Podcasts about France

Two men and two hundred years of history… On this week's This Is History: In Conversation, Dan Jones meets Mike Livingston — award-winning historian and novelist from across the pond — to discuss the Hundred Years War. A former Secretary-General for the United States Commission on Military History, Livingston knows a thing or two about battles. He's written multiple award-winning novels and frequently hosts lectures on the subject at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. Together, they delve into Livingston's latest book ‘The Two Hundred Years War' and discuss the curious questions it proposes: when did the war actually start and end? What did the French really think about it? Is the longbow overrated? – If you want a deeper dive into the Hundred Years War with Dan and Mike, grab their accompanying bonus episode at patreon.com/thisishistory. There, they dig deeper into the gory, the genius and the gruesome medieval warfare involved in England and France's most enduring military conflict. – A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email podcastadsales@sonymusic.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices – Presented by Dan Jones Producer - Alan Weedon Senior Producer - Dominic Tyerman Junior Producer - Dulcie Whadcock Executive Producer - Louisa Field Executive Producer - Dan Jones Production Manager - Jen Mistri Production Coordinator - Eric Ryan Head of Content - Chris Skinner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Premier League is back and so are Musa and Ryan, who chat about the first games of the new season, which showed signs of a new dynamic emerging in England's top flight. Arsenal got off to a routine start, whereas Manchester United, Aston Villa, Spurs and more suffered very disappointing opening weekend defeats. Hull, Ipswich, Brighton and Brentford had the headline wins, so there's chat about whether teams will take advantage of the post World Cup variables and how important it is for clubs not to fall behind.There are also shoutouts for some results in Spain, Italy, France, Germany and… the J-League!For more podcasts, ad-free and in full, plus access to the Stadio Social Club and much more, you can become a Stadio member by signing up at patreon.com/stadio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the upcoming events Clear Admit is hosting. We are hosting a livestream event on Tuesday, September 1, ahead of the Round 1 deadlines. This event is for participants to ask any questions they have for their Round 1 strategy. Graham and Alex will be hosting, as usual. You can subscribe to Clear Admit's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearAdmitMBA Later in September, Clear Admit will also host six webinar events featuring admissions professionals from all the top MBA programs. Signups for those events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham highlighted a recently published admissions tip, focused on GMAC's common letter of recommendation. Clear Admit continues its Adcom Q&A series. This week Graham notes Q&As with Notre Dame / Mendoza and Washington / Olin. Graham also highlighted several podcast Q&As with admissions deans that continue to be released. Graham and Alex also had a deep-dive discussion on the use of AI in MBA admissions. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected two ApplyWire entries: This week's first MBA admissions candidate is a military candidate and is targeting Tepper. They plan to remain in Pittsburgh for their career. This week's second MBA applicant is from the UK and has interesting global experience. We worry about their GRE score of 317. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

Alors que la France perd la guerre en Indochine, la CIA s'impose sur le terrain pour remplacer l'ancienne puissance coloniale et de contenir le communisme.Franck Ferrand nous plonge dans les coulisses de cette lutte d'influence, où la CIA mena une guerre de l'ombre pour supplanter la France et imposer ses propres hommes forts, au premier rang desquels le redoutable Edward Lansdale.

“Between Christmas 2003 and New Year 2024, packages of cocaine started washing up along the beaches of Southwest France. National television news reports carried the story of the coke de la plage — the beach cocaine, around a month after the first local rumours of finds emerged. One TV report on France 2, 30th Jan 2004, stated one-and-a-half tonnes had been recovered along French and Spanish coasts that month. If that's just what the authorities had found, it's safe to assume lots, lots more had been picked up by members of the public, mostly surfers.” - Paul Evans. Our guest this week is WSL commentator, Surf Europe editor, Stab contributor, and, as of a couple of weeks ago, the creator, producer and host of a long-form narrative podcast about cocaine. It was late 2003, and Paul had recently moved to southwest France from the UK, initially seduced by the prospect of good, uncrowded waves and rumours of mystics like Tom Curren and Robbie Page having made a life there. A few months later, bundles of pure Colombian cocaine started washing up on the beach. Paul first heard about it from a hitchhiker he picked up. The man had travelled several hundred kilometres from Toulouse and seemed remarkably determined to reach the coast that day, despite the weather. It had something of the sirens about it: a gift from the sea that was difficult to resist. Only here, instead of a beautiful song and certain death, it was exceptionally pure cocaine washing up on the beach, floating around in the lineup, offering a direct challenge to your capacity for restraint. What followed was a summer of abundance, debauchery, good waves and various forms of personal ruin, eventually building to a crescendo at the Quiksilver Pro France in 2004. The waves were pumping. Bruce and Andy Irons met in the final. The afterparty that followed, you'd have to imagine, given the situation and what was essentially being handed out to all, was fairly substantial. As Paul says in the podcast: “It's kind of cliché… everyone refers to their youth as the best times in the world, but objectively, some of those people are right.” If you're partial to good, uncrowded waves, a cacophony of beautiful women, and happen to possess even a passing curiosity about the sensation of your mouth going numb after sampling some uncut Colombian cocaine, then you'd have a hard time arguing against this as a purple patch in the history of mankind. Humanity has definitely had worse summers and here, Paul talks about how he went about telling that story. This is the making of Hossegor Beach Cocaine, told by its creator, Paul Evans. his is the making of Hossegor Beach Cocaine, told by its creator, Paul Evans. You can listen to the episode one for free here. Episodes 2-4 will live exclusively on Stab Premium and the Stab Premium app. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Vaer, Dome Dust, SlowTide, TurtleBox, and Devium, for making StabMic possible.

What is the future of security in Asia as Japanese lawmakers head to China? Then: Canada’s tariff war with the US, Kazakhstan’s elections, fashion archives from around the world and rentrée littéraire in France.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Annie Sargent sits down with Elyse Rivin to tell the story of Louis Braille. He lost his sight at age three. He was completely blind by five. That didn't stop him. By his teens, he had invented a whole new way to read. Annie and Elyse trace his path from a small village school to Paris, where teachers resisted his system at first. Then it spread like wildfire. You'll hear how blind students tested it, how one public demonstration changed everything, and why Braille still matters today, even with screen readers everywhere. Annie also shares guide dog etiquette and an update on Igor, her retired guide dog. Subscribe to Join Us in France so you never miss an episode.

L'ultime reine de l'Ancien Régime n'est certainement pas la dernière dans le cœur des Français : nous avons rendez-vous, aux Tuileries, avec Marie-Antoinette, à l'automne 1790.Franck Ferrand nous emmène dans les appartements de Marie-Antoinette aux Tuileries, en 1790, alors que la Révolution commence à gronder. Alors qu'il souhaite interroger la reine sur ses erreurs de jeunesse et les scandales qui ont terni sa réputation, on se retrouve face à une souveraine fatiguée, isolée et hantée par les événements à venir.À travers ce récit captivant, Franck Ferrand nous fait revivre les dernières années du règne de Marie-Antoinette, marquées par la montée des tensions et l'impopularité grandissante de la reine. De ses maladresses de jeunesse aux accusations infondées qui l'ont poursuivie, en passant par ses dépenses somptuaires et son isolement à Trianon, il brosse un portrait nuancé d'une figure complexe, à la fois admirée et honnie par son peuple.Un moment d'émotion et de connexion humaine qui contraste avec les discours souvent simplificateurs sur cette figure emblématique de l'Histoire de France.

Vendre du plaisir sans jamais prononcer le mot “sexe”.C'est la règle que Patrick Pruvot s'impose depuis le début.Il ne parle pas de sex-shop ou d'érotisme mais de bien-être intime et de développement durable du couple.Pourtant, rien ne le destinait à l'entrepreneuriat et encore moins dans cet univers.Ancien publicitaire chez Publicis, vers 40 ans, son divorce le force à emménager rue Saint-Denis, au-dessus d'un sex-shop, le Pussy Club.Chaque jour, il passe devant les sex-shops du quartier, observe et repère ce qui pour lui est une aberration marketing. Toutes ces boutiques mélangent deux univers opposés : la pornographie et l'érotisme.Son idée est simple : isoler la partie “noble” pour la rendre fréquentable, "moralement accessible".La sortir des rues sombres pour la coller entre Zara et H&M.Mais personne ne veut de lui : neuf banques sur dix refusent de lui ouvrir un compte, les bailleurs ne signent pas, les investisseurs tournent le dos.Malgré tout ça, Patrick contourne chaque épreuve.20 ans plus tard, Passage du Désir, c'est 25 boutiques en France, près de 35 millions d'euros de chiffre d'affaires, et une première adresse à l'étranger, avec une ambition : exporter l'amour à la française.Mais il ne se contente pas de revendre les marques des autres.Passage du Désir sort un nouveau produit tous les trois jours, uniquement disponible sur son site et dans ses boutiques.Patrick déroule les coulisses d'un commerce que personne n'osait rendre grand public :Pourquoi s'interdire les mots “sexe” et “érotisme” a construit toute la marqueComment banaliser un produit que tout le monde perçoit de façon négativeCombien coûte vraiment l'ouverture d'une boutique, et l'erreur qui tue un lancementL'importance des boutiques pour le retail en ligneL'art de négocier en ChineUne leçon de retail dans le secteur le plus tabou de France. Par celui qui l'a rendu fréquentable.Vous pouvez contacter Patrick sur Linkedin.TIMELINE:00:00:00 - Vendre du plaisir sans prononcer le mot sexe00:12:00 - Où s'arrête l'éthique des banques ?00:21:18 - Créer une gamme pour faire tomber les tabous masculins00:30:57 - Fixer des normes que la loi n'impose pas00:37:42 - Combien ça coûte d'ouvrir une boutique ?00:44:05 - Ouvrir des boutiques pour vendre en ligne00:53:29 - Transformer ses points de vente en attraction01:07:08 - Vendre la French Touch romantique01:16:16 - Lancer un nouveau produit tous les 3 jours01:22:34 - « En France on sait faire un Airbus, pas un sextoy »01:33:08 - L'art de la négociation Chinoise01:38:30 - Le produit qui fidélise autant qu'une marque de cigarette01:48:11 - Les meilleurs jouets à offrirLes anciens épisodes de GDIY mentionnés : #510 - Carole Benaroya - Kujten - La reine du cachemire#405 - Nicolas Santi-Weil - Ami Paris & The Kooples - "Si tu n'arrives pas à en faire un client fais-en un ami"#208 - Marie Comacle - Puissante - Faire vibrer le corps des femmesNous avons parlé de :DNVB et ONVB : les nouveaux modèles de croissance ?Plug Donald TrumpLELO: La Marque Leader Des Accessoires et Produits IntimesClick and Mortar : Définition et guide completModèle « Click and mortar » : définition et avantages pour les entreprises en FranceComment la Chine est devenue imbattable ?Un grand MERCI à nos sponsors : Squarespace : https://squarespace.com/doitQonto: https://qonto.com/r/2i7tk9 Brevo: brevo.com/doit eToro: https://bit.ly/3GTSh0k Payfit: payfit.com Club Med : clubmed.frCuure : https://cuure.com/product-onely (code DOIT)Vous pouvez retrouver la liste de tout le matériel utilisé pour enregistrer nos épisodes sur cette page.Vous souhaitez sponsoriser Génération Do It Yourself ou nous proposer un partenariat ?Contactez mon label Orso Media via ce formulaire.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Colman Domingo is nominated for two Emmy Awards this year, for two very different roles: in the Netflix comedy The Four Seasons and in the final season of HBO's Euphoria. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about the transition from dramatic roles to comedy, and guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a week. Award-winning writer Leïla Slimani grew up in Morocco, where women were second-class citizens, but inside her home and with her family, she was free to speak her mind. Her mother, a doctor, pushed her to go to France to study. Slimani spoke with Terry Gross about her trilogy of novels inspired by her own French-Moroccan roots.Rock critic Ken Tucker looks back on the soundtrack of the 1976 film Sparkle, sung by Aretha Franklin. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

00:00:00 – Catherine Austin Fitts and truth after career ruin 00:04:58 – Skinwalker Ranch season finale falls flat 00:09:58 – David Paulides frames Skinwalker Ranch as a psychological test 00:14:54 – Robert Bigelow recalls Israeli spies inside his aerospace company 00:18:54 – Darth Vader attacks Flock surveillance at city council 00:23:59 – Police use a fake Flock camera to catch a vandal 00:29:00 – Bill Maher weighs in on Trump aide Natalie Harp 00:33:32 – GTA VI leak sparks hacking and publicity theories 00:45:39 – Instagram influencer turns basic traits into profound identities 00:50:20 – Alex Jones and Tim Pool launch a viral feud 00:54:44 – Tim Pool explains his Jubilee debate walkout 00:58:48 – Jubilee debates expose shallow political punditry 01:02:49 – AI memes weaponize the Tim Pool controversy 01:07:50 – Tom DeLonge backs away from intelligence-community UFO games 01:12:09 – AI-generated television points toward endless synthetic entertainment 01:17:03 – Caller dives into Star Nation and Galactic Federation lore 01:21:34 – Alien ambassador claims humans are harvested for consumption 01:26:25 – Callers close out the phone segment 01:28:22 – Harvard pays millions over stolen donated body parts 01:33:24 – Canadian doctors propose organ harvesting during euthanasia 01:36:38 – France faces backlash over ending treatment against a patient's wishes 01:46:21 – RFK Jr.'s carnivore diet promises effortless bathroom trips 01:51:01 – Tucker, Catherine Austin Fitts, Liberland and show wrap-up 01:55:46 – Magnets take over the after-show outro   Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research ▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀ ► Website: http://obdmpod.com ► Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/obdmpod ► Full Videos at Odysee: https://odysee.com/@obdm:0 ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/obdmpod ► Instagram: obdmpod ► Email: ourbigdumbmouth at gmail ► RSS: http://ourbigdumbmouth.libsyn.com/rss ► iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/our-big-dumb-mouth/id261189509?mt=2  

Avec sa jumelle, Mme Elisabeth, Mme Henriette de France fait figure d'aînée parmi les enfants de Louis XV et de Marie Leszczynska ; sa discrétion naturelle n'a pas été inactive.Embarquez pour une plongée fascinante au cœur de la cour de Versailles, où les destins croisés des filles du roi Louis XV vous attendent. Découvrez l'histoire d'Henriette, la princesse discrète et méconnue, qui a pourtant joué un rôle essentiel au sein de la famille royale.

The world's great museums are full of art and artifacts that were plundered during an era when plunder was the norm. Now there's a push to return these works to their rightful owners. Sounds simple, right? It's not. (Part 2 of an updated series originally published in 2023.)   SOURCES: Matthew Bogdanos, assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit. Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum. Victor Ehikhamenor, Nigerian writer and artist. David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic. Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator of world archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Bénédicte Savoy, professor of art history at the Technical University in Berlin.   RESOURCES: "These Looted Treasures Are Home. What Now?," by Alex Marshall (New York Times, 2025). "France's Long-Awaited Restitution Policy Is Finally Here," by Vincent Noce (The Art Newspaper, 2023). Africa's Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, by Bénédicte Savoy (2022). "Who Benefits When Western Museums Return Looted Art?" by David Frum (The Atlantic, 2022). "Museums in England and Wales to Gain Powers to Dispose of Objects on Moral Grounds," by Dalya Alberge (The Guardian, 2022). The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, by Dan Hicks (2020). "The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics," by Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr (2018).   EXTRAS: "Can a Museum Be the Conscience of a Nation?," by Freakonomics Radio (2025). "The Hidden Side of the Art Market," by Freakonomics Radio (2021). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew Kolvet's attempt to smear me today was so egregious that Andrew Wilson actually stopped it, we demonstrate just how awful TPUSA has become, and it's obvious that these lies are meant to distract us from the investigation... so it's time to stay focused and keep the heat on them. 00:00 - Start. 01:59 - More exclusive footage. What did Terryl do with the footage? 14:18 - Even MORE exclusive footage. Who was walking in the garage on 9/10? 24:21 - Andrew Wilson and Andrew Kolvet coping hard. 32:19 - Andrew Wilson defends me to Andrew Kolvet. 36:38 - Beavis and Butt-Head debunk themselves. 44:04 - My trip to France with Kanye. 48:34 - Andrew Kolvet blatantly lies about our conversation. 58:10 - Comments. Battalion Metals​ ​ Explore their collection of fair-priced gold and silver! Make sure to enter code CANDACE at checkout to let them know I sent you! https://BattalionMetals.com/candace Dose​ ​ Get 35% off your first month subscription with promo code CANDACE at http://www.DoseDaily.co/Candace PureTalk​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Make the switch to PureTalk and get Unlimited Data for $34.99 a month! http://www.PureTalk.com/Owens American Financing​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ NMLS 182334, http://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 800-795-1210 for details about credit costs and terms. Visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Owens. Average savings based on borrowers who save over $199.99. Candace Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ClipsCandaceOwens Candace Official Website: https://candaceowens.com Candace Merch: https://shop.candaceowens.com Candace on Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/Pp5VZiLXbq Candace on Spotify: https://t.co/16pMuADXuT Candace on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/RealCandaceO Candace en Español: https://www.youtube.com/@CandaceOwensEnEspanol Candace Owens em Português: https://www.youtube.com/@CandaceOwensemPortugues Candace Owens en Français: https://www.youtube.com/@CandaceOwensEnFrançais Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

C'est près de Tunis, à l'été 1270, qu'est mort le roi Louis IX (Saint Louis). Pour ses compagnons d'armes, un grand défi se présente : ramener en France les restes du souverain.Franck Ferrand vous plonge au cœur de la dernière croisade de Louis IX, le roi de France vénéré comme un saint. Sous le soleil brûlant d'Afrique, le souverain agonise loin de son royaume, alors que son armée est frappée par la maladie et les défaites. Confronté à la mort de son fils bien-aimé, Louis IX fait preuve d'une piété exemplaire, pressentant qu'il rejoindra bientôt les cieux.Son frère, le redoutable Charles d'Anjou, roi de Sicile, arrive à la tête de renforts mais ne peut empêcher l'issue tragique de cette expédition. Après le décès du roi, une périlleuse odyssée commence pour ramener ses restes en France, entre tempêtes et péripéties.

En 1816, Jacques-Louis David quitte la France, banni pour avoir trop peint l'Histoire. Un retrait volontaire… mais pas sans éclats.Franck Ferrand vous emmène dans les pas de Jacques-Louis David, le célèbre peintre français qui a traversé les plus grands bouleversements de son époque.

TABLE OF CONTENTS THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 8-19-2026Rebecca Grant, Vice President of the Lexington Institute, discusses technological advancements on the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. She details the transition from traditional steam-powered catapults to modern electromagnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS), which offer superior, adjustable torque to launch both lightweight drones and heavily armed fighter jets. Additionally, Grant highlights the ship's new electromagnetic advanced weapons elevators, which double the capacity of older Nimitz-class systems and move much faster to significantly improve sortie generation rates. However, a White House executive order directing a study to reconsider steam systems threatens to disrupt these advancements. Grant warns that backtracking to older technology on carriers currently in construction, like the CVN-81, could delay delivery by up to seven years, creating dangerous operational gaps as Chinese naval threats rise in the Pacific. (1)Rick Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center analyzes China's advancement in space and its competition with the United States. Fisher discusses China's Gandai constellation, a space debris monitoring satellite system controlled by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which tracked a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster crashing near the moon's Einstein crater from over 380,000 kilometers away. He warns that this constellation can perform dual-use military targeting for space combat and missile defense. Fisher criticizes China's lack of transparency, noting its refusal to give advance notice for earthbound ICBM tests and its intention to let expendable propulsion stages crash into the lunar surface. Finally, he highlights the rapid progress of China's LandSpace with its liquid-fueled, methane-oxygen-powered reusable Zhuque-3 rocket, predicting that ten Chinese companies will offer cheap reusable launch services within five years and directly undercut Western competitors. (2)Greg Scarlatoiu, President and CEO of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, analyzes the multifaceted security threats posed by Pyongyang. Scarlatoiu describes North Korea as a post-communist, dynastic kleptocracy and a crime family masquerading as a nation-state. Under Kim Jong-un, the regime has consolidated its intelligence and police agencies while streamlining its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Scarlatoiu explains that North Korea's war economy exploits its people's human rights and security to fund weapons, which it now exports globally to Russia and Iran. The discussion, co-hosted by Gordon Chang, highlights active military provocations along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), including recent boundary crossings. Finally, Scarlatoiu and Chang evaluate how controversial remarks by the Trump administration praising Kim Jong-un have strained trust in extended deterrence and undermined relationships within the vital US-South Korea alliance. (3)Craig Unger, investigative reporter and author, explores President Donald Trump's unstable foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine. Unger contends that Trump behaves as a Russian appeaser whose real estate-linked advisers take marching orders from Vladimir Putin. The discussion highlights how Ukrainian-manufactured drones have successfully targeted Russian oil refineries, causing severe fuel shortages and long gas lines across Russia. While these military successes initially impressed Trump, leading him to publicly promise Patriot missiles and production technology to President Zelenskyy, Unger reveals that Trump subsequently withheld this critical support. Unger cautions that as Putin faces an existential crisis and potential military defeat, he may launch a limited incursion into Baltic states like Estonia or Poland. This would trigger NATO's Article 5, which Unger warns Trump would likely refuse to honor, thereby destroying the Western alliance. (4)Caleb Weiss of the Bridgeway Foundation and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies examines the evolution of African jihadist movements. Weiss details the case of Jamal Chima, a Ugandan Guantanamo Bay alumnus who transitioned from Al-Qaeda to recruiting for the Islamic State Central African Province (ISCAP) in Kampala. Weiss explains that East African court systems frequently experience "catch and release" cycles due to strict evidentiary demands for terrorism cases. The segment also addresses the kidnapping of missionary Kevin Rideout by the Islamic State Sahel Province. Weiss describes how these groups raise funds through lucrative ransoms, utilizing regional coordination hubs like the Al-Furqan and Al-Karrar offices to move capital globally to active cells in regions like Afghanistan. Finally, he notes that eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar has leveraged anti-jihadist operations to secure Western backing. (5)Michael Bernstam of the Hoover Institution warns of a severe global crisis in refined petroleum products, especially diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. Bernstam explains that the "crack spread"—the cost differential between crude oil and refined diesel—has reached an unprecedented historical peak of over $102 per barrel. This crisis stems from a fifty-year systemic failure, during which no major new refineries were built in the United States or Europe. Compounding this, sophisticated Ukrainian drone strikes have successfully knocked out 40% of Russia's refining capacity, forcing the major oil exporter to ban refined product exports and become an importer. Additionally, China has halted refined exports to meet its domestic demand. Bernstam warns that the resulting global diesel shortage directly threatens agricultural planting, harvesting, and regional food security, particularly for developing nations as winter approaches. (6)Peter Huessy of the Gold Institute for International Strategy critiques the Hollywood film House of Dynamite for its inaccurate depiction of US nuclear command and control. Huessy argues that the movie relies on flawed premises, such as the sudden, unexplained failure of Defense Support Program (DSP) tracking satellites and the total failure of US missile defense interceptors, to fabricate a helpless crisis scenario. He highlights that actual US missile defenses achieve 75% to 85% success in tests and up to 98% in combat scenarios like Israel's missile defense systems. Huessy strongly refutes the film's negative portrayal of military leadership as reckless warmongers and its central message that nuclear deterrence is ineffective. He asserts that the nuclear triad has successfully and perfectly preserved global peace for eighty years, keeping the country safe. (7)Simon Constable, writer for the Wall Street Journal, discusses European climate anomalies and their severe impact on global commodities. Speaking from the south of France, Constable reports temperatures reaching 35 degrees Celsius, contributing to low water levels in the Danube, Rhine, and Po rivers. These climate constraints, alongside maritime blockades of Ukrainian ports, have driven up prices for energy, wheat, and coffee. Turning to UK politics, Constable criticizes Prime Minister Keir Starmer for failing to spur house-building and notes that regional politicians like Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham lack an international profile. Finally, he reviews a longevity quiz from the Wall Street Journal, which highlights that the wealthiest Americans live fourteen years longer than the poorest. He notes that Japan leads the world in centenarians, emphasizing that geographic location and financial wealth are pivotal factors in determining an individual's healthy lifespan. (8)Andrea Stricker of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies examines Middle Eastern nuclear proliferation and the mystery surrounding legacy materials. Stricker details a positive, US-brokered development in which the post-AssadSyrian government agreed to cooperate and turn over legacy yellowcake uranium stored at a covert facility known as Site 99. This material was intended for a North Korean-built plutonium-producing reactor at Al-Kibar, which was destroyed by Israel in 2007. Despite long-standing Syrian secrecy and the site changing hands among various factions, environmental sampling by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed undeclared, man-made uranium particles at multiple locations. Stricker also raises concerns regarding Turkey's nuclear ambitions, highlighting its civilian programs' potential military purposes and Turkey's recent attempt to secure raw uranium contracts with the military regime in Niger. (9)Joel Kotkin, senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, examines California's economic and demographic challenges. Kotkin notes that California is on the verge of losing its population lead as middle-class families vote with their feet and move to states like Texas. He attributes this out-migration to exorbitant housing costs, a severe shortage of upwardly mobile middle-class jobs, and high electricity prices that hamper manufacturing and modern technology sectors like artificial intelligence. Furthermore, Kotkin highlights systemic social issues, including high teen unemployment, rising store break-ins, and a deteriorating public education system. These factors have depleted the state's middle class, leaving the tax base heavily dependent on a wealthy top one percent who can easily relocate to lower-tax states like Florida. Kotkin warns that this loss of middle-class families threatens California's future tax base and demographic vitality. (10)Corrections applied, several pending your confirmation: Bridgeway Foundation (transcribed as "Ridgeway," segment 5 — Weiss's actual affiliation), Al-Furqan and Al-Karrar offices (transcribed as "Al-Furkan and Al-Karr" — the standard renderings of the ISIS regional offices), LandSpace and Zhuque-3 (transcribed as "Land Space Corporation" and "Juk 3" — the Chinese firm and its rocket), Zelenskyy per house style, and "yellow cake" → yellowcake. One flag: "Gandaiconstellation" (segment 2) — I couldn't verify that name; the audio may be rendering a Chinese program name roughly, worth checking with the transcript or Fisher's notes. In segment 8, note the source describes Keir Starmer as PM and Andy Burnham as Manchester Mayor — this contradicts the recent batches where Burnham is PM. I've left it as the source has it since it's Constable's segment, but flag it if the summary tool garbled the timeline.R

Simon Constable, writer for the Wall Street Journal, discusses European climate anomalies and their severe impact on global commodities. Speaking from the south of France, Constable reports temperatures reaching 35 degrees Celsius, contributing to low water levels in the Danube, Rhine, and Po rivers. These climate constraints, alongside maritime blockades of Ukrainian ports, have driven up prices for energy, wheat, and coffee. Turning to UK politics, Constable criticizes Prime Minister Keir Starmer for failing to spur house-building and notes that regional politicians like Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham lack an international profile. Finally, he reviews a longevity quiz from the Wall Street Journal, which highlights that the wealthiest Americans live fourteen years longer than the poorest. He notes that Japan leads the world in centenarians, emphasizing that geographic location and financial wealth are pivotal factors in determining an individual's healthy lifespan. (8)

We once again were inspired to research a location that we saw on a series. This one is Mont-Saint-Michel from "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon." The location in the series is like a safe haven for the good people, at least that is the way it appears on the surface. The castle-like main building is so beautiful and large that it seemed like it had to be a creation of CGI, so we were shocked to look it up and find that it was a real place. And when we dug a little further to see if it was haunted, sure enough, it was! Join us for the history and hauntings of France's Mont-Saint-Michel. This Month in History features the birth of Cecil B. DeMille. Check out the website: http://historygoesbump.com Show notes can be found here: https://historygoesbump.blogspot.com/2026/08/hgb-ep-651-mont-saint-michel-or-nest.html  Become an Executive Producer: http://patreon.com/historygoesbump Music used in this episode: Main Theme: Creepy Carnival Theme  Created and produced by History Goes Bump Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (This Month in History) "In Your Arms" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Halloween 2025 Vol. 7 by Sascha Ende from ende.app Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

La reprise ! Après l'Italie, retour à Paris. Je pensais avoir eu une bonne idée pour voir l'éclipse. Mais parfois, on a des surprises.   Back from summer vacation with a plan that seemed perfect: catch the August 12 solar eclipse from an unusual spot in Paris, avoid the crowds, get free glasses. It didn't go as planned. This episode is a real, unscripted family story. Along the way: a dinner in the Italian countryside the week before, a very opinionated pigeon, and a live TV report that somehow makes the whole thing even better. This season, subscribers get more than a transcript — a podcast letter with every episode: a question to think about before pressing play, cultural markers to go deeper into the episode, natural turns of phrase to notice and copy, and a comprehension question for after you've listened. A relaxed, natural way to keep improving your French. D'autres épisodes à écouter aujourd'hui : 1451 — Bonne année ! (Exposition sur les comètes au Muséum d'histoire naturelle)
https://onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com/e/bonne-annee-1515192438/ 1877 — Summer in France : direction le Jura (La comète Neowise)
https://onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com/e/1877-%e2%80%94-vendredi-7-aout-2020-%e2%80%94-summer-in-france-direction-le-jura/ 2097 — Week-end en Normandie : le port flottant d'Arromanches et la tapisserie de Bayeux (La comète de Halley sur la tapisserie de Bayeux)
https://onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com/e/2097-%e2%80%94-week-end-en-normandie%c2%a0-le-port-flottant-d-arromanches-et-la-tapisserie-de-bayeux-%e2%80%94-vendredi-11-mars-2022/ 2211 — L'éclipse de 1999
https://onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com/e/2211-%e2%80%94-l-eclipse-de-1999-%e2%80%94-mercredi-8-fevrier-2023/    1 What was the August 2026 solar eclipse like in Paris?  2 Where to watch a solar eclipse in Paris  3 What is visible during a partial solar eclipse?  4 French podcast about everyday family life  5 How to talk about weather and sky in French  6 Real French conversation podcast for learners  7 What is the Philharmonie de Paris?  8 French expressions for disappointment or mishaps  9 Best places to watch the sky in Paris  10 French podcast for intermediate and advanced learners éclipse solaire · Philharmonie de Paris · Paris · parc André Citroën · vie de famille · voyage Italie · french podcast · real french · spoken french · french daily life · rentrée podcast

Full Text of Readings Memorial of Saint Pius X, Pope Lectionary: 423 The Saint of the day is Saint Pius X Saint Pius X's Story Pope Pius X is perhaps best remembered for his encouragement of the frequent reception of Holy Communion, especially by children. The second of 10 children in a poor Italian family, Joseph Sarto became Pius X at age 68. He was one of the 20th century's greatest popes. Ever mindful of his humble origin, Pope Pius stated, “I was born poor, I lived poor, I will die poor.” He was embarrassed by some of the pomp of the papal court. “Look how they have dressed me up,” he said in tears to an old friend. To another, “It is a penance to be forced to accept all these practices. They lead me around surrounded by soldiers like Jesus when he was seized in Gethsemani.” Interested in politics, Pope Pius encouraged Italian Catholics to become more politically involved. One of his first papal acts was to end the supposed right of governments to interfere by veto in papal elections—a practice that reduced the freedom of the 1903 conclave which had elected him. In 1905, when France renounced its agreement with the Holy See and threatened confiscation of Church property if governmental control of Church affairs were not granted, Pius X courageously rejected the demand. While Saint Pius X did not author a famous social encyclical as his predecessor had done, he denounced the ill treatment of indigenous peoples on the plantations of Peru, sent a relief commission to Messina after an earthquake, and sheltered refugees at his own expense. On the 11th anniversary of his election as pope, Europe was plunged into World War I. Saint Pius X had foreseen it, but it killed him. “This is the last affliction the Lord will visit on me. I would gladly give my life to save my poor children from this ghastly scourge.” He died a few weeks after the war began, and was canonized in 1954. Reflection His humble background was no obstacle in relating to a personal God and to people whom he loved genuinely. Saint Pius X gained his strength, his gentleness and warmth for people from the source of all gifts, the Spirit of Jesus. In contrast, we often feel embarrassed by our backgrounds. Shame makes us prefer to remain aloof from people whom we perceive as superior. If we are in a superior position, on the other hand, we often ignore simpler people. Yet we, too, have to help “restore all things in Christ,” especially the wounded people of God.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Pir Zia on the secret history of the world From a nondual perspective, aren't the world's great spiritual traditions expressions of a single living wisdom? In this intimate conversation, Pir Zia Inayat Khan explores the inspiration behind Tears from the Mother of the Sun, a sweeping mythic chronicle of sages, exiles, and revelations spanning continents and planes of existence. Drawing on sacred stories from Persia, India, Egypt and beyond, the book weaves the world's legends into a vision of humanity's shared spiritual inheritance. Together we discover the place of myth in a modern world, the imagination as a path of knowing, and the role of our deepest stories in restoring a sense of belonging to one another, to the Earth, and to the mystery that animates us all. Topics 00:00 Welcome 00:03 Growing up in a universalist lineage 00:06 Ferdowsi, Soroush, and the frame of the book 00:11 Why the world's traditions belong to one story 00:14 History as a living stream: the three worlds 00:16 The Mongols, violence, and unification 00:19 "I was a hidden treasure": the beginning of history 00:22 Syzygy, and the question of AI 00:29 Honoring the Earth inside our devices 00:34 Isis, Osiris, and the birth of music at Gaza 00:43 Grief, contraction, and the opening of the heart 00:49 Rabia, Noor Inayat Khan, and the green shoots Pir Zia Inayat Khan Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. He is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice. He divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France. pirzia.org Inayatiyya Sulūk Academy The book Tears from the Mother of the Sun: A Secret History of the World, Inner Traditions, 2026, with full-color paintings by Amruta Patil Amruta Patil, writer, painter, and India's first female graphic novelist, author of Kari, Adi Parva, Sauptik, and Aranyaka Also by Pir Zia Immortality: A Traveler's Guide Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest Dream Flowers: The Collected Works of Noor Inayat Khan Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan (editor) Figures and ideas in the conversation Lineage Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), who brought universal Sufism to the West Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who convened interspiritual dialogues and conversations with modern science, including with David Bohm Noor Inayat Khan, storyteller, author of children's tales and retellings of the Jātaka tales, and SOE wireless operator in occupied France. Killed at Dachau in 1944. Her last word was liberté. Persia and the frame of the book Ferdowsi, author of the Shahnameh, who died in Tus believing his life's work had come to nothing Soroush, the tutelary daimon who narrates the book The Ishraqi or Illuminationist tradition Sufi teaching The Hadith Qudsi: I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I created the world that I might be known Rabia al-Adawiyya, who carried a torch to burn down paradise and water to quench the fires of hell, so that God would be loved for God's own sake Najm al-Din Kubra, killed on the battlefield during the Mongol invasion Qabz and bast, contraction and expansion Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, and rahma as the action of the womb History, empire, and emanation Genghis Khan and the Palace of Myriad Peace at Karakorum Akbar and the interreligious debates at Fatehpur Sikri, under the policy of sulh-i-kul, peace with all Tahqiq, experiential knowing, as against taqlid, following what one has heard Avicenna and the three contemplations of emanation Syzygy, the alignment of beings into a molecule of spiritual work Isis and the birth of music The story of Isis and Osiris as told by Plutarch, in which Isis buries Osiris at Gaza and blesses a boy named Palestinos, who becomes the first musician Sirius, whose rising signals the Nile flood, understood as the tears of Isis Also mentioned Descending into Light: A Pilgrimage to the Center of the Earth, a seven-week series with Pir Zia and Yuz Ata, October 11 to November 22, 2026 Rumi & The Fire of Radical Love: A Path Through Global Rupture, a four-part SAND course with Omid Safi. Sessions on August 30 and September 6 still to come. The Eternal Song, SAND's collection of twelve films Support this gathering

Sailing in the Mediterranean and Beyond — Neil Fletcher's Summer Sailing Adventures In this episode of Sailing in the Mediterranean and Beyond, my good friend and longtime podcast contributor Neil Fletcher returns to share stories from another summer on the water in Europe. Neil has been contributing to the podcast for many years, and he has a wonderful ability to tell the stories of his adventures in a way that brings the experience of cruising to life. This time, he recounts his recent travels in France and Norway, but focusing mainly on 11 days on a riverboat in the canals and rivers of Burgundy. He shares practical details of how to do it, the experiences and people he encountered, and some of the memorable moments from his summer afloat. Neil is one of my favorite sailors to sail with. We’ve shared some great adventures over the years, including sailing together aboard his boat in Sweden, and I’ve always enjoyed hearing about his continued explorations around Europe. I really appreciate Neil taking the time to record this episode and share his stories with us. He tells these adventures much better than I ever could, and I think you’ll enjoy listening to him recount another summer on the water. Thanks, Neil, for being such a longtime contributor to Sailing in the Mediterranean and Beyond – and for sharing another great sailing story with us.   Upcoming Sailing Opportunities Sailing in the Mediterranean and Beyond isn’t going anywhere! I’m currently organizing a sailing sub-club at the Alta Club in Salt Lake City, and we’re planning a charter in Greece or Turkey next August. If you’re interested in learning more—or if you’d like to explore the possibility of joining a separate charter with fellow listeners—I’d love to hear from you. As always, thank you for listening. Fair winds and following seas, Franz Amussen

On today's episode presented by IGADI Dispensaries and Meraki Cannabis, we sit down (virtually) with Chef Ming Tsai from Big Sky Montana to talk about the upcoming Food & Wine festival going down Sept 25-27th. Chef has a long history of working in hospitality, starting in his mother's restaurant back when he was just a pre-teen in Dayton, OH. Fast-forward to today & he's running an award winning restaurant in Big Sky Montana and preparing for their inaugural Big Sky Food & Wine festival. We talk about his history in the restaurant scene, but also how he fell in love with the industry. His path from Ohio to Boston, Boston to France and then dancing across the country before planting his flag and declaring Montana his home. A wonderful episode filled with stories from the kitchen, his family & his dear friends from the community. You'll love his story and this episode, that I am certain. If you want to join the Big Sky F&W festivities, you can get tickets at bigskyfw.com and use promo code STONED15 for discounted pricing at checkout! We hope to see you under the stars and amongst the moose and elk this autumn! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/stoned-appetit--3077842/support.

Nick joined on the Knavesmire this morning by Jane Mangan to first reflect on the action from day 1 including Item causing a slight upset in the Juddmonte International and on that, racing manager Barry Mahon joins the show to share what it meant to him and the family and also looks ahead to Kalpana this afternoon in the Yorkshire Oaks. TPD's Adam Mills shares looks at what the figures tells us about how the Juddmonte was run and Lewis Tomlinson of Timeform reflects on that race as well as Maltese Cross's victory in the Voltigeur. Jane makes the case for why the latter must surely now head to France for the Arc over the St Leger and Amy Murphy is also along as she looks forward to Tokaido in the Harry's Half Million today. Finally, as we like to do at these major festivals, we're wine tasting with Neil Phillips and testing out the offering in the Paddock Pavilion restaurant with Steve Cooper.

From autocorrect to full-fledged conversationalists, discover how a few tweaks transformed language models—and why understanding this shift exposes urgent questions about AI safety and control. Trusting an open source AI proxy might bite you. France's under-15 social media ban hits its constitution. A bit of AI prompting found a serious bug in Zoom. AI-based network defenders see a stock price jump. A (very) deep dive into the operation of AI chatbots Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1092-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT joindeleteme.com/twit-biz doppel.com threatlocker.com/twit scribe.how/securitynow

How can you get your books surfaced when readers ask an AI what to read next? What are the hallmarks of authors and businesses that last more than a decade in the indie author industry? Ricardo Fayet gives his marketing tips after more than a decade at Reedsy. In the intro, Expanding Your Book's IP through Merchandising [Wish I'd Known Then]; Guide to writers conferences [Kindlepreneur]; Rick Rubin and Stephen Pressfield on resistance and the muse [Tetragrammaton]; Pulitzer Prize winners disclose AI usage [Nieman Lab]; My new rebuilt fiction site JFPenn.com. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Ricardo Fayet is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Reedsy, a marketplace for writers to find vetted freelancers, author training courses, and lots more. He's also the author of How to Market a Book and Amazon Ads for Authors. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How AI search actually finds and ranks the books it recommends Why keywords and search volume are disappearing as marketing metrics Building an internet footprint so your book is worth recommending Why Claude leans on Goodreads while ChatGPT and Gemini lean on Reddit Product is more important than marketing, and how to find your comp titles Passion, business sense and resilience in the authors who last You can find Ricardo at Reedsy.com. Transcript of the interview with Ricardo Fayet Jo: Ricardo Fayet is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Reedsy, a marketplace for writers to find vetted freelancers, author training courses, and lots more. He's also the author of How to Market a Book and Amazon Ads for Authors. So welcome back to the show, Ricardo. Ricardo: Thank you, Jo. It's been a while. Jo: It has been a while. As we were saying, it's been a decade, which is crazy, because you and I see each other at events and things. For anyone who doesn't know you— Tell us a bit more about you, where you're from, and also, what is Reedsy these days and how have things changed? Ricardo: Yes, sure. I think I'm hard to dissociate from Reedsy because my only background really is Reedsy. We started Reedsy right after business school for most of the founders. There are four founders, and I'm one of them. We've been going since 2014, so it's been 12 years. We started around the same time, and you started even earlier than we did, but we've had the chance to meet at quite a few conferences since. I think the main thing we're still known for is our marketplace. Since the very beginning, Reedsy is a curated marketplace where authors can come in and look for editors, cover designers, marketers, ghostwriters, literary translators, author website designers, pretty much any freelancer you would ever need to hire throughout your writing career. That's how we started. That's our main source of revenue and our main business. Since then, as you mentioned, we've also added courses, live events, so we've got a membership under Reedsy Learning. The main thing we're proud of right now is our writing tool, Reedsy Studio, because we've been pouring a lot of engineering talent into it over the past five, six years, and I think it's a really cool writing tool that is 90% free. It also does the formatting, so it's a good alternative to Vellum or Atticus for those who haven't purchased those tools. So there's a lot of things that Reedsy does at this point, which always makes it hard for me to describe what we do. Jo: But you generally serve writers. That's probably the crux of it. Ricardo: Exactly, yes. We're mostly at the production stage. The thing we say is we help authors make beautiful books, right? That's a little bit the tagline that applies to 90% of what we do, though we also help a little bit with the marketing side of things. Jo: And then just tell people where your accent is from. Ricardo: So I'm half French, half Italian from my parents, and I was born in Spain. So depending on my mood and the moment, it might be anywhere from French, Italian, Spanish. It's anyone's guess, really, at this point. Jo: Yes, exactly. You've been part of the indie author ecosystem, as you said, since 2014. You're often at the author conferences, and you stay abreast of everything that's going on. So what are the biggest changes you've seen in the industry since you started out? Like you said, you guys came from business school. You chose to come into the industry at a particular point, and yet things have changed. So what do you think are the biggest changes, and how have you seen authors adapt? Ricardo: It's crazy, the amount of things that happened in the past 10 years. Obviously we came into the industry as a result of Amazon launching Kindle Direct Publishing, and then the Kindle Store becoming one of the number one places where people buy books. That's what enabled self-publishing in the first place as an industry, and obviously we wouldn't exist without self-publishing being a thing. But then I think probably one of the biggest changes that happened was the introduction of Kindle Unlimited and various other subscription models. Perhaps as a response to that, afterwards, I would say direct sales is the other massive change that happened in the industry. The ability for authors to sell direct to their readers via their websites, or running Kickstarters, or basically the ability to reach your customers directly. Now, obviously, artificial intelligence is probably the biggest change of them all, not just in publishing, across every industry, but of course it's going to affect publishing very strongly, or it has already started making big waves. So I would say those are the three main changes that we've seen happening in the industry. Jo: Just interestingly, given that you're French, Italian, Spanish, European— Has the pace of change been the same in mainland Europe? Because you and I have also met up at European conferences, but I just get the sense that each individual European country, the UK included, as I include the UK in Europe, goes at a different speed. Ricardo: No, they definitely do. Our market at Reedsy is all in English. We only have an English website, and I would say 70% of our market is US, then 15% UK, and then Australia, New Zealand, et cetera. We do have clients in continental Europe, but they're mostly going to be American or British expats. A lot of retired people who write books and use Reedsy services. I think the main reason for that is that self-publishing as an industry hasn't really grown in Spain, France, Italy the way that it's grown in the US and the UK, probably because these are countries where book buying habits are a lot more traditional. So all my friends from high school and university in France, they all buy books, they all buy paper books. They all buy from bookstores. They don't really buy from Amazon that much. They love the smell of paper, all these sorts of things. So obviously that makes it harder for indie authors in those countries because they cannot place their books in the places where people buy them, which is traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores, or at least it's much harder. So there is an indie movement in those countries, but it's much smaller. I would say Germany is maybe the exception in Europe, where I've seen more and more full-time indie authors, but I don't think it's a market that's comparable even to the UK. Jo: Interesting. Okay, so let's go to marketing, because you love marketing, you have a newsletter about it, and you have a book, How to Market a Book, same title as mine, and we've found each other in our Also Boughts over the years. You have, however, updated yours several times. 2025 was your last update. Mine was 2016, so yours is definitely the most up-to-date one. So what are your thoughts on how authors can reach readers now? And let's split this into two. Let's start with some tips for new authors who just have maybe one book and are really just starting out. Ricardo: Yes, first of all, sorry for stealing your title. Jo: Oh, you know, it's never been a problem. Ricardo: We were trying to come up with something… I know, I know, I know. But still, we wanted something more original, and then we realised that for SEO purposes, that's the title we should really go for. The good thing is, if you search “how to market a book” on pretty much any retailer, you're going to find your book or mine in any order really, but those are going to be the top two books to this day, thankfully, so I'm good with that. I think in terms of marketing tips for new authors who have just the one book, I'd say, despite all the changes in the industry, the basics of marketing still stay the same. One of my big mantras when it comes to marketing is that product is more important than marketing. So having a great book is going to be more important, in my opinion, than being a great marketer. Having a great product. By that, I generally don't talk about literary value or prose or anything like that, just because I'm not a book critic. I'm not an editor. My opinion on whether a book is good or not is worth zero. From a marketing standpoint, for me, a good book is one that resonates with its intended audience. So the first step for newer authors is to basically figure out who they wrote this book for, right? Have an idea of who their target market is. A great way to do that, without entering into marketing jargon like proto-personas and stuff like that, is to think in terms of comp titles, comparable titles. I think that's probably the base of any marketing, whether traditional publishing houses or indie authors, to think, “Okay, which other books out there are similar to mine?” If your book is completely unique, you have, I would say, 99.9% chance of not selling, because your market doesn't exist, and 0.01% chance of creating your own market and completely dominating it, right? So being unique is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would say 99% of the time, it is. Obviously being unique within an existing niche, within an existing market, that's completely different, but you need to work on some comparable titles. So I would say that's where I would start, and that's one of the things that AI is great at. If you even just plug in your book into an AI chat that has enough context, if you're comfortable doing that of course, or if you plug in a synopsis, like a long synopsis, you can basically ask the AI chats, “Okay, what would be some comp titles?” Either you'll have heard of those books, and you'll think, “Okay, they're good comps,” or you may not have heard of them, in which case I would really recommend buying them and reading them and seeing whether they're comps or not. I think that's where marketing starts. Jo: Yes, and we might come back to that for book discoverability. Well, let's just talk about it now, because I now pretty much use Claude for discovering books as well. I just find that the Amazon search, for nonfiction it works really well, right? As you said, if you want to learn how to market a book, you just search “how to market a book”, and our books are very well titled for that. But for fiction, it's so difficult to find new books and comp titles, especially if you don't write in a clear genre, which I don't. I know lots of people do. So we're writing cross-genre. So in terms of book discoverability, I know you've been looking into SEO for books and all of that. What are your thoughts on how authors can more effectively have their books surfaced if people are using the AIs for finding books? Ricardo: That's a very big topic. That's one of my favourite topics right now. That's what I talk about in my marketing newsletter, and I want to start a Substack on the topic as well, because I think it is the future of book discoverability. As you say, search on Amazon isn't great, and if it's not great on Amazon, you don't even want to imagine on Google Play, Kobo, all these sorts of places, right? If you search on Kobo or Apple Books or Google Play for witch cozy mysteries, the top 10 books are going to have exactly “witch cozy mystery” in the title or the subtitle or the series title, right? Jo: Yes. Ricardo: Search is very simple on those sites, so it's very easy to game, but it's terrible as an experience for readers. So I do think that a big part of search is going to move to AI, and now you have Rufus within Amazon itself that appears as a chatbot and encourages you to talk with it, to ask for recommendations. In the beginning Rufus was really terrible, but now I recommend authors play with it. In general, I recommend when it comes to AI discoverability that authors play with all the AI search tools. So it's going to be Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Rufus within Amazon. Just like we talked about comp titles, right, ask for something like, “What would you recommend for fans of this book? Which other books would you recommend?” Or if you're looking for something specific that describes your book, what books would you recommend on… I think one of your examples was fiction around masonry or something like that, right? Jo: I always say, for example, if you ask for action adventure thrillers on pretty much anywhere, you're going to get 20 books by male authors. For those of us who are female authors, but also who have female main characters, you can then be far more granular. That's just not something that necessarily works on Amazon. So, action adventure thrillers with female protagonists written by female indie authors, which is very specific. That will work in AI, whereas that definitely won't work on Amazon. Ricardo: Exactly. So one of the great things about AI search, and terrible things at the same time, is that the concept of keyword is lost, right? So we title our books How to Market a Book because the keyword that people would search for is “how to market a book”, or “book marketing for authors”. Those were the two keywords that had the biggest search volume if we looked at Google Keyword Planner, or any search tools that give you keyword volume. When it comes to AI search, since it's conversational, and it's very personalised, and it can go as niche as you want, keywords are going to disappear, and search volume as a metric is going to disappear. The search you just told me about, maybe there are 10 people who are going to run it exactly. Most people are going to run variations of that. Since you can go as granular as you want, it's going to be very long phrases, very long sentences. So the whole concept of keywords, search volume, SEO, is going to disappear in favour of what some people call GEO, generative engine optimisation, AIO, AI optimisation, AI search optimisation. There's a bunch of names for it, but it is a different discipline. It still works on the basis of Google SEO because what most of these search engines will do is they're going to search the internet, right? They've been trained on a lot of information, but not all of that information is current. Most of these models have been trained on documents and web pages before 2021. That's why when you used the very early versions of ChatGPT, and you asked it about current events or current books, it didn't find it. It didn't have that information. Now all these models have the ability to search the web, and they do that really effectively. So the first thing they're going to do if you run a search like that is they're going to run dozens of different searches on Google or a similar search engine. Action thriller books with female protagonists. Action thriller books with female protagonists by indie authors. Action thriller books by indie authors. They're going to create what I call a corpus, so a massive document of information with candidates, books that probably meet those criteria that they have found through regular web searches. Then they're going to go through all those books and determine which are the most relevant to recommend, and they'll return with that. Then they'll usually have a verification layer as well, which is, okay, I have these five books that I want to recommend to this user, but I just want to make sure first that they are written by indie authors, that they do have a female protagonist, et cetera. And if I'm not able to verify that, I'll flag it in my answer to them. So there are these three layers. Web search, then ranking of the book candidates, and finally a verification layer, and then they serve you the answer. Obviously, that's really powerful. If that's the way that search is headed, which I firmly believe, then we as authors need to learn how to get our books in there. Jo: Yes. It's so interesting, and I do this all the time. Really niche stuff, like a thriller about anatomical Venuses, which are these models from anatomy museums and stuff like that, with an edge of the supernatural. What is brilliant is that you can find the books that come up. I actually got one that I read and reviewed, and it was fantastic. So I love the more granular thing, but we're really in the very long tail now, right? It feels like you can write a very nuanced book, and it will be surfaced, but only by a few people. So do we have to write our books and then try to not even retrofit them in the way that we used to? We used to try and figure out the seven keywords and all of that kind of thing, and now I almost feel like we just get to be grownups, where you just get to write the book and put it out there, and these things are more intelligent than the search terms. Ricardo: Yes, absolutely. I think in terms of the variety of books that are going to be read and discovered, that's amazing. A little bit like the whole indie publishing movement was amazing, because if you remove the traditional publishing gatekeepers, then suddenly zombie books aren't dead anymore. Zombies are alive again. They've… Jo: Come to life. Ricardo: They've come alive, and so you get a bunch of zombie books again. It's not a small niche audience. It's actually a pretty big niche audience that loves zombie books, and suddenly they have those to consume. This is a little bit similar on a much, much bigger and more granular scale, because anyone can find exactly the kind of book that they're looking for, with the tropes they want, with the type of characters they want, with the type of author they want, and you can basically use any kind of filter. So for discoverability on the side of the reader, that's great. For the authors, it doesn't mean that you can just write whatever you want and then rest, and readers will find them. Because your books still need to have generated a certain internet footprint and a certain review footprint in order to become interesting or recommendable to AI search engines, right? Unless you're the only book that an AI search engine can recommend for that specific search, and yours was very specific, so it might have been the only one. If there are other candidates, the AI search engines are pretty smart. They're going to recommend the candidates that have more reviews, better reviews, or are more famous, that have more, when I talk about internet footprint, more pages talking about them on the internet. That's for me the big finding I've seen. The more pages you have on the internet talking about your book, so that could be book review sites, that could be Goodreads lists, Listopia lists, anywhere on the internet where your book is mentioned, that creates a footprint for it. The more footprints, the more famous your book looks to AI search engines, and so the more worthy of recommendations it is to them. Jo: Yes, and this is one reason why I now ask people, especially when you sell direct, or say you have a Kickstarter and you want reviews, I ask people if they can review on Goodreads. Obviously Goodreads is owned by Amazon, but it is far more searchable by the bots than Amazon is. I sometimes find that Amazon gets blocked. Or Amazon blocks some of the bots, let's put it that way. They might change over time. They own 15% of Anthropic or something. But Goodreads I feel like does get indexed, and I'm not willing to engage on Reddit. I know Reddit is another popular one. Just be very clear on social media, because some people think, oh, I just need loads of influencers to talk about my book, and that will impact the AIs. But I find that social media just almost isn't even there. Ricardo: It depends on which social media. For me, Reddit is a social medium, right? It's a very weird one, but it's obviously the number one social medium used by AI search engines, and it's pretty dodgy stuff with lots of conflicts of interest, because Google has a paid partnership with Reddit. I think Sam Altman has shares in Reddit. So both OpenAI and Google Gemini heavily rely on Reddit for their AI answers, right? If you ask anything from ChatGPT or Gemini, I'd say there are very high chances that in the sources and the citations of the answer, you're going to find Reddit, right? That goes for books as well. Every time you ask for book recommendations, Reddit is going to be big for those two AI search engines. Claude, it's a little bit different. They do have a little bit of a relationship with Reddit, but I don't think it's as big. I found that Claude relies heavily on Goodreads, not Reddit. To me, Goodreads is another social medium at the end of the day, right? It's not the kind of social medium we think of, like… Jo: It's not TikTok. Ricardo: It's not TikTok. TikTok is surfaced a little bit, but not that much. It might become more surfaced in the future, but right now what I've found is, it's really Reddit and Goodreads. Facebook, LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is big for nonfiction topics more than fiction, because there are just not a lot of fiction readers, sorry, talking about their favourite books on LinkedIn. They usually go to other places for that. Jo: Yes, it's really interesting. So obviously TikTok has its own BookTok thing, so some people are finding books on BookTok, and some people like me are finding books through asking Claude, and that's just my overwhelming feeling about the industry. We talked earlier about what's changed. When I started, so 2006, there wasn't even KDP, and then KDP arrives, then you came in 2014, and probably until maybe a few years after that, there was one way to self-publish. Then what's happened since is this kind of splintering. There are so many ways to self-publish. There are so many ways to reach readers. There are so many ways to market. So someone, for example, could sell direct on TikTok Shop, only market through TikTok, and you wouldn't even know that they existed over in another ecosystem, right? So do you feel like that's happened too, this total splintering? Ricardo: Absolutely. I think there are so many different ways in which you can reach your audience now and monetise it as well, that it's absolutely possible. We both know examples of authors who are only visible to their TikTok niche, right? I think the big difference is also monetisation, because earlier you also had different ways of becoming well-known. Like you had Facebook, you had potentially Twitter, back when it was Twitter. Various social media, word of mouth. But where people bought books was Amazon. So that was your monetisation. It was either selling your book on Amazon, or potentially getting KU reads after that when KU launched. Now you can sell on TikTok, you can sell direct, you can run Kickstarters, you can start a Patreon or Substack and make your money through there. There are pretty much infinite ways through which you can monetise your content as a creator. Most of those places will also have a discoverability engine built in, so you can not only sell through there and make money through there, but also grow an audience there. That's probably the biggest competition that Amazon has ever had to face, is this sort of splintering. For us authors and content creators in general, it's amazing, because it's a bunch of different opportunities. Jo: Yes, and I think probably that's circling back to marketing. As we've said, some things have changed, some things stay the same. Is the email list still the number one way to market, do you think, for authors who want a long-term career? Ricardo: I think so. It's just the one thing you really own that allows you to communicate with readers, right? Because even if you build a following on TikTok, TikTok can change. The things we said about Facebook 10 years ago, if you build your Facebook group, Facebook can change, and Facebook changed. Facebook destroyed the reach of pages, and now groups also aren't amazing, et cetera. So the same thing that happened to Facebook can happen to TikTok, can happen to any other social media. Substack is a bit of a hybrid because it is a newsletter, it is a mailing list, but it also has a discoverability engine built in. So I still wouldn't really go all in on Substack. The great advantage there is that you do own the emails, right? So you can move away from it at some point. For me, the email list is the one thing that you are completely in control of. Personally, the main thing I check is my emails every day. I spend more time in my inbox than anywhere else, and I think that's probably the case for most people. So I do think, despite the influx of mails that readers are getting in their inbox, I still think it's one of the most important marketing tools for authors. Jo: Yes, and I still remember when I started my list in December 2008, and I still have people on the list who've been with me that whole time, and have moved email list services several times as well. So I think that's important too. The care of that list too is so important. One of the things that I am annoyed about with Substack, I don't have a Substack, but when I follow some people's, it's always constantly trying to get you to sign up to other people's lists, trying to subscribe you to this or that or the other. I'm like, “That's so annoying.” Now I've found on all these email services they're trying to pair you with other creators and cross-promote and all of this. So it feels like even the email list is becoming a difficult place unless you really protect it. So just protecting your list, I think, and remembering that those are people. Those are people who've bought your books, or people who read your emails. Like people listening to this, these are humans. Sure, some bot might be looking at the transcript, but humans listening to this are individual humans with individual email lists. We tend to forget that, don't we, as you get a bigger list. You think about it as a big number, whereas it's still individual people. Ricardo: Yes, it becomes a number, it becomes metrics, the open rate, the click rate, and all that. But the great thing about email is that you get replies in your inbox. There you remember that they're actual human beings who write you back. I think for readers, the ability to write back to an author and get a response is just amazing, right? If you write to your favourite author and they write back to you, that's the best feeling ever as a reader. So I think email is still one of the best ways to turn your readers into fans and into super fans of your brand, by just interacting with them and answering them. Because yes, you can answer comments on TikTok, Facebook, and all those places, but it doesn't feel the same as an author answering you in your inbox, I feel. So you do get that ability to create a real connection with readers directly through email. Jo: Yes, and I think that trust and the reputation is so important. Just in terms of seeing the authors that you've seen over the years, like I said, you've been going to a lot of the author conferences. You know a lot of the authors in the industry. A lot of people will know you from events. But you've also seen authors come and go, and you've seen vendors come and go. Both of us have seen people arrive, and we'd be like, “Oh, yes, I wonder how long they're going to last.” Then some people do and some people don't. So what are some of the elements that you've noticed about the businesses that last more than a decade? Ricardo: I think they need to solve a genuine problem, or offer a genuinely better solution than one that already exists. I see a lot of businesses come in and they do what another vendor already does, without doing it necessarily better. Those businesses tend to disappear, or linger there, but you don't really hear about them again. When they solve a real need… I still remember when BookFunnel came out, and they've since become massive with one very, very basic thing, which is, “We will take care of delivering your ebook files to readers.” That's how they started, and that's how they became massive. To me at the time, I was like, “That seems like a very small problem,” because I can just email an ebook file. I didn't realise that it was so complicated for a lot of readers to upload files to their Kindle or other devices, and that having a service that takes care of that for you is just massively helpful. I realised that when I published my books, actually. So businesses that solve even micro or apparently very small problems, but they really solve them effectively, they stay. Others that surf on trends, they tend to disappear when the trend disappears. When there's a new marketing trend, and that trend stops working, then those businesses tend to go. Jo: Yes, and what about the authors who last? Because let's face it, most of us don't solve a problem in a different way. Maybe you could say we solve your entertainment problem in a different version to your last book. What about the authors who last long term? What have you noticed about them? Ricardo: Two things. So the first one… Maybe three things. First one is passion. I always say to people who are looking to start self-publishing, I always say that publishing in general is probably one of the worst ways to make money. It's awful. You can pick up any other occupation and it's probably going to be easier to make money. So writers who make a career do it because they need to write, because they have a passion for writing. So a lot of people who come into the industry thinking, “I've heard about all these self-publishing success stories. Surely I can write a book and I can market it. It's not that hard. So that's going to be a great way to make quick bucks,” those generally don't last, because they don't have that genuine passion. The first hurdle they're going to face—and there's going to be a bunch of them along the way—they're going to quit. The second thing is business sense, or business education, the basics of business, right? Thinking in terms of marketing, thinking in terms of who's my reader, unit economics. If I'm selling my books at $3.99, I shouldn't be spending a ton of money. If I just have one book at $3.99, I cannot afford to pay $5 on ads to generate a sale. So those kinds of basic economics or business knowledge, I think, if not a requirement, it's a massive plus. The third thing is resilience. The industry has changed a lot, as you mentioned. There are a bunch of ways now to reach an audience. There are a bunch of ways to make money. It can also be distracting, because you go to one of these conferences and you go back thinking, “Oh, I've got to create my own website, sell direct. I've got to launch my Substack. I have to use Claude Code for my ads,” and three more things, “and I have to set up my TikTok Shop and do TikTok Lives to sell books,” right? Jo: All of those by next week. That's why we go to the conference. Ricardo: Exactly. All those by next week, right? And during that one week after the conference, you have the energy to start implementing all those things, but afterwards you lose that energy and you go back to, “I just want to quit.” So you need to have some sort of resilience, and the business sense of, “Okay, I'm going to try this for the next six months, and I'm going to stick to it, and I'm going to see whether it works or not. And if it doesn't work, I'm not just going to despair. I'm going to try something else.” That goes for marketing tactics, but also goes for books. Most authors I know who make a living writing, they didn't get there with their first book or even their first series. A lot of times I see authors who write a couple of series, and those series do okay. They sell a little bit, but not much, and it doesn't afford them to quit their day job. Then suddenly, based on what they've learned with those first two series and what they've learned potentially going to conferences or listening to podcasts like this, et cetera, they write a third series that's a hit. That's a hit, and that's instantly much easier to market, and that's when they can afford to go full time and write full time, because they've found that sort of product market fit. And product market fit for me is the main thing for marketing in general and for authors in particular. Until you find that, everything is really difficult from a marketing perspective. But finding it usually requires writing more than one book and more than one series, because you're rarely going to get the big lottery ticket on the first try. Jo: Or ever. I think it's really important. I've never had a breakout book, but I've made good money every year. I think, and Hugh Howey said this, that the real story of self-publishing is not the people who make seven figures a year, it's the people who can go on a holiday once a year, or the people who can just put a bit towards their mortgage or whatever. So you may never have a breakout series. I think that's really important, too. Ricardo: That's true. Jo: That's true. You can just keep writing and make all right money and be what we call in the mid-list. Ricardo: Yes, but you've got to keep going. You've got to have that resilience to keep going, probably because it's your passion. Exactly. You're not chasing that seven figure series. You're writing because you need to write. Jo: Yes, and you can't stop, and you get the bug. I think when you're writing that first book, I'm not sure if people understand that you either get the bug or you don't, I think. You've written a couple of books now. Do you think you have the bug, or is it more about the business? Ricardo: I don't have the bug. I definitely don't have the bug. I would've kept writing otherwise. Jo: You're a technologist, right? Ricardo: Yes. I'm more of a technologist, more of a marketer. To write my first book, How to Market a Book, I actually had to write newsletters, because that I can manage, right? One newsletter a week. Now I don't even manage that. I send it once every two weeks when I can even manage that pace. But back then I did one newsletter a week, and that's how I wrote my first book. I then put all these newsletters together, and that was before the age of AI, so I couldn't just dump all that into ChatGPT and tell it, “Create me a book based on that.” I had to do it myself. Jo: Oh, terrible. Ricardo: Terrible, I know. The days when we had to work. No, but that was a really good experiment. The second book, Amazon Ads for Authors, I actually wrote it from scratch, and I didn't love the experience. I loved the finished product, I'm very proud of it, but I didn't enjoy the experience of writing it. Amazon Ads is not the most exciting topic in the world. Even for people like me, who actually enjoy Amazon Ads, it's not super exciting to write about. The fact of having to write that whole book from scratch, I didn't love the experience. So now I do want to write a third book at some point, but I think it'll probably be in the format of the first one. Like, when I finish my series of newsletters on AI search and AI discoverability, I might do a booklet or something around it, but we'll have to see. It's not my favourite thing. It's a good thing I don't need to. Good thing I'm not an author, basically. Jo: No, but I think that's really great to recognise. You actually have written books that support your business, and that is very common for nonfiction writers. That's completely normal for nonfiction authors. So I think that's another important thing for people to recognise, is that the reasons we write are different, the reasons we market are different, and we all have different approaches. As we wind up, and obviously you talked a bit there about how easy it is to generate books with AI, and that is probably one of the biggest things that people are worried about. Now, those of us like you and I have been talking about AI at conferences and things for years now. Neither of us are afraid of it, I think basically because both of us use it, and we're technologists, so we just get on with it. There is so much fear in the community. There's so much negativity. You mentioned Substack, and now they've integrated Pangram, which is renowned for false positives around what is written with AI, and so people are very worried. If we look forward and we look at the next decade, this is not going away. This is going to change a lot of things. So how should authors be thinking about AI, do you think, if they want to prepare for the next decade? Ricardo: I think they need to play around with it, because you and I know that until you actually use it, you don't realise what it's capable of. We've both had these moments of “Oh my God, I'm going to be out of a job,” or “Oh my God, this is incredible,” the kind of things it's able to do. You also realise by using it the things it's not great at, or the things it can be good at but needing a lot of human input. There are courses out there, there are books, there are a lot of things, but for me, the most important thing is to start playing around with it. So you can pick one specific topic to play around with. Either something that you've been meaning to get into for years and haven't done, or something that really annoys you. Looking at the results of your Facebook ads, for example. If you run Facebook ads in the first place, and when you log into your Meta dashboard you cannot make sense of it, take screenshots or download the data, feed it to an AI chat, and talk with it. One of my biggest tips when talking to AI chats is asking them questions rather than asking them for things to do. Because if you just feed it your advertising data and you tell it, “Tell me what I should do,” the chat has no context about what your ads are about, what your goal is, et cetera, et cetera. If you feed it just a screenshot and you say, “Here are my ads. I would like you to help me make sense of them. What do you need to know from me in order to help me with this?” Then it's going to start asking you questions. “Okay, what are you advertising?” They're books. “Okay, what kind of books? Where are you selling? Are your ads going straight to Amazon or retailers, or are they going to your website? If you sell direct, okay, are these conversion ads?” Et cetera, et cetera. So you build that context, and they can help you with it. So that's just one example, but I would pick one thing that you want to test AI with, with zero expectations. Don't expect that by the end of the week you'll have a full system for understanding your Meta ads thanks to AI. You might get to that or you might not, but at least you'll play with it and you'll understand its capabilities, and have a sort of understanding of how it works and how you can potentially use it for other things. I think that's the best way to adapt, because once you play with it, you start thinking. You're walking the dog and you're just thinking, “Ha, I could maybe use it for this thing or that other thing,” and that's how you progressively become more familiar with it. I think there are a lot of worries around AI, but as you say, it's there to stay. So far, I think I was looking at data this morning, and the unemployment rate in the US has stayed stable ever since ChatGPT was introduced two years ago. So there are a lot of narratives out there around how it's going to replace humans, it's going to replace jobs, et cetera, which it might do. I'm not great at predictions usually, but so far it hasn't. What it will definitely do, however, is completely change the way we work. Obviously AI was one of our big reckonings at Reedsy, because we run a marketplace. Our main business model is the marketplace, where authors come in and look for editors, for marketers, for cover designers, for translators, and some of these domains and services are being transformed by AI, right? AI translations are massive right now. We haven't really seen a decline at all on the Reedsy marketplace, but we're prepared for it. It might very well happen, but what we think is happening, or is going to happen, is professionals using AI tools to provide a better output or a faster output or a cheaper output, or all three of these things. So for example, we now have literary translators who say they're open to editing AI translations, right? So you can come in, you can have your book translated with AI, whichever tool or method you choose for that. Then if you want a set of human eyes on it, you can hire a literary translator who's open to working on an AI-translated manuscript, and that's obviously going to be much, much cheaper than paying 10 cents per word from scratch for a literary translator. I'm not necessarily recommending you completely bypass literary translators, or that you go this way, but you have options, right? You have options for different sets of budgets. I think all these human editors, narrators, translators, designers, et cetera, they're not going to disappear, but they might have to reinvent the way they work in the future. Jo: As we all are doing. As you say, for me mostly it's the business side, getting Claude to help me with business stuff. Like even bookkeeping. There are bills that we've all been paying for years that we can now maybe reduce, and reducing costs as well as increasing profit is obviously good business sense. So, interesting times. But just as we wrap up, what are you excited about in what's coming? How do you see Reedsy shaping up in the next decade? What is coming for you and Reedsy? Ricardo: We're really excited about the decade to come, because obviously 10 years for a startup is a long time. I think most startups after 10 years, the founders are gone. Jo: Yes. Ricardo: Or they've exited or they've sold or whatever. We've stayed, we're the same founders, and we're still as excited because I think we have new products, right? We're working on new things. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Reedsy Studio, our writing tool, is probably one of the things we're most excited about, because first, it's getting adopted very fast. It has startup-like growth that we hadn't seen for other products in a long time, and it has very cool technology built in. We probably have a team of 10, 15 engineers now working full time on it and adding a lot of things. So we've added templates for plotting your book, with relationships within different characters and places and magic systems and things like that. We've added writing goals and writing statistics. We still have the free exports. One very cool thing we've added is real time collaboration. So just like Google Docs, you can write in real time with a co-author, or you can get an editor to work in there live with track changes. So you could have an editor working on chapter one while you're writing chapter three, for example. That kind of thing. It's really powerful technology, and that's one of the things we're really excited about for the future. A business, just like authors, we've got to reinvent ourselves. We've got to find ways to keep things exciting and keep motivated, and that is definitely one of them. When adoption goes along with it, then that's obviously super satisfying. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and Reedsy online? Ricardo: So Reedsy you can find at reedsy.com, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com. And there you'll find the whole suite of tools and services. For me, you can find me mostly by email, as I mentioned. That's the one place I check consistently every day, and my email address is ricardo@reedsy.com. So again, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com and ricardo@reedsy.com. You can email me any questions you have about this episode, about AI book discoverability, about marketing, about Reedsy. I always try to answer every email I get, because I think when we started Reedsy, I really appreciated people like you, and some other agents and editors and authors we contacted who were influential in the industry, who actually answered us and took the time to do that. So now I try to answer every email I get, because I feel like we've been very lucky in the beginning to have those people answering our emails, so we should do the same. Jo: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Ricardo. That was great. Ricardo: Thank you, Jo. Thanks for having me again.The post Book Marketing, AI Book Discoverability, And Resilience, With Ricardo Fayet first appeared on The Creative Penn.

It's Wednesday, August 19th, 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 Jonathan Clark, Timothy Reed, and Adam McManus 40 European hate crimes against Christians Christians in Europe faced dozens of hate crimes in July. The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe recorded 40 cases last month. Vandalism was the most common incident. In one case, authorities arrested an Islamic-State sympathizer who was planning an arson attack on a church in Hamm, Germany. The highest number of recorded incidents occurred in Germany, followed by France, Italy, and the United Kingdom.   Ebola virus has killed 2,300 people in Congo This year's Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now the deadliest in the country's history. Over 2,300 people have died as of Sunday. And cases have reached about 5,000.  Christian aid groups like Samaritan's Purse are on the ground in Congo. Franklin Graham, president of the Christian relief group, said, “Samaritan's Purse has been on the frontlines of fighting Ebola for more than a decade, and we aren't going to stop now. We are going to do everything we can to help save lives. We want people to know that God loves them, and they are not alone.”  You can donate to Samaritan's Purse relief effort in Congo through a link in our transcript today at TheWorldview.com.  Trump gives $2 billion to Christian non-profits for disaster relief Here in the United States, the Trump administration announced nearly $2 billion in health and humanitarian assistance to faith-based organizations this month.  This includes over $500 million in disaster response funding for Samaritan's Purse and a consortium jointly led by World Vision and Compassion International.  The U.S. Department of State noted, “This historic announcement is the largest allocation of global health foreign assistance to faith-based organizations in over 20 years.” Conservative kicked out of school board meeting over filthy books Texas conservative Bonnie Wallace is suing the Houston Independent School District for removing her from a school board meeting. Wallace, who is a member of Protecting Texas Children, had sought to shine light on the immoral and inappropriate materials children are subjected to in schools. When she stepped up to the podium at first, she said this which was captured on video. WALLACE: “Before you purchase new books, you need to get rid of the 500 filthy books that you have. If there's children in the audience, they need to leave.” BOARD MEMBER: “Ma'am, Point of Order. This is a public hearing.” WALLACE: “I understand that.” BOARD MEMBER: “You will not be allowed to read things that are not appropriate.” WALLACE: “Oh, not appropriate? Then, why are they in your schools?” After she cited the first vulgar reference from a children's book in the school library, the board member said this. BOARD MEMBER: ”Absolutely not! Ma'am, you are now out of order. This is your first warning. One more word, and you will be removed.” After Bonnie Wallace read a second vulgar passage from the book in the children's library, the school board member asked for a police officer to remove her from the meeting. BOARD MEMBER: “Officer, please remove this woman from the podium.” WALLACE: “If you don't like it, remove it so the children don't have access to it!” BOARD MEMBER: “Thank you very much.” Grant Stinchfield, a conservative talk show host on Real America's Voice, was understandably outraged. STINCHFIELD: “That woman you see there, being walked out, simply read one of the books in the school library. Now, if it's not appropriate for a school board meeting, how is it appropriate for our children?” In her lawsuit, Wallace alleged, “This was textbook viewpoint discrimination: Such conduct is ‘an egregious form' of content regulation that the First Amendment almost never tolerates.” Isaiah 5:20-21 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness. … Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” Planned Parenthood closes Albuquerque, New Mexico abortion mill Planned Parenthood shut down its Northeast Heights abortion facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico last month.  It's the latest closure as the abortion giant consolidates locations in the state.  Bud Shaver, executive director of Abortion Free New Mexico, told LifeNews, “Despite New Mexico leaders pouring taxpayer money into abortion and using government policy to prop up the industry, abortion facilities are still consolidating and closing.” Vaccination rate for kindergartners dropped slightly Vaccination rates for kindergartners dropped slightly during the 2025-2026 school year.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the rate dropped by one percent overall.  Exemptions from one or more vaccines rose to 4.2 percent, up from 3.6 percent the previous year. Christian men, mainline Protestants, and Catholics dissatisfied with church And finally, the American Bible Society released the latest chapter of its State of the Bible: USA 2026 report.  The survey found some population groups struggled with church attendance compared to others. These include Christian men, young adult Christians, mainline Protestants, and Roman Catholics. Gen Z men reported the lowest satisfaction with the churches they attend. Overall, weekly and monthly church attendance remain unchanged from two years ago. The survey did note an uptick in people attending church about twice a year. That amounts to about eight million more Americans attending a church service in 2025 compared to two years earlier. Psalm 84:2 and 10 says, “My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. … For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, August 19th, 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.

From autocorrect to full-fledged conversationalists, discover how a few tweaks transformed language models—and why understanding this shift exposes urgent questions about AI safety and control. Trusting an open source AI proxy might bite you. France's under-15 social media ban hits its constitution. A bit of AI prompting found a serious bug in Zoom. AI-based network defenders see a stock price jump. A (very) deep dive into the operation of AI chatbots Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1092-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT joindeleteme.com/twit-biz doppel.com threatlocker.com/twit scribe.how/securitynow

From autocorrect to full-fledged conversationalists, discover how a few tweaks transformed language models—and why understanding this shift exposes urgent questions about AI safety and control. Trusting an open source AI proxy might bite you. France's under-15 social media ban hits its constitution. A bit of AI prompting found a serious bug in Zoom. AI-based network defenders see a stock price jump. A (very) deep dive into the operation of AI chatbots Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1092-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT joindeleteme.com/twit-biz doppel.com threatlocker.com/twit scribe.how/securitynow

« Madame se meurt, Madame est morte ! » : la célèbre envolée de Bossuet lors de l'oraison funèbre d'Henriette d'Angleterre résume la surprise des contemporains devant une mort si prompte… Retour sur un mystère de l'histoire.Lorsque Henriette d'Angleterre, belle-sœur de Louis XIV, s'éteint de manière brutale à seulement 26 ans, la cour de Versailles est plongée dans le deuil et le mystère. Franck Ferrand nous plonge dans les circonstances fascinantes de cette disparition prématurée, qui soulève de nombreuses interrogations. Fille du roi d'Angleterre Charles Ier, Henriette a connu une jeunesse mouvementée, marquée par l'exécution de son père et les troubles de la Fronde. Malgré ces débuts difficiles, elle finit par épouser le frère cadet de Louis XIV, devenant ainsi une figure influente de la cour de France. Mais son mariage avec Philippe d'Orléans s'avère malheureux, empoisonné par les intrigues et la jalousie. Pourtant, Henriette semble avoir trouvé un rôle de premier plan auprès de son royal beau-frère. Chargée de délicates négociations diplomatiques avec l'Angleterre, elle joue un rôle politique crucial. Mais sa mort soudaine, survenue peu après son retour de Londres, soulève de troublantes interrogations. Empoisonnement ? Accident ? Ou simple tragique maladie ?Avec son talent de conteur, Franck Ferrand nous fait revivre les derniers jours d'Henriette, entre les somptueux décors de Versailles, les lamentations de son époux jaloux et les paroles apaisantes de Bossuet.

From autocorrect to full-fledged conversationalists, discover how a few tweaks transformed language models—and why understanding this shift exposes urgent questions about AI safety and control. Trusting an open source AI proxy might bite you. France's under-15 social media ban hits its constitution. A bit of AI prompting found a serious bug in Zoom. AI-based network defenders see a stock price jump. A (very) deep dive into the operation of AI chatbots Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1092-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT joindeleteme.com/twit-biz doppel.com threatlocker.com/twit scribe.how/securitynow

A senior French civil servant stands accused of drugging hundreds of women. Police say Christian Nègre kept a spreadsheet documenting what he described as his ‘experiments' in which he forced them to wet themselves. They believe he drugged as many as 248 women. But more than seven years after Nègre was formally charged, no trial date has been set. For Woman's Hour and BBC Global Women, Nuala McGovern spoke to one of the women affected, who says the delays to justice have left her feeling victimised for a second time.Within months of what was to be her last Olympic Games, double Olympic taekwondo champion Jade Jones decided it was time to take her career in a new direction. Last year, despite having never thrown a punch, she turned to boxing and, after just eight weeks of training, set herself the ambitious goal of becoming a world champion in another sport. She discusses her career pivot, what prompted her to start again, and how it feels to go from reaching the pinnacle of one sport to starting all over again in another.Queen Camilla has spoken for the first time about the pressure of keeping King Charles' cancer diagnosis secret in the early stages of treatment. In a video to mark the 30th anniversary of Maggie's cancer charity, the Queen, who is president of the charity, shared how difficult it was to avoid discussing her husband's treatment while on an official engagement with cancer patients and their families. Karen Verrill, Centre Head of Maggie's in Newcastle, who is also a specialist cancer nurse, advises how to navigate conversations about cancer, or - if you're supporting a partner - feeling that it isn't your story to tell. Renowned for its night clubs and rave culture - during the 1990s there was one party famous for being the wildest in Ibiza – Manumission. Created by a British couple who forged their life on the island, while promoting and performing in the events, they've now written a book to immortalise this time in Ibiza's club history, and their lives. The book is called The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza and the club's promoter, performer and mastermind, Claire Manumission, joins Nuala.Young children whose lung development has been stunted by pollution can recover when pollution levels drop, according to a new research study. Campaigner Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah's daughter Ella was the first person in the UK to have pollution listed as a cause of death after she died from an asthma attack. She explains what the research means to her and what she still wants to see when it comes to cleaner air for children.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

Vous nous demandez très souvent des recommandations d'épisodes de Génération Do It Yourself.Nous avons décidé de vous proposer dans une mini-série de nos recos d'épisodes à écouter pour vos week-ends, vacances, sessions de sport, ou pour vos trajets en voiture, en train etc.Des épisodes à écouter seul à ou à plusieurs, à (re)découvrir, des épisodes oubliés, des épisodes encore d'actualité…Enjoy !——————————————#553 - Paul Frambot - Morpho - Briser le cartel bancaire avec 600 lignes de code#552 - Vincent Luciani - Artefact - Organiser ses données pour débloquer la puissance de l'IA#549 - Hadrien Canter - Alta Ares - Construire le bouclier aérien de l'Europe#547 - Thomas Ramos - Rugbyman - Devenir hermétique à la pression#542 - VO - Yoni Assia - eToro - "AI Will Replace Most Traders in 18 Months"#542 - VF - Yoni Assia - eToro - "Les traders ont 18 mois avant d'être remplacés par l'IA"#540 - Sissy Mua - Youtubeuse, Trainsweateat - L'app fitness la plus utilisée de France#533 - Gaëlle Lebrat Personnaz - Manucurist Paris - Le futur leader mondial du vernis à ongles ?#531 - Mathias Frachon - The Product Crew - IA et agents, tout part en vrille, il est temps de vous y mettre#522 - Amixem - YouTubeur - Les nouveaux maîtres du divertissement#514 - VO - Ivan Zhao - Notion - The software toolkit that beats them all#514 - VF - Ivan Zhao - Notion - Le LEGO des logiciels#512 - François Ruffin - Député - En finir avec l'État perfusion#510 - Carole Benaroya - Kujten - La reine du cachemire#508 - Armand Thiberge - Brevo - La licorne la plus sous-côtée de France#505 - Mingpo Cai - Cathay Capital - De la chine profonde aux sommets du capital-investissement#502 - Thomas Sammut - Préparateur Mental - Faut-il forcément souffrir pour réussir ?#501 - Delphine Horvilleur - Rabbin, Écrivaine - Dialoguer quand tout nous divise#499 - Alexandre Mulliez - Président FC Versailles - Quitter l'empire familial et acheter un club de foot#326 - Ning Li - Typology - Fonder Made.Com, péter tous les scores et devenir le leader de la cosmétique made in FranceN'hésitez pas à partager vos retours sur vos réseaux en nous mentionnant si l'un de ces épisodes vous a plu.Vous pouvez contacter Clémence sur LinkedIn et sur Instagram.00:00:00 : Fleurons00:02:08 = La martingale 00:04:34 = Reco n°1 00:05:27 = Reco n°2 - nº3 - nº4 00:08:18 = Reco n°5 - n°6 00:11:17 = Reco n°7 00:12:20 = Reco n°8 00:13:28 = Reco n°9 00:15:58 = Reco n°10 00:18:11 = Reco n°11 00:19:06 = Reco nº12 00:22:22 = Reco n°13 - n°14 - n°15 00:23:13 = Reco n°16 00:23:55 = Reco n°17 00:26:02 = La newsletter 00:26:34 = Combien Ça GagneVous souhaitez sponsoriser Génération Do It Yourself ou nous proposer un partenariat ?Contactez mon label Orso Media via ce formulaire.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

From autocorrect to full-fledged conversationalists, discover how a few tweaks transformed language models—and why understanding this shift exposes urgent questions about AI safety and control. Trusting an open source AI proxy might bite you. France's under-15 social media ban hits its constitution. A bit of AI prompting found a serious bug in Zoom. AI-based network defenders see a stock price jump. A (very) deep dive into the operation of AI chatbots Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1092-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT joindeleteme.com/twit-biz doppel.com threatlocker.com/twit scribe.how/securitynow

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:14 – 14:16)Democratic Socialism is Bursting Onto the Scene Among Democrats: New Poll Shows Majority of Democrats Report Positive View of SocialismCBS News poll on whether Democrats split over socialism, and how Americans see parties in today’s economy by CBS News (Anthony Salvanto, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus)Part II (14:16 – 19:37)Why is the University Experience Producing Socialists? The Culture of Elite Education is Teaching University Students Wrong Lessons About the EconomyHow Colleges Produce Socialists by The Wall Street Journal (Kimberlee Josephson)Part III (19:37 – 22:55)The Energy Is in the Extreme: The Current Ideological Battle in the Democratic Party Was InevitableBeware the Democrats' ‘Redshift' by The Wall Street Journal (Matthew Continetti)Part IV (22:55 – 26:03)The Parable of Raoul Vaneigem: The Obituary of a French Marxist Points to the Nearness of HistoryRaoul Vaneigem, Whose Manifesto Inspired 1968 Revolt in France, Dies at 92 by The New York Times (Adam Nossiter)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

In today's episode the boys are UP LATE in Gold Creek Idaho, where ben got lost in the mountains before he even arrived. Spenny tells his story about riding dirt bikes in Redbull Romaniacs in Romania and finishing top 10. Cops in France on Rollerblades. Our Cow Bobby running for mayor, And about how we accidentally bought a dirt bike with FAKE money. Enjoy! For a limited time only, new customers get 20% off + free shipping at blueprint.bryanjohnson.com by using code LIFEWIDEOPEN at checkout. #Blueprint #ad   Shopify: Be your own boss. No dress code, no commute, no Steve from accounting. Free trial at shopify.com/wideopen Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/zz85607d #CashAppPartner Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week, we're all about the beauty of the South of France with Steve Hoffman, author of A Season for That. Here we go!

This week on the pod, Seth and Josh welcome Juno Temple! Juno talks about growing up between Los Angeles and rural Somerset, and the Grand Canyon inspiration behind her name. She shares memories of childhood trips to Peru and Machu Picchu and the Galápagos, summers in the South of France spent thrifting and exploring flea markets, and her lifelong love of vintage fashion. Juno also reflects on growing up around Glastonbury, and her early experiences on film sets, including working on Tom Petty shoots as a child. Plus, she talks about the return of Ted Lasso! Watch this episode on the Family Trips YouTube or Spotify, or listen wherever you get your podcasts! Watch more Family Trips episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlqYOfxU_jQem4_NRJPM8_wLBrEEQ17B6 00:00 Introduction with Seth Meyers and Josh Meyers 07:00 Joshua Tree Game Weekend 14:52 Juno Temple Joins 23:17 Growing Up LA to Somerset 31:53 Family Trips Galapagos Story 36:21 Flea Markets in South of France and Vintage Finds 45:08 Girls Trips 49:15 Machu Picchu to Punk Roots 55:17 Grandmother and Growing Up 58:30 Glastonbury Memories 01:00:57 Joe Strummer Stories 01:09:04 Grand Canyon Goodbye Support our sponsors: Fitbod Get 25% off your subscription or try the app FREE for seven days at https://Fitbod.me/trip Avocado Go to https://avocadogreenmattress.com/trips to check out their mattress and furniture sale. Mint Mobile To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to https://MINTMOBILE.com/trips. That's it there's no catch. Upfront payment of: $45 for 3-months, $90 for 6-months, or $180 for 12-months, plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes & fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed & coverage varies. See https://MintMobile.com Song Title - Ms. Vintage Finds | Parody Of - Mr. Brightside by The Killers Josh Meyers performs “Ms. Vintage Finds,” a parody of The Killers' “Mr. Brightside,” weaving Juno Temple's adventurous childhood and lifelong love of vintage fashion into a playful musical memoir. From family trips to the Galápagos and Machu Picchu to Glastonbury, South of France thrifting, and her obsession with iconic designers, the song celebrates Juno's eye for giving one-of-a-kind pieces a whole new life. Family Trips is produced by Rabbit Grin Productions. Theme song written and performed by Jeff Tweedy. About the Show: Lifelong brothers Seth Meyers and Josh Meyers ask guests to relive childhood memories, unforgettable family trips, and other disasters! New Episodes of Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers are available every Tuesday. Executive Producers: Rob Holysz, Jeph Porter, Natalie Holysz Creative Producer: Sam Skelton Coordinating Producer: Derek Johnson Video Editor: Josh Windisch Mix & Master: Josh Windisch Episode Artwork: Analise Jorgensen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How "Russia" reclaimed its title to become European champion. We break down Angelina Melnikova's return, the Russian visa drama, Sabrina Voinea's D-score inquiry saga, a controversial beam-final robbery and what these results mean for the upcoming World Championships. GYMCASTIC LIVE REPLAY Watch our U.S. Championships live show with surprise guest Shannon Miller. Replay tickets: https://gymcastic.com/gymcastic-live-at-the-2026-u-s-championships/ HEADLINES Team "World Gymnastics 2," aka Russia, topped the medal table with six medals. Angelina Melnikova led the team with three golds in the team, all-around and vault competitions, plus bronze medals on beam and floor. Italy finished second in the medal standings, led by European floor champion Manila Esposito. France placed third, with first-year senior Elena Colas winning beam gold and finishing second in the individual medal count. We discuss: Sabrina Voinea's latest D-score inquiry saga and how an inquiry dropped her beam score by three tenths, knocking her out of the final Russia's triumphant return and what its team score could foreshadow for Worlds Melnikova's five-medal performance and how her all-around score compares internationally Elena Colas' breakout senior European Championships Why holding apparatus finals before the team final produced mixed results Why Pauline Schäfer-Betz was robbed of a beam medal Great Britain missing the medals after Becky Downie was replaced by Ruby Evans in the team-final bars lineup Memorable skills from Estella Volkoff, Morgane Osyssek and Schäfer-Betz Event-final victories for Melnikova, Helen Kevric, Colas and Esposito The teams and individuals who qualified for the 2026 World Championships CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:36 Sabrina Voinea's inquiry saga 04:03 U.S. national team and vault clarifications 06:33 European Championships medal table 13:48 Angelina Melnikova and Elena Colas 21:31 GymCastic updates and Club Gym Nerd 25:01 Pauline Schäfer-Betz beam robbery 30:43 Manila Esposito 33:04 Unique beam mounts and skills 35:46 Helen Kevric and the bars final 38:09 Apparatus finals before the team final? 40:19 Huel 41:37 Competition-format discussion continues 50:47 Team final: Russia, Italy and France 57:13 All-around results and Worlds comparisons 59:12 Vault final 1:04:02 Bars final 1:05:45 Beam and floor finals 1:10:32 World Championships qualifiers SPONSOR Limited-time offer: Make healthy eating simple with Huel. New customers receive 15% off online with code GYMCASTIC at https://huel.com/GYMCASTIC. Thank you to Huel for partnering with and supporting our show. LINKS European Championships results: https://results.smartscoring.com/live-results/7bbd2dc9-ea89-49c4-84a2-5009458acca0/live AD FREE & BONUS EPISODES Join Club Gym Nerd for ad-free podcasts, weekly Behind the Scenes episodes, our members-only archive, games, forums and live-show discounts: https://gymcastic.com/club/ Add Club bonus and ad-free episodes to your podcast player: https://gymcastic.com/community/postid/89/ LA 2028 Roster Lab: https://gymcastic.com/2028-roster-lab/ Elite Score Explorer: https://gymcastic.com/elite-scores/ Gymnastics Calendar: https://gymcastic.com/gymnastics-calendar/ GymCastic Games: https://gymcastic.com/games/ Newsletters: https://gymcastic.com/gymcastic-newsletters/ Shop GymCastic: https://store.gymcastic.com/

August 18, 1942. During the Second World War, Allied forces depart England and head to northern France, where their ill-fated assault on the town of Dieppe will result in carnage and catastrophe. This episode originally aired in 2023. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

It's the Leatt LVK: More Than Moto show where Start Your Systems' Kellen Brauer and Vital MX's Lewis Phillips debate current SX/MX/MXGP topics as well as general life itself. In this episode, we break down the championship fight in the 450 class after Hunter Lawrence's DNF, discuss what will happen with Team USA, and more. It's all brought to you by Leatt, Alpinestars, ICON Meats, and Partzilla. --- CHAPTERS --- 00:07 Show intro bumper 01:14 Commercial 01:36 Hunter Lawrence's title fight flips upside down (Leatt ad) 07:15 Commercial 07:39 Can Jett's mistakes return? Prado/Deegan wildcard 09:53 Commercial 10:16 Prado's chances to split the Lawrences 12:18 Hunter's reaction & SMX standings tangent 15:24 Partzilla ad + PRMX team update 17:40 Team USA lineup speculation 23:03 France & Latvia Nations rosters 28:14 Commercial 28:41 Nations trivia: name a dominant Nations 35:05 Alpinestars TecAir MX ad + airbag banter 39:06 Commercial 39:31 Prado's KTM extension & Lux Turner to Husqvarna 43:10 Nate Thrasher to Pro Circuit & silly season rumors 47:26 Commercial 47:51 Barsha's future & Ducati's title fight math 50:19 Commercial 50:42 MXGP silly season wrap & Malcolm/Levi Kawasaki plan 54:40 Icon Meats ad + Icon of the Week picks 58:31 250 class title fight: Davies vs Kitchen 1:03:04 Box of Questions: dark sides & rule-breaking 1:06:18 LVK's identity in moto media debate 1:12:18 Commercial 1:12:44 Sign-off & Bud's Creek preview

Full Text of Readings Wednesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 421 The Saint of the day is Saint John Eudes Saint John Eudes' Story How little we know where God's grace will lead. Born on a farm in northern France, John died at 78 in the next “county” or department. In that time, he was a religious, a parish missionary, founder of two religious communities, and a great promoter of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. John joined the religious community of the Oratorians and was ordained a priest at 24. During severe plagues in 1627 and 1631, he volunteered to care for the stricken in his own diocese. Lest he infect his fellow religious, during the plague he lived in a huge cask in the middle of a field. At age 32, John became a parish missionary. His gifts as a preacher and confessor won him great popularity. He preached over 100 parish missions, some lasting from several weeks to several months. In his concern with the spiritual improvement of the clergy, John realized that the greatest need was for seminaries. He had permission from his general superior, the bishop, and even Cardinal Richelieu to begin this work, but the succeeding general superior disapproved. After prayer and counsel, John decided it was best to leave the religious community. That same year John founded a new community, ultimately called the Eudists—the Congregation of Jesus and Mary–devoted to the formation of the clergy by conducting diocesan seminaries. The new venture, while approved by individual bishops, met with immediate opposition, especially from Jansenists and some of his former associates. John founded several seminaries in Normandy, but was unable to get approval from Rome—partly, it was said, because he did not use the most tactful approach. In his parish mission work, John was disturbed by the sad condition of prostitutes who sought to escape their miserable life. Temporary shelters were found, but arrangements were not satisfactory. A certain Madeleine Lamy, who had cared for several of the women, one day said to him, “Where are you off to now? To some church, I suppose, where you'll gaze at the images and think yourself pious. And all the time what is really wanted of you is a decent house for these poor creatures.” The words, and the laughter of those present, struck deeply within him. The result was another new religious community, called the Sisters of Charity of the Refuge. John Eudes is probably best known for the central theme of his writings: Jesus as the source of holiness; Mary as the model of the Christian life. His devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart led Pope Pius XI to declare him the father of the liturgical cult of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Reflection Holiness is the wholehearted openness to the love of God. It is visibly expressed in many ways, but the variety of expression has one common quality: concern for the needs of others. In John's case, those who were in need were plague-stricken people, ordinary parishioners, those preparing for the priesthood, prostitutes, and all Christians called to imitate the love of Jesus and his mother.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Started with France's social media ban being tossed by courts, and then talked about the massive find of gold in Belgium. Plus renowned climber falls to death in CA, Multiple art heists, Hawaii hurricane, El Niño en route, and a new lawsuit accuses Dollar Tree of turning a blind eye to men pleasuring themselves on to women in their stores.

There's a political firestorm swirling about past comments from JD Vance about how the Dollar being the world's reserve currency might actually be hurting America. This immediately caused a huge blowup. But is Vance actually right? There are big things happening at Blaze, and we'd love for you to join us. You can join now at https://Get.BlazeTV.com/Nick and use promo code “NICK40” to get $40 off! SPONSOR: Alliance Defending Freedom Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their knowledge or consent. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Washington high schooler Kallie Keeler, who was injured on the wrestling mat before learning her opponent was male, in a lawsuit challenging the state's policy. Your support helps ADF fight for Kallie and for the safety and fairness of girls' sports. Have your first gift doubled while matching funds last. Text NICK to 83848 or give at https://www.JoinADF.com/Nick ----- SPONSOR: Human Coalition Thousands of women believe abortion is their only option because they feel alone and unsupported. For twenty-six dollars, Human Coalition reaches a woman right when she is scared and searching for answers, offering free ultrasounds, real resources, and a Continuum of Care that stays with her until she is stable. Most of these moms want to keep their babies. They just need their circumstances to change. Give a twenty-six dollar gift and leave a legacy of life at https://www.humancoalition.org/freitas ----- GET YOUR MERCH HERE: https://shop.nickjfreitas.com/ BECOME A MEMBER OF THE IC: https://NickJFreitas.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickjfreitas/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NickFreitasVA Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickJFreitas YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Nickjfreitas TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nickjfreitas3.0 00:00 – Why the right is tearing itself apart over the dollar 06:06 – The 33 seconds that started the whole fight 14:21 – The trap built into being the world's money 17:29 – France came for the gold, and Nixon had no choice 21:26 – Why fiat money is the problem nobody wants to name 22:41 – When the right straw-mans its own side 29:15 – Where Vance is wrong: the economy is not a tool 33:46 – Free markets need guardrails — but whose? 36:52 – What Friedman would actually tell Vance 42:38 – What being the world's reserve currency really costs 47:14 – Paying the mortgage by selling off the farm 53:01 – You'll get back to sound money one way or another 55:11 – If the right won't explain this, the left will 59:48 – The people will break before the system does Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we will try a new Honey Bunches Of Oats Protein cereal, then we'll take a trip to France to try Nestle's Chokella...with very mixed reactions! Then, something from LoveGrown that might make us think we are bleeding when we hit the can.Support the show: https://www.cerealkillerspc.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's ev.news Briefly for Monday 17 August 2026, only todays headlines and nothing else, in just 4 minutes if you haven't got time for the full show.Patreon supporters fund this show, get the episodes ad free, as soon as they're ready and are part of the ev.news Community. You can be like them by clicking here: https://www.patreon.com/evnewsHYUNDAI STARTS IONIQ 3 PRODUCTION IN TURKEYHyundai has begun building the IONIQ 3 at its Izmit plant in Turkey, the site's first EV, following a €250 million ($290 million) investment that modernised around half the facility. Initial output is 30,000 units a year, with Dutch prices from €27,995 ($32,000) and the next-generation BAYON and i20 to follow next year.HYUNDAI OPENS IONIQ 3 ORDER BOOKSHyundai Motor UK has opened orders for the IONIQ 3 compact hatchback from £22,245 on-the-road, positioning it against the Kia EV2, Renault 5 and VW ID Polo. Buyers choose a 42.2kWh battery with up to 213 miles or a 61kWh version with up to 308 miles, both charging 10-80% in about 30 minutes, and the car debuts Hyundai's Android Automotive-based PleOS Connect system. Grant eligibility is still pending.LUCID UNVEILS GRAVITY GT-SLucid's 2027 Gravity GT-S produces 1,070hp from a dual-motor powertrain and hits 0-60mph in 3.1 seconds, priced from $127,750 — about $14,000 below the outgoing Dream Edition. It comes with rear-wheel steering and adaptive air suspension as standard, while a 926V architecture supports 400kW charging that Lucid says adds 200 miles in under 12 minutes.FRANCE TO BACK USED ELECTRIC VEHICLESFrom September, France will subsidise used EV purchases and leases through the Energy Savings Certificates scheme, funded by energy suppliers including EDF, Engie and TotalEnergies under the polluter-pays principle. Cars must have been first registered in France between 2017 and 2023 and retain at least 80% battery capacity, with buyers required to keep the vehicle three years and to purchase through a dealer rather than privately.PORSCHE REPORTS POINT TO TAYCAN PHASE-OUTPorsche is reported to have agreed in principle with employee representatives to end Taycan production by 2029 or 2030, closing a roughly decade-long run, though nothing has been formalised or confirmed. Output has collapsed from 39,397 cars in 2023 to 11,510 in 2025, with first-half 2026 deliveries down 25% and no successor named as Porsche appears set to prioritise the electric Macan and Cayenne.TESLA ADDS V2L TO MODEL Y PREMIUMTesla has enabled vehicle-to-load for the Model Y Premium in the US and Puerto Rico, delivering 2.4kW at 120V via an $80 adapter that requires the Gen 3 Mobile Connector. Eligibility is narrower than the badge suggests, with reports indicating only newer Juniper-built cars from around May 2026 carry the necessary hardware, and Tesla still trails rivals offering up to 10.2kW.TESLA LEASES POWERWALL BACKUP IN TEXASTesla Electric is offering a whole-home Powerwall lease in selected Texas retail-choice areas for roughly $35 a month plus tax in year one, achieved by applying an $87 monthly credit to a two-unit lease costing about $122. The deal carries a 3% annual escalator, a $100 order fee, a 20% minimum backup reserve for virtual power plant dispatch, and credits that may not start until two billing cycles after installation and utility approval.CORVUS TO SUPPLY BATTERIES FOR BC FERRIES SUMMIT CLASSCorvus Energy will supply 40MWh of battery storage across four hybrid-electric Summit Class ferries for BC Ferries, each carrying 360 vehicles and 2,100 people and fitted with a 10MWh Dolphin NxtGen system. The hardware is scalable to 70MWh per vessel for near-zero-emission running once shore charging exists, with China Merchants' Weihai Shipyard delivering the first ship in 2029 and all four in service by 2031.FERRARI LUCE SELLS FOR $40 MILLIONChassis 0 of the Ferrari Luce, the marque's first EV and a one-off Tailor Made build designed by Sir Jony Ive's LoveFrom, sold for $40 million at RM Sotheby's Monterey auction, over 36 times its estimate and a record for a new car. The sale was offered without reserve and with no buyer's premium, sending the full amount to The Ferrari Foundation, with winning bidder Dr Herbert Wertheim taking delivery early next year.

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Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Pacific War. In late 1941, the Second Battle of Changsha ended with Chinese forces claiming victory despite suffering nearly 100,000 casualties against roughly 1,670 Japanese losses. Chiang Kai-shek's government launched an aggressive propaganda campaign, flooding international press with fabricated triumph narratives to sustain national morale. Behind closed doors, Chiang was furious at his generals' tactical failures, executing commanders and dismantling units. Meanwhile, geopolitical forces threatened China's survival. Japan's 1939 defeat at Nomonhan crushed hopes for a Soviet alliance against Tokyo. Germany's pact with the Soviet Union left China isolated, while Western powers remained reluctant to commit meaningful support. Britain offered little; the US provided only modest loans. By 1941, facing potential collapse, Chiang desperately searched for allies while Wang Jingwei's Japanese-backed rival government beckoned as an alternative. China's exhausted people endured horror—including a 1941 bombing massacre in Chongqing that killed over 400 trapped civilians. Then Japan unleashed a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.   #215 An Implosion in the East Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   In the early morning of December 7, 1941, the US Pacific Fleet was anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Two waves of Japanese bomber aircraft, launched from six aircraft carriers, attacked the vessels and their sleeping crews, destroying the battleship Arizona outright and damaging seventeen others, as well as most of the military aircraft parked nearby. Some 2,400 Americans died, and another 1,100 were wounded. Within a day Japanese invasion forces had attacked Siam, Malaya, and the Philippines. Chiang Kai-shek heard the news at one o'clock in the morning and immediately dictated a letter of support to President Roosevelt, pledging commitment to a new "common battle." The news reached Zhou Fohai in Shanghai as well. On December 8 across the international date line from Hawaii he had heard the sounds of firing as the Japanese took over the rest of the city, and then received reports that Japan had declared war on the Western powers. "I heard they'd bombed Honolulu, Manila, Singapore, and Hong Kong. From now on, the Pacific becomes a killing ground."   When Japanese carrier planes descended on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, they were executing far more than a tactical strike. They were unleashing the culmination of a strategic vision that had shaped Japanese military planning since the 1920s: the Nanshin-ron, or "Southern Advance" doctrine.    The Nanshin-ron represented a critical strategic choice that emerged from internal Japanese debates during the 1920s and 1930s. Japan faced an inescapable vulnerability: it was an island nation with virtually no natural resources of its own. The nation's population had doubled since the Meiji Restoration, growing to over 70 million by 1941. An industrial economy of tremendous sophistication, capable of producing world-class warships, aircraft, and military equipment, depended entirely on imported raw materials. Oil, rubber, tin, iron ore, bauxite, copper, and manganese all had to be acquired through foreign trade or conquest. This resource dependency was not a luxury problem; it was an existential one. A nation that could not feed itself or fuel its economy was a nation vulnerable to strangulation by enemies who controlled the resources it needed. Japanese strategic thinkers divided into two camps on how to resolve this vulnerability. The Hokushin-ron advocates, primarily within the Army, pushed for expansion northward into Siberia and Mongolia, seeking to conquer Soviet territory and resources. The Soviet Union possessed vast tracts of land, mineral wealth, timber, and agricultural output. From a purely materialist perspective, the Northern Advance made geographic sense—it was contiguous with Manchuria, which Japan had already secured in 1931. Yet by the late 1930s, the Hokushin-ron strategy had suffered a catastrophic blow. In 1938 and 1939, Japanese and Soviet forces clashed at Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia in what the Japanese called the Nomonhan Incident. The battles revealed a terrifying truth: the Soviet Red Army, under General Georgy Zhukov, was far more formidable than Japanese military planners had anticipated. Soviet armor, air power, and coordinated tactics annihilated Japanese forces. Japan suffered over 60,000 casualties while inflicting perhaps 10,000 on the Soviets. The defeat was concealed from the Japanese public, but it was unmistakable to military planners. A direct clash with Soviet power could end catastrophically. The Northern Advance, it became clear, would almost certainly provoke war with a nation capable of destroying the Japanese Army. This strategic defeat tilted the balance decisively toward the Nanshin-ron. If Japan could not safely expand northward, it must expand southward, toward Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, and the western Pacific. The appeal of the Nanshin-ron was immediately apparent to the Navy, which had always been more oriented toward maritime commerce and expansion across the ocean. The territories to the south were not militarily formidable. The colonial powers, Britain, the Netherlands, France, were either already defeated in 1940 or distracted by their own desperate struggles leaving Britain fighting alone against Germany. The United States, though potentially a formidable adversary, was not yet at war, and there was a chance, however slender, that a decisive blow against American naval power might convince America to negotiate rather than fight. But beyond strategic opportunity, the Nanshin-ron offered something that the Hokushin-ron did not: it offered resources of staggering abundance. The Dutch East Indies possessed oil reserves that could dwarf Japan's consumption for years. Malaya produced the world's rubber. Thailand offered agricultural bounty and geographic position. Burma's timber and agricultural products could feed Japan's growing empire. The Philippines possessed harbors, airfields, and economic output. These were not marginal additions to Japan's economy—they were transformative. Together, they would convert Japan from a resource-hungry island nation into the master of an imperial domain encompassing hundreds of millions of people and containing most of the strategic materials necessary for sustained industrial warfare. In the last episode I explained the western sanctions and embargoes that drained Japan's military of the resources they required to continue the China War. By 1941, Japan faced a civilization crisis. Japan imported roughly 90 percent of its petroleum, and the bulk of that came from the Dutch East Indies and the United States. Suddenly, the American supply was cut off entirely. Reserves would last perhaps 18 months if Japan's military and industrial consumption continued at existing rates. After that, the military machine would sputter and die. The industrial economy would collapse. Even civilian life would become impossible to sustain. Japan was facing not merely economic inconvenience but literal strangulation by the Western powers.   Yet it would be a mistake to reduce Japanese motivation to just materialism. Japanese military leaders wrapped their conquests in an ideological framework, one that many of them genuinely believed, or wanted to believe, served a higher historical purpose. The concept of the Daitoa Kyoeiken, the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," posited a new regional order in which Japan would play the leading role in liberating Asian peoples from Western colonial domination and creating an Asian-centered political and economic system. This ideology drew on genuine anti-colonial sentiment. For a century, Western powers had dominated Asia, treating Asian peoples and nations as subordinate, colonized territories existing to serve Western economic interests. Japan, which had modernized and Westernized enough to avoid colonization, saw itself as the natural leader of an Asian renaissance—a civilizing force that would restore Asian dignity and independence even as it established Japanese hegemony. Of course, this was propagandistic. Japanese conquest represented a substitution of one imperial master for another, and often a harsher and more brutal one at that. But for understanding Japanese decision-making, the ideology mattered profoundly. It provided Japanese leaders with a moral narrative for conquest. It allowed them to understand themselves as liberators rather than mere conquerors. It provided a rationale for extracting resources from occupied territories and for mobilizing subject populations to support the Japanese war effort. And it resonated with anti-Western sentiment throughout Asia, making Japanese occupation seem, in some quarters, preferable to continued Western colonial rule. The slogan Hakko ichiu—"eight corners under one roof", captured this ideological vision: a unified Asia and eventually world under Japanese guidance. Whether Japanese leaders truly believed this vision or cynically deployed it as propaganda, it shaped how they understood their actions and justified them to their subjects. Now I know this is a podcast dedicated to the century of humiliation, ie: China's experience. But I thought it was necessary just to have one episode explain what Dan Carlin titled "a supernova in the east" and I have titled an implosion in the east. I won't go into depth into the campaigns as some of them have a lot of Chinese involvement and we will be covering them in depth, but rather I will explain the rationale for Japan's numerous invasions following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.   Japan's assault on Malaya began within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, indeed, Japanese troops were already landing on the Kota Bharu beachhead on the Malaysian peninsula before dawn on December 8, 1941 local time. Malaya was one of the world's largest rubber producers, and Singapore, at the tip of the peninsula, was the linchpin of British naval power in the Far East.The Japanese interest in Malaya was straightforward but crucial: rubber. The Japanese military consumed vast quantities of rubber for tires, gaskets, hoses, and countless other applications. American and Dutch rubber supplies were now cut off by embargo. Malaya's rubber plantations represented perhaps the world's richest reservoir of this strategic material. Beyond rubber, Malaya and the surrounding region were major tin producers—essential for alloys and manufacturing. For Japan to conduct prolonged warfare, Malaya was not a luxury target; it was a necessity. Singapore represented something different: a symbol of Western power in Asia and a strategic chokepoint. As the major British naval base in the region, Singapore served as the anchor of British imperial authority across the South China Sea. By seizing Singapore, Japan would not only capture crucial resources and port facilities but would also deliver a psychological blow to the entire edifice of Western dominance in Asia. The fortress city that the British considered nearly impregnable fell within seventy days, a stunning demonstration of Japanese military capability and the vulnerability of overextended Western empires. If Malaya was critical for rubber, the Dutch East Indies was essential for oil. The region, comprising present-day Indonesia, was the world's third-largest oil producer and had reserves that could sustain Japanese military operations for years. This was the jewel of the resource-conquest strategy. Japanese planners had long eyed the East Indies, but direct conquest had seemed risky while Britain and America remained neutral or opposed. With both now at war, the window of opportunity had opened. Japan needed the oil so desperately that when the Dutch East Indies Petroleum Company initially agreed to some Japanese oil purchases before the war, Tokyo was already planning its takeover. The conquest of the Dutch East Indies would provide not just oil but also tin, nickel, bauxite, and other materials essential to an industrial war machine. The islands would also provide air and naval bases from which Japan could defend its new empire and potentially threaten Australia. The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies, which began in late December 1941 and accelerated through January and February 1942, was methodical and comprehensive. Various island groups were targeted systematically: Java, Borneo, Celebes, and the Moluccas. Dutch military forces, though brave, were overwhelmed. By March 1942, Japan had secured the entire archipelago,a stunning logistical and military achievement that delivered vast resources into Japanese hands. Thailand presented a fundamentally different case from Japan's other targets. Rather than conquest, Japan pursued alliance with military strongman Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who had seized power in a 1938 coup as a nationalist ideologue determined to reassert Thai sovereignty and recover territory lost to French colonialism in the nineteenth century. Thailand was the last independent state in mainland Southeast Asia, hemmed in by British-controlled Burma and Malaya to the west, and French Indochina to the east. For a century, Thailand had survived by playing European imperial powers against each other. But by the late 1930s, this strategy was becoming obsolete. Europe was distracted by Hitler's Germany. Colonial powers were weakening. Japanese power was visibly ascending. Phibunsongkhram recognized both danger and opportunity. He could resist Japan and invite invasion, or he could ally with Japan and profit from rising Asian power. Japanese diplomats approached Thailand with sophistication: they offered military alliance and support for Thai territorial expansion at French expense. This addressed Thailand's deepest national wound, the humiliation of nineteenth-century territorial losses to France. The Franco-Thai War of 1940-1941 became transformative. With Japan providing military support, advisors, tanks, aircraft, Thai forces defeated the French for the first time in history. By May 1941, Thailand had recovered 54,000 square kilometers of Cambodian territory and portions of Laos. For Phibunsongkhram, this was extraordinary: he had achieved what Thai leaders could not in a century, reclaiming territory from a Western imperial power. Domestically, his position was dramatically strengthened. The parallel to China's century of humiliation—the foundation of your podcast is striking: Thailand too was reversing colonial diminishment through association with rising Asian power. The Thai-Japanese relationship was unique. Unlike the Philippines, Malaya, or the Dutch East Indies, Thailand would retain nominal independence. Phibunsongkhram remained in power. Japanese occupation was light. Thai forces maintained their own command structure. Most importantly, Thailand's territorial gains from the Franco-Thai War were recognized and secured. Japan valued Thai cooperation more than conquest. Burma, controlled by the British, was the next target in Japan's southwestward advance. Japanese planners had multiple motivations for invading Burma. First, it was strategically positioned on India's eastern frontier, and Japan harbored ambitions of eventually striking toward India and linking up with Germany in the Middle East or at least destabilizing the British position in South Asia. Second, Burma was a significant producer of timber and agricultural products. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the invasion of Burma was meant to cut the Burma Road, the crucial supply line that allowed American aid to reach Nationalist China. The invasion of Burma began in late 1941 and accelerated through early 1942.  The invasion of the Philippines, which began on December 10, 1941, just days after Pearl Harbor, served multiple strategic purposes. Like the assault on Pearl Harbor itself, it was meant to neutralize American military power in the region, in this case, the American garrison under General Douglas MacArthur and the American colonial administration. But the Philippines were also valuable in their own right. The islands sat directly in the path of what Japan envisioned as its defensive perimeter. By controlling the Philippines, Japan would make it extraordinarily difficult for American forces to project power westward into Southeast Asia. The territory would provide naval and air bases critical to defending Japan's new empire. Additionally, the Philippines possessed some agricultural and industrial resources valuable to the war effort, and their conquest delivered a psychological victory, defeating American forces and ending American colonial rule in Asia, which appealed to anti-Western sentiment that Japan tried to cultivate. Beyond Southeast Asia and the Philippines, Japan rapidly invaded Guam and Wake island to extend Japan's defensive perimeter further into the Pacific and eliminate American air and naval bases that could threaten Japanese operations. Guam, seized on December 10, 1941, fell within two days, the American garrison was small and the island's strategic value lay primarily in denying the United States a forward staging ground for any counteroffensive. Wake Island, attacked the same day and finally captured on December 23 after a brief but heroic American defense, served similar purposes: cutting off American reconnaissance and interdicting potential supply lines to the Philippines.  Now I believe that's enough of the implosion in the east, let's get back to the situation in China. After Chiang Kai-shek sent his letter of support to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pledging Chinese commitment to what he termed a new "common battle." he did something most revealing about his mood towards the global war. He played "Ave Maria" on his gramophone, celebrating with an almost spiritual gratitude the implications of what had just transpired in the American Pacific. This moment crystallized the profound difference Pearl Harbor would mean to different members of the emerging Allied coalition. For the United States, the attack was pure shock, a violation of the sanctity of American soil and the complacency of American isolationism. For Britain, it was like the pricking of a large, painful blister—painful but perhaps not entirely unexpected given Japan's regional ambitions. But for China, the relief that surged through the government and the consciousness of the Chinese people surpassed even Britain's response. For four long years, China had fought Japan almost alone, watching as Western nations remained neutral or limited their commitment to rhetorical support and modest material assistance. Now, suddenly, the trajectory of the entire conflict had shifted with breathtaking speed. Chiang's emotional state at this moment could scarcely be contained, and those close to him understood that beneath his carefully maintained Confucian composure burned an intoxicating sensation of vindication. These Western powers who had been so impatient with Chinese strategy, who had mocked the retreats of the Nationalist Army and spoken scornfully of Japanese capabilities, were now themselves in headlong retreat from those very islanders. In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila, British and American forces would be fighting desperately for their lives against the Japanese military that China had been contending with for years. Chiang could not have failed to perceive the irony: the Japanese had conquered vast stretches of China through relentless campaigns, yet Westerners had dismissed Chinese resistance as inadequate. Now the Japanese were proving that they posed a formidable challenge to Western military power as well. There was a bitter satisfaction in this vindication, even as Chiang understood that the strategic implications of American entry far outweighed any emotional satisfaction. What was pragmatic and strategically clear to Chiang, however, was far more important than any emotional satisfaction. The United States was now at war, and it was on China's side. This represented the transformation for which Chiang had labored for years, bringing the full weight of American industrial capacity and military might to bear against the Japanese enemy. The diplomatic foundations for this alliance had already been laid in the months preceding Pearl Harbor. Beginning in the spring of 1941, the United States had begun to commit significant resources to supporting China. In April 1941, following the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality agreement, which had devastated Chinese morale by suggesting that Japan might attack the Soviet Union rather than move southward, the Roosevelt administration had determined to provide $45 million worth of militarily useful commodities to China as an immediate gesture of support. Then, on May 6, 1941, President Roosevelt had made a more formal commitment by announcing that the munitions provisions of the Lend-Lease Act applied to China, declaring a phrase that captured the strategic logic of American assistance: "defending China is the key to defending America." This declaration represented a significant shift in American policy, elevating China from a regional concern to a central element of American grand strategy in Asia. Subsequently, in July 1941, Roosevelt had sent Owen Lattimore to China to serve as political adviser to the Chinese government, a position that signaled deepening American engagement with Chinese affairs. In August, the administration appointed John Magruder as military attaché and head of the American Military Mission to China (AMMISCA), with the primary responsibility of overseeing the delivery of Lend-Lease material to the Chinese armed forces. On the diplomatic front, Chiang moved with remarkable alacrity. He had already severed relations with Germany on July 2, 1941, the very day after Hitler had formally recognized the Wang Jingwei puppet government in an attempt to appease Japan and encourage it to finally implement the Southern Advance. Now, on December 8, 1941, just one day after the Pearl Harbor attack, Chiang took the decisive step of formally declaring war against the Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan. This declaration transformed China's position from a beleaguered nation fighting a war of survival into a formal member of the Allied coalition. Chiang had seized the opportunity that Pearl Harbor presented to ally China with a genuinely strong power against Japan, a gambit that fundamentally altered the diplomatic weight and international legitimacy of both the Chinese government and the Chinese cause. From a strategic perspective, the Japanese had committed what Chiang and others immediately recognized as a catastrophic blunder. On the operational level, Pearl Harbor was indeed a devastating tactical success, the American Pacific Fleet was crippled, and Japanese forces now enjoyed temporary naval superiority throughout much of the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Yet strategically, Pearl Harbor represented a failure of epic proportions, a miscalculation rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the intangibles of warfare: what motivated the Chinese people and what motivated the Americans. The Chinese had understood, through four years of brutal conflict, that warfare was about more than territorial conquest and resource acquisition. It was about will, about endurance, about the capacity to absorb punishment and continue fighting. The Japanese had learned this lesson imperfectly in China, where despite overwhelming military advantages they had been unable to force a decisive conclusion or compel Chinese surrender. The Americans would teach the Japanese this lesson even more emphatically. The attack on American sailors in Hawaii instantly galvanized the American population to prosecute an unlimited war, with Tokyo itself as the ultimate destination of American counterattack. While Americans would remember the "date that will live in infamy" primarily because of the assault on Pearl Harbor itself, the strategic consequence was that Japanese actions in Hawaii had introduced numerous new adversaries into the Pacific conflict: not only the United States, but also Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. These additions transformed what had been, from the Japanese perspective, a regional conflict with manageable parameters into a global war that Japan could not possibly win through any conceivable means. What made this particularly disastrous for Japan was the context in which the new theater had been opened. Japan was already deeply mired in a quagmire in China—a "malignant quagmire," as one observer would later characterize it, that had consumed vast resources, inflicted enormous casualties, and failed to produce decisive victory. In military strategy, it is sometimes wise to open a new theater in order to attack an enemy from an additional and unexpected direction, thereby dispersing their forces and creating new challenges for them to manage. But opening a new theater that introduces an entirely new, powerful adversary, and doing so when one is already overextended in an existing theater is a prescription for strategic catastrophe. This was precisely what Japan had done at Pearl Harbor. Chiang Kai-shek understood the magnitude of Japan's miscalculation with crystalline clarity. He understood that whatever the military complexities that lay ahead, whatever the challenges of coordinating with Western allies, and whatever the limitations of Western military assistance to China might be, the fundamental equation had changed. The United States would ultimately defeat Japan. The Chinese did not need to defeat Japan by themselves; they merely needed to survive long enough for American industrial and military capacity to grind the Japanese military into defeat. In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Chinese and American officials moved swiftly to formalize the alliance and establish the mechanisms of wartime cooperation. Roosevelt asked Chiang Kai-shek to serve as commander in chief of the Allied forces in the China theater, a designation that recognized China's central role in the Pacific War and elevated Chiang's international standing to something he had long sought: a position as an equal partner in the Allied coalition, a seat at the "top table of global decision-making" alongside Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. To support this expanded role and to ensure effective coordination of the military effort, Roosevelt dispatched Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell to China. Stilwell was not chosen randomly; he brought fifteen years of experience in China, a deep familiarity with the country, its military, and its complexities that few American officers possessed. Stilwell was appointed to serve simultaneously as the U.S. government's military representative in China, as chief of staff of the China Theater, and as commander in chief of the American forces in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater. This appointment established the framework for joint Chinese-American military cooperation and represented an American commitment to the Asian theater that, while never receiving the resources devoted to the European theater, nonetheless signified recognition of China's strategic importance. Trust me, going forward we will be having a lot of time dedicated to the hilarious bromance / bro hatred of Vinegar Joe and Peanut.  Yet the formation of an alliance and the establishment of command structures was easier than the practical implementation of military cooperation. The fundamental challenge that would plague Chinese-American relations throughout the war emerged almost immediately: the problem of delivering military assistance to China. Before Pearl Harbor, the United States and China had reached agreement on three major points regarding military assistance. First, the United States would provide training and technical support to assist China in establishing a modern air force. Second, the United States would provide training and equipment for a ground army consisting of thirty divisions. Third, the United States would assist China in constructing railways and highways from Yunnan to Burma, along with the provision of rolling stock and vehicles to support these new transportation routes. These were ambitious plans, reflecting the extent of Chinese need and American willingness to support the Chinese war effort. However, the outbreak of the Pacific War threw American plans into disarray. The fundamental strategic doctrine guiding American policy was the "Europe first" strategy, which meant that the European theater and the defeat of Nazi Germany received priority over the Pacific theater. Additionally, China's geography made it extraordinarily difficult to supply. China could only be reached through supply lines of extraordinary length and complexity, either through the port of Rangoon in Burma and then overland via the treacherous Yunnan-Burma Road, or through the port of Hong Kong, which immediately fell into Japanese hands after Pearl Harbor. The first Sino-American loan agreement had specified that the United States would deliver commodities worth $45 million to China in 1941. However, shipping shortages meant that only $26 million worth of commodities actually left the United States. These commodities were shipped to the transit port of Rangoon, where a massive traffic jam developed as supplies accumulated faster than they could be distributed onward to China. Along the Yunnan-Burma Road, that "much-contested life line" as it came to be known, conditions were chaotic. The road had always been a source of trouble: it was long, extraordinarily difficult to keep in repair, fantastically dangerous to travel, and too narrow to permit much volume of traffic at any one time. Due to mismanagement and pilfering, the commodities that were shipped out of Burma suffered heavy losses in transit, and only one-third of them eventually arrived in Chongqing. Yet the United States had already established one valuable asset in China that could be deployed relatively quickly: an air force nucleus. Just before Pearl Harbor, a group of American aviators had been formally organized in Chongqing who worked on volunteer status for China under the command of Colonel Claire Chennault, an American aviation officer who served as instructor at the Chinese Air Force Cadet School. Some of these men had been flying in China since the Kuomintang first began purchasing American aircraft, having come to demonstrate the aircraft and remaining to pilot and teach. Others had hurried to China after being released from their volunteer service in Spain, where they had gained combat experience during the Spanish Civil War. It was a familiar joke that pilots from both sides of the Spanish conflict were likely to meet and work side by side in China, but political convictions proved immaterial to these professional aviators, they got on well enough with each other, mercenaries of the twentieth century united by their expertise and their willingness to fight. When American traffic on the Burma Road swelled in volume and became chaotic, with cargo lost to pilfering and trucks breaking down from mishandling, the air freight service into Chongqing became increasingly vital to maintaining Chinese military capabilities. The backbone of this organization was American, and it had been in operation for months before the Japanese attack. Halfway down the Burma Road, over the border in Burma, was a plane factory backed by American and Chinese capital, providing some degree of repair and maintenance capacity for the aircraft operating out of China. Recognizing the strategic value of these experienced aviators and the need to formalize and expand their operations, American and Chinese officials moved quickly to incorporate this volunteer group, formally known as the American Volunteer Group or "Flying Tigers," into the U.S. Army Air Force. This transformation of volunteer aviators into official American military personnel represented a commitment to providing air support to Chinese operations, recognizing that air power could compensate to some degree for Chinese numerical disadvantages in ground combat. In Chongqing, it was clear that among the United Nations fighting Japan, America was the only one taking China seriously, the only one prepared to invest significant resources in Chinese military capabilities and the Chinese war effort. Yet Pearl Harbor brought consequences that extended far beyond the strategic and diplomatic spheres. For Western civilians living in China,missionaries, teachers, doctors, businessmen, and journalists, the attack represented a catastrophic change in their status and their fate. Until December 8, 1941, Westerners residing in China had maintained a curious protected status as foreign neutrals, even in areas nominally controlled by the Japanese. This status had provided them with a measure of distance from, and protection against, the grinding reality of the war that had devastated Chinese populations. For a century, Americans had been part of an imperial presence in China, sometimes benevolent, sometimes violent, but always ultimately under Western control. That world came to an abrupt end on December 8, 1941. All across eastern China, Americans and Britons were rounded up and interned. The International Settlement of Shanghai—that remarkable oasis of neutrality that had persisted in the midst of a war-torn city—was now reunified under Japanese control. Thousands of foreigners with Allied nationality were sent to holding camps scattered throughout occupied China. Some, like the eleven-year-old British boy Jim Ballard, would remain imprisoned for the remainder of the war, enduring hunger, cold, and disease in camps like Longhua, which housed approximately 2,000 detainees. Forty years later, as the novelist J. G. Ballard, he would memorialized this experience in his semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun. For missionaries like Velva Brown, the evacuation process was degrading and final. The missionary staff were permitted to pack no more than three suitcases with their belongings. As they prepared to leave, Japanese and Taiwanese "sightseeing" parties arrived to decide which houses they might want to occupy. The journey home aboard crowded Japanese ships offered no concessions to status or dignity; ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and missionaries alike were given "bed-sized strips of Chinese matting which we spread side by side on the iron floor of the hold," as Brown recorded. The humiliation was compounded by the finality of it all. For many, their decades-long presence in China was ending not in orderly retreat but in hasty evacuation, leaving behind "servants, many of whom had been with us for fifteen or twenty years." Despite these immediate human tragedies, the strategic transformation that Pearl Harbor wrought for China was undeniable. Chiang Kai-shek now embarked on an entirely new sort of life, heavily involved with the leaders and generals of the Western powers. He held diplomatic discussions with the leaders of the United Nations and military planning sessions with Western generals. In these unfamiliar circumstances, he did his best to live up to the Confucian ideal of the gentleman, seldom permitting the mask to slip—though the pressure of these new responsibilities and the intoxicating combination of vindication and anxiety would occasionally prove too much even for his considerable self-control. Within weeks of Pearl Harbor, Chiang demonstrated the value he could bring to the new alliance. He visited India and spoke with the leaders of the Indian independence struggle as an ally and friend, as a fellow non-European speaking to others seeking to escape from colonialism and imperial domination. He joined the Allies in their first joint campaign, not in China but in the jungles of neighboring Burma, committing Chinese forces to operations outside China's borders in support of the broader Allied military strategy. Yet the price that Chiang would pay for China's belated entry into the global alliance against the Axis powers would prove to be a heavy one. Chiang desperately needed his new American and British partners, but accepting this alliance would unleash forces within Chinese society that would threaten the very basis of his political control. The complexities of this bargain would become most visible in the four-year struggle between Chiang and General Joseph Warren Stilwell, the American officer who would become simultaneously his chief of staff and the administrator of American military assistance to China. This relationship, shaped by mutual suspicion, different strategic visions, and incompatible political agendas, would define Chinese-American military cooperation during the Pacific War and would have profound implications extending far beyond the battlefields of Asia. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Pearl Harbor's shock reverberated through Asia. Japan's assault on Hawaii, combined with invasions of Burma, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, inadvertently transformed regional conflict into global war. Chiang Kai-shek, vindicated after four years of isolation fighting Japan, embraced American alliance with profound relief. The U.S. committed military aid, appointed General Stilwell as chief of staff, and recognized China as a co-belligerent. For Chiang, this partnership brought diplomatic status but also internal tensions that would define the Pacific War's final chapter.