights of Fantasy community: Patreon Website Instagram TikTokFollow along for episode updates, book recommendations, theories, reactions, and all things romantasy!
We just got back from the Smoky Mountains and I'm taking you along for the whole thing.In this episode, I'm walking you through exactly how we booked our family trip to Dollywood and Gatlinburg, Tennessee: the resort, the flights, the rental car, and yes even how we handled park tickets. If you've ever wondered what a real points trip looks like from start to finishIn this episode, I cover:How we booked our resort [which points/card, how many points, what it would have cost in cash]The flight strategy [airline, points currency, routing from ABQ]Rental CarOur favorite spots in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, where we ate, what we skippedA full day at Dollywood The takeaway: You don't need a huge income or complicated strategy to make trips like this happen. You need a system and the willingness to say yes.Links & Resources:Ready to book your own points trip? Join us inside the Travel Points Lounge Follow along → @pointstooparadiseCapital One Venture X Card
Christchurch Airport's reaching new heights and says there's still plenty of room to climb. This summer will be the airport's biggest yet, with more than 1.27 million international seats available between November and March – up 21% on last year. China Southern Airlines is boosting capacity by 57%. General Manager of Aeronautical Development Gordon Bevan told Mike Hosking there's still room to grow its offering further. He says there will be about seven million passengers at the airport this year, with room for another two-to-three million more. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Have you ever run an award search, come up empty, and quietly wondered whether the flights you want are even out there? That frustration usually comes down to one thing, and it isn't that the flights don't exist. It's that most of us were never taught how to search for them well. In this episode I break down two ways to search for award flights outside your credit card travel portal, where transferring points to airline partners can turn a one to one-and-a-half cent point into two, five, even ten cents of value, and why knowing how to search is the skill that unlocks all of it. I get into both, the method most people lean on without realizing what it quietly misses, and the older, more hands-on approach that still turns up availability those tools can't see. Each one has real strengths and a few blind spots, and learning when to reach for which is what separates the searches that come up empty from the ones that end with a trip booked. Whether you've leaned entirely on search tools and keep coming up short, or you're a confident manual searcher who has written those tools off, my hope is you walk away seeing why the best award searches use both, and where the flights you've been missing have been hiding all along. Get full show notes and transcript: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/how-to-search-for-award-flights Enrollment for Points Made Easy is open! Eager to learn the secrets of award travel so that you can turn your expenses into unforgettable experiences? Join the course here: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy
Episode Notes Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights and Movie Nights returns with Rob in order to finish off week 6 as we get to see the inner workings of Red's smuggling operation in Shawshank.
Are parents obligated to travel separately in case something happens to one of them? That's what Madison is arguing, but her husband Levi says she's wrong! Whose side are you on?
Full show - Thursday | GMD - Separate flights | News or Nope - Taylor Swift, Dick and Dave, and Dwayne Johnson | Did you make the most of your summer? | Go-to movie | T. Hack's T. Oilets | Someone called 9-1-1 last night | Slacker witnessed a crime...maybe | Erica's new tattoo | Stupid stories www.instagram.com/theslackershow www.instagram.com/askslacker www.instagram.com/ericasheaaa www.instagram.com/thackiswack www.instagram.com/radioerin
In this episode, Ray Cochrane breaks down NVIDIA’s case for world action models, the shift that swaps a robot’s picture-describing backbone for one trained to predict what happens next. He also covers Perseverance closing in on the off-world driving record, a derelict SpaceX rocket stage hitting the Moon, and Anthropic’s rework of Claude Fable 5’s biology safeguards. Finally, he digs into Gemini Omni, Google’s undisclosed trip-planning rankings, the Danube’s record low, and iFixit’s call for Apple to unlock the iPad bootloader. – Want to start a podcast? It’s easy to get started! Sign up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens with a personal update. Wildfires in Eastern Oregon made for a rough week of heavy smoke, and a local building burned down, which he calls a real tragedy. Meanwhile, his work at Blubrry has centered on PowerPress fixes, where reproducing customer-reported bugs remains the biggest headache. Support tickets rarely carry enough detail, and the errors themselves are often too vague to diagnose. Consequently, he is leaning toward a stronger logging and error layer, and he asks experienced developers to share what actually works for them. Beyond VLAs: NVIDIA’s Case for World Action Models The featured story comes from NVIDIA’s developer blog, and it answers a question sitting underneath this year’s robot news. Why do robot arms fall apart the moment anything changes? Move a cup six inches, swap its shape, or change the lighting, and a policy that worked perfectly in training fails. The answer, according to NVIDIA, is not the robot but the model underneath it. For the last few years, the dominant approach has been the vision-language-action model, or VLA, built on an AI that originally learned to describe pictures. Consequently, it recognizes a banana it has never seen, in a kitchen it has never seen, yet it has no idea what that banana will do next. As the article puts it, such a model “does not learn what happens to a mug when the gripper closes, how a towel folds, where an object lands when released.” Because the physics never arrives with the model, every scrap of it has to come out of hand-recorded demonstrations. The proposed fix swaps the foundation entirely. Instead of building on a model that learned to caption images, a world action model builds on one trained to predict how video continues, so the physics is already paid for. Notably, these models output an action and a prediction of what the robot’s cameras will see, in the same pass. Cochrane likens it to forethought, imagining your own motion as you make it. NVIDIA’s implementation is Cosmos 3, pretrained on roughly 767 million images and 348 million videos of real-world dynamics. It ships in 4, 16, and 64 billion parameter sizes named Edge, Nano, and Super, and it runs in real time on a Jetson Thor board bolted to the robot itself. Cochrane recalls his dad owning one of those Jetson boards, and he asks anyone working in robotics to explain how the throughput figures fit together. However, he closes on an open question: where did 348 million videos actually come from? For deeper detail, he points listeners to the source article and to NVIDIA researcher Jim Fan. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. Perseverance Closes In on the Off-World Driving Record Ars Technica reports that NASA’s Perseverance rover is about to take the record for most distance driven on another world. The mark sits at roughly 28 miles, set by NASA’s own Opportunity rover across more than fourteen years before it went quiet in 2018. As Cochrane works out on air, that averages about two miles a year. Perseverance will pass it in roughly five years instead. The difference is a navigation system called AutoNav. Since a radio signal takes several minutes to reach Mars, earlier rovers crept along pre-plotted routes and stopped every half meter to think. Perseverance carries a second computer dedicated to processing what its cameras see, so it plans while the wheels keep turning. Consequently, about ninety percent of its driving is autonomous, against roughly ten percent for Curiosity, and it averages around 110 meters an hour rather than 15 to 18. Cochrane notes researchers finding the rover at planned sites days ahead of schedule, and he wonders aloud whether world action models might drive the next one. A SpaceX Rocket Stage Slammed Into the Moon Next, Smithsonian Magazine covered the Falcon 9 upper stage that struck the Moon on August 5. That stage flew back in January 2025, carrying Firefly’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience landers, and it was never meant to end up there. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman says a mixture of solar activity and gravity nudged the derelict onto a lunar path after nineteen months adrift. Four tonnes of dead hardware arrived at about 5,400 miles per hour. Nobody watched it happen, and the reason is a nice bit of physics. It struck sunlit ground near a crater called Einstein, and no impact flash has ever been detected on the lit part of the Moon. However, the instruments caught the aftermath. South Korea’s Danuri orbiter imaged a dark new mark, while the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope picked up sodium and lithium in the plume, the lithium possibly shed by the rocket itself. Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell quipped that he has “Sir Isaac Newton’s personal assurance that it did indeed hit the moon,” while planetary scientist Hannah Sargeant warns against making a habit of it. Cochrane points out the Apollo landing sites are still sitting up there. Anthropic Reworks Claude Fable 5’s Biology Safeguards Anthropic published a post on how Claude Fable 5 handles biology questions, and the bind is genuine. Biology is the textbook dual-use problem, since the knowledge behind reading your own lab results also helps someone build a weapon. Rather than refusing outright, a classifier watches for risky requests and quietly reroutes them to Claude Opus 5, a capable model without Fable 5’s biological depth. Anthropic calls that mechanism a fallback. The trouble was how often it fired on people doing nothing wrong. This update cut biology-related fallbacks by roughly 85 percent in Anthropic’s own testing, with expected overall drops of 67 percent on Claude.ai and 55 percent on Cowork. Genuinely dual-use territory still trips it, and Anthropic names virology, toxicology, and molecular design. Cochrane hit the old behavior himself and found it irritating, so he welcomes the refinement. Even so, he would rather see a false positive than a model helping someone produce a virus. Five Builders Put Gemini Omni Through Its Paces Google highlighted five builders working with Gemini Omni. Omni is a model rather than an app, and it generates video from text, images, other video, or audio, while also editing footage you already have. Google claims it “combines an intuitive understanding of physics with Gemini’s real-world knowledge,” citing gravity, kinetic energy, and fluid dynamics. As Cochrane observes, that is the same bet NVIDIA is making with robots, only pointed at video generation instead. He also flags a naming collision worth knowing about. NVIDIA calls its architecture an omni-model while Google’s product is simply Omni, two different things landing in the same week. Additionally, he encourages listeners to watch the demos, though he still senses a disconnect in AI-generated video and concedes that knowing its origin may color the impression. Gemini Wants to Plan Your Vacation Another Gemini piece, a how-to on trip planning, drew Cochrane’s sharpest take of the night. Gemini plugs straight into Google Maps, Flights, and Hotels, pulling live locations, reviews, and prices to build an itinerary. Switch on a feature called Personal Intelligence, and it reads across your Google apps, turning a messy trip-planning email chain into a clean master plan. Clever, but he calls it extremely concerning. Once these become services, he expects partnerships to quietly push particular hotels, restaurants, resorts, and destinations onto users. Notably, Google’s post never explains how any of it gets ranked, and the words sponsored, ad, affiliate, commission, and paid never appear once. There is no disclosure of a commercial arrangement, and no denial of one either. Meanwhile the post hands readers off to Viator to book tours without describing that relationship at all. Cochrane suspects the real effect shows up slowly, in the shape of small businesses continuing to disappear. The Senate Blocks a Rule on Who Controls Research Money Science reports that the Senate passed a temporary spending bill in the early hours of Saturday the 8th. The Senate’s version carries a one-paragraph rider the House version lacks, and that rider stops the White House Office of Management and Budget from finalizing a set of proposed rules. OMB builds the president’s budget, clears agency regulations, and controls how approved money actually reaches agencies. The bill itself is a stopgap, which prevents a shutdown without settling anything. The rules reach every organization that takes federal money, a pot of roughly $1.1 trillion across 41 agencies, about $150 billion of it research grants. They would let political appointees second-guess which grants get funded, allow awarded grants to be pulled when the work does not match presidential priorities, and put several countries off limits for research partnerships, China first among them. Senator Susan Collins pushed the block through after telling OMB director Russell Vought the proposal was deeply flawed, noting nearly 500,000 public comments, the vast majority opposed. However, the 90-6 vote is not law. Both chambers are on recess. Vought reportedly said the rule would not have been finalized before December anyway, and the block only lasts as long as the stopgap, which expires December 11. The Danube Falls to a Record Low ESA published a pair of Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images showing the same bend of the Danube, 45 kilometers upstream of Budapest, photographed a year apart. Cochrane calls the before-and-after shocking, going from green to brown completely. Wire reports put the Budapest gauge near 10 centimeters at the start of the month, about four inches of water, against a previous record of 33 centimeters set in 2018. The knock-on effects arrived fast. Budapest ran short on both power and drinking water, while the shrinking flow concentrated pollution in what remained. Romania hit record lows on its own stretch as well. Cochrane hopes the recovery is already underway. What a Heatwave Actually Does to the Power Grid That river story runs directly into a Carbon Brief factcheck. Nuclear plants cool themselves with river water, so when the Danube dropped, plants in Hungary and Romania throttled back and pulled roughly 2.5 gigawatts off the grid. Romania declared a state of alert in its energy sector, and its navy reportedly used explosives to steer more water toward a plant intake. Carbon Brief then walked through what heatwaves do to each way of making electricity. Nuclear loses efficiency when the cooling water is already warm, though its shutdowns are mostly regulatory rather than mechanical. Gas turbines pull in less air because hot air is thinner, costing capacity. Wind falls off hardest, since a heatwave is a big stalled dome of high pressure and nearly still air. Solar is the surprise: cells genuinely do get less efficient as they heat up, yet total output climbs anyway, with UK solar up 46 percent during a four-day June heatwave against the week before. Butterflies Are on the Move Everywhere A new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution covered 1,758 butterfly species, roughly one in ten of every species we have named. The team pulled 6,182 records from 105 countries, reading non-English research alongside 68 expert write-ups. Four out of five species pushed into new territory, and about 79 percent of the logged shifts traced back to climate change and extreme weather. Separately, 27 percent saw their range shrink somewhere, and 22 percent moved up or down a mountain slope chasing cooler air. That sounds like good news, and it really is not. Expansion means a boundary moved, not that butterflies are thriving, since a species can push its northern edge forward while its southern edge quietly collapses. Lead author Shawan Chowdhury says the shifts turn up on every continent where butterflies occur. Additionally, monitoring gaps leave Central Africa, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and the Amazon Basin barely counted at all. Cochrane recalls hearing years ago that butterflies were disappearing in Hawaii, and he invites listeners spotting unfamiliar species locally to contribute what they see. Primates Make Friends Across Species Cochrane called this one a fun find. A study in the journal Primates, led by Cyril Grueter at Oxford, gathered 427 documented cases going back to the 1970s across 88 primate species and 127 partner species. Play and grooming dominated at 139 and 136 cases, alongside carrying, huddling, food sharing, and even adoption. Primates usually started the interactions themselves, with juveniles playing most, adult females handling grooming and caregiving, and adult males least likely to join in. The examples are remarkable. Japanese macaques on the island of Yakushima groom sika deer and climb on their backs, a silverback gorilla cradled a tiny wild bushbaby, and wild capuchins in Brazil adopted an infant marmoset in a bond that held for weeks. However, Grueter rejects the pet-keeping headline and prefers the hedged term proto-pet keeping. The actual claim is smaller and more interesting: curiosity, tolerance, caregiving, and play have roots running far deeper than humans do. iFixit Tells Apple to Unlock the iPad Finally, an opinion piece from Charlie Sorrel at iFixit struck a chord. This fall, iPadOS 27 drops support for a batch of older iPads, including the 8th-generation iPad, the third-generation Air, the fifth-generation mini, and the first-generation iPad Pros. Cochrane owns one of those Pros and reports it still works fine. Those devices will not break, but they stop getting OS and security updates until apps abandon them and the battery gives out. The obvious second life is Linux, except the bootloader stays locked. Apple’s iBoot will not load anything else, unlike a Mac, a PC, or most Android phones. Sorrel argues it “should be a user choice, not a vendor choice,” and Cochrane agrees flatly. You own the device, so why does Apple decide what runs on it? He compares the situation to jailbreaking, and he suspects most consumers have never pushed back simply because it never occurs to them. Nevertheless, he hopes an unlock eventually breathes new life into hardware that still works perfectly well. Cochrane wraps with housekeeping: become a GNC Insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider, email geeknews@gmail.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and grab a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com. He thanks GoDaddy for over twenty years of keeping the show on the air, and he signs off wishing listeners a wonderful evening. The post The Robot That Imagines First #1872 appeared first on Geek News Central.
Mike is about to start that bonfire if the Red Sox don't find that winning way again. The NFL is one day away! A recap on current events other events in the sports world. Subscribe if you love chaos, craft beer, and unfiltered opinions. It's Flights, Football & Anything Else - and it's LIVE.
Episode Notes Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights and Movie Nights is back with Rob as Andy takes a stroll in the park after finding out why Red is called Red.
Episode Notes Rob is joined again by Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights and Movie Nights as Red and Andy discuss payment methods and surcharges.
Welcome to the ultimate Maastermind Compilation! We've gathered every Maastermind segment from our entire ACOTAR: Revisited series into one place, tracing the foreshadowing, Easter eggs, lingering plot threads, hidden connections, and theories Sarah J. Maas has planted throughout all 3 series! ⚠️ MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for all three Sarah J. Maas series: A Court of Thorns and Roses, Throne of Glass, and Crescent City ✨ Love the show? Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode! Leaving us a rating and review is one of the best ways to support the podcast and help more fantasy romance readers find our book club! ✨Join the Flights of Fantasy community:PatreonWebsiteInstagramTikTokSJM Series Episode Playlists: ACOTAR Throne of Glass Crescent City Maasverse Theory Episodes Follow along for episode updates, book recommendations, theories, reactions, and all things romantasy!
HPR's Cassie Ordonio reports on the results for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs races; Mokulele Airlines begins test flights with BETA Technologies' fully-electric Alia aircrafts.
Episode Notes Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights and Movie Nights rejoins Rob as Red and Andy talk about rocks and some of the dangers of Shawshank.
Episode Notes Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights and Movie Nights joins Rob this week as Andy and Red start to discuss things in the yard.
How the heck did this happen? Who has the oldest working A/C unit? GUESTS: Jon Woodward - Video Journalist with CTV News Toronto Gavin Tighe - senior partner with Gardiner Roberts LLP and chair of the firm's Litigation and Dispute Resolution Group
Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra and Fianna Fail Senator Dee Ryan
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It's Friday, August 7th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus Tanzanian Christians worried about Muslim threats In several Muslim-majority communities along Tanzania's coast in eastern Africa along the Indian Ocean, small Christian churches continue to worship under growing pressure, with pastors and congregations describing intimidation, disruption, and insecurity, reports International Christian Concern. For many believers in Zanzibar and parts of coastal Tanzania, where 99 percent of the population is Muslim, church leaders say some congregations have experienced threats, harassment, and occasional attacks. One pastor said, “When a church is threatened, it is not only a building that is affected. People begin to fear even the simple act of coming together to pray. Mothers worry about bringing their children, and some believers spend the entire service looking over their shoulders instead of worshipping freely.” Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in Tanzania. Trump, Hegseth clashed over missile depletion concerns President Donald Trump's frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from War Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, reports The Washington Post. President Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed.” The shortages, particularly in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, have been part of the reason President Trump has pulled back from launching additional massive strikes against Iran in recent days. Senate Republicans hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress Senate Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer lawmakers' questions during a fiery hearing last week, reports NBC News. Fauci, who has been a target of the right since he served as a top health official during the Covid pandemic, invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during the hearing, explaining in his opening remarks that he believed Republicans would try to use his testimony to prosecute him. However, Fauci had been given a full and unconditional pardon by President Joe Biden before he left office on January 19, 2025. In an 8-5 party-line vote, Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held Fauci in contempt. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee chair, said, “We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence.” He added, “I ordered him to answer and warned him about contempt, yet he still refused. That is obstruction of a congressional investigation.” The committee can refer the contempt of Congress resolution directly to the Justice Department or request that Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota hold a full Senate vote. Senator Paul said the committee would hand-deliver the referral to the Justice Department. Contempt of Congress is a criminal misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a $100,000 fine and one year in jail. Proverbs 18:12 says, “Before a downfall, the heart is haughty …” In an impromptu press conference, Senator Paul insisted that Dr. Fauci be held accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic. PAUL: “A million Americans died, and I think they deserve to know the truth. Anthony Fauci has advocated for dangerous gain-of-function research for two decades now. The question ‘why' is not a question that he can have liability for. “He was given a pardon. Interestingly, the pardon starts in 2014. That's when the funding of the lab in Wuhan, [China] started. So, I think he should answer questions. As far as pleading the Fifth [Amendment] when you have a pardon, all you have to do is tell the truth, just not commit a new crime. So, I think the American people do deserve to know this. “This is the same Anthony Fauci who said, in a Washington Post op-ed in 2011, even if a pandemic should start from a lab, if someone's bitten in a lab or the virus escapes the lab, that the knowledge would be worth the risks. I don't think many Americans believe that! “This deserves to be thoroughly, exhaustively debated, so we don't do this again.” Christian congressman: Dr. Fauci under divine judgment Appearing with Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade on July 27th, Republican Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee talked about the recent revelations from Dr. Anthony Fauci's pandemic-era diary entries which showed a fixation on his own "explosive" fame, reports The Christian Post. KILMEADE: “Congressman, we saw this, but now we can read this. What changes about how this guy is perceived once and for all?” BURCHETT: “I think his arrogance shows. The Bible talks about professing themselves to be wise; they became fools. We closed down mom-and-pop operations. Jewish and Christian fellowships were shut down. The big boys were allowed to stay open. This thing was a disaster from the start, and we celebrated this guy, [meaning Fauci].” The phrase from Romans 1:22-28, which is part of the Apostle Paul's larger indictment against the pagan world, describes the corruption and prideful self-delusion that afflicts the minds of those who reject God. The refusal to worship God leads to a litany of self-destructive sins that ends with God abandoning individuals and societies "to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” Southwest Airlines blocks ICE from detaining illegal aliens on 6 flights Firm in the belief that immigration enforcement is bad for business, Southwest Airlines is pushing back hard against efforts to detain illegal immigrants at U.S. airports, reports The Western Journal. A report from the Wall Street Journal highlights a July 25 incident in which an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent tried to board a Southwest Airlines jet in Dallas. The agent was prevented from carrying out his duties by Southwest Airlines. The Dallas-based airline staff also refused to share passenger information with ICE. In recent weeks, a half-dozen other incidents involving Southwest have taken place. The incidents occur as ICE has been broadening their efforts to arrest illegal aliens at airports. Write a polite, 3-sentence letter of complaint to Southwest Airlines President Bob Jordan. Send it to: 2702 Love Field Drive, Dallas, TX 75235. Planned Parenthood sues Trump over denial of Title X funding And finally, Planned Parenthood is suing the Trump administration to challenge updated Title X funding guidelines issued earlier this year that could render the abortion giant ineligible for so-called “family planning” grants, reports LifeSiteNews.com. In April, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services issued updated guidelines for Title X applications, which drop contraception promotion in favor of “natural family planning methods,” tout an objective to “strengthen family formation and assist clients in achieving healthy pregnancies,” and require applicants to reject abortion as a method of family planning. The new standards threaten to disqualify longtime Title X recipients such as Planned Parenthood. As a result, the nation's largest abortion chain announced on July 29 that it is suing the Trump administration over them. Isaiah 59:7 describes the abortion giant to a “t.” “Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction mark their ways.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Friday, August 7th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
Flights were delayed Thursday afternoon at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after telecommunication issues caused a ground stoppage. News that the Prairie Correctional facility in Appleton will reopen as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center has divided some community members. A Twin Cities woman who suffered salmonella poisoning after eating takeout from Chipotle is suing the restaurant chain. Minneapolis park officials say a blue-green algae bloom is underway at Cedar Lake. Testing confirmed the toxic algae and a warning is now in place for all three beaches at Cedar Lake. People and pets should stay out of the water.The Moorhead Police Department is searching for a missing Indigenous woman with family ties to a long-standing cold case in Duluth.
Did the MLB trade deadline produce the drama that everyone wanted? The NFL is only weeks away. A recap on current events other events in the sports world. Subscribe if you love chaos, craft beer, and unfiltered opinions. It's Flights, Football & Anything Else - and it's LIVE.
In this episode of The Session with Londa and David, Londa recaps her Knoxville girls' trip, why she'd “rather be stabbed in the neck with a fork than fly,” and one truly terrible restaurant experience (yes, complete with a blonde hair in the burrata). David connects these real-life moments to wild news out of the Inland Northwest—massive fires, a horseback-hero at In-N-Out—and how all of it shapes our mindset, our money, and our mental health. More than a travel chat, this one's about curating your life instead of just your algorithm, choosing joy on purpose, and making meaningful memories with the people you love. Three business / mindset takeaways: 1. Curate your inputs like an asset portfolio. Just as you manage financial risk, you can manage emotional and mental risk by curating what you watch, read, and scroll. What you “feed” your brain becomes the backdrop for your decisions as a leader, parent, or business owner. 2. Stillness is a productivity tool, not a luxury. Londa rediscovers that when she simply sits quietly and thinks—on a plane with her phone off or awake in the night—she has better ideas and more clarity. For business, that means scheduling screen-free thinking time can be more valuable than another hour of “hustle.” 3. Customer experience is built at the front door. From TSA lines to eye-rolling hostesses, the “front face” of any organization sets the tone. Small moments—respect, attention to allergies, how you handle mistakes (like hair in the food)—either build trust or destroy it. Train and empower your front-line people like they're your best sales team, because they are. #MindsetMatters #CurateYourLife #CustomerExperience #TravelStories #TheSessionWithLondaAndDavid
AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports flights at a German airport disrupted after suspect objects sighted.
LIMITED EDITION HARRY'S VLOG MERCH HERE ROT: WEATHER CHAT IS BACK Can you beat the fastest guy in Richmond? Our first athlete for the Split the G comp. Josh's NEW investigation: Where is Snipes? Yappers: Heather from Harcourt & Jerry Springer. The MOST DISGUSTING plane story ever. Schemes: Free Youtube Premium, free drinks on a Virgin flight, & free parking at Adelaide Oval. Odyssea prank call. JOIN OUR PATREON FOR HEAPS OF BONUS STUFF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Getting ready to read The Lion and the Deathless Dark by Carissa Broadbent but need a Crowns of Nyaxia refresher first?!We're breaking down everything you need to remember before beginning Septimus and Kyrene's story—from the Vampire Houses and powerful gods to the major events, characters, relationships, and connections that have shaped the series so far.Consider this your complete pre-reading guide so you can enter the Deathless Dark fully caught up and ready to go!Spoiler warning: This episode contains spoilers for the entire Crowns of Nyaxia series published before The Lion and the Deathless Dark. There are no spoilers for The Lion and the Deathless Dark in this episode.✨ Love the show? Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode! Leaving us a rating and review is one of the best ways to support the podcast and help more fantasy romance readers find our book club! ✨Come read with us on Patreon: We're covering The Lion and the Deathless Dark with exclusive Chapter Chats, where we read along together, break down each section, share our reactions and theories, and continue the conversation in the comments!Join the Flights of Fantasy community: Patreon Website Instagram TikTok Crowns of Nyaxia Series - Episodes : Spotify Playlist Follow along for episode updates, book recommendations, theories, reactions, and all things romantasy!
Send us Fan MailToday we've got a jam-packed lineup: United Airlines is rolling out a brand new premium cabin that has passengers buzzing, Russia's homegrown MC-21 jet just flew for the first time in true production form, British Airways is quietly pulling its A380 off one of its most iconic routes, China's COMAC has flown a special high-altitude version of the C919, and we say goodbye to an aviation legend who spent eighty years wrenching on airplanes for American Airlines.
Airborne misadventures of the Odd kind. Surprises can come from any direction, including overhead. In this episode, we explore what happens when perfect strangers decide to unexpectedly drop in. Taking Off With "Flights of Unfancy" It's the kickoff of our annual participation in Dog Days of Podcasting. That means 31 days worth of Odd News! And what a way to begin! Your head will spin when you hear not one, but two stories that serve up high-flying nonsense. One adventure will have you wondering whether or not you should file a flight plan when you hit the ski slopes. The other proves that there's no such thing as a peaceful afternoon, because chaos is as close as your own back yard. Sure, neither flight goes according to plan, but that's exactly why you listen to Odd News! You are cleared for comedy take off Don't get left standing at the gate. Listen to "Flights of Unfancy" now and discover why some trips are best enjoyed from the safety of your headphones! >> You can also support comedy4cast by becoming a patron on Patreon>> Or you can get Clinton a Dunkin' card or a cup of coffee via Ko-Fi>> Follow comedy4cast on BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook, MeWe, and Mastodon >> Give us a call via the Super Secret Phone Line (213) 290-4451>> Also check out Clinton's other podcast, The Topic is Trek>> Certain sounds effects heard on comedy4cast are courtesy of freeSFX and FreeSound.org Click here for a transcript of this episode.
Hour 3- Conway Show hosted by Andy Reismeyer tonight and we are covering what appears to be plagues in SoCal. There are flies where the Boyle Heights Fire was but no evacuations as of yet. PLUS is there a benefit to booking economy? We don't get the benefits that were once given. We break all of it down and MORE on KFIAM-640. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
(Disclaimer: Click 'more' to see ad disclosure) Geobreeze Travel is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as MileValue.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. ➤ Free points 101 course (includes hotel upgrade email template)https://geobreezetravel.com/freecourse ➤ Free credit card consultations https://airtable.com/apparEqFGYkas0LHl/shrYFpUr2zutt5515 ➤ Seats.Aero: https://geobreezetravel.com/seatsaero ➤ Request a free personalized award search tutorial: https://go.geobreezetravel.com/ast-form If you are interested in supporting this show when you apply for your next card, check out https://geobreezetravel.com/cards and if you're not sure what card is right for you, I offer free credit card consultations athttps://geobreezetravel.com/consultations!Timestamps:00:00 Points Path Intro00:12 Meet Julian00:49 Free Masterclass 01:25 Show Kickoff Banter02:20 What Is PointsPath03:08 Free Vs Pro Plans07:36 Missing Airline Coverage09:23 Basic Economy Support12:26 Bank Transfer Indicators15:25 More Transfer Partners17:15 Chase Points Boost21:22 United Card Discounts23:55 Accuracy And Phantom Space25:40 Points Calendar Demo30:17 Upcoming Features31:59 Special Offer And WrapYou can find Julia at: ➤ Free course: https://julia-s-school-9209.thinkific.com/courses/your-first-points-redemption➤ Website: https://geobreezetravel.com/➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geobreezetravel/➤ Credit card links: https://www.geobreezetravel.com/cards➤ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/geobreezetravelYou can join Points Path here at:➤ Geobreeze three-for-two offer: https://pointspath.com/gboffer Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. The content of this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Our birthday getaway to Cancun was supposed to begin with champagne and celebration—but instead it turned into one of the most unbelievable travel nightmares we've ever experienced. We take everyone behind the scenes of the chaos that started before sunrise when American Airlines canceled our original flight, rebooked us multiple times, changed our gates over and over again, and somehow managed to make an already stressful travel day even more unbelievable. Then came the moment that changed everything. Inside a temporary American Airlines Admirals Club, what should have been a quiet place to regroup quickly became the center of an uncomfortable confrontation with an employee whose behavior left us feeling shocked, intimidated and completely blindsided. We share exactly what happened, why airport police were called, and why even other employees appeared uncomfortable with the situation unfolding around us. Just when we thought the drama was finally behind us, things somehow got worse. We reveal why another Admirals Club refused to let us inside before even hearing our side of the story, how one incredible American Airlines flight attendant completely restored our faith in customer service, and why she encouraged us to publicly share our experience. But the surprises didn't stop there. After finally landing in beautiful Cancun to celebrate Patrik's birthday, we discovered our luggage had somehow been sent to Dallas instead of Mexico, forcing us to postpone photo shoots and spend the first days of our vacation without our belongings. Then came another shocking twist when we almost became victims of a transportation scam at Cancun International Airport that could have cost travelers hundreds of dollars if they weren't paying attention. Along the way we share hilarious moments, laugh through the madness, celebrate SnowWhite90210 traveling like the little VIP she is, and remind ourselves that sometimes the craziest travel disasters become the funniest stories later. This episode is packed with outrageous airport drama, unbelievable customer service stories, travel tips every flyer should know, behind-the-scenes birthday chaos, and proof that even when everything goes wrong, the adventure somehow becomes unforgettable. Subscribe to our audio: linktr.ee/undressedpod Follow Pol' Atteu: Instagram: @polatteu TikTok: @polatteu X/Twitter: @polatteuwww.polatteu.com Follow Patrik Simpson: Instagram: @patriksimpson TikTok: @patriksimpsonwww.patriksimpson.com Follow SnowWhite90210: Instagram: @snowwhite90210 X/Twitter: @SnowWhite9010www.snowwhite90210.com Watch Gown and Out in Beverly Hills on Prime Videowww.gownandoutinbeverlyhills.com #UndressedPodcastArmenian Coffee Reading SnowWhite90210 SnowBubu is the perfect gift!https://polatteu.com/shop/ols/products/snowbubu90210 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How do you decide whether to buy flights with cash or miles? Follower Owen asked this question recently, saying:"On the podcast you guys often say that you rarely book flights with cash. I find that, especially when booking domestic flights, I often can't get amazing value from my points (let's say
This week on Those Weekend Golf Guys, the crew dove into the messy, hilarious, and occasionally heartbreaking world of golf performance — especially the mental circus happening between a golfer's ears. They kicked things off with a story about a player who had all the physical tools but confidence lower than a worm's shoe size. Classic case: the swing was fine, the fundamentals were fine… but the brain? Oh boy. Total chaos. Jeff jumped in with the reminder every golfer needs tattooed on their forehead: range golf and real golf are not the same sport. You can stripe it on the range like you're auditioning for a commercial, but the second you step onto the first tee of a tournament? Suddenly your hands shake, your heart races, and you forget how to hold the club. Welcome to competitive golf. The guys hammered home the idea that a golf shot is a golf shot — whether you're on the range, on the course, or staring down a college coach who may or may not be watching. But getting golfers, especially juniors, to believe that? That's the trick. Then came the junior‑golf deep dive. iPad shared a win with a 15‑year‑old from Montana who turned his game around once he got the right mental tools. But he also pointed out the obvious: how a kid handles pressure usually comes down to how they've been raised. Some kids soak up coaching like a sponge. Others crumble the second they think someone's judging them. And yes — parents are often the biggest variable in the whole equation. Jeff broke down performance variance in a way every sports parent needs to hear. He compared it to basketball: you don't score the same number of points every night because the gym, the opponent, and the pressure all change. Golf's the same. But parents see one bad round and act like the kid's scholarship just burst into flames. Speaking of pressure… Jeff and Joe talked about the cost of chasing big tournaments. Flights, hotels, rental cars, food — suddenly you're two grand deep before the kid even tees off. And then you hear a college coach might be there? Yeah, that'll tighten the screws on everybody. Joe wrapped things up with some of his best emotional‑management tools. The big one: the detachment mechanism. Kid hits a bad shot? Instead of spiraling into a meltdown, they say, “Isn't that fascinating.” Boom — emotional reset. No shame, no panic, no identity crisis. He even teaches players to jokingly blame their playing partner for the shot just to break the tension. It works way better than you'd think. The final message was simple and loud: your golf game is not your identity. Kids need hobbies, interests, and confidence that don't depend on whether they shot 72 or 92. Because the second golf becomes their whole personality, the game stops being fun — and that's when everything falls apart. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
It may still be summer, but if you're planning to travel for the winter holidays, it may already be time to start looking. Travel expert Katy Nastro from Going joins us to explain where travelers may still find late-summer or early-fall deals, when to book holiday flights, and the smartest moves to make before prices climb even more. Learn more about our guest(s): https://www.theNewsWorthy.com/shownotes Join us again for our 15-minute daily news roundups every Mon-Fri! Become an INSIDER and get ad-free episodes here: https://www.theNewsWorthy.com/insider Get The NewsWorthy MERCH here: https://www.theNewsWorthy.com/merch Sponsors: Sleep cooler this summer with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at BollAndBranch.com/newsworthy with code NEWSWORTHY. Stop piecing your software together. Go to Odoo.com/newsworthy to learn more. To advertise on our podcast, please email: ad-sales@libsyn.com
Things get a little squirrely in the third hour of Friday's show, as the guys air their grievances about airports and the overall flying experience. Valenti has had it with infants on planes and says his parents stopped travelling for many years when he was a child. Plus, a riveting installment of 'Who Said It?'
Keith explores how investors can build legacy wealth by owning productive teak timber and the land beneath it in Panama. Mike Cobb, an international real estate developer with over 30 years of experience, explains why Panama's legal framework, economic stability, and U.S. dollar economy make it a compelling destination for first-time offshore investors. They discuss the long-term return profile of teak, its resilience as a hard asset, and common mistakes to avoid when investing internationally, along with how a sawmill and vertical integration can enhance returns. This discussion highlights how the strategy can diversify both geography and asset type while also opening doors to potential residency options abroad. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/615 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text FAMILY to 66866 Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. To get in the best physical, mental, and professional shape of your life, go to DanielThomasHind.com and apply for Daniel's intensive 1-on-1 coaching for burnt-out entrepreneurs and executives. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review" For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold, talking about a legacy investment. You can profit from this real asset long term, and so can your heirs. It's real estate, but not housing. It's a diverse and more primitive use type. Today on Get Rich Education, you know. Mid South Homebuyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties. It's an executive coach. For nine years now, their CEO Terry Kerr and his COO Pat Mix have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners. His name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one-on-one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to DanielThomashind.com. H-I-N-D. That's DanielThomashind.com, and sign up before spots fill. Keith Weinhold 1:35 What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com. Speaker 1 2:08 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education. Keith Weinhold 2:24 Welcome to GRE from Cherokee, North Carolina, to Cherokee, Panama, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Welcome back to another Wealth Building Week. You are inside Get Rich Education, where financially free beats debt free. Today we're talking about a specific investment that is not residential real estate. In fact, it's a more primordial real estate type that predates housing. So therefore, it is lucid and intelligible. It's easy to understand. Sort of the opposite of more arcane investment like AI data centers or crypto mining. At a basic level, this makes it easy to understand, and there aren't any tenants to manage. It also does not pay you as often as monthly, though as you'll learn, there is income and appreciation is expected too. Now, if you invest outside your home country, you're probably going to want to be diligent and select a politically stable nation that also has an operator based in that region with a fantastic track record. It helps if they're close to the U.S. This small nation is close to the U.S. in both geographic proximity and economically. Their currency is even the U.S. dollar. They even share an electrical system with the U.S. with the same outlets and voltages. As you might be guessing, where I'm talking about, this nation also has a consumer culture somewhat similar to the U.S. with American restaurants and retailers and brands in our real estate world. What we find more important is how, like the U.S. this nation is a constitutional presidential republic, and both nations have these separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches, the three branches and elected presidents, in these competitive multi-party elections, and both America and this place have market-oriented economies that emphasize private property and private enterprise, banking and financial services, international commerce, logistics, ports, and aviation. Keith Weinhold 4:49 Today, we're talking about the opportunity for you to own productive timber and the land beneath it, teak hardwood trees in Panama, a quarter-acre parcel. At a time with your name on the deed, that direct ownership is known as fee simple ownership. I have directly invested in Panama for about 11 years myself. Now, though teak might be able to survive in a climate like Hawaii, mere survival is not enough in the U.S. It is difficult to impossible to find anywhere that grows productive plantation teak. Here in the late 2020s decade, we've had bouts of El Nino or La Nina a lot of places in the world, and that has severely weakened some crop types. Other providers of different agricultural investments are failing, but not this teak. They're resilient, and we'll get into the physical properties of the teak. I'm going to ask today's distinguished guest about that. He and his business partners planted some select timber 27 years ago, and they've been offering teak hardware parcels to investors for that long, 27 years, and for about the last 10 years to GRE investors. Hundreds of you are participating now, but I'm going to wait to ask more about the physical teak product itself until later, because what's more important are the investment environment and the strength of the operator. So learn more about this and what the projected investment returns are, and just how much exactly does a quarter-acre parcel of teak cost? If you so choose, owning teak parcels also gives you the option of residency status in Panama, and you only need to spend two days there every two years in part of maintaining that status, they offer investor in-person tours of the teak plantations too because they're proud of what they do there. I expect a fascinating discussion with Mike, the teak company co-founder and CEO. This week's guest has become a friend since I met him about 10 years ago. He co-founded and is CEO of an international real estate development company. He's got active projects throughout Central America. He's been doing it for more than 30 years, so he's not a tinkerer and not trying out project concepts. Keith Weinhold 7:26 And at this point, he's helped thousands of North Americans diversify their portfolios through international real estate ownership and residency planning, and even lifestyle investing. And if you've ever attended an investment conference on something like global diversification. You might have seen him speak there because he's such a frequent, recognized speaker and voice, and he's authored multiple books on real estate, financial freedom, expat living, and just unlocking a better lifestyle. Hey, welcome back onto the show, Mike Cobb. Mike Cobb 7:59 Oh Keith, nice to be with you. And you're right. 10 years, we've enjoyed one another's company at many conferences. It's always great to be back with you virtually. I look forward to seeing you again personally one of these days as well. And yeah, thank you for the very kind words on the intro. Keith Weinhold 8:14 Yeah, if I'm teetering on whether or not to attend a conference, I ask myself, is Mike going to be there? That's right. Mike Cobb 8:20 We'll hang out, Keith Weinhold 8:22 100% And you know, Mike, he's also an avid reader of GRE's "Don't Quit Your Daydream" newsletter. So then, clearly, he's even smarter than you've ever thought. You heard him on the show before, so you knew he was smart, but now he's even smarter than you ever knew since he's a reader. Tell us what you like about the newsletter. Mike Cobb 8:40 You know, Keith. I gotta say, every issue that comes in, I read it. By the way, today's issue said read before Thursday, so you give me a couple days tomorrow at least to read it. Anyway, no, you know what? You are so powerfully succinct. The charts that you put in are wonderful. You were a geographer major, and and so spatial things are important. I also recognize. I love the charts. I love the graphs, and I hate to even say I love sort of the I hate to call it the trivial information, but you know enough data points that seem trivial when you put a theory around them actually become meaningful. And what you are able to do is you're able to connect dots that most people don't connect. That's the hallmark of genius, and I think you are a genius, by the way. And I think your newsletter shows that. And so, thanks for putting it out. Your readers are very, very fortunate to have you there, giving them the kinds of information that are super relevant in the marketplace at one level and on a specific level. But even more important, creating the theoretical constructs that allow them to understand the why of something's happening because you know if you understand the why of something you know it makes a lot more sense first of all but it also allows us to maybe forecast the next what coming down the pike and if we can be on the front edge of something or you know being able to look over the hill or around the bend that's. Powerful in the marketplace, and and you bring that power to your readers. Well done, man. Keith Weinhold 10:04 Thanks. Yeah, it's not just what; it's why this matters. And that was an incredibly kind thing to say. I write every word of the letter myself, and you, the listener, you can get the letter free now@greletter.com I send it about weekly, and Mike, I know that U.S. investors, including some Get Rich Education followers, they've been increasingly looking offshore for one thing many perceive the political risk has palpably higher than it was a few years ago. So, just broadly, tell us more about what North American investors seem to be looking for. Mike Cobb 10:42 Sure, I summed it up earlier today. I was talking with a conference organizer, and he was really giving me the hard sell on why I should come to his conference. And it's probably not a good fit. But I heard myself say it for the first time. What we really help folks do in certain spheres, but maybe in this sphere, is help people get a good night's sleep, you know, peace of mind, right? And when you've got the political turmoil, you wrote an article or a newsletter a couple weeks ago, and it was about inflation, the kinds of things that were happening, and it was so spot on. And I think your readers, and not just your readers, but people who are tuned into what's really happening from a political standpoint, a financial standpoint. There is no way you can print this much money. There's no way you can have these kinds of things going on all the time that create a huge run-up of debt, right? And it's not even the debt; it's the implications of the debt. What's going to happen next? How's this thing going to unwind, right? And so when you have all of this stuff going on. You have people who are really, really worried about their future. It's a financial future. I say there are two train wrecks. There's a train wreck of debt, which is what I just talked about, and there's a train wreck of freedom. And that train wreck of freedom is really, in some ways, a result of the train wreck of debt. But when you've got a train wreck or two train wrecks happening, we really have three choices. We can ride it out, right? Take the ride and go for the crash, right? We can do something about it, but we really have to do something about it before. I'm going to mix a metaphor here, but if you know a hurricane's coming in three or four days, you don't wait till the wind's blowing 150 miles an hour to put up the plywood, right? You get out there while the sun's still shining. You put up the plywood, and then when the hurricane hits, like you got plywood over the windows, and you can ride out the storm. And this is where I think so many people are today. They're recognizing this hurricane is coming. The problem is, is that I don't think people always know where to go get plywood, right? What do I do? How do I protect myself and my assets, right? Mike Cobb 12:38 And what this conversation right here is about is here's one kind of plywood you can put up on your window and the diversification overseas the diversification internationally into a hard asset that is not really inflation proof because I'm not sure there is such a thing but largely inflation proof or a big a great hedge against inflation real stuff hard assets real estate timber commodity right this is. what so many people are now looking at, and then the other piece of it is you can layer in a residency, which starts to give you that political plan B. You've got an economic plan B, kind of the hedge against inflation, but you've got this residency component that gives you sort of a hedge against the political uncertainty, and 1000s of folks have moved in this direction. Several 100, I think it's about 600 folks now, have picked up the residency as part of their timber investment as well. So a lot of different things going on, but I think they do circle all the way back to this train wreck of debt and a train wreck of freedom, the political divisiveness kind of what's happening. Keith Weinhold 13:40 Now, what if someone hasn't invested in a hard asset overseas before, Mike? I'm thinking some people might come ask you. You know, why would I do this? For example, I live in the United States, where we have a rule of law and stable, mature markets and high property ownership rights. So, why should I look to diversify internationally with hard assets, Mike Cobb 14:01 yeah, I think there's a general answer, and then maybe a couple specific answers. Generally, you know, I would never bet against the U.S. the U.S. economy. We're the largest economy in the world. I would never bet against it, right? But I think that for prudence, we would all want to have at least another basket for a few of our eggs: 5% 10% 20% Pick. Pick a number that's comfortable, but have some of your investable net worth outside your home country. Like that's just prudent, right? Why would you have everything all in one basket? And so we see that as a general answer. Specifically, a country like Panama, where we do have artique plantations, they have public title escritora publica. It's fee simple title, but in the civil law, so it's called escritora publica. The rule of law is strong in Panama. And then the other thing about Panama that I absolutely love is you have the canal, and the canal provides both economic stability and political stability. On the economic side, it generates just. Under $5 billion a year of cash flow, year in year out, right? So just it's like an ATM machine for a country with a population of about 4 million people. Do the math on that; like that's a huge amount of money on a per capita basis, right? Keith Weinhold 15:13 Narrow water passages have really been newsworthy for a long time now, too. Mike Cobb 15:16 Well, they have, and just like the Strait of Hormuz, right? You know, people sometimes go. I hear it said, "Oh, the canal is a vital strategic U.S. interest. That is absolutely 100% correct. But if you're a country that produces any goods that ship, or you're a country that receives any goods by ship, that canal is a strategic interest to you, and by definition, that's every country in the world. Every country in the world wants that canal open and transiting, right? Because everybody either produces or receives or both, right? And so you've got the political stability element as well as the economic stability element. You've got the rule of law. Panama is a great, great place for that person who you mentioned who's never done an overseas investment, never gone offshore, right? What's an easy place to start? What's one of the safest places to start is Panama, and it's in this hemisphere too, so it's close. I mean, you can get there for three hours from Miami, three and a half hours from Houston. Flights all over to U.S. Canada. It's easy. So I think a lot of folks see Panama as a very, very easy way to make that first step overseas. Keith Weinhold 16:25 I happen to know that you just flew in from Panama. You're in the United States today, but you're constantly going to Central America. You span time zones more often than almost anyone I know. You mentioned fee simple ownership in there. For those that don't know, I think of that as direct ownership, where you don't have some weird administrative government layer in there that can dilute your hard asset. Mike Cobb 16:47 Right, you can own it in your own name, you can own it in a corporation, so it's easy to own it. But yeah, no layering, right? By the way, the Constitution treats owners who are Panamanian the same exact ways it treats all foreign owners, and actually, we do business all over Central America. The one thing that we look for is a a legal regime that protects foreigners and foreign investors the same as it does domestic. Panama does that. Keith Weinhold 17:12 Yeah, so investing in hard asset in Panama is a bit like investing internationally with training wheels on, due to its close relationship with the United States bolstered by the Panama Canal, but yet if someone hasn't invested internationally first, there are still a few mistakes to avoid. Maybe things that one isn't aware of. Can you tell us more about that? Mike Cobb 17:33 The biggest danger people have when they make their first foreign investment is what I call margarita madness, right? And a lot of times it happens. You're on vacation in Cancun. You're having the time of your life. You're you just went parasailing, whatever. You're walking down the beach, and some developer says, "Hey, come on up here and take a look at my condo project. You know, and we'll buy you dinner at Senior Frogs tonight. We'll give you a coupon or whatever, right? Keith Weinhold 17:55 Right. Mike Cobb 17:55 And a lot of people do that, and then later that night, that's Senior Frogs. They're celebrating the condo they just bought, right? I mean, it's not how we transact real estate in the U.S. and Canada. There's a due diligence process. There's a due diligence period. It takes weeks or months to transact on a property, not hours, right? And so the single biggest mistake is that, and the way that we really can resolve it. I mean, my book is all about this. In fact, you have a copy, and I think you've helped some of your your readers and listeners get copies as well. It's called "How to Buy Your Home Overseas and Get It Right the First Time, and it really boils down to three simple principles: buy what you see. Is it there? Right. Own community. Right. Make sure it's in a place where you have people around. Right? Because there are a lot of ghost towns out there, and then know the developer. Do your due diligence on the developer himself, right? So you've got these three principles, and if you follow those three principles, you could do a lot better. But I actually think there's even a better way, and it has to do with character. It has to do with us, and you know when we move to the developing world, anywhere outside of you know North America, Northern Europe, maybe Australia, New Zealand, right? We're moving from the land of seller beware, right? Think lemon laws, think Ralph Nader, think advocacy groups, you know, lots of laws and regulations that control the seller, to the world of buyer beware, where none of those laws exist, and so now you're on your own. And because we've been living and transacting our whole lives in a seller beware environment, in a bubble of protection, we're protected by the government, right? We think we are. We'll just say that anyway. But we're protected. We're in a bubble, and we move to the land of buyer beware. Mike Cobb 19:38 The problem is we don't really know how to transact. We don't know the right questions to ask, and our single biggest advantage, our single biggest attribute or asset that we have, is actually humility, because we don't know what we don't know, and we have to forget what we think we know. Assumptions, right? We can't bring assumptions with us that hold true. Some do some. Don't right. If we approach a transaction overseas with humility, there are no dumb questions. I'm going to ask every question I can think of. I'm going to do as much research as I can within a limited period of time. I'm not going to not analysis to paralysis forever. I'm going to say, look, I'm going to spend the next 30 days. I'm going to do a ton of due diligence, and at the end of 30 days, if I like what I say, I'm going to transact, right? So you're you're not getting the deer in the headlights never to do something, right? But you know, several weeks, maybe a month or two, depending on what it is you're doing, is enough time to do really, really good due diligence. Ask all the questions you can think of, but approach it with humility. And when we do those things, we transact so much, so much better than if we just rush into it with Margarita Madness. Keith Weinhold 20:44 Right? People get caught up in those emotions with Margarita Madness and end up with a timeshare that they can't get rid of, or something like that. You said something so interesting there, Mike. When you move from the developed world to the developing world, you move from a seller beware world, like with some of the things you have to be aware of, and like you need to give disclosures and such into a buyer beware world. I hadn't thought of it that way before. Mike Cobb 21:08 Yeah, and really, a lot of my book and a lot of the presentations that I've given, you've seen me give over the years, really deal with what I call a change in thought process. Because mostly in presentations, right? My goal in a presentation is to help somebody change how they think, to take away the bubble and understand that they're on their own, right? It's not really their own. They have you, they have me, they have other resources, right? But they don't have this bubble of government or regulations or laws out there protecting them anymore. Now it's the individual, and as an individual, I don't want to be rugged individual. I want to find other people that can help me, right? But I have to do that as opposed to it's just there for me, right? So if I can help people change how they think, they will transact so much better. They'll make better investments. They'll make investments that work for them in ways that they want them to work for them, right? They'll achieve the goal or the dream in a much, much, much higher percentage of the cases, Keith Weinhold 22:04 we're talking about investing antique tree hardwood plantations, principally in Panama, like you mentioned, and we're talking about one mindset about crossing borders with our investing, and another is oftentimes, at least for GRE listeners, we're crossing asset use type because we're so used to residential rental housing. So when you cross into agriculture or forestry, I guess as it is with teak, what are some of the bridges to cross there as we change use type? Mike Cobb 22:35 The reason I love timber generally and teak specifically in Panama in this case is that most people, most people, and I hope that many of your readers aren't most people. Most investors look at 20-five years and they simply say themselves, "No way, no way. And I love that because right now teak timber is being cut down 10 to 12 times faster than anyone is replanting it. And the reason people don't replant it is because most average investors come along and say, "Oh, it's 25 years. I can't wait 25 years. Well, you know what? Good, because the folks who do decide to move ahead and plant the teak, what that means is the price of teak is very highly likely to continue to increase in value far beyond inflation. Teak wholesale teak prices have gone up five and a half percent a year on average for the last 50-three years. I think that number is going to increase largely because there's this huge psychological barrier. People think, "Oh, 20-five years, but back in 1990-eight I bought 100-acre cattle pasture in Panama, and we had a professional forestry company plant it and maintain it for the last now 27 years, and two two and a half years ago, we started building a sawmill. Our sawmill is up and running. In fact, was just down there and brought back one of our first retail products. We're producing lumber. Our first container of lumber is headed out to a distributor in Colorado next week. Keith Weinhold 23:56 Mike's holding up a nice cutting board for those in the audience. Mike Cobb 24:00 Nice cutting board. We're setting up an e-commerce site. We're going business to consumer with cutting board, bath mat, shelving, tables, chairs. We have our whole production facility ramping up with new retail products. So the bottom line is, is yeah, man, it does take 25 years. You know. Keith Weinhold 24:15 The lantation to harvest cycle. That's the 25 year span you're talking about here. The patience it takes for an investor. Mike Cobb 24:21 Thank you. Yes, absolutely. And then, as we cut down this mature plantation that we we are now harvesting right now, it gets replanted, and the next 25 year harvest. I'm 61 Maybe I'll make 86 I don't know. Maybe not. Right. But my kids probably will, and they'll get the big harvest in 25 years, and then it'll replant, and maybe they'll get a next one, or maybe it'll be the grandkids, right? And so what we found savvy investors, people who are really not your average bear, right? And they think to themselves, how can I create generational wealth stewardship? I have enough money coming in. I mean, Keith, that the I mean, you can own teak for 10 grand. You can. Own a quarter acre of teak. You own the land. You own the trees. 10 grand, like it's 9000 something or other, but 10 grand, right? I mean, the bottom line is it's such an affordable, easy investment, right? And it turns into well over $100,000 in today's numbers. Who knows what inflation? But in today's numbers, buying power, you know, 10,000 turns into 100,000 right? Over 20-five years, and so most people who do this recognize the fact that they might get the first harvest, but it's their kids, their grandkids, their great grandkids who are going to get this harvest every 20-five years thereafter. And so the 20-five year thing becomes a wonderful thing, not a bad thing. Right, it keeps many people out, which keeps the price of teak high and growing, which we like. But it also creates this cash flow period. People go, "Oh, it doesn't cash flow. I'm like, "Absolutely, it does. It cash flows phenomenally four times a century. Like you have an internal rate of return of almost 11% 10 point something, right? You have an internal rate of return of 11% and it cash flows four times a century. This is a phenomenal cash flow investment. You might get to see the first one or the second one, but you're probably not seeing three or four. But somebody else in your lineage, your family, your heirs will see it, and they will all be so happy you made that decision to own teak. Keith Weinhold 26:22 We're talking about the ability for you to own teak parcels and the land beneath it, title in your own name, one quarter of an acre at a time. We're going to talk more about that with Mike when we come back. You're listening to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Flock Homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio, through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now mom and pop landlords can 721 their residential real estate. Request your initial valuation. See if your properties qualify at flockhomes.com/gre. That's flockehomes.com/gre. Keith Weinhold 27:09 Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. And full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call or text family to 66866 That's family to 66866. Ken McElroy 28:12 This is Rich Dad advisor Ken McElroy. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold and don't quit your daydream. Keith Weinhold 28:29 Welcome back to Get Rich Education. We're talking about international investing with teak tree plantations. This isn't something experimental. We're not talking about a tinkerer here. You have to be more careful when you go overseas, and we're talking about with the owner of an international company that's been doing this for 30 years, providing international investments. But the teak tree plantation, I think, began in 1998 or 1999 Is that right? Mike Cobb 28:56 Yeah, 98 was the purchase of the property, and in the rainy season of 99 we planted the first 100 acres. Yep. Keith Weinhold 29:03 Yeah. Well, talk to us more about that because you talked to us about how historically teak appreciates at about 5% per year. Tell us about how we get to that 11% internal rate of return. Mike Cobb 29:15 Yeah. Sure. I mean, so two things. One, you've got the five and a half percent a year kind of calculated out over a very long period of time, 50-three years. So that's a pretty good statistical baseline. And then the fact that your trees actually physically grow, right? I mean, back in 2008 my joke is from 2008 to 2012 While the rest of us in real estate were hating life, my trees just simply kept growing, right? They just kept growing. And so what you start off with is about 100 maybe 110, I think, trees on a quarter acre, and in the end, after all the thinnings, you end up with somewhere between 22 and 25 trees per quarter acre, and each of those trees produces about 1.2 to 1.6 cubic meters of timber. For lumber, by the way, one of the things that we are working on, and you know, look at the end of the day, you had a walk, jog, run, right? And we're in the walk stage right now, but we're harvesting out all of the other elements of the teak tree. Your lumber piece, that just you know, sell it as boards, you know, one by fours, one by sixes, one by eights, whatever it is. Ship that stuff off. That's your 1.2 to 1.6 cubic meters, but you've got other pieces of the tree. You've got stuff that's too thin, the root stock that can be turned into other things, including cellucrete with cellulose, the ground up, the sawdust itself. We're saving all the sawdust. We're going to use that for cellulite. This is the math on this. Our investors get 80% of the net proceeds after processing costs, which is 15% my company gets 20% and so we, my company, has the highest incentive to drive the highest possible return to the investor possible because I get 20% of whatever I make for the investor, and so all the numbers we use are always the net investor number, right? And we have a business plan. All the numbers are laid out. It's all there, and it's pretty easy to see how the IRR gets up. About I think it's 10.6, 10.7% I can't remember. Just under 11% but it's all in the business plan, Keith. And again, this is part of that due diligence process, right? Get a copy of the business plan. Get on the phone with one of our property consultants maybe take a trip to Panama. I just got back. We just took a group of people. Yeah, we got tours. Yeah, we have tours, and so like as part of the due diligence process, come visit, come see the trees, come see the sawmill. Right? If it's something that makes sense from a an investment standpoint, yeah, the material, the facts, and the due diligence is all there for people to be able to pick up and do over a you know several week period, you know 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever it is. Keith Weinhold 31:47 Well, let's back up because seemingly you have had really good prescience. Because when we look at world agriculture today, we see some problems. Whether some people want to call it erratic weather, other want to call it climate change, and how that's really ravaged some crops and created disruptions in certain produce. Or with coffee, you know, we've also got a cattle production problem, for example. But you've chosen something that's been really resilient. Tell us more about that resilience and just why teak of all crops and forestry. Mike Cobb 32:22 Let me start by saying, who was it? Yogi Berra says, you know, predicting is hard to do, especially when it's about the future or something. Exactly. Yeah. Right. But I mean, look, we're talking about the future. I mean, who the heck knows, right? I mean, that's what makes it investing rather than you know something else. But teak has been grown in plantations for almost 400 years. It was started by the British in India, what was then Burman throughout Southeast Asia. And one of the things the Brits did so so well is they documented everything. They had statisticians keeping track of altitude, rainfall, soil types, different stock. I mean, just anything and everything that you could imagine, and so by the early 1900s, some of the best books about teak and teak plantation farming was written. I actually read those books in order to interview the forestry management companies in Panama that we would hire them to manage our plantation, because I don't know anything about it, right? But I wanted to be prepared to do the interviews, so I was. What amazed and fascinated me was this incredible track record of production for almost 400 years of teak as a commodity in the marketplace, and then for the last 50 years, 53 years, you know, seeing what's happened to the price of teak in that time period. Look, nobody can predict the future. Weather patterns change. Teak as a species, is very very resilient. You know, the highest quality teak is grown in very specific conditions, and the Darien province of Panama has exactly the conditions to produce the highest quality teak. If those conditions change, maybe the quality of the teak goes down. Maybe the quality of the teak goes up a little bit. Who knows, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we don't control weather. We don't control weather patterns. We don't control the future. But that thing goes back to the idea of diversification. Like, how can we mitigate against the future? I think we do that by just simply broad diversification. And if we have all of our assets and stocks, bonds, and rental real estate, we're pretty concentrated, especially if it's all in the United States, right? Our home country, for example, and so some diversification into other sectors probably makes sense. I know it makes sense for me because I think that's my way of hedging against the uncertainties of the future. Keith Weinhold 34:37 Let's talk about the tree quality and then the sawmill, because some people don't understand that teak really has pretty special properties that maple or black cherry or oak doesn't have. Mike Cobb 34:47 It does. It has a very very high oil content and it has a hardness that makes it extremely resistant to rot fungus, which is why it's used in the marine environment. If you look at Chris Craft. Boats or yachts. You always hear about teak, teak, teak. Teak is used in maritime environments because it holds up to the salt water-not just salt water-holds up to water, but even more so, salt water and the environment, which makes it unique. And so, even if you don't treat teak, right, you just leave it out. It turns gray, but it doesn't rot. And then you can come back. You can you know sand it and varnish it and turn it into that beautiful, rich color. It's a beautiful, beautiful wood. It's funny because it has furniture uses, outdoor furniture, patio furniture, things like that, decking. But now they're starting to use it in hardwood floors. They're using it in gates and fences and soffit materials. Again, outdoor uses, but it can be used indoors as well for very very fine furniture, which at the end of the day teak has a panache that a lot of these other woods don't have. Mahogany is certainly one mahogany. The thing about mahogany is it's softer, right? It's a softer wood. It carries some qualities in terms of the grains and the colors that make it a a very favorable product for cabinetry and other things. We actually looked at mahogany as a species to possibly grow, and it's about a 30-five to 40-year harvest cycle. And so, when we looked at that, we said, you know, we can get our heads around 20-five, and and maybe someday we will do some mahogany plantations as well. But for now, we we started with teak. Actually, when we did the analysis, I don't know if this is still true, but 27, 28 years ago, when I did the initial research and analysis, it had the best time value of money ROI. Keith Weinhold 36:29 Ah, that's the first time I learned that. And some of these durability properties that you've been talking about really go back to my earlier question about how some more sensitive crops have been ravaged lately. Mike Cobb 36:39 Yeah, it holds up very very well to the environment. By the way, it'll do well in pretty much everything but desert, right? If it rains too much, the teak will grow faster. Actually, it produces a less quality. The quality of the teak is less. If so, if panama's rain system changed and it started raining every day of the year, where we have it growing, teak trees would grow wonderfully. The quality of the teak would be lower, right? Still, be teak. It'd still be valuable, but not as valuable in the marketplace. So. Keith Weinhold 37:08 Now you've been here to talk about teak before, but something that you added a few years ago was a sawmill to really bring some vertical integration there. And now you're not at the mercy, perhaps, of the price that you would need to sell to a lumberyard. Can you tell us more about how it's going with that? Mike Cobb 37:22 Yeah, absolutely. Well, the bottom line is, is because we earn 20% of what we earn for the investor on their wood, our goal is to sell it for as high a possible price. And lumber does pretty well. I mean, you can sell logs. Let's just start there. You can cut the trees and sell the logs for X. You can turn the logs into lumber and sell it for you know whatever 578 x. You can turn it into things like cutting board, chairs, tables, a finished product, and there you're talking about you know not just five to 7x You're talking about another 10x on top of that. So that's like 30x right? I mean it's an incredible difference. So from log to finished product, it's about a 30 times differential in what you ultimately achieve out of the marketplace for return. Right now it takes longer to do it. There's more work involved, but at the end of the day, because you make more of the investor, we make more. Some of the teak is going to go out as finished product, and so we get a blended return of lumber. We don't do logs, but we're going to have a blended return of lumber and finished product that will push that yield up maybe higher than we've anticipated, which would be just fine with everybody. Keith Weinhold 38:30 ll right, all right. Diversifying your exit, then. Well, before we learn about how we can get a hold of more information, is there any last thing that we should know about investing across international lines into teak, maybe something that I didn't think about asking you, Mike. Mike Cobb 38:45 The only thing there is two of the teak farm parcels can be bundled together for a half acre with about a I don't know it's a seven $8,000 legal piece government fees to achieve a residency. So you can actually become a resident of Panama with the teak investment, and again coming in on about 600 folks have done the residency as well as the investment and ownership of the teak farms. So I would say that's a piece. Again, if people aren't sleeping well at night, they're worried about inflation, they're worried about social disruption, polarization, where things are headed, right? And they like the idea of the teak investment, then you know it may make sense to just do the extra government legal piece and get the residency card. I mean, I just did that. By the way, I think you know I'm a I'm a Nicaraguan resident because I lived in Nicaragua for 14 years. Keith Weinhold 39:34 Mike is holding up his Nicaraguan ID. Mike Cobb 39:37 but last summer I also got my Panama residency card, so now I have, y'all. I'm a U.S. resident, U.S. citizen, and I'm also a Nicaraguan. I think I held up my West Virginia driver's license. Hold on, let me go. Here's my Nicaraguan residency. Sorry, I was like, yeah. Wait a minute. Anyway, so right. So I'm a U.S. citizen, and I'm a resident of both Nicaragua and Panama. And so, this is something that a lot of folks choose to do because of the uncertainty, the political and social uncertainty in their lives. The teak itself will help with the economic uncertainty, but the residency then helps with the other two elements. Keith Weinhold 40:15 Next time you fly in and you're doing customs in Panama City or Managua, show them your West Virginia driver's license and see how they like it. See what happens. Mike Cobb 40:22 It wouldn't work. Hahaha. Keith Weinhold 40:25 Well, the prices are low. You do not need to be an accredited investor in order to do this. So there's really no qualification bar to clear. There's really no limit in the number of parcels that you can buy. Some people like to purchase 10 parcels, but you can buy as little as one, and tell us more about that price. Mike Cobb 40:42 Yeah, in fact, we've introduced Keith since the last time we talked a financing program. Oh, Keith Weinhold 40:48 I didn't know that yet. Mike Cobb 40:49 We did. That's a fairly new. It's a this year thing, right? So the teak parcels, I think 9890 or something, whatever. Call it 10 grand. The parcels just under $10,000. Keith Weinhold 40:59 Okay. Mike Cobb 40:59 Yeah, and they have a down payment and a credit card thing. I think it stretches maybe over a year or two, so it's a fairly short period. Let's people who don't have the entire 10,000 upfront who want the teak investment to be able to acquire it. And if they're doing the residency piece, the residency piece can only begin after the teak farm piece is acquired, right? But it can also lead to the residency piece over time. So yeah, and then there are some discounts on three of them and 10 of them. So we have a lot of people that actually end up getting them for. And and here's a really cool thing because it's titled in your own name, it can also be titled in a child's name or a grandchild's name. And so we have a lot of people that actually acquire them and they don't take ownership. They put it in their kid's name or their grand name. Yeah, so it's a wonderful way to move that asset already right out of the gates into the next generation or the next generation. Keith Weinhold 41:52 So we're talking about diversifying at least twice, both internationally and then in a different asset type as well. This has been fascinating to learn about, Mike. It's just fascinating alone, I think, to learn about the geography and the teak itself. And like we touched on earlier, they do organize tours. Any reputable provider should do that. They're proud of what they offer there. Tours in the Darien province of Panama, in this case, to see your teak tree parcels. It's a really approachable price. If you want to learn more and get a report and perhaps purchase some parcels, Mike's one of our GRE marketplace providers. You can visit gremarketplace.com/teak or talk to your GRE investment coach. Mike has been fascinating as always. It's been great having you back on the show. Mike Cobb 42:40 Nice to be here. Thank you, Keith. Keith Weinhold 42:48 Teak is one of the more durable crops that there is. The demand for teak hardwood is substantial, and it's really growing. They have also had the same tree manager for all 27 years since the teak was planted, some real continuity there. The name of the manager is Heyo Forestall. There's a little to manage with the teak hardwood trees, like performing thinnings, and those thinnings do give investors like you intermittent income. So you're not waiting for absolutely everything for 25 years, but the income from the thinning is really small. Most of the return takes place in that 25 years, and it's interesting to me to see the profile of the GRE investor in teak because it attracts young investors, and maybe that's because the cost of entry is so low. It also attracts older investors because they more often have an eye toward passing along something productive to their heirs that is going to outlive them. A lot of them don't want to give their heirs money because money can be spent on fleeting trivialities. Also, the older a person is, they just have an easier time visualizing the fact of 25 years and knowing that it really will pass by. And yes, in-person tours are offered there in the Darien province of Panama, and there were 13 to 14 attendees on a recent tour. They do need to limit the group size, and the tours are for you, whether you're an existing investor or not. If you're just checking it out, that's for you too. If you believe that you want to attend a tour and you don't want to buy, I understand that you can get your money back from the tour. Keith Weinhold 44:35 The next tour is in September. Each quarter-acre newborn teak parcel costs $9,680 $9,680 and over 20-five years, it's projected to produce about 110k in today's dollars. And yes, now with financing, we've talked about this investment on GRE before, but it's the first time where they now have financing in place, so you don't even need. 9680 to get started. Also, retirement funds might be eligible for use here. And really, when you think about the long-term horizon of this investment, retirement funds make sense. If this is potentially interesting to you, get a hold of the report that goes into the details and shows you some projections and more. You can do so by either contacting your GRE investment coach or visit gremarketplace.com/teek. Money may not grow on trees, but sometimes trees grow into money. Until next time, keep growing your means and maybe a few trees. You could visit gremarketplace.com/teak. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream. Speaker 1 45:53 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal, or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively. Keith Weinhold 46:21 The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. getricheduceducation.com
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