Podcasts about Gee

Susan Pierce Jacobsen is a community connector and advocate who has worked in many different positions. Through several of Susan's roles she has supported The Center for Black Excellence and Culture. Dr. Gee shares about Susan's support and their relationship in development projects in the community. They discuss some of the various connections that Susan helped bring together with The Center from architects, community organizers, and company leaderships. alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group

In this episode of The Consummate Athlete Podcast, Peter and Molly answer interview top gravel racer Gee Schruers, in person, during her recent visit to Collingwood area. They discuss: The exciting weather and racing at Unbound 200 mile gravel race in 2026 Trends in Gravel Cycling: teams, technology and, of course, lots about tires Gee's interesting career from road racing to soigneur and back to elite level gravel racing for Specialized Factory Insight into Gee Schreurs training for Unbound and recovery after a big endurance event

URSULA'S TOP STORIES: SEA World Cup kickoff // Charges dropped against KC Assessor // The PC Sheriff could lose his job come November // Gee takes us onto the pitch for the inaugural SEA World Cup match // Science has a name for the people who drain you

The new Center for Black Excellence and Culture has officially opened! City Cast Madison host Bianca Martin sits down with founder Rev. Dr. Alex Gee at the center to talk about everything it took to open the doors and what comes next. The 37,000-square-foot space features auditoriums, lounges, a children's library, senior area, women's center, art gallery, innovation and business workspaces, and more. Beginning July 1, visitors can take walking tours.  To hear more from Rev. Dr. Gee, listen to his podcast Black Like Me. Mentioned on the show Justified anger: Rev. Alex Gee says Madison is failing its African-American community (CapTimes)

Episode 294-AG Green-lights Red Flag Also Available OnSearchable Podcast Transcript Gun Lawyer — Episode Transcript Page – 1 – of 14 Gun Lawyer — Episode 294 Transcript SUMMARY KEYWORDS Gun Lawyer, New Jersey, ERPO, gun confiscation, due process, public awareness campaign, gun safety, Second Amendment, red flag law, wellness check, gun rights, gun violence, civil rights, gun storage, gun laws. SPEAKERS Speaker 2, Evan Nappen, Teddy Nappen Evan Nappen 00:17 I’m Evan Nappen. Teddy Nappen 00:19 And I’m Teddy Nappen. Evan Nappen 00:21 And welcome to Gun Lawyer. So, Teddy, what have you discovered in your travels? Teddy Nappen 00:30 Well, first off, you can stop pestering me. I finally watched Project Hail Mary. Evan Nappen 00:36 I love that movie. It was fun. Didn’t you like it, man? Teddy Nappen 00:40 I thought it was. I will give it credit for a movie that’s almost three hours long. You stay. You don’t want to like check your phone or anything. You’re actually very engaged. And I was like. Evan Nappen 00:51 True! Teddy Nappen 00:51 The last 40 minutes, I’m like, okay, everything’s solved, what’s left for plot? And then they actually made it more interesting. Evan Nappen 00:59 Yes! Don’t, don’t spoil it for people. Teddy Nappen 01:01 No, no spoils. Page – 2 – of 14 Evan Nappen 01:02 It’s a good one, and it is a very interesting statement about Government. Teddy Nappen 01:12 I was thinking also Stoicism. Evan Nappen 01:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did a great job. I really enjoyed it. So, anyways. I love talking about movies. However, this is Gun Lawyer, man, and we talk about important New Jersey. Teddy Nappen 01:32 Fine. Evan Nappen 01:33 And beyond the borders of New Jersey. Teddy Nappen 01:38 We’ll open with this: the Attorney General’s a jerk. Evan Nappen 01:42 Wait a minute! Don’t go disparaging our beloved Attorney General. But why are you not happy with what the Attorney General has done? Teddy Nappen 01:51 Well, I love when they’re advertising, effectively legalized swatting, in this latest article. Right from the Attorney General’s Office. ” Attorney General Davenport, Office of Alternative and Community Responses launches gun safety public awareness campaign”. (https://www.njoag.gov/attorney-general-davenport-office-of-alternative-and-community-responses-launch-gun-safety-public-awareness-campaign/) I want to meet the marketing team that comes up with these titles. Evan Nappen 02:14 Which always, if it’s Gun Safety Public Awareness Team, let me guess. They’re using their office to promote citizen self-defense so that citizens are no longer victims, but can defend themselves against criminals, right? Isn’t that what they’re promoting? And helping citizens to understand their use of force and self -defense, and complete dedication to the Second Amendment, right? Am I correct? Teddy Nappen 02:41 I think you forgot this is with New Jersey, but yeah. Evan Nappen 02:45 Oh, what did they do instead? Tell me. Page – 3 – of 14 Teddy Nappen 02:47 Oh, so from the article that they put out, Attorney General Davenport of the office has launched a multi-year public awareness campaign to raise awareness about the life-saving potential of New Jersey’s Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs). Evan Nappen 03:06 Ah, the Red Flag. Teddy Nappen 03:07 Wow! Evan Nappen 03:07 So, they believe that it is life saving. Try life destroying! If you’re a gun owner and you get hit with one of these ERPOs, as we talked about on a prior show, simply talking to Chat GBT led to this. Where not only were the guns seized, not only is your house searched, but you’re taken away for a “wellness check”. And with his inability to give a urine sample, they shoved a catheter up his penis. All over the wonderful ERPO situation. Isn’t that great? How that all works out. So, there’s a lot of downside, unless you don’t consider forced catheterization up your penis, a downside. I don’t know. Today you don’t know. But these are the kind of things that can come from ERPOs and wellness checks. It’s just astounding. Astounding. Teddy Nappen 04:19 What is astounding is I love how they twist it. Just reading the article, you can feel it. I always go back to that line from “Untouchables” – “Let’s do some good.” They actually think this is going to solve problems. Or right here from the Attorney General. ERPOs are a proven tool for preventing tragedies. How do I know? I pulled it out. They didn’t actually say that. We are committed to using all the tools at our disposal. Evan Nappen 04:52 This is what they put out. But the reality of it is, it’s a tool for disenfranchisement of Second Amendment rights, and it’s a tool of confiscation of guns. It is a tool of gun rights suppression. It is designed for that purpose. There is no due process up front. These are granted ex parte. The person who is served with the ERPO has no clue that it’s coming their way, has no opportunity, before the damage is done to talk or speak or make their case to the judge. This is just gun confiscation in its rawest form with benefits. And the benefits are taking you away for a so-called “wellness check”, while you’re at it, to search and seize giving them the opportunity to review your guns, to take your guns, to search your house, to invade your Fourth Amendment rights as well. All done under this guise. Evan Nappen 05:40 This is something we in the firm here deal with these all the time, and the public awareness campaign is designed to get more people to jump on this. No matter how weak the claim is. No matter whether it’s for reasons that are unproven. It doesn’t matter! They want these ERPOs, which, when they initially issued, are called TERPOs, Temporary Extremist Protection Orders. Only after the issuance of the TERPO do you finally get a hearing where you get to try to fight to challenge it from becoming a final, Page – 4 – of 14 what we call a FERPO. And if it takes place in Burlington or Bergen County, then you, of course, are getting a BURPO. I’m just kidding about that. They don’t call them BURPOs, but it is a pretty bad, rotten, terrible law. It is the most extreme ERPO law in the country, and it is just rights violation from the get-go. Teddy Nappen 07:32 Well, also, if you’re going through the article, they’re talking about the public awareness campaign they’re going to be doing. They say the ERPO awareness is leading up to the National Gun Violence Awareness Month in June. I thought June was also Pride Month, but you know they kind of go hand in hand with the recent mass shootings. It’s one of those. Evan Nappen 07:58 It’s like National Brotherhood Month. Be glad we don’t celebrate it the rest of the year. Teddy Nappen 08:04 I know. You know what? Evan Nappen 08:05 That’s the old Tom Lehrer joke. Teddy Nappen 08:07 You know what? I’m very aware of the gun violence. That’s why people want to be armed to defend themselves, but continue. Then they go on about using like billboards, bus shelters, radio platforms. Oh, by the way, everything will be in Spanish, too. They were very bold in that, and they made it very clear it’ll be in English and Spanish. So, okay. Evan Nappen 08:30 Well, the propaganda that gets generated out of New Jersey is intense, and it is going to create more and more confiscations and misery for law-abiding gun owners and their gun rights. That’s the reality of what is going on. They have these very cute images on this article. I see where they are going to promote this operation, and it’s like they’re meme articles. Because of an ERPO, they’re still here. They show two people, then they have another one. Because of an ERPO, he’ll graduate in June. Really? Then there’s another one. Learn the facts about ERPO. Stop gun deaths. Need to talk. . . blah blah blah. Evan Nappen 09:27 Okay, you know what? We could do our own memes here. You know, we could have, because of an ERPO, this person, this law-abiding gun owner, just had their life ruined, just had their home invaded, just had their family heirloom guns seized, just had to go through an expensive court process just to get back to square one. Because of an ERPO, the person was taken in for a completely unnecessary wellness check, and had medical procedures done to them against their will. Because of an ERPO, they just have a big dick pic with a catheter in it, and say, because of an ERPO, I was forced to endure this. How about that for a nice image? You know, this is what reality is when you’re in the practice. You see these laws and what they actually do to people, and what doesn’t get told is what I’m telling you Page – 5 – of 14 now. The actual effect of it. Not this fluff and propaganda and claims being made that are not how we have experienced ERPOs in the practice of law. There’s an extreme risk protection website, Teddy, by the way. (https://www.njoag.gov/erpo/) Teddy Nappen 10:53 Yeah, they have the link. Evan Nappen 10:53 It talks about ERPOs, and it has a Q and A in it. Let’s take a look at the questions, the Attorney General’s answers, and what I think are the real answers. “Is ERPO the same as a ‘Red Flag’ law?” It’s very similar to what a lot of people know as Red Flag law that exists in other states, even among states that use the name ERPO. There are some technical legal differences. Be sure any information you get about ERPOs is specific to New Jersey. Yes, the similarity ends with New Jersey not having any due process upfront. It’s not just a Red Flag law. It’s a bright Red, no due process upfront law. Other states that may have Red Flag laws do it where you get due process up front before the order is even issued. Not in New Jersey. So, yeah, it’s different. It’s different in an extremely gun rights suppression manner. “Why are ERPOs needed?” Well, an ERPO is an immediate step that can be taken to stop a violent situation before it starts, by temporarily removing firearms from a person who’s at risk of harming themselves or others. Evan Nappen 12:10 Yeah, it’s also an immediate step that can be taken to SWAT somebody and an immediate step that can be taken when information is misconstrued. It’s also an immediate step that can be taken without even truly determining whether there is an actual risk of harm to oneself or another, because the one person they’re concerned about never gets an opportunity up front to actually explain whether there is or isn’t such a risk. “Why do people file for ERPOs?” Because they’ve seen warning signs that someone close to them is at high risk of using a firearm to harm themselves or others. Filing a petition for an ERPO provides safety for everyone involved and gives the person in crisis an opportunity to seek help. Really? Well, so-called warning signs, again not evaluated up front, high risk, again not evaluated up front with any input from the person who becomes the victim of this ERPO. Filing a petition for ERPO provides safety for everyone. No, it actually doesn’t provide safety for everyone. In fact, it endangers law-abiding gun owners. There are cases on record, Teddy, about individuals being swatted over false ERPOs, and they end up getting killed by police because they don’t even know what’s going on in this raid. They had no clue, right, Teddy? Teddy Nappen 13:42 It’s one of those things that’s very disgusting, just the very insidious nature of this. It is legalized swatting, and there’s no way about it. Like, you can just make something up, say someone said something or did something, and they’ll hand them out like candy. Then you get your life destroyed, just going through the process. And I love, I love the article. Their whole thing in it, where they’re saying we need to dispel the myths. The whole, yeah, dispel the myths. Page – 6 – of 14 Evan Nappen 14:16 To create an entire myth about what it is. “What’s a temporary ERPO?” A judge can issue a temporary ERPO if they believe the at-risk person is an imminent threat to themselves or others. Isn’t it amazing that a judge can do this, believing the at-risk person is an immediate threat to themselves or others with never speaking to the so-called at risk person. Never talking to them in advance. And a TERPO is in effect until the hearing for a final, which is typically scheduled within 10 days. And let me tell you, yeah, there’s a railroading, after your life has been turned upside down, of the hearing on the final having to take place in 10 days. After all the damage has been done, after your house has been raided, after you’ve been forced into a wellness check, after you’ve had your property seized. And do you think it’s cared for real well when it’s seized? After you’ve had this entire ordeal, then within 10 days of it, you’re supposed to have a hearing. Are you ready for that hearing? You don’t even know what hit you. How are you going to be prepared and do that? It’s railroading you into a FERPO, instead of giving due process up front on the TERPO. Teddy Nappen 15:37 The article tries to paint it like the court judges may issue them after carefully reviewing the individual circumstances, and prompted by the petition filed by a relative, household member, or law enforcement officer. The ERPO is issued only after several factors are considered. Whether they have been arrested, charged, convicted, disorderly persons, domestically. Evan Nappen 16:01 One of those factors, Teddy, as we’ve reviewed. One of the factors is has recently acquired a firearm. That’s actually a factor for an ERPO. That you’ve gotten a gun, that means that you got a pistol purchase permit and got a gun, or went to the gun dealer and bought a gun. That’s now an ERPO factor, as a fact to take your gun, is that you just got a gun. It’s literally a factor in the law. Teddy Nappen 16:27 Well, the article ignores that factor. Gee, I wonder why? Evan Nappen 16:31 They don’t list all the factors, because they’re so outrageously vague and unbelievable. And again, done ex parte. “What is a final ERPO?” Before a final ERPO is issued, this is all from their Q and A, a person at risk will have a chance to present evidence and testimony to the judge. If the judge believes they’re immediate threat of ERPO, so what does it say? Before the final. That’s the only time you’re going to get your chance is after the TERPO, the temporary order has issued. “How long does a final ERPO last?” It stays in effect until the person who filed the petition or the person at risk asks the judge to end it. If the at-risk person is seeking to end the order, they must prove to the judge they’re no longer a danger to themselves or others. So, the burden of proof switches to the victim of the ERPO. The person whose rights have just been taken away from them and had their life turned upside down. The burden is shifted for them to have to prove, in effect, their innocence. Prove they’re no longer a danger. Go ahead and prove the negative. Good luck with that. Page – 7 – of 14 Evan Nappen 17:47 “What information goes into the petition?” You’ll need to provide specific information about dangerous behavior or threats you’ve witnessed. If the person owns any firearms, provide all information you may know about firearms they own or have access to. So, now you have the ratting out, the giving of the information, the revealing of any firearms, so that they may be confiscated. Backdoor gun confiscation. Let’s have an entire propaganda campaign designed to do this. Even in their Q and A, all the gun information goes. “Does it cost money to file?” No, there’s no filing fee. There’s actually something you can do in Nwe Jersey that they won’t charge you for, and that’s if you aid and abet New Jersey in the seizure of guns in the disenfranchisement of an individual’s gun rights. They won’t charge you for that. Isn’t that nice of them? Evan Nappen 18:47 “Is the person arrested or taken into custody?” No, but they will eventually be required to appear in court. Ahh, let’s talk about that. Person arrested or taken into custody? Well, when they do the combo with the wellness check, you’re taken in. And they say, if you don’t voluntarily go, we’ll make you go. Oh, we just searched your home for guns, and we found that one of your magazines holds 11 rounds instead of 10. You’re getting arrested. Or any other condition that they want to turn into criminality, you’re going to be arrested and taken into custody. And if there’s any type of other allegations made, you’ll face those charges. Evan Nappen 19:37 Remember, this isn’t just done in a vacuum. So, it’s extremely misleading to say a person isn’t arrested or taken into custody when very often that’s exactly what happens. We’ve seen it because of the collateral damage that occurs from the TERPO. “Does an ERPO go on a criminal record?” No, it’s a civil matter, not a punitive punishment. You see, they don’t consider taking your guns and taking your gun rights punitive or punishment. No, this is just civil. Its purpose is to give the person in danger of harming themselves or others, an opportunity to address the crisis. You see, this is being done for your own protection. We’re doing this just for you, gun owners. We’re doing it to help you, because we love you so much. It’s not punitive at all. Evan Nappen 20:34 Except you go into a database that declares you to be an extreme risk. Do you think being in that database is going to help you get a job? Do you think being in the extreme risk database that ERPOs put you in is going to be helpful to you? Do you think that’s going to help you travel, let’s say on an airplane? Do you think it’s going to help you anytime a background check is done on you? So, does it have an actual criminal record? No, because there’s no criminal conviction. So, it would not be a criminal record. But notice it doesn’t say, do you get a record? Because the answer to that misleading way it’s presented is yes. You’re damn right. You will have a record. You will have a record of having an ERPO and being put in a database and on a list of being an extreme risk. But they don’t bother mentioning that in their Q and A. Teddy Nappen 21:39 Oh, this is what happens. Page – 8 – of 14 Evan Nappen 21:41 Go ahead, Teddy. What? Teddy Nappen 21:42 Well, what I was going to say is one thing that does point, like jump at the article with me. All this can be made possible from a competitive grant award from the “Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program” (SCIP) Grant which is administrated through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance. (https://www.njoag.gov/attorney-general-davenport-office-of-alternative-and-community-responses-launch-gun-safety-public-awareness-campaign/ – last paragraph) So, the insidious nature of SCIP. Oh, you know what happens whenever you get thrown in, because you think, oh, he may have said he said something like, oh, he’s had some bad thoughts. We need to get him into the crisis intervention unit. He needs to be evaluated. So, the doctors who evaluate you, who think you’re crazy or think you’re extreme, throw you into the nut house as well. That same group is pushing for Red Flag. Amazing! Evan Nappen 22:27 They are, because it goes together with it. And then it says, “What happens to firearms when an ERPO is approved?” Firearms, ammunition, and license to purchase, own, and carry must be surrendered to law enforcement. What also happens is you get put on the ERPO list. And if you fail to have guns turned in, if you fail to file that order, you can be criminally charged for contempt. Then you become a prohibited person after that to ever possess firearms and ammunition, very similar to being a convicted felon. But notice none of that is explained either. Then it says, “When are firearms returned?” When a judge terminates the order. Well, let me just tell you right now, that’s not in the law. We have cases on this right now. You can go in to court, and you can win a TERPO. But the TERPO was defeated after your guns were seized and you went through all that. There’s nothing in the statute that orders the guns themselves returned. So, if the Attorney General is now saying that firearms are returned when the judge terminates the order, great! Because we have cases right now where this very answer and question I want to explain why it hasn’t happened to our clients. Because it’s not in the law! And fighting to get it back afterwards, after you win the TERPO, where a FERPO is not granted, it’s exactly what a client we had on a couple shows ago. He talked about that very thing, that very problem. They asked, How is ERPO different? Go ahead, Teddy, what? Teddy Nappen 24:20 Well, I was going to say is the thing that if you kind of go through all this, looking at like the article, what they’re talking about, they are just doing all their best to muddy the waters. Trying to like no, no, no, no, it’s perfectly fine. We’re just going to take the firearms away, and then it won’t be a problem. Then if everything’s calm and the State has deemed you not an extreme risk. What do we mean by that? Well, we’ll determine that from a political judge. Evan Nappen 24:54 Ask any gun owner that’s gone through this, and they’ll tell you it’s a nightmare. This is designed to create more nightmares for New Jersey gun owners. Here, “Do ERPOs stop violence?” Evidence suggests ERPOs are an effective violence prevention tool, particularly in cases of suicide or mass shootings. Suggests it. They don’t prove it. Instead we have tremendous violation of due process rights Page – 9 – of 14 in this “suggestion” of what people go through. No actual hard evidence that it even accomplishes what it is intended to do. And of course, potential suicide or mass shootings. Well, of course, if someone’s hell bent to kill themselves, last I heard, a gun wasn’t the only way to do it. If the person is determined to engage in criminal acts, a piece of paper will not stop that person. So, who is it really affecting? The law-abiding citizens. They’re the ones who pay the price. Evan Nappen 26:04 And then last question here, “What happens if the petition for an ERPO gets denied?” Now, notice this is really interesting. The last question is, what happens if ERPO gets denied? It says, if the municipal court denies a petition for a TERPO, the person who filed it can request an immediate hearing in Superior Court. If the Superior Court judge is the one who denied the TERPO or denies the final, the person who filed can appeal to the Appel Division within 45 days of the denial. Notice what they don’t say. What happens if a petition is granted? Do they tell those people that they have a right to appeal? Do they mention the appellate rights of the victim of the ERPO? No, they don’t. They only tell the person who filed the ERPO of their appellate rights. Evan Nappen 26:58 Well, let me tell you. If you are hit with these, you have appellate rights. You have the right to challenge it and appeal it. They don’t mention that on their website. It’s supposed to be so informative. To cut through the so-called misunderstandings and misinformation out there about ERPOs, but they don’t even tell you about the appellate rights for those that suffer under this non-due process red flag law. New Jersey is probably the most extreme example of ERPO in the country. If not the most extreme, then tied for it. If somebody else is out there that I’m not aware of, that has copied New Jersey’s model. Teddy Nappen 27:58 I’m just waiting for them to up the ante, where they’re going to combine it with the gun owner gulag, where we’re not only going to arrest you, we’re not just going to ruin your life and take your firearms, we’re going to hold you until trial, and the hearing also takes six months. I’m just, it comes back to the old article that you first wrote, just death penalty to gun owners. They’re at that stage. The left hates us that much, that that’s where they would see the justice, like when it comes to the justice. Evan Nappen 28:24 They’re never satisfied, and it’s always take, take, take. Then the amount that they want to take, they call a compromise. And then they come back for more “compromise” where they take more. Then they say, well, that’s a great compromise, now we want more. It’s never giving. When do you see rights expanded and respected? When do you see rights restoration to New Jersey gun owners in the broader Second Amendment sense? Only when they’re forced to do it kicking and screaming, such as with carry permits, because of the Bruen decision. They knew they had to issue them, so they created the Carry Killer Law. So, yeah, we’ll issue permits, and we’ll try to make it as impossible as we can for you to actually use the permit by creating 25 “sensitive places” in an absolutely bizarre and confusing matrix. Create all these other requirements upon anybody who chooses to have a carry permit. So, it’s always take rights, take rights, take rights. And even when they’re forced by case law to have to restore freedom, they try to find some other gambit to take freedom yet again. This is the pattern of a gun rights suppression Government. That’s what we’re dealing with here, and that’s what we see. Page – 10 – of 14 Teddy Nappen 30:05 I’m trying to remember. It was a comic artist, like, where he was a free speech advocate, Frank Miller, and there’s a famous comic image that he painted where it was speaking out against the censorship going on in the comic book industry. It’s a picture of a woman, and there are band aids covering her eyes, covering her ears, and then one about to go on her mouth. The hands with the hand blob going, this last one’s for your safety. It just, it’s that insanity twist of believing that this will actually make the community safe. Actually thinking that this will solve the problem when all it does is exacerbate it and good luck to every actual career criminal. If that’s quote unquote red flag, we’re Evan Nappen 30:57 And that’s if we are giving them the benefit of the doubt. That they’re actually doing it because they really want safety and are simply misguided or wrong. But I don’t believe that after practicing gun law for over 40 years in the state of New Jersey. I believe it’s an agenda. It’s an agenda of gun rights oppression, and its foundation is simply that of being evil and wanting to go after rights. I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt as to their intention. Their intentions are to destroy our rights. If they could repeal the Second Amendment, they would do it. Look at how draconian every gun law is in New Jersey. Look at how they don’t grandfather magazines. Look at how extreme the penalties are. Look at how they created the gun owner gulag. I mean all this that they do. I just don’t believe it’s for some noble cause. It’s more about their hatred of us, and that really is what fires them up. That’s what the Left is all about, hatred, and they hate us. And this is how their hate is translated into these so-called do-gooder laws. It just is a better explanation from my experience in seeing what the gun laws do to good people, Teddy. Teddy Nappen 32:27 Yeah. Evan Nappen 32:29 But let me tell you, it doesn’t mean that we can’t have guns, that we can’t enjoy our guns. We can still keep fighting, and we don’t want to give up. We’re making progress, even though New Jersey is the toughest environment. And this is where it’s very important that you have a range to go to, and the range where Teddy and I shoot is WeShoot. WeShoot is in Lakewood. They’re a great indoor range. They have great training and a great pro shop. You can get your certification you need, your CCARE for your carry. It’s really just a great place. WeShoot has some pretty cool stuff they’re offering in June. Here they have a Smith & Wesson Performance Center Bodyguard 2.0 Carry Comp with blue titanium finish. It is a stunning evolution of the Bodyguard platform, a very popular platform. It features all these performance center enhancements with an integrated compensator and that really cool blue titanium finish. So, check it out. I think you really dig that bodyguard. They also have a Sig Sauer P211 Comp GTO. Now, this is Sigs latest high performance masterpiece. This gun blends race gun speed with premium craftsmanship, and it just takes it to another level. They also have Henry Big Boy Steel X. Now, the Henry Big Boy is a modern lever action. It’s a powerhouse with a threaded barrel, and that’s okay. On a lever action, you can have a threaded barrel on your lever action, side loading gate, and rugged steel construction, proving that tradition and innovation can ride side by side, and so check out those. Page – 11 – of 14 Evan Nappen 34:29 By the way, Molly Friedman is joins “The Many Faces of 2A”, and she’s reminding us that the Second Amendment belongs to every American from all walks of life. WeShoot is running some great June promotions beyond those really cool guns. There’s 25% off all heritage firearms, $200 off a family membership, 10% off all new firearms, 15% off all used firearms, and 15% off private lessons. So, this is great. Get down to WeShoot. WeShoot is in Lakewood. Go to weshootusa.com, weshootusa.com, weshootusa.com. Check out their website, beautiful photography. Also, pay a visit there in Lakewood, you’ll be glad you did. Evan Nappen 35:27 Let me also shamelessly promote my book, which is New Jersey Gun Law. It’s the bible of New Jersey gun law. It’s over 500 pages, 120 topics, and explains what you need to know about New Jersey gun law. It’s used by well, everybody, that wants to know about New Jersey gun law. Go to EvanNappen.com and get your copy today, so you can hopefully not become a GOFU, because New Jersey loves to make GOFUs. Teddy, what else do you have that you may have discovered in your travels? Teddy Nappen 36:05 Well, as you know, Press Checks are always free. One of the things that is, again, we always want to do our opposition research to see what they’re currently the gun rights oppressionists are pushing or crying about. If we go to our good friends at TheTrace.org, they put out an article. “Trump’s Justice Department Is Suing Cities and States to Dismantle Gun Laws. (https://www.thetrace.org/2026/06/trump-doj-civil-rights-2a-local-gun-laws/) So, again, this is where we always have to make. Evan Nappen 36:41 Make sure our listeners know that The Trace is Bloomberg’s mouthpiece, the anti-gun Bloomberg mouthpiece. So, they’re oppo research for sure. So, what do they say? Teddy Nappen 36:55 Yeah. So, they’re whining about the fact that they no longer have the strong arm of the United States government to go after our rights. Instead, oh my god, the Civil Rights Division is fighting for the Second Amendment. Evan Nappen 37:11 Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re telling me that the Civil Rights Division of the US government is actually fighting for the Constitution? Teddy Nappen 37:20 I know. Amazing. Evan Nappen 37:21 When did that happen? Page – 12 – of 14 Teddy Nappen 37:24 Well, apparently, and this was a big shocker, even to The Trace, where they even talk about the article. I love how there’s this. This department was used for fighting civil rights discrimination for black voting and school segregations. It has never been a focus on gun rights, said former attorney of the division, who focused on red lines, which can’t wait to hear all that wonderful things that went on with redlining. Evan Nappen 37:54 Well, so what? I mean, the Second Amendment is also a constitutional right and a civil right, and they absolutely should be protecting all civil rights. They particularly should not be going against any civil right. So, under Biden and prior administrations, they weaponized these agencies to actually go against Second Amendment rights. And now the agencies are actually doing their job and enforcing Second Amendment rights, and The Trace apparently can’t stand it. Plus, they’ve lost so much money that they used to get from the taxpayer. I mean, this is the effects of an election having consequences, and it’s President Trump and his administration that are making these great changes. You see it taking place here, and they’re upset about it. Teddy Nappen 38:49 And this is for, like, any every time I hear the black pillars go, like, he’s not doing enough for the Second Amendment, are you kidding me? Having the Civil Rights Division fighting all of these blue on-on strongholds, fighting for our rights, taking down. This is how we lost our rights through salami tactics. This is how it piece by piece, sure enough. And I love this timeline, mind you, of the Spamberg together talk. Actually, mentioned this in the trace arc about Spanberg signing the assault weapon ban. The Assistant Attorney General Dylan posts on X, see you in court. Imagine having an Assistant Attorney General in your Government saying we’re going to fight to defend your rights. When was that ever in any administration? Evan Nappen 39:41 Take on the state that’s stomping on Second Amendment rights. But, Teddy, you mentioned the black pillars. Just so our listeners know, what does that term mean? The black pillars. It’s not about race at all. What does that term mean? Teddy Nappen 39:56 They’re the horseshoe right. They’re the ones arguing that Donald Trump hasn’t done enough. He hasn’t met any of his promises. And look, no one is perfect. No one can. He is not a king. He can’t just snap his fingers and say, all right, we’re going to send in all the National Guard and point the guns at all the governors and force them to sign bills recognizing the Second Amendment. Like that’s not how that works. It’s about fighting in the system. Going after these policies state by state through the courts, because believe me, they’ve had all their politically appointed judges. I mean, they just did an Executive Order. He did an Executive Order stopping the massive funding to the H1b allowing them to get houses. A judge stopped that through a judge blocking, blocking. Page – 13 – of 14 Evan Nappen 40:49 The activist judges are always causing him problems, and he has to go to higher levels to overturn. We see it every time. They are the appointees, normally from the prior administrations, and this is where Trump’s breaking the mold of the old government ways. And these judges can’t believe that somebody would actually have the balls to do that, and yet he does. Hey Teddy, I want to mention about this week’s GOFU. It’s very important. As you know, GOFUs are Gun Owner Fuck Ups, and we want to make sure that our listeners learn these expensive lessons for free that others have learned. I’m going to have you tell us what you think is a good GOFU for this week for us to discuss. Teddy Nappen 41:48 So, this is something that I’ve been seeing with all the primaries coming up. I always like to imagine all the Democrat candidates just get handed the talking points, like it’s a sheet, like, okay. What gun control thing are we pushing for? For some reason, they’ve all dragged out the “safe storage” as the next big dog whistle of an issue that they’re trying to make relevant. Safe storage, we need to push for it. It was Tallarico, you know, the vegan. Whatever. This guy is are moron, but he pushes for “safe storage” laws requiring safe storage of firearms to keep everyone safe. Evan Nappen 42:30 Now, under Heller, you’re not required to lock up your safety. Heller addressed that in the original decision, but New Jersey does have a law that says you cannot allow a minor to access a loaded firearm. So, when it comes to minors accessing your guns, New Jersey also makes transfer laws, so that you can’t transfer temporarily a firearm, even your spouse or family member, unless you’re at the range or while hunting. There are issues with transfers, and there are issues that have to do with storage. But what they’re looking to do here is create what is mandatory storage requirements, so that, you know, while someone’s breaking into your home, you just got to ask the hot home invader, you know, that’s doing a hot robbery. Just give me a second, so I can get my gun out of the safe, okay? I’ll be right with you while they’re going to rape and kill your family. So, this is a problem. Evan Nappen 43:42 But the GOFU component, particularly in New Jersey, is making sure that you don’t have unauthorized parties access your firearm. You never let a minor access a loaded firearm unless it’s where you’re within an exemption. Where they’re under your direct supervision, but you know, just leaving it at home unlocked, where a minor can access it, you’ve got criminal potential problems there. And then on storage of your firearm, under the Carry Killer law, you’ve got to make sure that if you’re going to use that exemption, that your gun is unloaded and locked. You know, secured in that manner. Otherwise, you can get charged for improper storage of your firearm in violation of the Carry Killer law and sensitive places. Evan Nappen 44:43 These are the areas where storage in New Jersey takes on a legal component, where you can end up with a GOFU. But what you’re talking about is also very important, because it’s another foot in the door by the antis to try to abuse the storage laws to disenfranchise and take away gun rights. New Jersey has done that to a certain degree here in the Carry Killer law, and some of the other laws that they put forward about having to secure firearms. It’s designed to create disenfranchisement of Second Page – 14 – of 14 Amendment rights, arrests, and even at minimum taking away gun licenses over the use of these rules that they again put forward in the name of public safety and do it even contrary at times to the decision in Heller. Evan Nappen 45:48 Hey, this is Evan Nappen and Teddy Nappen, reminding you that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens. Speaker 2 45:59 Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state. Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S5 E294_Transcript About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.Known as “America's Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it's no wonder he's become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets. Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It's Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News. As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists. He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America. Email Evan Your Comments and Questions  talkback@gun.lawyer Join Evan's InnerCircleHere's your chance to join an elite group of the Savviest gun and knife owners in America.  Membership is totally FREE and Strictly CONFIDENTIAL.  Just enter your email to start receiving insider news, tips, and other valuable membership benefits.   Email (required) *First Name *Select list(s) to subscribe toInnerCircle Membership Yes, I would like to receive emails from Gun Lawyer Podcast. (You can unsubscribe anytime)Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank.var ajaxurl = "https://gun.lawyer/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";

Ich spreche mit der Journalistin Nora Beyer über Frauen in Spielen, weibliche Perspektiven sowie die Care-Ethik, der sie in ihrer Doktorarbeit nachspürt. Die Mutter von zwei Kindern war u.a. Chefredakteurin beim Spielemagazin GAIN und hat in den letzten Jahren zahlreiche Artikel über Games geschrieben, u.a. für den Tagesspiegel, GameStar, der Freitag, das International Games Magazine oder in der GEE. Wir sprechen u.a. über ihre dort veröffentlichten Essays über Indiana Jones und der Große Kreis, wo sie auf das Netzwerk der Frauen im Hintergrund aufmerksam macht, sowie über Mütter als Monster, wenn Zerrbilder von Frauen dargestellt werden. Außerdem geht es natürlich um ihre Lieblingsspiele.

Gee responds to breaking news on SeaTac & listener texts on social security // GUEST: Angela Rye // More with Angela Rye

How did the vision for The Center for Black Excellence and Culture find its shape? Dr. Gee talks to Jim Bower about how their collaboration helped shape the vision for what was valuable for the Black community in Madison. Jim's role was to continually clarify Dr. Gee's vision and find a way to make it a reality. He saw Dr. Gee as a social innovator, who had something important he wanted to change in society that needed to have a track for the project to move forward on.  Dr. Gee explains how the cross-cultural partnerships involved coalesced around the vision despite issues that the community and country were facing. The project is a rare example of a team of people unified around the vision that they invested so much of their skills and heart in. alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group

12pm - URSULA'S TOP STORIES: Just like that. . . The cameras are on // New tiny home village opens // Transit fares in Seattle are optional? // Lakeside senior donates winnings // Scott Pelley speaks out // WE NEED TO TALK. . . Gee's fun facts about the World Cup

URSULA'S TOP STORIES: Mayor Wilson vs. the public // Seattle paying out millions for officers claiming harassment at SPD // Russell Wilson's retirement video // Thousands of locals are getting a free front row seat to the FIFA World Cup // Gee is tuning into the new Michael Jackson movie

Sintonía: "Mack The Knife" - Kenny Dorham1.- Lotus Blossom2.- I Had The Craziest Dream3.- Old Folks4.- Blue FridayExtraídas del álbum "Quiet Kenny" (New Jazz, 1960/Concord Music, 2006) del trompetista Kenny Dorham5.- Blues for the Blues6.- Blues for Piney Brown7.- Blues for Bill Basie8.- Alone TogetherExtraídas del álbum "Gee, Baby Ain´t I Good To You" (Verve,1957) del trompetista Harry Edison y el saxofonista Ben WebsterEscuchar audio

Hear about the long term relationship with Hiebing for marketing services for The Center for Black Excellence and Culture with Dave Floran, CEO, and Dana Arnold, Chief Growth Officer. Dr. Gee discusses how Hiebing helped articulate the story of The Center and share this visionary cultural space with the community. The team partnered in bringing the language and image of The Center to clarity and the public. alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group

I'm excited to work with Microsoft once again as the presenting sponsors of the AI Engineer World's Fair! We'll streaming live from MS Build today for a special crossover pod with our friends at No Priors and the one and only Satya Nadella. However we did not hold back with this interview - we asked all the burning questions about uptime and Copilot that we know you have in your minds. Lets go!For almost two decades, GitHub has been the home of software, where both open source and closed flow, through commits, pull requests, reviews, actions, etc.This ecosystem flourished as open-source maintainers and contributors would continue shipping code for the benefit of the community. However as coding agents began to ship mass quantities of code - growing 1400% in 2026, it marked a new era that was both extremely exciting and challenging for GitHub.While these agents help more people ship more projects, they also significantly increase the floor of how much code is shipped, how often it is shipped, how many people commit code, and basically orders of magnitude multiples in every dimension of GitHub infrastructure:Now GitHub inevitably experiences more pressure on their infrastructure which was originally designed around human developers moving at human speed. This has resulted in a very publicly notable uptime story:So it begs the question of whether current systems around code can absorb what AI produces. Can CI/CD keep up when every idea becomes a build? Can open source maintainers survive floods of AI-generated slop contributions? Can GitHub preserve the human social contract of software while becoming the operating layer for agents?Which brings us to the perfect person to answer these questions: GitHub COO Kyle Daigle. In this episode, he joins swyx to unpack what happens when AI doesn't just autocomplete code, but starts changing how companies operate, how open source works, how pull requests get reviewed, and how GitHub itself has to scale. We go deep on GitHub's internal AI workflows: micro-skills, WorkIQ, MCP, Slack, Teams, email, Copilot workflows, the new Copilot desktop app, CLI, cloud agents, and how Kyle uses agents to look backwards across company context before deciding what to do next. Kyle also reflects on GitHub's history building webhooks, APIs, Actions, npm, Dependabot, and Semmle, why the AI era is breaking GitHub in new ways, how Actions became a general-purpose compute layer, and what Copilot becomes after code completion.Full Video PodWe discuss:* Kyle's expanded role across GitHub* How AI got Kyle coding again after years in leadership* Why GitHub rolls out AI through existing workflows instead of forcing new tools* WorkIQ, MCP, Slack, Teams, email, and GitHub as company context* Why massive “mega-skills” are giving way to small, atomic micro-skills* How AI changes summarization, communications, marketing, and analyst work* Why former developers in leadership may have a unique advantage in the AI era* Kyle's “15 agents on Saturday” workflow* How Kyle built an AI-generated executive presentation for CRO/CFO teams* Why AI changes the chief of staff role without removing the human work* GitHub Actions, webhooks, arbitrary code execution, and secure agent compute* The npm acquisition, supply-chain security, 2FA, and token invalidation* Slop forks, vendoring, and whether AI agents change dependency management* What pull requests become when most PRs come from agents* Prompt requests, vouching, AI review, and trust in open source* What counts as a “developer” when AI lowers the barrier to building* GitHub Spark, low-code, and why GitHub refuses to hide the code* 14x commit growth, Actions load, databases, monorepos, and availability* Copilot's evolution from completion to CLI, desktop app, cloud agents, and SDK* Context, memory, rules, and making GitHub “act like Kyle wants it to act”* Ambient AI, OpenClaw, enterprise security, and the new operating system for agents* What swyx should ask Satya Nadella about Microsoft's AI futureKyle Daigle* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyledaigle* X: https://x.com/kdaigleTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:03:36 Why AI Got Kyle Coding Again00:07:04 Running GitHub with AI: WorkIQ, MCP, Slack, Teams, and Skills00:15:39 The Golden Age for Former Developers in Leadership00:17:31 15 Agents on Saturday and AI-Generated Executive Work00:20:20 How AI Changes the Chief of Staff Role00:21:45 GitHub's History: Actions, npm, Webhooks, and Open Source00:28:45 Slop Forks, Vendoring, and AI Dependency Management00:33:57 Pull Requests, Prompt Requests, and Trust in Agent-Generated Code00:41:21 GitHub Stars, 200M+ Developers, and the New AI Builder Wave00:45:15 GitHub Spark, Low-Code, and Why GitHub Still Shows the Code00:47:38 GitHub's Hardest Era: 14x Growth, Reliability, and Scale00:59:21 Actions as the Compute Layer for CI/CD and Automation01:02:04 The State and Future of GitHub Copilot01:08:24 Ambient AI, Background Agents, and the Future of the SDLC01:13:09 OpenClaw, Enterprise Security, and the New OS for Agents01:18:03 Build Announcements, WorkIQ, FoundryIQ, and Microsoft Context01:21:41 What Should swyx Ask Satya?TranscriptIntroduction: Kyle Daigle's Expanded Role at GitHub and MicrosoftSwyx [00:00:00]: We're here with Kyle Daigle, COO of GitHub. Welcome.Kyle [00:00:07]: Hey, thanks for having me.Swyx [00:00:08]: You're not just CEO of GitHub. People know you as that. You have a new role.Kyle [00:00:11]: So I have an expanded role now. I've been working at GitHub for thirteen years and doing all things developer. Joined as a developer myself. And now, I'm also responsible as the CMO of Developer for Microsoft. And so all the kind of learnings and passion for developers and how we work with them and how we communicate and how we bring our products to market, we're also bringing that expertise to the broader Microsoft ecosystem and helping every developer that uses a Microsoft product or would like to have a sort of similar experience that they've had with GitHub over the years. So it's a different role in some ways, but it's also just building on the experience that I've had at GitHub of just sort of tell the truth, be authentic, show people how to use it and then let the products speak for themselves. Now just doing that with, all of Microsoft.Swyx [00:01:09]: We'll be releasing this in conjunction with Build. You got lots of stuff planned, and we can sort of touch on that whenever it's appropriate. I think one of the interesting things is I rarely meet a COO who's also a CMO. I think you're a very outward facing and you're very confident publicly. That's rare. Do you actually view yourself as COO? What's What is your thing?From GitHub Developer to COO/CMO: Building the Platform and Operating GitHubKyle [00:01:33]: I think for me, it's been funny. The titles have always been, a— have always felt a little strange to me. I joined GitHub as a developer? I wrote so much of theSwyx [00:01:46]: Let's bring that up. You wrote the back ends?Kyle [00:01:48]: I was going through, I was going through, some old photos, when folks were talking about how things were being built or how there was a build GitHub. I built, webhooks and worked with teams building the API, built the platform layer. Anything that integrated with GitHub, up until really twenty eighteen, I built or ran the engineering teams. And that's kind of where my the beginning of my passion always was helping people build things, deliver them to, their customers. And so being a developer, building for developers was always super unique. In a— I think as my role expanded, it became my ability to talk to not just developers, but also enterprise customers or business leaders and have this translation layer. And then through all those years, GitHub has always operated pretty uniquely. Post-pandemic, working remotely was not as novel as it was when GitHub started in two thousand and eight. But all that expertise of running remote teams, doing it well, became this sort of bigger role, ultimately turning into the COO role of how do we operate GitHub in the way that GitHub's always operated after the Microsoft acquisition. And kind of so on from there. So like for me, I think the— I've, I still code. I love coding but the problem has always been, people. It's a much harder problem to both support our own employees, a harder problem to communicate to developers and enterprise buyers what we're building why it matters, ‘cause those are two very different messages. And so getting to work in the mix of COO, CMO, also just being a dev, I think is what's kept me at GitHub for so long.AI Workflows for Leadership: Commits, Retrospectives, and ContextSwyx [00:03:40]: Apparently, you have— your commits have gone up. What's this? What's going on?Kyle [00:03:45]: Rui's called me out pretty aggressively. So I think— as you can imagine, right, you can see my normal era of being a dev In the twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen era, and then moving into management, and then ultimately the COO role. I think what you see there is me, really getting back to coding thanks to AI. I— similar to, attaching problems between how to market and how to operate a business and how to code, I find, building agents and workflows that are connecting very disparate problems to be what's driving this. So that's, some of it's writing software. A lot of it is, connecting a ton of a different data sources to, help me out. But that is completely me really diving in on the AI side in trying out our tools, trying out everyone's tools, But building for me, building for the non-technical leader, though I'm technical and how we're, able to use these tools more than just the simple, call and response that I think a lot of the non-technical, your employers, you have to get— you have to use AI, and so everyone uses, ChatGPT or Copilot or Claude or whatever. To really get into, how is this going to help me out, it— I find that it's not the I need to write a blog post, I need to those simple examples. Helping people find the workflows of, “Okay, I need you to go through all the PRs today. I need you to go through everything that we've posted online. I need you to go through what we did the last three months. Go through all of my Obsidian notes for any mentions of this then go through my transcripts at work.” We use, Teams, so, using WorkIQ, go call that MCP server, grab all the transcripts, go through all the Slack, and then build me out the plan of, what this week's messaging actually was. That's something that was, impossible because for me, I find AI in a what most of this launch here is actually, less building forward. It's actually, a recursive loop backwards. I'm always looking at what had happened first. Go back through the week and tell me what we did, what worked, what didn't work? And then tell me in the next three or four days-What would you tweak based on this sort of like looking backwards and then looking ahead a little bit? I find that to be so much more valuable, especially for like non-technical, because that retrospection is actually LLMs are very good at that. Like finding all the patterns, pulling them out, and then applying that retrospection to just a couple of days or just like a short period of time. Is all a bunch of apps that I've built and launched a bunch of, internal tools. I use the new, GitHub Copilot app, the desktop app with workflows. Every time I crack open my laptop, it's running workflows for me. It's just a ton of different stuff and of course, it all ends up on, it all ends up on GitHub.Swyx [00:06:47]: Of course. That's where, that's where, stuff is hosted. Man, there's so much to ask you. I was going to leave the how do you run a company with AI thing at the end. I have to ask one— double click one thing. You said, you are looking back at the week. You're, you're understanding what happens. When you say we That's three thousand people. How?Rolling Out AI Internally: Skills, CLIs, and Company ContextKyle [00:07:09]: I think when we started rolling out AI internally beyond engineering, right? One of the things that I was really, passionate about is like we have to do this in a way where no one has to change how they work. I don't want to have to teach you a tool. I don't want to have to teach you something new. And so for us, we tried out a few tools. Most of them don't work because I got to get you on board? I got to teach you how to use it. What we've actually ended up doing is we've built like a set of skills internally. We have we each have our set of skills, and we've just been distributing even to the non-technical folks, the CLI. And then effectively, we're just giving it access to like read about everything that we're writing. So that's for us, that's usually GitHub, Teams, Email, and Slack. So Teams for, video chat, generally speaking.Swyx [00:08:03]: Teams and Slack?Kyle [00:08:04]: so we use Teams for video communication, but we don't use it for chat. W-we— GitHub for a long history, right? We're alwaysSwyx [00:08:13]: Also SlackKyle [00:08:14]: Talking about ChatOps and like everything is built into Slack. Like every command, every flow.Swyx [00:08:18]: So even though you have been acquired for I don't know, eight years nowKyle [00:08:22]: we stillSwyx [00:08:23]: You still use Slack?Kyle [00:08:23]: it's a purpose-built tool for us, and I think the reality is that moving off of it would be so bluntly expensive? Simply because all the tooling is, baked in with that paradigm. And they both have their pros and cons but they don't work the same way at all. We still use a bunch of different tools Because it's the purpose-built tools that We need. And thenSwyx [00:08:47]: Well, the same doesn't go for the rest of Microsoft, presumably.Kyle [00:08:50]: like the like various teams like operateSwyx [00:08:53]: They make their own decisionsKyle [00:08:54]: Various ways. I think it just matters what you're trying to what you're trying to do. But we do we do work across kind of every tool that we use, and then by giving everyone access to all of that context and the new WorkIQ MCP server, which is quite cool if you do live in the M365 like world. I can ask it all these backwards-facing questions, and it's incredibly important for our teams that are working remotely. There's a lot of stuff you miss when you're not in an office, and we are spread out all over the world. So most of that is looking back. And then we post, we post either auto-automatically into GitHub issues or discussions, these sorts of like findings or like our industry reports. Like what's happening this morning, today, yesterday. A little automation gets run. We'll use the app. We might use GitHub Actions like with, our agentic workflows just to go do that run, and then we push it into GitHub, and w-we keep having a conversation. So usually for us, it's about that sort of like looking back, looking forward on the non-technical side. And then of course for a lot of those folks, it's also building an app, pushing it to GitHub pages or pushing it somewhere to host it et cetera. But it's just like enabling everyone with that power of it's going to take me a week to figure this out. Instead, we're going “Okay I built a skill. Let's put it into a repo. We'll all share that skill together, and then we'll use the CLI or now the app-” “just to run it.”Micro Skills vs. Mega Skills: How GitHub Uses AI at WorkSwyx [00:10:26]: All right. I think, I think we're going straight into like the team management and productivity thing. I think a lot of people are getting various levels of LLM psychosis. How do you manage the bloat of skills? Like everyone Has their thing, and they're Like trying to promote it to the rest of their peers in their org, right? And obviously, whoever becomes a skill influencer internally becomes like an AI leader, right? Of sorts. I assume you have those.Kyle [00:10:50]: like I think we haveSwyx [00:10:52]: And I assume it's a mess a Yeah.Kyle [00:10:54]: there's like I— like I think the reality is there's two pieces. Like first is I think that we're ending the era of these like massive, beautiful, perfect skills that are just like not any of those things. ‘cause for a while, right every tweet every day is like go download the skills, the perfectly managed thing to do this entire workflow. And I think that like what we've found and what— I was just with my team, this week, and we were talking about the skill side, and we're really talking about these like incredibly micro skills that are just doing one thing for us very well Versus a skill that's going to do I said, that full report. That doesn't really exist on our side anymore. It's usually how do— like a single skill that's going to identify the most important marketing information given any MCP server. Like this is the most important thing. Less about stitch a bunch of tools together and have it produce this mega output because then weeks go by, months go by, things change, and you want to tweakSwyx [00:11:58]: It's brittleKyle [00:11:58]: Your mega skill and you're screwed? You can't do that. And so now we're really just talking about the Legos we're using and just letting the instruction book be something we're all putting together. Whereas I think a lot of AI skills for a while have been that mega instruction book style.Swyx [00:12:15]: I've, thought a lot about Postel's law. I don't know if that's a term that is, means things to folks. It's the idea that you should be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you output, right? And I think that's like a good framing principle for skills. This is my skills, obviously on GitHub. I feel like everyone should have like how like some repos In GitHub are special repos? I feel like we should sort of reify the slash skills and everyone like give it some kind of special presentation. Anyway, so, yeah, this is one of those like download Download anything, transcribe anything, and then you can string together the atomic skills that do one thing well Into like some kind of orchestration skill that calls other skills. I assume, does that match?Kyle [00:12:56]: I like I think so. I think that theSwyx [00:13:00]: Summarize anything.Kyle [00:13:01]: Like I think the- For me, summarizing something for I do communications and PR and analyst relations and marketing and customer activities, and so my summarize everything is very different for each one of those like Contexts. What ‘Cause if I'm summarizing something for an analyst, that's a very different thing than, probably how I'm going to summarize something for like a customer meeting or an engagement. So that's I think like the difference when we're talking about the like the tools I might use on Saturday or the skills I might use on a Saturday when it's just for Kyle. Yeah, those are kind of like they have an atomic actual tool underneath or maybe skill, and then Kyle cares about X. But I think when we're talking about work and enabling the the marketers, communicators there, it's the atomic, this is what good summarization is, and then this is what I care about as for marketing for communications For whatever. And that I think is like the interesting matrix problem when we go from like a developer set of concerns to all kinds of different professions, is that what that word means to me is different than it means to you is different than it means to the analyst or the salesperson, and that's where I think the matrix mess is that we're starting to like still starting to find. It's about these mega skills but they're all just slight permutations, but those permutations are really important. It's the difference between someone reading this and going “Did AI make this?” what Or “This makes total sense, and I would expect this when I'm giving a briefing to Gartner,” or like whatever else.Swyx [00:14:37]: I think the beauty of it maybe is that you don't have to be that careful about what goes in there. It doesn't have to exactly fit as long as it like roughly is contained in there. I used to complain about plugin hell, basically. Like when you have a framework and then you have a hundred things that you need to integrate, everyone does like the GitHub used to be bloated full of these things. And now we don't need them anymore ‘cause now you just use skills.Former Developers in Leadership: AI as a Creation MultiplierKyle [00:15:00]: And like I think the most magical thing is the just that like I can just also crack it open. Like Like yes, I could go like change the how the plugin is coded, or like I could go do that now with AI, but I think there's just something more magical about getting a response back and being “That's not right,” and then you just crack the skill open, you just type English words and it's different. That building block is just, I think very unique. Once I get everyone to kind of understand how to best how to best make those changes to get the most power out of them.Swyx [00:15:36]: Is there a— you have a your peer group that Of people like you. Is there a common framing for Something I'm feeling is, which is true, is that is this a golden age for former developers who are now in leadership? Because you can wield the tools, you would know the right words, you're maybe not too close to the details. Doesn't matter. But like you're more effective than someone who doesn't come from that background.Kyle [00:15:59]: I think that like the secret has always been your ability to identify patterns and solve problems, and I think that for folks that like myself that don't code day to day anymore, that has made me successful as a developer, made me successful as a COO and now CMO. And so now that I have access to get and write code, I'm now applying that sort of like pattern finding and problem solving, and I know enough still about how to then go and say, “Oh, I want to make an app, but I don't want to break into jail or create something that's not going to be able to work or to be deployed scale or whatever.” that ability to apply all that additional business knowledge and still code I think is what makes that so interesting to me. Slightly different than I think some of the other like technical leaders that became business leaders and now are going back to their apps and updating them. Good for them? But I think the more, much more interesting thing is, well, now I have this whole new set of expertise over ten plus years. Why not take that and use that as a developer with these AI tools? So I definitely think that makes me more powerful, but I think that's true for like every dev as well. Most of the dev friends I still have also have some other underlying skill and passion. There's really talented, very kind of linear computer science software devs, absolutely. I just find that the folks that came from a different career, went to school for something else, went off and did this random thing, and then became a software dev, or were a dev, did a random thing, came back. Learning that extra set of information, learning those extra skills, and now having the power of an AI where I can crank up fifteen agents on Saturday while my kids are doing lacrosse, That's like really powerful. And I think it gets me back to that feeling of like creation, and it's very hard to replicate that in most other senses? That first time you build an app and you click it and you show someone that's magical. And so being able to do that not just in code, but across all kinds of different assets that's, that's huge. We were doing we're doing our every year we do our revenue planning. We talk about okay, what is it going to look like for next year? And of course as you imagine, there's, slideshows everywhere talking about what are we going to talk about, what's the narrative, et cetera. And so as you said I'm “Okay, well, I could probably just like build something to build this and then that way I don't have to go build the whole spreadsheet or I have to pass it to my team.” So we went through this process, and I got all the information and used the skills I mentioned. I built like a little app just to make it so I could look at some of the information in a SQLite database, more easily. And I ultimately built this entire presentation without touching any of it and I was “Okay, I'm just going to present this to our CRO, the CFO, their teams,” without mentioning I'd built it with AI. I like built a skill to make it look very much not AI driven. Just not pretty.AI-Generated Presentations, Human Taste, and the Changing Chief of Staff RoleSwyx [00:19:03]: Like a design. Yeah.Kyle [00:19:03]: Not pretty. But just like very clearly not AI. Kind of like don't do anything interesting.Swyx [00:19:08]: That's, yeah, that is valuable.Kyle [00:19:08]: Just go Exactly. We did the whole thing through. It used my notes from Obsidian, it used all the context I mentioned before, the plans, and Never came up once that it was AI generated.Swyx [00:19:20]: It didn't matter.Kyle [00:19:20]: Never once. D It didn't matter. And so now I takeSwyx [00:19:23]: This is a toolKyle [00:19:23]: I can take that tool and go, “Look, I don't want you to go build slideshows.” They're just helping us share information with each other. If this thing can do it With a little bit of crafting from you and then we can look at it together, awesome. There's no value in all that extra work. I think that the ability to, make it look humanly bad and and build a little app to, manipulate the data I think is part of, that upside for devs that are now in leadership roles. Because, the thing that I feel like I said before, this that's all a people, that's all a people problem. I know if you've used a coworker or not to build a slide deck, unless you spent a bunch of time to not do it.Swyx [00:20:07]: I know, but like it was so, I think there's a certain charm to just being blatantly AI. ‘Cause I think that you're well, you're just honest about There may be mistakes here that I cannot vouch for. So how much value is there? But anyway I think, actually the real question I want to ask is, there's a— You were a chief of staff To Thomas. And in the pre-AI world, the that job would've been a chief of staff job of like Can you prep me these slides and all that? And now you do it yourself.Kyle [00:20:35]: I still, I still have a chief of staff. Because, the difference is it's sort of the discussion every time we have some sort of technology evolution is it's not that the jobs the roles don't all go away, they just change? And so yeah, I don't have someone spending all their time building out slides for me and presentations ‘cause I don't need that anymore. But now I need that person that is able to go and find all the different connections between humans in those discussions to help me find out, okay, I should be meeting with this group and this team, and they have an opportunity, and I'm going to be in San Francisco today, I'm going to be in Seattle tomorrow. Those sorts of human connection aspects are still incredibly valuable and has always been a big part of that chief of staff role. But now just like chiefs of staff are not opening up, letters to process, they're doing emails. What It's the same thing. And now they're, they're not building out as many of these presentations because they have the the ability to have a AI take it on for, and share that with me and great. Let's keep moving ‘cause it's allowing us to go faster and make better decisions more quickly.Swyx [00:21:45]: Awesome. Well, so we can dive into more sort of, Productivity insights as you go. I did want to do a little bit of a brief history of colleague and hub. Because, we started here. And then you also involved the NPM acquisition. I did, I do want to touch upon that. And then more recently, I just want to bring up to present day where we're having uptime issues Which transparently we've already Addressed publicly, but we'll, we'll discuss in the pod. Did I miss anything? Like what, any other major highlights? Obviously, it's, it's a lot of years to cover.A Brief History of GitHub: Webhooks, Actions, Acquisitions, and Platform EvolutionKyle [00:22:15]: No the I think one of one highlight was right before the acquisition closed in twenty eighteen, I got to launch the first version of ActionsSwyx [00:22:27]: OhKyle [00:22:27]: At GitHub Universe. So it was OSwyx [00:22:29]: They're that young?Kyle [00:22:30]: It was October of twenty eighteen, I think. Yeah. Yeah.Swyx [00:22:33]: Gee, Jesus.Kyle [00:22:34]: I got to I was the engineering leader on that project and got to launch that. And then, yeah, we did acquisitions of NPM you said, Semmle, Dependabot Pul Panda a whole bunch of things. That was a bigSwyx [00:22:47]: Pul Panda.Kyle [00:22:48]: Abi is doing well.Swyx [00:22:51]: DX. Holy crap.Kyle [00:22:52]: Did well on DX. I and like that was a that was the big shift, after the acquisition. I had to join the sort of business side.Swyx [00:23:00]: So I need to hit you on some of these things ‘cause you were there. Right? And how often do I get to talk to someone who was there? But yeah, Actions. Is that the number one source of security issues on GitHub?Kyle [00:23:11]: Oh, sh I think that the number one source of, security issues is probably like all, the literal code in everyone's like underlying repositories. I would say back further than that is, if you remember I had to show in this graph was this is, I'm, didn't say this before, this is ultimately webhooks.Swyx [00:23:30]: You yeah.Kyle [00:23:31]: Like circa whatever it was.Swyx [00:23:32]: It says Hookshot in there.Kyle [00:23:32]: I forget. Yeah. Yeah, Hookshot's in there. And so like back then, it says GitHub Services. Do you see, it says Hookshot FE for front end, and then it says GitHub Services. GitHub Services back in the old days, right? You we had a repository that was Ruby code, and you could write any Ruby code in there, and then we would execute that On your behalf As a service, and then that way if an if you were trying to integrate with something, it didn't we would run it for you.Swyx [00:23:57]: And of course no containers ‘causeKyle [00:23:58]: No, ‘cause it wasSwyx [00:23:59]: Well, no containersKyle [00:24:00]: Twenty fourteen. And so there was some isolation obviously, but it was mostly the separations on the server level. That's like an example as long as the very old version of Pages, which ran on its own containerization infrastructure, not on Actions.Swyx [00:24:15]: Which like all-time great product.Kyle [00:24:16]: Pages powers the internet at this point to some degree. Those were places where like clearly there were no like issues like to my knowledge. But it was those things where I'm looking at and going “Okay, well we can't be running arbitrary Ruby code,” like on everyone's behalf. Then containerizing all of that up intoUh into actions now where yeah the containerization, is r-really good. The pinning most folks aren't pinning it the like to a particularSwyx [00:24:48]: ImagesKyle [00:24:48]: Sha, et cetera like their workflows, and so that's a big that's a big place Of pain for folks if they're just doing similar to any dependency management, just V1 or newest or latest, I think. But, that journey from that day to “Okay, we're just going to run all this arbitrary code, and, it'll basically be okay,” to now, no, we have, really good containerization. We have a new, underlying, ag-agent, containerization, service. It's like we're using it under the hood. It's through Azure. They recently announced it. The Azure, Dev Compute, but it's, very fast, very fast compute to be able to, spin up your own cloud agents, or whatnot. We're using it under the hood for some parts of the new,Swyx [00:25:36]: Microsoft Dev Box?Kyle [00:25:37]: No. Dev Compute, yeah.Swyx [00:25:41]: Hmm. Not finding it just yet.Kyle [00:25:44]: Oh, it's, it's in there somewhere.Swyx [00:25:46]: All right. Well, we'll cut that out.Kyle [00:25:47]: Sorry. But with, Dev Compute, you can, run, really fast, spin up really, small VMs really quickly, so you're doing a tool callSwyx [00:25:58]: Same conceptKyle [00:25:58]: Just do it containerize exact-exactly. So we're using that so definitely moving that direction to protect us from every every piece of code that we're ultimately running.Swyx [00:26:07]: look, that grows into the full SDLC? Code hosting was just the start and and then it's grown beyond that. Let's talk about NPM may-maybe ‘cause I think that's also, a very major point in the industry. I do think, it was looking for a home. It was, kind of struggling as a business, right? I don't know, I don't know how you would characterize that whole acquisition and how itNPM, Package Security, and Keeping the Internet RunningKyle [00:26:33]: like when we were talking to the team, I think the big thing for the both of us was to find a way to keep NPM, which was basically powering the internet then and way more so now to some degree running. Keep it going keep continuing to scale. It was having scaling problems, if I recall, back at that time. They were doing some rewrites. ItSwyx [00:27:00]: that's cute compared to now.Kyle [00:27:01]: Well, that's the thing is like when I'm talking to folks now, there's there's so many more underlying uses of NPM than there were back when we had them join in with GitHub. But that was ultimately the goal. It was really okay, we used to have pages. We have, the world's code. Let's make sure that we can keep NPM running well for the world. And we put a bunch of time and investment into fixing some of the underlying backend, changes, some of which we talked about some of the manifest work, et cetera. And then now, really trying to bring the the security posture of NPM up to speed. But, it is a unique challenge in that every move that we make to make it more secure will break a lot of people. And security is paramount. And also, we take it very seriously. We're, the any time that we have a problem with GitHub or we make a change that makes us more secure but hurts, there's, a snow day for developers or a really bad fire that they have to go put out. And so we've, have changed the 2FA policies. We've changed the way the tokens work. When we find tokens that have been exposed or potentially, exposed, we invalidate them, andSwyx [00:28:22]: I love that feature in GitHub. Yeah, it's greatKyle [00:28:23]: That creates issues, but, the but that's the thing is we're trying to push the community, forward without necessarily, doing something that is going to break the contract that's been for 15 years or close to it or some amount of years on NPM.Slop Forks, Vendoring, and the Future of Open Source Supply ChainsSwyx [00:28:43]: I think the— So now we're talking about, open source and publishing. And I think there's something here with what people are calling slop forks, which, I think Malta from Vercel is doing. And, part of me thinks, well, the way to get past any vulnerabilities, we just, let's just get rid of the concept of NPM. And we only publish source code. And anytime you want to import it you have your coding agent look at it and then adapt whatever subset you're going to use into your vendor it. But, the AI vendor it. Is that realistic? I don't know. Is it— Will that solve all our security issues? I don't know.Kyle [00:29:24]: I don't think it'll solve I so Mitchell was just talking Mitchell Hashimoto Was just talking about this today, and I think that I-in some ways, it's all all things, old or new again? Yeah, absolutely vendoring everything. Like I do I do remember twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen.Swyx [00:29:42]: This is Yeah. Let's, we must return toKyle [00:29:43]: That's what is We were vendoring everything. We were having actual discussions around, or at least I remember we were “Should we take this full thing?” “Why is this so big? We only need this one file.” And so I do think there's something true there where having either taking only what you need or the dependencies just getting incredibly small over time, I think will help to some degree, but it's not going to solve the fundamental problem, I don't think, because the vulnerabilities in an agent looking at them, there's time and time again, there's a million different ways in which we can convince an agent that this thing is, secure or not and pull it in. Or we can do static code analysis or runtime testing to say whether the code works or not. That is, I think, the step that needs to continue to be, invested in. The question is just on, how much scope. Should it be this enormous project that I'm pulling down, or should it be this piece? Either most companies are running some amount of security checking on the on the packages that they're bringing in or vendoring. That I think won't change. That's like what advanced security does to some degree, Socket does some degree. Like everyone is doing a piece of that. How we each do that like especially when we're talking to enterprise customers, is just like very different. No there's no one wants one single way to do it. And I think that's always been GitHub's, unique position in the world. I talk a lot to maintainers, I talk a lot to folks about this. It's we're— we rarely start like a process and a practice and like push it onto the community. We usually wait for the sort of like RFC process socially or literally, everyone agreeing, and then we'll cement something in. Because otherwise we'reMaintainers, RFCs, Vouching, and the Social Layer of TrustSwyx [00:31:35]: That fits your role in the ecosystem, yeahKyle [00:31:36]: We're GitHub. Yeah, we don't want to shape the whole thing. We want it to be figured out. But like how do you balance that like sort of Role in the industry to keep everything as secure as is possible and make sure that you're you're not going to be compromised as a human, ‘cause that's usually how it all happens. And Not not create a process or lock us into a flow that you're not going to or like Mitchell's not going to or other open source projects aren't going to like. That's always been a tricky balance for us, and I think that's something that we haven't talked about enough is we're not going to be able to fix everything for everyone in a way that everyone is going to like. So tell, help us, tell us what is working. When Mitchell was talking about, the Upvote, the upSwyx [00:32:22]: I was going to bring up his thing. Yeah.Kyle [00:32:23]: I forget what it Yeah. When he's talking to us, I was chatting with him and talking to him about this and I put it on Twitter and we talked to, also over DM, was “We're going to keep working.” but I think the important thing is I do actually want to hear what isn't working for you. And as, be as specific and clear for your project as is possible. And to every piece of credit over the many years that we've known each other through the industry, he's always done that and I appreciate that ‘cause there are places that we need to fix up, and we hear from him, and we'll fix up just like we do all other kinds of maintainers. But that that process between making those types of improvements and being more secure and like creating, I forget what he calls it's not the proof process, not the claims process. Do what I'm talking about? He has that he his projects have a way for you to kind of like,Swyx [00:33:13]: VouchKyle [00:33:13]: Vouch. Thank you. Yeah. He has like the vouch system for saying, “Hey, you should accept my PRs.” That's beenSwyx [00:33:20]: I just built this into GitHub. I don't know.Kyle [00:33:22]: Well, see, but that's the thing is that you say that and like he and his community really likes this and then I'll go talk to other maintainers and other maintainers, globally, and they're “No, this doesn't work for me.” And that is the tension, but also the kind of beauty of GitHub, depending on which way you look at it is we want to help maintainers, so we create all these tools to let you have more control over how much you take in from AI and PRs. But you can also use this. What You can go use this project, and if it takes off and becomes the kind of mostly standard, then yeah, we probably wouldn't enforce it but we would add it in because that's the flow that we tend to do?Swyx [00:34:02]: I hear a lot of people don't know the history of the pull request. And like like that's how, that's something that GitHub standardized basically.Kyle [00:34:08]: Yeah. It was a very messy process Like beforehand, and now the we have the benefit of it being the process? And now we have to go and Figure out the next best process or what adaptations change, or what does a pull request look like when eighty percent of your PRs are just coming from your agents and not From other devs?Swyx [00:34:31]: Do you like the prompt request idea from Peter?Kyle [00:34:34]: like I think that for each like each idea I think has its merits. I'm not, I'm not avoiding saying anything good or bad, but I feel like I've seen a version of we have that we have entire Thomas' store. Take all the assets of what you've built and put that in. I think that's got great ideas. There's all these various permutations of the PR flow, but I think the reason why there's not a single answer is ultimately we're trying to codify trust. We're trying to say “Okay, if Sean reviews this I'm going to trust it because you're Sean or you're the senior dev or you're the whatever.” And right now, when we are working in a flow where an agent writes code and another agent reviews code and then Kyle goes and looks at it the trust is kind of diffuse. And most of the tools that we're talking about are talking more about verification flows. We have more assets to look at, so I can probably say whether this is a good PR or not. But that still doesn't solve, I think, the human problem of I'm looking at a PR and I want to know if I can trust it. And we're still, we still tend to use human signals for that? Mitchell approving it or Kyle approving it or whatever. And so I think that's, I think that's why most of these options haven't really solved it is because, it's a social problem ultimately. It's a it's a human problem to review it and agree. Or you fully trust the tool and you're imbuing that tool with full trust Which I think in some cases that absolutely exists.AI-Generated PRs, Trust, and the Waymo AnalogySwyx [00:36:08]: And so like in the same way that there will be a tipping point in society when we don't allow humans to drive anymore Because machines are measurably better than Than humans. I'm looking for that tipping point, right? Like Mythos is ridiculously expensive. Someday we'll have Mythos on a desktop. I don't know. Will, does that change the equation?Kyle [00:36:30]: I think it's more I took a Waymo here, and I was on my phone and not looking around at all. There are other, self-driving, vehicles that I would not trust while, staring at the road. And I think that trust is something that isSwyx [00:36:48]: Is this a Zoox thing? What is itKyle [00:36:50]: I think that is both. I think that is both. LikeSwyx [00:36:53]: There's Zoox in this robo taxi. That's it. It'sKyle [00:36:56]: Well, depending on what level Of self-driving. But, my point is sort of that I think part of that is I strongly believe that's, a mixture of verifiable proof. Like how many accidents, how much data, and so on, and the human aspect of how I feel when I'm in this car, what it tells me, et cetera. And so that's why I think some of the like Some of these some of our AI tools tend to, imbue me with more of that feeling of trust, even if the data says this is 100% accurate. I feel like it takes more time for us to go, “Should I trust this or not?” And that's in the soft sense of, startups with high agency, weekend projects, and open source. And then there's enterprises and regulated industries and everything else, and that is an even harder problem to go solve because even when it is fully verified, not only do you have to have trust from the humans on the team, you probably have to have trust from multinational,Swyx [00:37:55]: Oh my GodKyle [00:37:55]: Multi governments around the world and regulating agencies. And so that's where I feel like until we tip over to your point on the sort of like human EQ side of it. I feel okay this feels okay I've been proven enough. Then the ball will start to roll a lot faster, where we'll end up getting to the “Okay, we can trust this,” and feel good about it in the Most difficult of cases.Reputation, Sponsors, Stars, and Bot Activity on GitHubSwyx [00:38:18]: If human trust is the thing that matters, I feel like GitHub as the developer social network could maybe do more there. Like vouchers are one system But, we have star counts, and then we have Contributor rights, and that's it. And I feel like there should be more in that space. I don't know if there's any other design decisions there.Kyle [00:38:37]: I think that one of the places that we don't really expose right now in this sort of way is, some degree of like hard trust and support, which would like for me is like sponsors is a good example of that.Swyx [00:38:49]: Ah.Kyle [00:38:49]: It like costs you something. To prove that I believe in your project and I trust you To some degree or I want to support you at the very least.Swyx [00:38:56]: Solve payments for open source. Why not?Kyle [00:38:58]: I think that I think that like as we keep moving forward, right, there's more and more projects where I'm, adding more and more dollars into sponsors personally because I want to like support them, but I also like know of I've probably never met them in person, but, I know of enough of their work that I want to support them. I think the thing that I don't love about stars or commit counts or anything else is ultimately, even with all of the various, abuse and de-spamming and deduplication work that we do or anti-abuse work that we do, these are all, not active social signals. They're passive ones that are ultimately gamifiable. And you may trust me, but another open source maintainer may not. And on what heuristic should you be, trusting me? That I think, is kind of where some of our thinking is right now. What signal from me is most important to you? You— If you can define that potentially, honestly in an agentic workflow that's what we see some of these open source projects do, where you have GitHub actions, and then you have like an agentic workflow that's calling AI, and you're setting these rules. Like if Kyle has submitted and gotten accepted PRs across any given project and has a social handle tied to his account in GitHub, and that social account's older than a certain amount. Really complex measures that matter to you ‘cause most open source projects have that heuristic built into their heads, if not written down in the contributing guidelines. You could take that and then go apply that and then just say, “Oh, we're not going to accept this PR.” Building something that is, I think, malleable to everyone's needs, is a little bit better, rather than going “Hmm, this account's too young.” Because what happens? The attackers just go and go and create a multitude of accounts, and they wait Until it ages up. Needs to have a certain amount of stars. That's how star inflation happens. Need to have a certain amount of reposSwyx [00:40:46]: Oh my God. YeahKyle [00:40:47]: With PRs. They all just create repos and submit PRs to each other, and then they come in and do something nefarious. And so, it's hard. It's hard to find the measure. So I think we're, we're looking more at how can we provide you tools so you can kind of choose what's best for you. And of course, we'll give you some standards. But the trust vector, gets down to I don't know, some version of like human digital ID like everyone's been talking about. Like how do I prove that it's meSwyx [00:41:13]: Give me your eyeballsKyle [00:41:14]: On the internet. Give me your eyeballs. Exactly.Swyx [00:41:18]: The I got to keep moving on Topics, but obviously I can go all day on this stuff because, I've been involved in GitHub and open source My entire professional career. Stars. Very superficial. Everyone knows it. But I think time to one hundred thousand stars is the fastest I've ever seen. Like people just reached that in I don't know, months. And then like at the same time I don't trust it right? Like how many of these are real or bot or like whatever. I don't know how to ask this but like what can we do about it? LikeKyle [00:41:49]: JustSwyx [00:41:49]: Is stars broken? Is stars fine?Kyle [00:41:51]: I think that there's kind of two, there's like two pieces. Obviously we're constantly like trying to find ways in which like your users are producing spam, which would, I would include like be like only doing star gamification. When we find them, we pluck ‘em out and we,Swyx [00:42:08]: But it's like a Whac-A-MoleKyle [00:42:10]: It's a hundred percent like a Whac-A-MoleSwyx [00:42:11]: There's no wayKyle [00:42:11]: Now, powered by AI to be helpful. But I think more so what I'm seeing is, a lot of the like fastest time to X tends to be because we're now inviting so many more people into like software development on GitHub That like the zeitgeist is just swarming? And it'sSwyx [00:42:32]: It's not just developers anymoreKyle [00:42:33]: And it's not you and I. Like like however you want to say like what a developer is it's not just folks who have been coding for a very long time. It's folks that have maybe started coding or only joined in since the AI era. And nowSwyx [00:42:44]: what's the latest Octoverse number? I know eighty million was my lastRem- member that a number of developers on GitHubKyle [00:42:50]: Oh, we're over 200 million now.Swyx [00:42:53]: Okay. Well, so you see?Kyle [00:42:55]: Like over 200 million developers now.Swyx [00:42:56]: But it's not developers, right? It's, it's people with a GitHub account.What Counts as a Developer in the AI Era?Kyle [00:43:00]: So, so this is, this is the biggest debate that I would say, everyone loves to have at GitHub at this point. From my perspective, right, I think that there's, there's clearly a difference between, professional enterprise developer and then developers. But I think that I think that the idea that we should be I don't know, splitting hairs or segmenting developers in the early era of software development is, not worth our not worth the time. SoSwyx [00:43:29]: When you get into gatekeepingKyle [00:43:31]: 100%Swyx [00:43:31]: What is a developer?Kyle [00:43:31]: 100%. ‘Cause I wasn't a developer when I started writing code? I was going toSwyx [00:43:36]: Oh, no. I made— I cloned a thing, seven years before I learned to code. And then I and then I wrote about my learning to code journey, and people Just called me a fraud ‘cause I had a GitHub account. And I'm “Well, no, I just use GitHub, but I don't know-” “I didn't know what I was doing.”Kyle [00:43:49]: I I remember that. I remember those sets of posts, and like that's, that's b******t. So I fight very clearly on the line of, if you create code, if you have an idea and you create it into some way of, I'm, I'm going to run it and use the app right now, you may still use AI in that moment, but that's okay. At some point you're going to do the next thing. You're going to create a big— You're going to have to learn about this database. You're going to fix a bug, whatever. We're all on some same journey, and those people are also hearing about the great new agent skill package or a new CLI tool or a new whatever. And those projects are going up because you want to be a part of this moment, just like I wanted to be a part of the Ruby community when Ruby was popping off when I started becoming a developer, and now I can just click the star button. And so I think that yes, there's clearly some amount of like spamming and game gamification that we're working against, but I really think we're just seeing this whole new cohort of folks that are moving from technology to technology because they're not working on a 20-year-old software application. They're working on a side app that they built on the weekend for their friends or for their new idea or whatever. And that's how you see these enormous charts going up and to the right with With stars.Swyx [00:44:59]: I think something that's remarkable is the persistence or, that GitHub extends to those folks. Usually when I see platforms go into a new audience, they usually have to, have like a second platform with a different name that wraps the main platform. But somehow GitHub has been able to sort of persist and extend, and it's friendly and whatever? So it's, it's nice.Spark, Low-Code, and Always Showing the CodeKyle [00:45:19]: I that's partially why I think as we've tried to move into I don't know, more like low-code-y things. We so we started working on Spark as like a way to, build an app and run it. I think that the reality is that we anytime we try to, kind of put even a veneer on top of it without when we put a veneer on top of something, we still always show you the code. That's kind of like a tenant. We're never going to, hide the code from you ever, because whatSwyx [00:45:52]: Why would you?Kyle [00:45:52]: That's, yeah, that's the whole point? However, I think that what we learned with things like Spark is that really the value of Spark for most devs is, easy runtime. And you may have a runtime or a host that you're going to use for that or you just build something and run it but, the package of making that even more simple isn't really needed for folks that are trying to build software and not just trying to build, an app, which is, slightly different, a slightly different goal. So I want to get you in, I want to get you comfortable. I think the best thing for me as, someone that did not traditionally come into software dev way back, I want anyone to be able to breach that chasm and not be in the I don't know, I feel like we're, we're still in an era of, STEM. I've got a 12-year-old and an eight-year-old, and it's “We got to get ‘em into STEM,”? Over and over. And I like I do, I do the things that good parents do. I was “Oh, you want to do coding?” “Yes, I want to do coding.” Do coding classes. But now they're just not afraid of doing software. And that's, I think, the thing that's honestly kept me at GitHub for so long. Anyone should be able to go and build a thing, just like I can go change a light switch in my house. I'm not going to go into the breaker box ‘cause I'll probably kill myself? But, I can go change that light switch. Everyone should be able to go and say, “This fricking app doesn't do what I want. I want it to work like this.” And that I think, is what's kind of kept us all connected with GitHub through the years and some and during the easiest of times or in the hard times because of that opportunity of, we're the home for all developers, and we want everyone to be able to have that feeling that we've had of, had an idea, I created it and holy s**t here it is.Swyx [00:47:37]: Here it is. All right, I'm going to try to do more spicy questions.GitHub's Hardest Scaling Moment: Growth, Agents, and UptimeKyle [00:47:42]: Great.Swyx [00:47:42]: Is it an easy time now or a hard time?Kyle [00:47:45]: Oh at GitHub? It's a hard time. Like, it's a hard time and also, I was just with my team and I said, “This is also, the best and most exciting time that I think I can remember at GitHub.” BecauseSwyx [00:47:57]: Best of times, worst of times. It's never oneKyle [00:47:59]: ‘cause we've we were talking about Octoverse reports and, usually we do an Octoverse report once a year, and we look at the numbers, and we say, “Oh my goodness.” I was at Universe in October saying, “This was the fastest year of growth that we've ever had,” right? And now we're doing more in a month than we did in a year last year.Swyx [00:48:20]: You're talking about PRs.Kyle [00:48:21]: Commits.Swyx [00:48:21]: Commits, yeah.Kyle [00:48:22]: PRs. Kind of like you name it by roughly every measure that we're looking at, there's some amount of sort of growth that is much bigger, and that is breaking our system in new ways, not old ways. Like webhooks were always notoriously, unreliable over the years?Swyx [00:48:38]: Whose fault is that?Kyle [00:48:39]: not anymore mine, but for a period of time, I'm sure you could pull up a tweet that was “It was me. I'm sorry.” but, now, that got rewritten at a scale level that is still working and is not having problems today. Now what we're finding isn't just the isn't the-The simple stuff that folks are on the sometimes on Twitter or on the internet are “Hey, why is this like this?” Sure. There's absolutely silly problems that we shouldn't exist. But now we're talking about, unique, novel permission problems that happen only at a scale across all different objects or whatever, that now we have to go rewrite this underlying system. And so it's, there are problems that yeah, caught us off guard, which I think I said. Like the growth is astronomical, but also we're making such material progress in that I'm excited once we're once we've kind of like reimagined the underlying foundation layer, or pieces of it at least, what's going to be possible when it's not just all of us and all the new people that are being developers and all of their agents and all the tools like working together. Because that'll still happen in that in that GitHub tool, that GitHub community. But it's a it's a hard day anytime we can't give you what you're looking for. We have the same problem internally. We operate through github. Com. Of course, we have backups when things go down and whatnot for our own operations but we feel it too. If it's not working it's not working for us, and that's kind of like the promise of dogfooding for GitHub. It's always been true. We're using the same tool you're using. We're not using a super secret version. We and so we also need it to be great for us for our customers of course for open source. And now an exponential growth of agents, Doing it too.Swyx [00:50:32]: I wanted to load for audio listeners who maybe haven't seen your tweets, whatever. So one billion commits in twenty-five. Now it's two hundred and seventy-five million per week on pace for fourteen billion this year, if growth remains linear. Is that still the pace? I don't know. It's been aKyle [00:50:48]: it's, it's speedingSwyx [00:50:50]: Roughly.Kyle [00:50:50]: It's still speeding up.Swyx [00:50:51]: It's, it's April, so yeah.Kyle [00:50:51]: Exactly. This was in April.Swyx [00:50:53]: All right. So basically you have fourteen x growth, right? Year on year on year. And I think that's a scaling issue. I think, I'm going to like try to really steel man this thing. People have experienced fourteen x growth. They haven't had your downtime. And that's like— C-can we go dig into that? Why? Like what's the— what broke? What are we doing to fix it? Like just anything for the community to reassure them.Why GitHub Reliability Is Breaking in New WaysKyle [00:51:18]: so there's a Like I was saying, there's a couple different places that we've seen the growth issues. Some of the growth issues, which is why we're t— I was talking about pushing hard on more CPUs is in actions in particular. More tools, more agents, more PRs mean more builds, more builds mean more CPUs. And so we are expanding through not just our data center, but obviously we were talking about moving to Azure and moving to, adding an additional cloud compute because we simply need more CPUs. Not as much GPUs. We definitely need GPUs too, but now CPUs are becoming a factor.Swyx [00:51:53]: It's very CPU heavy.Kyle [00:51:54]: Underneath the hood when it comes to some of the underlying services, we've been breaking up over the years our database infrastructure, so that way we have, more cognitive separation between our the various services. The place that we continue to have pain is in, permissioning. And so right now m-many of our permissioning layers sit into a database that we like internally call MySQL One, and old Hubbers will know what I'm talking about. And so we've been pulling things out of MySQL One for many years, because like and we use we use Vitess and we use other technologies to shard and we do it as one bigSwyx [00:52:31]: Famous thing, PlanetScale was born from this andKyle [00:52:32]: A hundred percent. Sam Old Hubber and friend. And so finding these opportunities to like break this out and then do that globally. The other thing that I think is interesting and both a unique opportunity and tricky is we also run everything I just talked about in a black box container with GitHub Enterprise Server for people that work on-prem. So we take everything I just said, and we also do it on-prem, and we also do all of that and we do it in a data residence setup for customers that need to have their data in a single location. Each of these has the unique characteristic around how we're sort of storing that data in MySQL or in a permissioning setup. That's where some of these outages have oc-occurred, where you're seeing it more like across the board rather than just like the one pieceSwyx [00:53:17]: Filling the databaseKyle [00:53:17]: Isn't quite working. Exactly. And so part of it is that. I think there's been some other places where agents are much more or more projects appear to be moving towards monorepo versus we were going the other direction for many years in the industry. Repos were smaller, but there were more of them, and now we're seeing the opposite. Repos are bigger, and there's, not fewer of them per se ‘cause there's new growth, but, we're just seeing many more big repos. Big repos, big monorepos have always had, a unique performance problem. Because each one, is slightly different if, particularly if the underlying blobs are incredibly big Inside the repos. And so we've done a ton of work that you pro— like most people haven't probably experienced, unless you're in this case of the monorepo. But that Git, infrastructure layer improvement does help the overall, system because, many of the improvements that make monorepos work better make all repo infrastructure work better. And so, I could kind of keep going down the line where it's another thing where we're moving out of, We're changing how we do j I'll just say job queuing for lack of a better, explanation changing the underlying technologies there.Swyx [00:54:32]: I spent two years being a job queuing guy, so.Kyle [00:54:34]: And so it's kind of a little bit of a little bit of piece by piece, and it's mostly because as we were— as it was built, we built everything in a way that assumed, I guess in some ways that the size of the pipe of work was going to remain the same. There's just going to be more people coming through each of those pipes. But instead now in places whereA git push was, generally a certain size for example, is now, no longer true.Swyx [00:55:03]: Oh, yeah.Kyle [00:55:03]: OrSwyx [00:55:05]: I push a thousandKyle [00:55:06]: On the average. 100%Swyx [00:55:06]: A thousand line commits like dailyKyle [00:55:07]: Same thing with PRs. Like PRs same thing. And like we've talked about optimizing that and making changes where, and there were technology choices that did not work there? And it got slow, and it didn't It was not fast. It did not do what the users wanted. And so we've been reeling that all out and going “Okay, that's just not right. Let's stop putting good money after bad and do it the do it the right way or the right way now.” So there's It's a it's a lot of things, not quite when I've experienced scale at GitHub historically, it's almost always two options that we've used. We go vertical scaling, particularly with databases, right? And we go horizontal scaling. Oh, we just have more people using this service. Great. We're going to add more servers, and we rack them in our data center, or we use it in a cloud. And now we're sort of in a like diagonal, where like vertical doesn't really work anymore. Horizontal isn't work either because we're all We all have some CPU or GPU constraints in the world now, and now we have to go in and like crack open services that have been running for 10 or 15 years and go, “Okay, the rules of this service have legitimately changed, and now we have to rewrite them.” None of this is an excuse. This is like we're We have to do the work. We have to make it better.Swyx [00:56:22]: actually as an infra guy, I'm “This is like one of the most fascinating scaling challenges I've ever seen.”Kyle [00:56:26]: That's that's, that's the thing that's the thing that it's hard for Like when we weren't talking about it publicly, and I was like I came out, and I was “Hey, I just want to explain what's going on.” Part of it comes from a very old GitHub ethos, which is it's our it's our uptime. It's down. W What I know you're a developer, so you're, you're inclined to want to understand more what's going on. But at the same time us going “Hey, this service didn't, perform the way we expected, and now we have to go change it,” we weren't We're not trying to hide anything from you i

Jonas Vingegaard zet de kroon op zijn Giro: hij wint ook de laatste bergrit en komt zo op vijf ritzeges in totaal. Thymen Arensman blijft met hulp van Egan Bernal vierde in het klassement. In deze aflevering van In Het Wiel blikt Niek Goedvolk met Roxane Knetemann en wielerverslaggever Marijn Abbenhuijs terug op de voorlaatste etappe. Volgens Marijn hoefde Vingegaard ook tijdens zijn solo van vandaag niet over zijn drempel te gaan. Is dit daarom de ideale voorbereiding op de Tour de France geweest? We noemen ook de belangrijke karaktereigenschap van Arensman, die er (samen met Bernal) voor zorgde dat hij Derek Gee-West achter zich kon houden in het klassement. Zit er dankzij die eigenschap nog meer in voor de Nederlander de komende jaren? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gee & Ursula respond to the former Sheriff // AGREE TO DISAGREE // WE HEAR YOU! and WORDS TO LIVE BY

Het kan niet op voor Visma-Lease a Bike. Na vier keer Jonas Vingegaard, was het vandaag Sepp Kuss die de koninginnenrit van deze Giro d'Italia won. De Amerikaan voltooide daarmee ook nog eens zijn trilogie van ritzeges in grote rondes. Daarachter kende Thymen Arensman een minder goede dag. De Nederlander moest lossen bij zijn concurrenten en kukelde daardoor van het virtuele podium. In een nieuwe In Het Wiel heeft Niek Goedvolk het met Roxane Knetemann en wielerverslaggever Daniël Dwarswaard over Visma, Kuss en Arensman, maar ook over Giulio Ciccone. Wat was de Italiaan allemaal aan het doen? En heeft de teamleiding van Lidl-Trek nog wel grip op hem? Teamgenoot Derek Gee-West zat uiteindelijk 'gevangen' in de groep achter hem en verloor daarvoor belangrijke secondes in de jacht op het podium. Rox en Daniël halen in deze aflevering uit naar de 'egoïstische' Ciccone. Luisteren maar!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Special Industry Update with Jason Diamond and Mindy Diamond A replay of part one of a two-part series, Jason and Mindy Diamond unpack the real advisor transition playbook—from due diligence and culture fit to portability, enterprise value, and the evolving landscape of advisor choice. In Summary Why do advisors really consider changing firms or models—and what separates thoughtful due diligence from reactive decision-making? In a replay of the first of this special two-part Industry Update, Jason and Mindy Diamond unpack what actually drives advisor transitions, the misconceptions that derail decision-making, and the questions sophisticated teams should be asking long before they're ready to act. The conversation also explores how the industry landscape has evolved around independence, portability, enterprise value, and advisor optionality—drawing context from Diamond's role in the landmark OpenArc breakaway from Merrill and much more. The Storyline Most advisors assume transitions are primarily driven by recruiting economics. Jason Diamond and Mindy Diamond suggest that recruiting economics may get the headlines, but advisor transitions are usually driven by a far more layered set of considerations. What tends to happen instead is more gradual: a growing disconnect between how advisors want to serve clients and the constraints of the environment around them. Sometimes it's bureaucracy. Sometimes it's limitations around growth, marketing, technology, or flexibility. Sometimes it's simply the realization that the industry landscape has evolved while their assumptions about it have not. This conversation examines what actually happens between the moment curiosity begins and the moment a move becomes real. Rather than treating transitions as transactional events, Jason and Mindy frame due diligence as a strategic process of self-assessment—clarifying what matters, identifying trade-offs, evaluating long-term optionality, and pressure-testing assumptions before making consequential decisions. The discussion also offers a rare look inside the mechanics of advisor movement itself: how teams evaluate culture, how portability is assessed, why some advisors choose ownership over upfront monetization, and what sophisticated client communication really looks like during a transition. The backdrop throughout the episode is Diamond's role in facilitating the historic OpenArc breakaway from Merrill—a move that challenged longstanding assumptions about scale, independence, and what even the industry's largest teams are now willing to reconsider. Topics Covered Advisor transition due diligence Wirehouse limitations and advisor frustration Independence versus traditional firm models Enterprise value and long-term ownership Advisor portability and client transition strategy Boutique and regional firm recruiting trends Culture evaluation during due diligence Reverse due diligence and evaluating firm stability Transition economics and recruiting deals The OpenArc Merrill breakaway story Advisor optionality and industry evolution How technology and AI are changing transitions   > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why do advisors actually decide to leave firms? (06:20) Mindy explains why most transitions are driven less by economics and more—by mounting limitations around growth, flexibility, client service, and long-term alignment. What is the biggest mistake advisors make when beginning due diligence? (18:12) The conversation explores why many advisors evaluate firms before gaining clarity around what they truly want to improve—often creating confusion instead of insight. How should advisors evaluate culture beyond a firm's sales pitch? (32:41) Jason and Mindy discuss the importance of speaking directly with advisors who have already made similar moves—and how to pressure-test what firms promise. When should transition economics matter most? (47:03) The episode breaks down the difference between short-term monetization and long-term enterprise value creation—and why many elite teams are increasingly prioritizing ownership and optionality. Why are more advisors reconsidering independence? (56:48) Using the OpenArc transition as context, the discussion explores how today's independent landscape has evolved far beyond the traditional “build it yourself” model. How long does a real due diligence process take? (1:06:10) Jason and Mindy explain why thoughtful transitions often unfold over many months—and why some advisors remain in exploratory conversations for years before acting. How should advisors think about portability and client communication? (1:16:20) The conversation details how sophisticated teams assess portability risk—and why the client-facing rationale for a move matters more than recruiting economics. Have advisor transitions become easier over time? (1:24:12) Mindy explains how technology, legal infrastructure, and industry specialization have improved the process—while emphasizing that transitions still require risk tolerance, effort, and patience. Key Takeaways Most advisors do not move primarily because of recruiting deals. The larger driver is usually a growing disconnect between what they want to build and what their current environment allows. Due diligence tends to fail when advisors begin by evaluating firms before clarifying what they actually want for their business, clients, and long-term future. The industry landscape has evolved dramatically over the last decade, particularly around independent and supported-independent models, creating far more customization and optionality than many advisors realize. Transition economics matter — but sophisticated advisors increasingly view upfront monetization as only one component of a much larger enterprise value equation. The ability to articulate a compelling client-facing value proposition is one of the strongest tests of whether a transition opportunity is truly viable. Conversations with advisors who have already made similar moves remain one of the most valuable forms of real-world due diligence. Even the industry's largest teams are reassessing assumptions around independence, ownership, control, and scalability. Quotable Moments “The biggest mistake advisors make is beginning due diligence before they've gotten clear about what they actually want.” “A recruiting deal can't be the first thing you consider. But it would be foolish not to consider it at all.” “The landscape looks entirely different than it did five or ten years ago. If you haven't gotten educated, you're doing yourself a disservice.” “The real question is not whether you can move. It's whether you can clearly explain to clients why the move makes their experience better.” FAQs Why do advisors typically begin exploring a move? In many cases, the process begins gradually. Advisors may still feel successful and reasonably satisfied, but start questioning whether their current environment fully supports how they want to grow, serve clients, or build long term. Often, curiosity precedes dissatisfaction. Is advisor movement mostly driven by recruiting deals? Not usually. While economics are an important consideration, the episode explains that most sophisticated advisors weigh a much broader set of factors, including flexibility, culture, client experience, growth limitations, ownership opportunities, and long-term enterprise value. How long does a typical due diligence process take? There is no universal timeline. Some advisors move relatively quickly once they decide change is necessary, while others spend months – or even years – getting educated and evaluating options before acting. For many teams, a thoughtful due diligence process unfolds over roughly six months. What is the biggest mistake advisors make during due diligence? The episode suggests the biggest mistake is evaluating firms before gaining clarity around personal and business priorities. Without understanding what they actually want to improve, advisors often become overwhelmed by options, recruiting pitches, and conflicting information. How can advisors really assess a firm's culture? One of the most valuable approaches is speaking directly with advisors who have already made similar moves. Jason and Mindy discuss why real-world perspective – particularly from advisors with comparable client bases or business structures – is often far more revealing than formal presentations or recruiting materials. How should advisors think about independence versus traditional firms? The conversation frames the decision less as “right versus wrong” and more as a question of alignment. Some advisors prioritize ownership, control, and long-term enterprise value. Others value infrastructure, brand recognition, or operational support. The industry landscape has evolved enough that advisors now have far more flexibility to design around the trade-offs that matter most to them. In many cases, the process begins gradually. Advisors may still feel successful and reasonably satisfied, but start questioning whether their current environment fully supports how they want to grow, serve clients, or build long term. Often, curiosity precedes dissatisfaction. Not usually. While economics are an important consideration, the episode explains that most sophisticated advisors weigh a much broader set of factors, including flexibility, culture, client experience, growth limitations, ownership opportunities, and long-term enterprise value. There is no universal timeline. Some advisors move relatively quickly once they decide change is necessary, while others spend months – or even years – getting educated and evaluating options before acting. For many teams, a thoughtful due diligence process unfolds over roughly six months. The episode suggests the biggest mistake is evaluating firms before gaining clarity around personal and business priorities. Without understanding what they actually want to improve, advisors often become overwhelmed by options, recruiting pitches, and conflicting information. One of the most valuable approaches is speaking directly with advisors who have already made similar moves. Jason and Mindy discuss why real-world perspective – particularly from advisors with comparable client bases or business structures – is often far more revealing than formal presentations or recruiting materials. The conversation frames the decision less as “right versus wrong” and more as a question of alignment. Some advisors prioritize ownership, control, and long-term enterprise value. Others value infrastructure, brand recognition, or operational support. The industry landscape has evolved enough that advisors now have far more flexibility to design around the trade-offs that matter most to them. Related Resources The Advisor Transition Playbook: The Latest on Due Diligence, the Move, and Everything In Between – Part 2Jason and Mindy Diamond revisit the transition playbook, this time focused on how advisor priorities are shifting. From AI and enterprise value to stability and flexibility, they unpack what's changing in due diligence and what it means for advisors evaluating their next move.  The $129B Blockbuster Move: Shirl Penney on Why This Transition Marks a New Era for the IndustryThe $129B OpenArc breakaway marks a watershed moment for wealth management. In this Rapid Reaction episode, Louis Diamond and Shirl Penney unpack what it means for the RIA model, advisors, and the future of industry competition. The Missing Narrative of the $129B Merrill Breakaway StoryThe largest (and quite possibly most significant) advisor breakaway in industry history made news this week. Yet instead of leading with the scale or significance of the move, headlines centered on Merrill's lawsuit alleging corporate raiding. NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… The Advisor Transition Playbook: Inside Baseball on Due Diligence, the Move, and Everything In Between A Special Industry Update with Jason Diamond and Mindy Diamond. Jason Diamond: Welcome to a replay of one of the most popular episodes from our podcast series for financial advisors, The Advisor Transition Playbook: Inside Baseball on Due Diligence, the Move, and Everything In Between. It's Part 1 of a 2-Part Industry Update with Mindy Diamond. I’m Jason Diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more, who change firms, are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at (908) 879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms, and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Jason Diamond: Everything about a transition can seem incredibly overwhelming. From understanding the whys of a move, then conducting due diligence, and onto aligning the right models and selecting the best firms, it might seem like a fairly linear process. And for some, it can be. But for others, the layers of minutia can be daunting. Essentially, it comes down to the adage, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” So the goal of this episode is to share some inside baseball in how to get from here to there. I asked Mindy Diamond to join me to help draw from decades of experience in helping advisors through their transitions. We’ve dived into the misconceptions, the common traps, the aware of a big check and much more. Essentially, it’s a download of what you need to know when considering a move. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it. Mindy, so excited to have you join me for this topic. Mindy Diamond: Yeah, I’m really happy to be here. And I’m just thinking to myself, “Yikes, decades of experience,” you’ve said, and yes it is, decades of experience. Jason Diamond: It most certainly is, 30 years in the business. So the seeding for this topic was, “You’ve been in this business now for 30 years, how many hundreds of thousands of conversations with advisors is that?” Some who moved, plenty who certainly did not. But ultimately, what we thought would be useful because it’s a question we get most commonly from advisors that we speak with is, “Tell me what I don’t know. What are the questions I should be asking?” So I’m going to just pepper you with some of the most common questions we get, and I would love to share the benefit of your wisdom and experience with our audience. That sound good? Mindy Diamond: It sounds great. I just want to say that we are recording this two days after one of the largest deals probably in the history of the industry broke that I am gratified to say we facilitated the OpenArc team who left Merrill with 129 billion in assets under management, broke a couple days ago to go independent. I’m hoping we have the opportunity to talk about some of their best practices and things we discovered along the way because I think it’s relevant. And a deal like this gets a lot of attention, people always want to know what they do and what went wrong. Jason Diamond: It’s a good point. I’m glad you bring it up. First of all, it’s so timely, but I think you can almost use it as a case study a little bit to answer some of these questions. So let’s dive in with that. I want to start with the big picture, “Why?” Because that’s the number one thing I think people want to know is, “Why do advisors move?” And I think there’s an assumption that 95% of transitions happen because of a big check or because of economics. I’m certain you’re going to touch on that to some extent, but give me your sense of what are the main triggers of advisor movement. Mindy Diamond: Yeah. Look, are there some advisors that move because they need to recapitalize or they want the money? Sure. But the absolute vast majority are moving because they come to a place where one of two things is true, and oftentimes both. One, the pain of staying is great enough. Meaning there’s enough frustrations or limitations that they’ve gotten to a point where despite efforts to the contrary to make it better, despite gutting it out and saying, “On par, it’s good enough,” they come to a point where there’s limitations in how they can serve their clients, how they can grow the business, and that’s just untenable for them. Hopefully, simultaneously, they are equally excited and have identified an opportunity that they believe is needle-moving enough, it’s worth the hassle, the disruption, the everything to make this move. I’ve never done a move where it doesn’t fall into one of those two or, hopefully, both of those categories. Jason Diamond: Let’s go a little deeper there. You mentioned limitations. Give me an example either using this recent deal or even just any recent advisors that you’ve worked with about, “What are some limitations that people experience at,” let’s say, “the wirehouses that potentially would be a catalyst for a move?” Mindy Diamond: Generally speaking, the biggest limitations have to do with how they’re able to grow their business and serve their clients. So anything to do with excess bureaucracy, anything to do with an incongruence, if you will, between the advisors or the team’s goals for how they want to serve clients or grow the business and what the firm is allowing them to do. Using this enormous deal as an example, you’ve got a team that was doing extraordinarily well. Oh, my god. They were the biggest team at Merrill, so talk about having a batphone to the top and the attention of senior leadership. If anyone was going to be able to break through the red tape or get things done, or eschew the limitations, it was them. And for a long time, they did. But they were sort of increasingly unhappy, let’s say, over a decade. Despite their size, every year, they became a little bit more frustrated. And after probably six or seven years of saying, “We’re just too big to move,” they came to a point of saying, “We can’t ignore this anymore. We’ve got a tiger by its tail. We have this extraordinary business that is growing exponentially. We’ve got clients that are complaining to us. And more importantly, we’ve got team members that are feeling stifled.” And that’s where it comes from, where there’s problems you just can’t ignore even if you want to. Jason Diamond: It almost feels like one of those things where advisors know they’re limited, they can just feel it. But if you’re fighting against the firm, and instead of with it. I’ll give you one other one that comes to mind as we’re talking here, that seems to come up a lot in advisor conversations, which is freedom of marketing. And that might seem like a fairly minor limitation, but I can’t tell you how many times, certainly myself, I’m sure you too, get call from an advisor who is heated. They’re angry because they were trying to send some timely market commentary and the firm took two weeks to approve it. Does that fall under the same category of limitations, in your mind? Mindy Diamond: Oh, without a doubt. And it’s funny you say that because in this world of social media where the news is consumed or can be consumed within seconds of an event happening, there’s nothing more frustrating for an advisor than wanting to write a newsletter to update their clients with scale as opposed to having to make one phone call at a time and not being able to do so. It absolutely puts them on a back foot. And then, I think it’s the lack of freedom to differentiate themselves. Most advisors that work for big firms have a firm website that is templated, the same sort of structure of the website and the picture of the team and the same basic wordings, and that’s hard to deal with. Jason Diamond: Well, you bring up an interesting point, which is sometimes… For example, advisors might say or wirehouse advisors might say, “Oh, the marketing is good enough.” But a lot of times, and we’ve had advisors on this podcast who talk about exactly this, they don’t realize how limited the sandbox they were playing in is or was until after a transition. And that’s when their eyes open and they realize, “Oh, my god. I was basically playing with one arm tied behind my back.” We’ve heard advisors use that metaphor. Let me ask you this then, and this is a tough question, what do you think advisors get wrong? What is the number one misconception that advisors have prior to approaching due diligence and thinking about a move? And maybe it’s something as simple as like, “Eh, it’s the same everywhere,” but tell me what you think you hear most commonly. Mindy Diamond: There’s certainly those myths, the assumptions or presumptions that it’s the same everywhere or there’s nothing that’s going to change anyway, for sure. But I think the biggest and most fundamental thing they get wrong is a lack of clarity around, “What it is they’re trying to accomplish, and why?” I’d like to say that I think one of the things, the thing, we do better than most, I’m not going to say everyone else but better than most, and something we’re really good at, is helping advisors to answer the really tough questions, the smartest questions, to get a sense of what it is they’re looking to accomplish, what it is they want to improve and why, “What does success look like?” Because if you don’t do that, then a lot of folks do it backwards. They get a phone call from a manager at Morgan Stanley or from somebody at Schwab or somebody at Dynasty, or whatever it may be, and they say, “I’ll take a lunch, why not?” And of course, the job of the manager from Morgan or the sales rep from Dynasty, or whatever it is, is to tell you all the good things about independence or about Morgan Stanley. But if I, as the advisor, am not really clear about what it is I’m looking to accomplish and why, it’s going to all sound good and I’m going to wind up more overwhelmed than when I started. And that is probably the number one thing that we see advisors getting wrong. It makes the due diligence process, if you choose to enter it, exceedingly inefficient. Jason Diamond: I totally agree. So I’m an advisor, I want to start due diligence in earnest. I know in my head, things are suboptimal. I’m not going to go so far as to say,” I definitively want to move.” But I’m a wirehouse advisor and I’m thinking for the first time in my career, “I’ve built a nice business, but it’s time for me to start getting educated.” So what do I do? Do I just say, “Hey, John at Morgan Stanley, what’s your recruiting deal look like these days?” Tell me, for an advisor who’s never thought about this before, what are the ABCs of this process look like? Mindy Diamond: Yeah. It’s definitely not, the first step, calling Morgan Stanley, even if you’re pretty sure Morgan Stanley is where you want to go. I’d suggest that’s probably one of the last steps, and I’ll tell you why. The first thing is to give yourself permission to say, “Even if I’m not 100% certain that a move is in my future or that I know I’m unhappy enough to go through the hassle and disruption of making a move,” to give yourself permission to get educated. The world, the industry landscape, the ecosystem, the everything looks entirely different than it did five and 10 years ago. And if it’s been five or 10 years, or even three to five years, since you last got educated, asked the questions, looked under the hood to get a sense of, “Is there or could there be something that’s better than where I am?”, you’re doing yourself and your team a disservice. Yeah, it takes time and it’s annoying and it’s overwhelming, and it’s all of it, but that’s honestly why people like us have a job. We don’t approach this that we think people should only come to us when they’re sure they’re going to make a move. In fact, it’s the opposite. We love the calls we get when somebody says, “I’m really happy here. I’ve been here 40 years. I’ve been here 30 years, it’s really good enough, it’s working well for me.” “But all of a sudden, I’m beginning to be curious. Or all of a sudden, I feel X, Y and Z. Tell me what I don’t know.” Those are the best calls. Those are the smartest calls. That’s the best thing an advisor can do. Jason Diamond: Yeah, I agree with that. Are there things you think an advisor needs to ask for during the diligence… I guess what I’m getting at is, do you trust the process that if you go through this process with, let’s say, three to five strategically picked firms… So you work within a recruiter or, a shameless plug, however you approach this, and you end up with your short list of contenders. Do you trust that, by going through the due diligence process, these firms are going to give you the building blocks that you need to do proper due diligence? Or are there things you, as an advisor, need to ask for? I’ll give you one example that comes to mind, which is… There’s obviously been some firms that have had financial troubles recently. So do you think an advisor, for example, needs to ask for financial statements from a firm they’re potentially considering due diligence on? I’m curious what your thoughts are. Mindy Diamond: Yeah. Particularly, if you’re looking at sort of in this new world order, if we think about the landscape as a continuum and the newer boutique multifamily offices on the right side, absolutely. Conducting what we call reverse due diligence and getting to see the financials of the firms you’re considering, to make sure that they’re sound and solid and that the equity valuation is exactly as advertised, of course, yes, that’s true. So the answer is, in part, you trust the process. You trust that if you’ve asked the right questions, if you’ve gotten clarity around what’s important to you, and as a result, you’ve crafted the right questions, and therefore, the manager or the representative from the firm or options you’re considering has put together the right due diligence plan, you can trust that at least 90% of what needs to be gotten right has gotten right. But there are always things around the margins that aren’t addressed. One is you can’t just outsource the due diligence process. You need to be paying attention. And much like people who trust their doctor and presume the doctor just always has it right, you need to be your own advocate. I would say, the same thing here. That as the process unfolds, there will be additional questions, additional sort of gaps and holes, and you shouldn’t stop until you’ve gotten all of your questions answered. That’s really the best advice I can give. Jason Diamond: You are talking to John from XYZ firm and Jim from ABC firm, and they’re going to tell you what’s great about their firms. So how do you know that you’re not just buying a false bill of goods, it’s just a glossy kind of sales pitch? I’ll give you my answer first. Part of it is, I think, you test drive the systems. I think another step I suggest a lot is calls with advisors on the platform. So an advisor who left UBS to go to Morgan Stanley, probably the best possible person to ask about Morgan Stanley. Any other additional thoughts on that one? Mindy Diamond: You took the words right out of my mouth. Absolutely, that is the number one way to do it, is that you ask for an opportunity, and you can do it in a name-blind way without identifying yourself, to talk with advisors that have made the move that are two things, that either came from the firm you’re coming from, so you get a similar perspective, but it’s equally important to talk to advisors that have similar business mix. It doesn’t matter what firm they came from, even if it’s not the same as yours, but, “How does someone that services international clients, how are they better able to serve those international clients at this new firm or new model than they were where you are?” We’re talking about it as if it’s wirehouse-to-wirehouse. But very often in today’s world order, especially looking at this giant move from this week, it’s about wirehouse to some version of independence. So there’s so much more due diligence, so many more questions that are required. It is even more important in that world to really get an understanding of what it’s like from the perspective of somebody that’s walking in those shoes. I will tell you, Jason, and you know this, that literally the number one reason I started this podcast more than a decade ago, and why we continue to do the podcast and the feedback we get, is because the feedback from advisors that have joined a platform already is the very best feedback, the best way, in a discreet confidential manner, to hear the truth from somebody who doesn’t have a horse in the race who’s just sharing their perspective with you. And that’s the feedback we continue to get. In a couple of weeks, I’m interviewing, as an example, Neil Rubinstein. Neil’s an advisor in Texas that came from Merrill that we moved to Rockefeller. A perfect example. So many advisors that are considering a move if they’ve got high net worth clients are going to look at Rockefeller. Well, what better way to understand what Rockefeller is about than to hear it from an advisor that’s walked in the shoes, not only of a Merrill advisor, but services high net worth clients and then have information or perspective similar to Neil. What do you think about that? Do you agree with that? Jason Diamond: 1000%. First of all, the podcast, I will say, a little bit of a sales pitch, has one thing going for it that a call with an advisor doesn’t, which is complete discretion and confidentiality. I will say, I think we’ve done a good job of doing facilitating name-blind calls between advisors. We continue to harp on this point even though it sounds somewhat minor, because it really is the very… You can talk to people like me and people like the recruiters from the firms until you’re blue in the face. But the right way, the best possible way to learn the, “Is this guy selling me? How does the technology compare to Merrill? How does the day-to-day compare? What’s it like working for this manager?”, all those types of questions, I think are best answered by another advisor. So completely agree with you. Mindy Diamond: Yeah, and I’ll take it one step further. Somewhere in the process, you take advantage of the opportunity to either listen to a podcast and hear somebody’s perspective of what the move was like, and how it’s bettered their life and where the pitfalls are, and/or you take the opportunity to talk with other advisors that have made the move, so you can ask your own specific questions. But after you’ve had the opportunity to do that, then it’s really important, and this is the part that why you can’t entirely outsource or let the due diligence process just go on autopilot, to take some of that perspective and the manager that you’re interviewing with, hold his or her feet to the fire. What do I mean by that? So I talked to an advisor that talked about the fact that the number one concern about Rockefeller, I’m making this up, is that they’re going to be the next Merrill, or that they just added a fee that now is going to have to be passed on to clients. While this advisor said it doesn’t bother them and they had a lot of good reason of why it’s not an issue, I’d love for you to tell me why it could be an issue. What are some of the things you’ve gotten wrong? When someone doesn’t join Rockefeller, why is it? I’m making that up- Jason Diamond: Yeah, smart. Same thing. Even let go, this advisor mentioned that technology is a step back from the firm I’m coming from. And I’m not asking you to argue with me, but perhaps the manager might be able to say something like, “We’re investing substantially in the platform, and we have these rollouts coming in the next several months that are going to close that gap.” So I completely agree. That’s a really smart- Mindy Diamond: And a follow-up question to that example, Jason, which is a great one, is, “How can I trust, how can I get a sense of security, if I join here in the next couple of months that in fact that investment is going to be made? And how that investment in technology will actually impact thing?” So again, it’s constantly being your own advocate, constantly paying attention, and constantly questions beget more questions. Jason Diamond: I agree we. Haven’t talked at all about the dollars and cents of this, and I think we need to because it’s important. Right? You can have the best platform on the planet, but the reality is a move comes with risk, a move comes with hassle, and there is a market for advisors’ books of businesses. That’s one of, I think, the major kind of paradigm shifts we’ve seen in the last, call it, decade is advisors know their books are assets, their book is a business, and that business is worth something substantial. At any firm, even at their current firm via retire and place deals, the book is worth something substantial. So if you had to put a percentage to it, I’m an advisor making a decision, 100% waiting, how much percent waiting do I put on the economics and how much waiting do I put on culture, platform, everything else? Mindy Diamond: The answer is, absolutely, it’s an inside job, personal, and it depends upon the advisor. There are some advisors, they’re wrong, but they will put all the weight on personal economics. They’re making a big mistake, if that’s the case. And most advisors will put much more weight on getting it right, meaning, “What’s life going to be like afterwards? And will I have a better ability to serve clients and grow the business?” But here’s what I would say, they’re both equally important. So no advisor who’s got a decent enough runway ahead of him or her and who’s looking to really grow the business and who cares about their clients can’t be unconcerned about the culture of where they’re going and what life is going to be like and what are the limitations, all of the questions we’ve been talking about. But an advisor who’s built a great business would be a fool not to consider their own personal economics. It just can’t be the first thing they consider. And in the book I wrote, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, I wrote that 100 times that it’s all about, “Lead with what’s important to the business and important to clients, do the right thing, but you can’t ignore personal financial gain.” Let’s talk about this move of OpenArc, this $129-billion Merrill team. You can only imagine the number of zeros at the end of a check that this team was offered by every major firm on the street. And in the span of a decade, they got those offers. Independence, making this enormous leap, was not the first thing they looked at, was not necessarily their first choice. But as they began, in their case, to really consider how limited they felt on the things they wanted to be able to do for clients… By the way, I don’t want to steal anybody’s thunder because we’re going to be launching a podcast specifically talking about this deal and this move, so I’ll save that for… Louis Diamond, our partner, and Shirl Penney, the CEO and founder of Dynasty, are going to be talking about it and they’ll cover all of that. But I just want to give the example that as this team began to realize, certainly in the last five years, how much things had changed at Merrill and how incongruent they felt between their goals, the goals for the business, the goals for serving clients, and what the firm was asking of them since Bank of America came to town, it became impossible to just say, “Holy cow, we can get a check with a lot of zeros at the end of it.” They couldn’t not see the benefits of everything else, the benefits that creating their own independent entity could bring them. Jason Diamond: I agree with that. I will play devil’s advocate a little bit here and say, “I think what you’re really talking about is the trade-off.” They’re not martyrs, they’re not altruistic and said, “We don’t want your hundreds of millions of dollars.” I think what you’re talking about is the trade-off between near-term upfront recruiting deals, which is the primary means by which the wirehouses, the regionals, the boutique firms recruit. Right? The traditional forgivable loan structure is all about a short term de-risking of the move, a monetization event in the near term where they’re paying you some percentage of revenue, 350%, 400% of revenue, tied to a forgivable loan. But that’s your bite of the apple in that example. With the example of a move to independence, you’ll lose, in some cases, all of that upfront monetization. So this example you’re talking about is a good example where they got no upfront transition dollars because they launched an RIA. But, and this is a very important caveat, they know they are building equity and ownership in something that is going to, at the current rate, be worth a preposterous multiple if and when they decide to sell it. So I assume that has to be part of this conversation around independence is, it’s not that you don’t care about monetizing the business, it’s that you plan to monetize the business in a different and probably more significant way. Fair? Mindy Diamond: Beyond fair. 1000%, that’s absolutely correct. Again, not only making it about this example, but it’s a good example. So again, the possibility of getting a check with a lot of zeros on it, and by the way, also tapping into an already established well-familiar, well-run infrastructure. Think about how much easier the move would’ve been, to jump from Merrill Lynch to Morgan Stanley, and not probably was their first choice, if they were going to go the traditional route. Think about how much easier the due diligence process… how much less heavy the lift would’ve been in terms of due diligence, but certainly from a short-term upfront perspective. And that’s really the key, is that not everyone has the appetite to bet on the long term. To me, that’s the beauty of the industry landscape as it’s evolved and the waterfall of possibilities today. If you’re a great team, and there are so many great teams, you’re growing, you’ve got a multi-generational bench of advisors, you’ve got a succession plan, you’ve got sticky clients, you don’t have 5,000 clients but you have 100 or 200 relationships, you’ve got a great business that you’ve got options for it, there’s no right or wrong. It’s, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”, and, “How do I want to live my business life?” And if you query 10 of those great teams, five of them will wind up moving to the traditional space. That doesn’t make it wrong, it’s just, “That’s what’s right for them.” But the other five will have entrepreneurial drive, will value the long term, and willing to forego the short-term upside in order to bet on themselves for the long term. And holy cow, again, we’ll save that for the episode that Shirl and Louis do to talk about what those multiples could look like, but I don’t think there’s enough zeros on the calculator to begin to think about what that business… OpenArc’s business will be worth even as little as five years from now. Jason Diamond: I agree with that. I think the one point I would probably make in defense of people who go the traditional firm route… Actually, two points. Number one, I don’t think it’s only about, “I am not willing to bet on myself, and I don’t want to delay the monetization event.” I think for some people, the idea of being independent and putting the toner in the copy machine and the little K-cups, that’s just not appealing. I like going into a branch and they have everything, my desk is all set up. So that’s one caveat I’d make that some people just prefer the traditional firm world. The other caveat I’d make is there are advisors who, rightly or wrongly, believe in the brand name of the firm mattering. So there are some advisors who say, “Look, I am a good advisor, but my ability to land and grow business is tied very closely to XYZ firm/brand, Morgan Stanley.” I think, a lot of times, we find that’s not always the case as much as advisors believe. But I’m just trying to think of a couple scenarios where there are advisors who genuinely prefer or need or want the stability, big brand, resources of the biggest firms on the planet. Mindy Diamond: I totally agree. Actually, thank you for bringing those two caveats up because, I’d say, there’s a third caveat. Someone can’t go independent, they don’t have a next gen. They don’t have someone that could do the heavy lifting, if they’re not capable of doing it on their own, to build an independent firm. They don’t have entrepreneurial spirit. They’re three years from retirement, and they don’t have the kind of time that it takes to really build the value of an independent practice. And we have great respect for those people. But again, the cool thing about the industry landscape is that as it’s evolved, there’s something for everyone. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the only choice is stay put or go to UBS. Jason Diamond: Agree. In fact, there’s probably even versions of independence. For example, if you don’t have a successor, well, there are versions of independence that might work where there’s a monetization event on the backend where somebody can buy and inherit your book. So that is probably the coolest or most interesting thing, the most exciting thing anyway, about the industry landscape in the last, really call it, five years anyway, probably even a little sooner than that is, especially in the independent side of things, there are options that check just about every box. You as the advisor choose what elements… And this gets back to your begin with the end in mind. Choose what elements of the business you like, and want to maintain control over. Choose what elements of the business you don’t, and there is probably a solution out there that works to check those boxes. Mindy Diamond: And then, that goes back to what we were saying. Even if you are 90% satisfied and 99% certain you would never make a move, if you haven’t gotten educated, in some capacity, whether it be listening to a podcast, reading articles, talking to a recruiter, talking to other firms, talking to friends and colleagues at other firms, or some combination of all of the above, in the last five years, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice. And again, not because in any way we’re trying to sell you on making a move, but because we believe knowledge is power and it looks different than it did. So make sure that you’re challenging your own assumptions, and that you’re really crystal-clear that what you believe or what you believe five years ago is still true today. Jason Diamond: This is a little bit of a gear shift, but I think there’s a tie in here. If you are an advisor now, or a point in their career, they’re wise to at least get educated, pick their heads up, understand what’s out there. But then, there’s the question of, “When is due diligence done?” But I’m going to frame this through a different lens here, which is, “Now, I’m an advisor, I’ve done due diligence, I’ve talked to maybe three to five strategic firms.” Is there typically an aha moment when an advisor says, “Oh, my god. It’s RBC, and I need to go that way and I know I need to move”? Or is it more process driven than that? What are your thoughts? Because I think a lot of advisors struggle with that. And I often find myself telling advisors, “Trust the process here and you’ll know when… You don’t have to know right away in the first inning of due diligence which firm or which model you’re meeting, or even if you’re going to make a move.” But curious what your thoughts are on this one. Mindy Diamond: Yeah. In fact, we hope you don’t. We hope that you don’t go into this process with preconceived notions, we hope that you don’t make a decision after one meeting, because we do think that there’s value in the process. And people get to that aha moment at different times. You and I are working with a team, right now, that is 22 meetings in. And that’s not to say every process takes 22 meetings, but the team is sort of taking it slowly. They started out looking at five or six firms. They’ve narrowed it down now to three. The goal is to get to two or one, then to get to a home office visit to the one that’s their first choice. They’re absolutely getting closer. And I’m probably exaggerating at 22 meetings, but I’m making a point, that even at this point in the game, which is probably a good, would you say, five months into the due diligence process, I don’t know that they’ve had an aha moment. They have an aha moment that they know they don’t want another wirehouse. They don’t want to be independent because the senior member of the team is exactly that person we just described, that he doesn’t have the kind of time in the business in order to make independence worthwhile- Jason Diamond: Or drive. They just don’t want independence. Mindy Diamond: Right, and the next generation doesn’t really want it. So at this point of the game, the aha moment is think we want a regional firm or a boutique firm. But it’s not an aha moment yet that it’s going to be this firm, and that’s I think a good point. A lot of times, the aha moment is the model, first, and then the firm. Jason Diamond: Sometimes, deal can be the type like, “Okay. I know I love the regional firms, but one is offering a deal that’s 100% better,” and that’s often when we actually will counsel advisors, “It’s okay to consider the deal.” The deal is a factor, as you said earlier. Mindy Diamond: If I can, that’s actually a great point. That’s the perfect example of where, “Always consider the deal, just don’t make it your primary or first consideration.” Jason Diamond: Right. Mindy Diamond: So if you’ve done all the right due diligence and two firms or two opportunities stack up next to each other perfectly, they both will allow you to move the needle significantly enough. If they both will allow you to do better for clients and grow faster, and do everything else that’s important to you, then it’s absolutely time to make deal the tiebreaker. Jason Diamond: So you threw out five months and talking about 22 meetings, let’s table that. An advisor calls you, Mindy, this morning and says, “Not unhappy, but I’m getting that itch.” Give me the average time it takes them from that first call this morning to the moment they resigned from their firm, and then give me the quickest they could do it if they needed to. Mindy Diamond: Yeah. Let me start out by saying that those calls we get from advisors come in two different categories. One is, “Yeah, getting the itch. The straw that broke the camel’s back happened yesterday when X happened.” But the other call, the one we mentioned earlier, which is, “I am 90% happy. I am growing exponentially. I get time to coach my kids’ soccer game. I have great quality of life. I have a great team. I’ve been here 30 or 40 years, and life is good. I’m watching more of my colleagues go or I’m feeling more pain,” fill in the blank for whatever that is. “Even though I’m 90% happy and I’m 100% convinced I don’t want to move, that moving is a hassle, I can’t not see the handwriting on the wall and I at least need to get educated.” So let’s assume that we get one of those calls. The reason I am calling out the difference between the two is because the time it takes to do the due diligence is usually different. If someone is already at the point where they know that they’re unhappy and likely to move, the due diligence process usually runs quicker. The due diligence process for somebody that’s mostly happy and just beginning to get curious, sort of the latter example, might take a little longer. Jason Diamond: Give me some real parameters to it. Mindy Diamond: Well, I’d love to hear what you think. What’s swirling in my head, it’s all over the map, but I’m going to say typically six months. Jason Diamond: Six months was the number I was about to throw out as well. And I think the quickest you want to do this is three months. Anything beyond that starts to be basically a fire drill. We’ve done deals quicker than that obviously, an advisor’s going to or has been terminated. But I think six months in earnest is a good, healthy timeline. Especially, by the way, because a lot of firms are busy, we’re hearing this from a lot of the firm side of things these days. Depending upon what firm you’re moving to, you need to make sure that the firm can handle you. You want to get their A team upon your breakaway and your transition, no matter what firm that is. Mindy Diamond: Do you think, Jason, that it’s six months from, “Gee, I’m a little curious. I want to start to look. I want to begin to do due diligence. What does that look like?”, to, “My butt is in a new seat”? Jason Diamond: No. Because I think in the example where you’re just like, “Eh, I’m a little unhappy,” those early innings conversations typically play out slowly because the guy who’s 90% happy is in no rush to say, “Set me up with a bunch of firms, and let’s talk about it.” In those instances, it could take a year and a half because I think what happens really there is then there’s a catalyst event that takes them from your category two to category one. Right? They went from a little unhappy, just curious, to the straw that broke the camel’s back. And that’s when then they shift into the more… or they say the firm has… A good example, UBS, upset a lot of advisors with the compensation plan. They recently walked back a lot of those changes. I’m certain there will be some advisors who say, “This is a nod to attrition. I’ve seen from management what I need to see, and I’m going to stay put.” Equally, probably plenty of advisors who say, “It’s too little too late.” Mindy Diamond: Let me say something, and again, not to make this episode at all about this team in Atlanta, but that was a ten-year conversation for us. Literally, 10 years ago, maybe even 12 years ago, but let’s say 10, one of the senior partners on the team had called to say, “Curious, really happy, doing incredibly well. Zero chance we are moving in the next year or two or five.” But look, what don’t we know? And every year, we would then have a conversation about what the landscape looked like. But I’m going to say it was six years ago when the conversation shifted from, “Really happy, convinced we’re staying,” to, “starting to think we might leave at some point,” but another six years until this really happened. Now, that’s a good example because they were going independent. The transition itself probably took a year, year and a half. Jason Diamond: And the size and complexity of the team, by the way, probably amplifies that as well. Mindy Diamond: Well, there are outliers on either side, and that’s the point I wanted to make. Correct. Jason Diamond: Very fair. I’m glad you bring that up because there’s no cookie-cutter answer. It totally depends on the makeup of the business, where you’re going, how you’re going, when you’re going. I think we have time for two more questions, and I want to make sure we get to this because we’ve talked about this through the lens of the advisor and the advisor’s team. We haven’t talked much about the client experience, and that is clearly self-portability, in general, is something that gives advisors anxiety rightfully so. I think if you could tell a lot of advisors with 100% certainty that their book would move, I think many more would be interested in moving. I think concerns about portability, a lot of times, would keep advisors in seats. I guess what I’m getting at is because that initial client conversation is so important, is there anything you coach advisors to think about or to say to clients or potential clients as they consider a change, a transition? Mindy Diamond: Well, you have to be mindful certainly of your own employment agreement and legal considerations of pre-soliciting- Jason Diamond: Important point. Mindy Diamond: No way are any of us advocating for pre-solicitation. But you do have to have a pretty good sense in your mind without asking the client specifically, who is likely to come and who not. And the determination, the sort of hypothesis or the supposition, of who will come and who will not has everything to do with where you’re going and the value proposition, “Will I be able to make a compelling enough point? Will I have compelling enough reasons where it’s not about me, the advisor, it’s about you, the clients, about how I will better be able to service them? And if I’m able to say to a client, ‘If I make a move or I’m making this move and I’m now going to be able to do X, Y, and Z for you,’ I’m much more confident that they will be able to come?” In the case of this OpenArc deal, the Atlanta team, they did a lot of retirement plan business, so they had to be really concerned about how they were going to position this move and the new brand separating from Merrill brand, how they were going to convince their Fortune 500 clients that this was the right move. So it always has to start with what’s best for clients and how will I pitch it, if you will. Jason Diamond: I love how you answered that because it’s like two different answers to me. Part one is handicapping the portability, and that’s pre-transition during the due diligence process. Honestly, if you’re an advisor, you could do that now, right? If I were to make a move, “Here’s my client who I know with 100% certainty would follow me. Here’s the maybes, here’s the no,” you come up with a weighted average portability metric. I totally agree with you on that. And then the second piece of it is you have to be constantly thinking this option might sound the best to you, but remember, and I agree, not pre-solicit, but post-transition, you’re going to have to sell it to your clients. So you need to be thinking about every conversation you have with every firm through that lens. Do you agree with that? Meaning I’m going to move my business from UBS to Morgan Stanley. You get paid a big check, but can you articulate the clients- Mindy Diamond: Yeah, 1000%. It’s such a good point because, and we’re going to give you some inside baseball here, the number one question that any advisor who is in traffic with any firm or any model needs to ask is, put words in my mouth, “If we were fast forwarding to the day I made a move and joined your firm or joined your model, help me to understand what would the pitch to my clients sound like.” And then, you need to sort of absorb that pitch from the perspective of your clients. Put yourself in the shoes of your oldest clients, of your youngest clients, of your most important clients, of your middle-of-the-road clients, of your middle net worth clients, of the institutional clients, fill in the blank, “Does that value proposition fit?” That is one of the best ways to assess whether a firm or an opportunity is better enough or good enough for you. Jason Diamond: It’s such a good answer, and I love the inside baseball look there. Also, by the way, it has this side benefit of you’re forcing the managers or the recruiters to articulate almost like a succinct value prop on their firm. Right? Tell me, hypothetically, what would I say to clients about, and you’re just picking on Morgan, “Why is Morgan Stanley better than my current firm?” And that answer ought to be compelling. In closing, I want to wrap this up with a question around the difficulty of a move. You’ve been in this business now 30 years, I think it’s almost exactly 30 years. Has it gotten easier logistically to transition? And do you see that trend continuing, let’s say, because of partially things like AI, DocuSign and the like? What are your thoughts on the nuts and bolts of transitioning? Mindy Diamond: There’s no question it’s gotten easier. There’s no question that, from a legal perspective, the advent of broker protocol certainly makes it less scary or less risky to make a move. But there are plenty of moves that are made as a non-protocol move, and that’s not always the case. And the ecosystem, I should say, has gotten better to support the advisor in transition. Legal counsel, all they do all day long is facilitate these moves. Third-party consultancies, people like us that have been at it 30 years and have seen it all, and all the mistakes have already been made, we know how to do it. But with that said, moving is a hassle. No matter how much better the support system has gotten, no matter how many times a manager or a firm has transitioned advisors, it is a hassle to move. It is disruptive. It is a lot. And again, this statement is not going to win me a place in the headhunter hall of fame, but you should absolutely not consider a move unless you have the appetite for some risk, for some breakage, meaning some loss of clients, and you’re willing to shrink to grow, and you’ve got an appetite for some hassle factor to work perhaps harder for a short period of time than you have in a while. If you don’t have that, then no matter how unhappy you are, you really need to seriously consider whether moving is the best way to solve your problems. Jason Diamond: Yeah. It’s a really great way to tie a bow on this episode. It was a lot of fun. I’m excited. I think that would be 2037 based on your 12-year timeline. So the next $129-billion team, we’ll have to schedule that episode out for 10 or 12 years from now. But Mindy, thank you so much for sharing your years of wisdom and expertise with us. This was a fantastic episode. I had a lot of fun. Mindy Diamond: Yeah, I loved it too. Thank you, my pleasure. Jason Diamond: Thank you for joining us. We'll be back with a new episode next week, so be sure to listen in. Mindy Diamond: As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibility seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms, or could a better option exist? Should I Stay or Should I Go? is a book written with you in mind. It’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and road map to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively, whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook.     The Advisor Transition Playbook: Inside Baseball on Due Diligence, the Move, and Everything In Between A Special Industry Update with Jason Diamond and Mindy Diamond. Jason Diamond: Welcome to a replay of one of the most popular episodes from our podcast series for financial advisors, The Advisor Transition Playbook: Inside Baseball on Due Diligence, the Move, and Everything In Between. It's Part 1 of a 2-Part Industry Update with Mindy Diamond. I’m Jason Diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more, who change firms, are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at (908) 879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms, and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Jason Diamond: Everything about a transition can seem incredibly overwhelming. From understanding the whys of a move, then conducting due diligence, and onto aligning the right models and selecting the best firms, it might seem like a fairly linear process. And for some, it can be. But for others, the layers of minutia can be daunting. Essentially, it comes down to the adage, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” So the goal of this episode is to share some inside baseball in how to get from here to there. I asked Mindy Diamond to join me to help draw from decades of experience in helping advisors through their transitions. We’ve dived into the misconceptions, the common

Dr. Gee tells the story of how The Center for Black Excellence and Culture was actually built with Jim Yehle, the President and CEO of Findorff Construction. Denzel Bibbs, Findorff Construction Project Manager, fills in the details of the building process. He discusses his role in maintaining the vision of the Black aesthetic laid out by the team. Hear how the design and physical building exemplify the multi-dimensionality of the African Diaspora and the African American communities. The relationship of this team demonstrates the cross cultural innovation that strengthens the accomplishments of The Center for Black Excellence and Culture. Jim Yehle contributed to the process by making strategic community introductions and creating enthusiasm around fundraising to create a debt free construction. Denzel Bibbs talks about the atmosphere of the construction project that speaks to the positive energy and environment that will be taken onto other projects.   alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group

Send us Fan MailFIRST HALF:  Royce expounds on a request from a listener to discuss over-the-road truckers carrying guns for protection, and the patchwork of anti-rights zones that must be navigated.SECOND HALF: New Jersey, one of the communist controlled areas of the U.S., filed suit against Glock, not merely to harm Glock, but more for the sake of crafting a publicly accessible registry of Glock owners. Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Royce answers that rhetorical question and more in this episode!Support the showGiveSendGo | Unconstitutional 2A Prosecution of Tate Adamiak Askari Media GroupBuy Paul Eberle's book "Look at the Dirt"Paul Eberle (lookatthedirt.com)The Deadly Path: How Operation Fast & Furious and Bad Lawyers Armed Mexican Cartels: Forcelli, Peter J., MacGregor, Keelin, Murphy, Stephen: 9798888456491: Amazon.com: Books

What does a good leader sound like? // Gee is wrong about corn // Tech firms are snapping up real estate in Seattle again // AGREE TO DISAGREE: To waterbed or not to waterbed? // WE HEAR YOU! and WORDS TO LIVE BY

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah talk to journalist Mary Lisa Gavenas, whose new biography of cosmetics queen Mary Kay, Selling Opportunity, also traces the profound role that direct sales had in selling the American dream. It took a while for women to enter the salesforce, but once they did, oooh, watch out. Mary Kay, in particular, had a genius for sales, which she turned into an empire that exists to this day. Although the company largely sells skin care, Mary Kay also sold inspiration, a better life, transformation. As a pop-historical figure, she's part self-help guru, part social media influencer, part girlboss — but entirely a self-made woman.We talk about the resilience of 20th-century women who cared less about having the correct politics and more about feeding their family, the line between opportunity and exploitation, and (of course) those pink Cadillacs.Also discussed:* “I like women. Nancy is undecided.”* The power of a good sob story* Yankee peddlers!* Mary Kay seminars: Where tent revival meets Las Vegas floorshow* Billy Graham put himself through divinity school as a Fuller Brush salesman* Want to come over and see my new dust mop?* Mary Kay had six husbands* The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos* The founder of Tupperware was actually someone named “Tupper”* Also, Mr. Tupper thought he was the Leonardo DaVinci of his time* Pink bathtubs as aspirational* Did your grandmother work?* Is Mary Kay a Ponzi scheme?* The power of a “thank you” notePlus, Sarah learns the definition of “pin money,” Nancy creams over a new tinted moisturizer, Mary Lisa's dream of Aix-en-Provence includes hunting dogs, and much more.Gee, that paid subscription looks good on you ..

Today, In Focus brings you the story of a community that is famous for its history and artistic quilts, the Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy in Gee's Bend, Alabama. 

ow do you share a vision that has never been seen before? Mark Schmitz shares how ZebraDog acted as a conduit for the vision of The Center for Black Excellence and Culture. Zebradog knew how to tell stories through a space and The Center team knew the stories of the Black community, and they came together to bring these stories to life. Dr. Gee and Mark discuss the importance of storytelling, especially right now, where history and storytelling are in danger. Mark works on projects all over the world but he has been changed by the this hometown project that is a part of his shared community. They explore together how we are the embodiment of our history and how you become the buildings that you inhabit. The space of The Center is a hopeful vision of what we want to see for the Madison community.  Mark has been in the visual design and storytelling world since 1985. About 35 years ago, he started shaping what would become ZEBRADOG with a simple but bold idea: combine traditional visual communication design thinking with emerging technologies to create environments that engage all the senses. He wanted to build places that tell stories, connect people to brands in authentic ways, and invite them to linger a little longer—to learn, to touch, to feel. Today, that idea has grown into a world-class experiential design consortium that brings visual brands to life within built environments around the globe. The ZEBRADOG team is made up of exhibit architects, interior and graphic designers, producers, programmers, and software developers, all sharing one thing in common: they're passionate thinkers who love what they do. Mark travels across the country speaking about "Dynamic Environments" and "The Human Experience of a Brand." He's a frequent keynote speaker for groups like the American Institute of Architects, the International Interior Design Association, and the American Marketing Association. As a Certified Experience Economy Expert (CEEE), he helps clients understand how to design experiences that feel personal and memorable. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for Taliesin Preservation, Inc., where he's helping shape design programs that elevate the industry and celebrate creative heritage. And when he's not deep in a ZEBRADOG project, you might find him rating golf courses for Golfweek Magazine, lending a hand at Taliesin, or tearing up the mogul fields in Summit County—still smiling on his 62 year-old knees. alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group      

Blowing Fentanyl in a cops face got him arrested! Gee, you think?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, an in-depth investigatory show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (5/13/26). As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant. !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble");   Rumble("play", {"video":"v77mqtk","div":"rumble_v77mqtk"}); Source Links (In Chronological Order): (21) Acyn on X: "Trump on Iran War: Reporter: What extent are Americans' financial situation motivating you to make a deal? Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans' financial situation https://t.co/TJ94pGpqD8" / X (21) Five Times August on X: ""The poors will think this is hilarious. They're paying so much for gas right now!"" / X (21) Mel on X: "For reference: Eric Trump's net worth has gone from $40 million in 2024 to $400 million in December 2025. Hunter Biden's net worth is approximately $1 million. The Trump family corruption is so extravagant, so over the top, it makes Hunter's stint getting paid $50k/month to" / X New Tab (21) The Last American Vagabond on X: "Well isn't that convenient for an admin imploding in front of us. It was never incompetence and criminality guys, it was just more democrat hold-overs. Sure, why not. Those willing to ignore the obvious will jump at anything that helps them do just that. #TwoPartyIllusion" / X (21) Office of the DNI on X: "For the love of country.

Why don't Gee & Ursula celebrate when someone faces vigilante justice? // GUEST: Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes // GUEST: Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes

Gordon Gee framed his defense of Les Wexner as a matter of loyalty, philanthropy, and presumed ignorance, insisting that Wexner was blindsided by Jeffrey Epstein and had no meaningful awareness of the abuse orbiting his former confidant. Gee leaned heavily on Wexner's decades of charitable giving and institutional support, portraying him as a benefactor whose generosity and civic engagement should outweigh uncomfortable questions. In doing so, Gee treated proximity to Epstein as an unfortunate coincidence rather than a relationship that lasted years, involved extraordinary financial power, and raised obvious red flags long before the public reckoning.What makes Gee's defense so troubling is not just what he said, but what he refused to confront. By defaulting to character references and donation tallies, Gee sidestepped the basic issue of responsibility that comes with wealth, access, and sustained association. His comments implied that elite benefactors deserve the benefit of the doubt denied to everyone else, and that institutional gratitude can substitute for scrutiny. Instead of demanding accountability proportional to influence, Gee lowered the bar, effectively arguing that if someone gives enough money and claims shock afterward, the questions should stop. For critics, that posture doesn't protect the truth—it protects the donor class, and it reinforces the very culture of deference that allowed Epstein's network to operate in plain sight for so long.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Former OSU President Gee defends Les Wexner amid probe into billionaire's ties to Epstein | WOSU Public MediaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Listeners do NOT want a new Seahawks stadium // Gee & Ursula are anti-cop?? // AGREE TO DISAGREE: Should kids be riding electric powered everything? // WE HEAR YOU! and WORDS TO LIVE BY

SayNoGo/DeLaSoul 4:21 YUHDONTSTOP / De La Soul 4:06 The Rose Bowl (Feat. Your Old Droog & Gee... 4:10 Break Ice / Leaf Dog 3:01 Hard Times (Feat. Fashawn) / Blu & Exile 5:32 Lalala (feat. Method Man) [DJ Premier Remi... 2:42 Sinners And Saints (Prod. By Napoleon Da L... 3:39 Metal Detector feat. Onry Ozzborn & DJ Ch... 3:40 Mathematics (Oddisee Remix) / DJ Mickey K... 3:31 MIMS / Oddisee & Heno. 3:24 Gotta Get Mine (Feat. Masta Ace) / Kista &... 3:10 Touchin Base / Estee Nack & Cookin Soul 3:08 Who U (Feat. Ruste Juxx) / Benny Slumz 3:10 The City / Rashad & Confidence 4:19 Gimme The World (Feat. Jadakiss) (Prod. B... 3:04 Borealis / J Scienide 3:12

De tweede etappe in de Giro d'Italia was er een met twee gezichten. Aan de ene kant schreef Guillermo Thomas Silva geschiedenis door als eerste Uruguayaan ooit een rit in een grote ronde te winnen, aan de andere kant was er weer een vreselijke valpartij. Nu met nog grotere gevolgen dan gisteren. Niek Goedvolk neemt de schade op met Roxane Knetemann en wielerverslaggever Daniël Dwarswaard. Wie zijn de grootste slachtoffers? Werd de koers na de neutralisatie niet te snel weer hervat? En hoe lekker is het dat Thymen Arensman vandaag geen tijd verliest, maar zelfs een paar secondes wint? We bespreken het allemaal in een nieuwe aflevering van In Het Wiel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stacy Rost joins the show and continues a conversation we started with Gee regarding the Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel scandal and how women in sports often have to navigate cultivating sources differently than men. Then, we discuss the M's beginning a three games series with the White Sox tonight, Bryce Miller being set to return this homestand, and new Seahawks ownership bidders emerging in Need to Know. Plus, we take your calls as we do every Friday.

On this episode, we take you inside a community health clinic at a place known for being as concerned about how their customers feel as how they look: Gee's Clippers.Started as a way to help fill an access gap in the community, the clinic is now part of an even larger mission: Gee's MKE Foundation, a nonprofit that owner Gaulien "Gee" Smith recently launched to expand his focus on wellness, mentorship and health disparities within underserved communities of color. Host Kim Shine talks with visitors and volunteer staff about the clinic's lifesaving work, as well as Smith himself about what inspired his more than three-decade drive to serve Milwaukee.#####Host: Kim ShineUniquely Milwaukee is made possible by the generous support of our members.

"Life's a Beach" (May 21, 1989) For our final season, we're not hitting up that many of the GEE favorites. There's no Seinfeld, no Friends, no Roseanne, no Golden Girls. Hell, there's not a Simpsons on the schedule at the moment. But we will make time for Married… With Children, whose third season finale provides some nice moments to remind you all why the Bundys matter. There's even a hot gay couple, however briefly. The Fox Files theme was composed and performed by Nick Loiacano. Listen to Talking Simpsons' episode about Married… With Children's aliens episode. And yes, you can listen to all ten episodes of Fox Files right now for the low, low price of just $5. Purchase here. We have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode's art was designed by Ian O'Phelan. Sound cues for this podcast were composed by Meika Grimm.

Luke Duecy explains the situation surrounding King County Assessor John Wilson // Is the World Cup a Non-Event? Plus Gee makes a big announcement! // WE NEED TO TALK: Sometimes life gives you hard choices, Gee had to make one

In this episode, JP sits down with Gee Ranasinha, a marketing wizard and the driving force behind KXC, a creative agency dedicated to transforming marketing strategies for startups and small businesses. G brings a wealth of knowledge to the table, emphasizing the importance of understanding the psychological aspects of buyer behavior. His insights aim to reveal the often-overlooked fundamentals of marketing that can make or break a business's success. Tune in as Gee unpacks: • The common misconception that marketing is merely about promotion, and why this leads to failure. • The critical role of strategic preparation in marketing before jumping into tactical execution. • Why businesses should focus on understanding their ideal customer profile and tailor their messaging accordingly. • The pitfalls of over-relying on technology and algorithms without a solid marketing strategy. • The importance of conducting thorough market research to ensure your product or service is truly what the market desires. If you find value in today's episode, be sure to subscribe and share it with your network. Let's spread the word about the real keys to marketing success! ⏱ Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 1:13 - Strategy and Branding 2:44 - Misconceptions About Marketing 6:48 - Reflective Marketing 8:06 - Customer Profiles 12:48 - Competitors and Channels 15:07 - Effective Messaging 19:15 - Differentiation 23:20 - Branding and Visibility 29:20 - Embracing Change 33:47 - Tactical Plans 36:53 - Channels of Engagement 39:32 - Importance of Homework 44:19 - Strategic Objectives 51:27 - Consistency in Marketing 54:31 - Video Content Strategy ---

The Center for Black Excellence and Culture's development is groundbreaking in so many ways and now the staff are inspired to build a movement of excellence. Jason Fields, Chief Strategy Officer, and Janine Stephens Hale, Chief Operating Officer, talk about infusing the Black space with the potential for Black excellence  because of the empowering process and the intentionality of the space itself. Hear about the personal value of The Center and the value for the whole community. The visionary standard set by Dr. Gee has extended to the staff who experience the creative energy everyday in the Black space. As Chief Strategy Officer at The Center for Black Excellence, Jason brings nearly a decade of leadership experience in leadership, finance, nonprofit management, economic development, and organizational growth. In this role, Jason focuses on advancing the organization's mission of empowering communities and fostering cultural advancement by leveraging innovative strategies and fostering impactful collaborations. Jason's expertise in nonprofit leadership and team management allows him to effectively implement the vision and drive strategic initiatives that create lasting economic and social impact.   Previously, as President and CEO of Madison Region Economic Partnership, Jason led initiatives to strengthen regional economies by fostering business growth and cultivating talent pipelines. His commitment to financial literacy and community empowerment has been a consistent thread throughout his career, including his work at The Financial Promise Co., where he championed financial education to promote individual and community wealth-building. Janine Stephens serves as Chief Operations Officer of The Foundation for Black Women's Wellness. Her wealth of experience includes over 10 years in fund development, operations, marketing and communications, and events management. Her talents and leadership have helped grow the success of organizations in the local Madison Community including the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County where she most recently served as Chief Development Officer, helping to expand the Club across three locations over her nine year tenure. Janine also served as Chief Operating Officer of Building Brave, a non-profit women's empowerment platform. Janine has served on many community committees to further the mission of agencies serving youth and families in Dane County. A Milwaukee native, Janine is an active and proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the largest African American women's organization in the world. theblackcenter.org alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group

The night is so cool, it just really is.   Chet Baker- You don't know what love is. Beegie Adair-Stranger In Paradise Out Of Abingdon- What Kind Of Life Linda  Carone- Having it All Rose Sinclair -OneNote Samba Drugstore Romeos- Wondrous Place. Tamara Murphy- Atoms for Peace. Dexter Gordon- You've changed. Dave, Brubeck- La Paloma Azul Diana Krall -Bésame Mucho. Sally Street , Sally Street, Gee baby Ain't I Good to You Thomas Mackay -Black Orchard

Dr. Alex Gee gives a preview of the new season of the Black Like Me podcast. It is the big moment as Dr. Gee's vision of The Center for Black Excellence and Culture is revealed to the community. This season shares conversations with the key people that brought this innovative Black space to life. Not only do these conversations highlight the meaningful relationships in all spheres of the process but also show how this project has already inspired individuals involved personally. Hear about how this season will bring together those that invested in the Black aesthetic and culture of The Center and the non-Black allies who leaned into partner on the vision of the project. alexgee.com Support the Show: patreon.com/blacklikeme Join the Black Like Me Listener Community Facebook Group

Indie Mk.Gee, sexy metal and 60s' throwback bangers are stacking the new music mix this week, before Sam and Max pour one out for an Aussie icon at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and start looking ahead to Brisbane's biggest annual music event lineup.Follow along with the songs we discuss with this week's Spotify Playlist.Discover more new music and hear your favourite artists with 78 Amped on Instagram and TikTok.Watch episodes on our YouTube channel and don't forget to like and subscribe.

Gee shares his thoughts on the popularity of the new Michael Jackson biopic // AGREE TO DISAGREE: What makes a good cheap date // TEXTS AND WORDS TO LIVE BY!

Bob channels James Mason and asks Miles for an apology, while Miles entertains Mr. Miagi, trying to put together a lawnmower. Bad AI Transcript Oh, no, no. here tonight, building in for Bob. How is everyone? Gee, fantastic. Are you there? You disconnected me a twat. He apparently is having some trouble with his technology. […]

Gee and Ursula react to the Pedersen Interview // Is the new ABS system making baseball better? // SCENARIOS!

The mics are back to full power, and Sam is in neo-soul heaven as he reviews the second outing from UK outfit Jungle. He's throwing references like Frank Ocean, Tame Impala, and Mk.Gee, but how do they stack up?Relisten to "For Ever" by Jungle on Spotify and Apple Music.Discover more new music and hear your favourite artists with 78 Amped on Instagram and TikTok.Watch episodes on our YouTube channel and don't forget to like and subscribe.

Luke Duecy explains the new public records that show the state’s new millionaires’ tax is a test case to overturn a 1933 Supreme Court ban on income taxes / GUEST: Former Washington State Senator and Washington State Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge weighs in on income tax and the reshuffling of WA Supreme Court  // Gee and Ursula react to income tax and convo with Phil Talmadge / Kash Patel files defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic // WE NEED TO TALK: Tucker Carlson is apologizing?

Dan and Gee Atherton have HUGE Red Bull Hardline updates! On this episode of The Ride Companion Dan and Gee, Atherton reveal the debut of Red Bull Hardline British Columbia, coming to Cypress Mountain near Vancouver on October 17th 2026. Designed by Dan and Gee Atherton, the course will bring the gnarliest downhill race in the world to one of the most iconic mountain bike regions on the planet. The guys also explain why Red Bull Hardline Wales will take a break in 2026 as the team prepares to build an entirely new course for 2027 along with offering a few insights into what to expect. Gee also breaks down his latest Nepal film project, sharing the reality of riding and filming deep in the Himalayas, while Dan talks about life building Dyfi Bike Park, creating the next generation of riders through the Atherton Academy, the launch of the brand new Atherton Bikes E-170 e-bike and loads more. Red Bull Hardline BC will be broadcast live on Red Bull TV and the Red Bull Bike YouTube channel on Saturday October 17th 2026. We hope you enjoy this banger episode with Dan & Gee Atherton! Episode Sponsors:- - Fan of quality tools and want to geek out? Feedback Sports is available from your local bike shop, online retailers such as Saddleback and Bike 24, plus directly from https://feedbacksports.com - LAKA → Don't risk it folks, get your bike insured with LAKA and get 30days free on us. Learn more at https://my.laka.co/the-ride-companion - Manta Sleep: Get 10% off with code theridecompanion at https://tinyurl.com/theridecompanion - Kecks → 10% off with code THERIDECOMPANION at https://kecks.co.uk Get early access & ad-free episodes → https://www.patreon.com/theridecompanion You can also support our long term partners: Marin Bikes → marinbikes.com/gb Focus Bikes → focus-bikes.com SRAM: sram.com/en/sram adidas FiveTen: adidas.co.uk/five_ten invisiFrame: 15% off with code REFRESHANDRIDE at invisiframe.co.uk Troy Lee Designs → 10% off with code theridecompanion at saddleback.avln.me/c/OzduCWvjtcOr Manta Sleep → 10% off with code theridecompanion tinyurl.com/theridecompanion HUEL → 15% off with code RIDE: huel.com/ Mudhugger → Get 10% off with code ridecompanion10 at themudhugger.co.uk Compex → 20% off with code THERIDECOMPANION: compex.com/uk/ Igloo → igloocoolers.com/ Kecks → https://kecks.co.uk use code THERIDECOMPANION for 10% off Feedback Sports: feedbacksports.com WORX → 15% off with code THERIDECOMPANION at uk.worx.com HKT Products → 10% off with code PODCAST at hktproducts.co.uk Follow The Ride Companion Instagram @theridecompanion YouTube @TheRideCompanion Olly Wilkins Instagram @odub_23 YouTube @owilkins23 YouTube clips and BTS channel @moreridecompanion Get official Ride Companion merch, find old episodes and more theridecompanion.co.uk

Podcast family, we have to be careful what we ask for…Because we might just get it! We have been asking for new ways to predict preeclampsia for close to two decades. Well now we have new biomarker serum tests that are even offered direct- to-consumer. The problem is, what do we dowith a positive test?! In a past episode we covered an FDA cleared serum test by Thermo Fisher for use in patients already diagnosed with preeclampsia. Now there is a new blood test which uses cell free RNA, drawn between 18 and 22 weeks of gestation, which can also predict preterm preeclampsia. Does this work? And what do we do when the result shows “high risk” It's a complicated issue. Wehave to be careful what we ask for. Listen in for details!1.     https://publications.smfm.org/publications/554-acog-clinical-practice-update-biomarker-prediction-of-preeclampsia/2.     ACOG Clinical Practice Update: BiomarkerPrediction of Preeclampsia With Severe Features June 20243.    https://www.healthywomen.org/tech-talk-hp/tools-to-predict-preeclampsia4.     Elovitz, M.A., Gee, E.P.S., Delaney-Busch, N. etal. Molecular subtyping of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Nat Commun 16,2948 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58157-y5.     https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250717476669/en/New-Study-in-JAMA-Network-Open-Shows-Current-Approaches-to-Assessing-Preeclampsia-Risk-Are-Failing-the-Majority-of-Pregnant-Moms

"The Offspring" (March 12, 1990) Yeah, we finally did an hourlong — and if you're surprised that we picked Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you are probably unaware how many fans of GEE are also huge Star Trek nerds. We're joined by friend Mike Gizienski, who knows more about the Star Trek franchise than we do, to discuss the episode with Data's daughter Lal, which isn't especially any of the letters in LBGTQ but manages to tread into each of their territories. Trust us, it's a great episode of TV even if you don't know the difference between an Andorian and a J'naii. We have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode's art was designed by Ian O'Phelan. Sound cues for this podcast were composed by Meika Grimm.

Episode 283-Fighting the Gun Records Cover-up Also Available OnSearchable Podcast Transcript Gun Lawyer — Episode Transcript Page – 1 – of 11 Gun Lawyer — Episode 283 Transcript SUMMARY KEYWORDS Gun lawyer, John Petrolino, Citizens Committee, New Jersey, carry permits, African American applicants, retired police officers, freedom of information, institutionalized racism, constitutional carry, national reciprocity, Second Amendment, anti-knife movement, UK gun laws, knife control. SPEAKERS Speaker 2, Evan Nappen, Teddy Nappen Evan Nappen 00:16 I’m Evan Nappen. Teddy Nappen 00:18 And I’m Teddy Nappen. Evan Nappen 00:20 And welcome to Gun Lawyer. So, we are currently watching with great expectation here over a lawsuit that has been brought and filed by our good friend John Petrolino with the help and assistance of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. (ccrkba.org) And what is going on here is very interesting, because John, who many of you know, does excellent reporting on firearm issues, particularly on New Jersey as well. He does great extensive coverage. Well, John was instrumental in having the permit to carry statistics getting publicized and put out there. And with it being put into the ether and made part of an awareness that otherwise really wasn’t there about the key discovery he made regarding blacks, black carry applicants. African American applicants are denied more than double their white counterparts for non-criminal reasons. Okay? Evan Nappen 01:55 And John, he requested the records seeking the statistics on retired police officer carry permits to build on the coverage of all as to who has been denied. So, remember retired police officers in New Jersey can get the RLEO, the Retired Law Enforcement Officer, Card, which in effect functions as a carry permit for retired law enforcement. Prior to the Bruen decision, where it was virtually impossible for folks to get carries, Retired Officers through the RLEO were able to get their carry in that manner. Now, of course, there’s been even more progress where LEOSA (Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act) also covers law enforcement and actually covers New Jersey law enforcement, which to large degree makes even needing a retired law enforcement carry not as necessary as it used to be. But still, it is something that is done, that is issued. Page – 2 – of 11 Evan Nappen 03:14 John requested through, you know, essentially New Jersey’s freedom of information to get the records so that we can continue the further analysis. And what I have here is a news release from Citizens Committee. (https://ccrkba.org/ccrkba-director-sues-nj-officials-over-denied-records-requests/) And what it says, as noted in the complaint, “Plaintiff and the public has a strong interest in ascertaining the relationship between the demographics of carry permit holders amongst the general public and retired law enforcement officers including but not limited to county location, race, sex and the effect of potentially disqualifying criteria in the application population as well as the success rate for the appeal process within the New Jersey State Police.” “Having established Petrolino was deprived of his common law right of access the New Jersey Civil Rights Act was violated, the clear remedy is injunctive relief compelling the production of the records to Petrolino . . .” It continues, “The NJSP”, meaning New Jersey State Police, “has denied countless records requests that I’ve made over the years, never fulfilling even one”, Director Petrolino said. “When I emailed them about these denials, an unnamed person at NJSP basically told me to sue them — so here we are.” Evan Nappen 04:46 That’s right. And as further noted in the news release, “Records concerning the retired police officer permits are about as public as you can get,” says Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Do they have the same level of perceived bias in their permitting statistics? Or perhaps worse yet, do they not? The public has a right to know this information. We laud Director Petrolino in his quest to hold New Jersey officials accountable by forcing them to be transparent with those they swore to serve.” Yes, it is very important that these records get out there, because the current records already show the institutionalized racism that occurs in carry permitting systems. That alone should stand for why we should have Constitutional Carry in New Jersey, where you do not need any permit, as do the majority of the United States. They have no permit required, and it is something that is not necessary, nor in full exercise of the Second Amendment. We should not even be required to need a permission slip. And this illustrates the reasons why. Because the surest way to avoid the racial discrimination, to avoid these type of coverups over records, is to not have to have the records at all, by having what is lovingly called Constitutional Carry. Evan Nappen 06:34 You may have heard there’s a bill federally being pursued to have National Constitutional Carry, which would preempt all states and make it so that any law-abiding citizen can carry without any permit anywhere in the U.S. Now, as a step in between getting to that would be national reciprocity, where every State has to at least recognize every other state’s carry permit, although the majority of states don’t even require carry permits anymore. So, this is what we’re working toward, because this is fundamental to our rights. The ability to carry, the ability to be defenders and not victims, and the fight continues. This is yet another important, very important, step in the fight. As it reveals, and has the potential to reveal, the flaws and other problems that go to bias, racism, arbitrary denials, discouragement built into the system itself. These are all the mechanisms that permitting systems are designed to create. They’re actually made to do this. They’re made to discourage. The idea that it has anything to do with public safety is, of course, a joke, and it’s proven by the Constitutional carry states that are doing just fine without the permission slip. So, in the states that have this still in place, it’s there to be a barrier to the exercise of our rights. Page – 3 – of 11 Evan Nappen 08:28 And you know, it’s kind of laughable to see the Left talk about how outrageous it is, unbelievably outrageous, how it’s Jim Crow 2.0, to require an ID to vote. To vote! That’s Jim Crow. But what goes on with carry permits, with gun licensing? Oh, that’s fine. Well, if that’s Jim Crow 2.0, gun laws are Jim Crow 2000. It’s insanity then, Okay? That’s what’s going on in that radical difference. Teddy Nappen 09:10 Honestly, Dad, it makes me think back to Shaneen Allen, where, you remember, we reached out to all the pro black groups, all the others, like bringing. Evan Nappen 09:22 Right! Teddy Nappen 09:22 They were going to put a single black mom in jail for doing nothing more wrong than. Evan Nappen 09:28 Seven years, with three and a half years minimum mandatory, was their best offer when I took on the case. Teddy Nappen 09:35 Yep, reached out to Al Sharpton’s group, the NCAA, anything? Evan Nappen 09:39 Everybody, right! Teddy Nappen 09:41 Nothing. Crickets. Evan Nappen 09:43 Crickets. Teddy Nappen 09:44 Because there is a built-in reason. These people, the Left are just Marxists. And when it comes to Marxists, they have no standards. It’s about oppressor and oppressee, and it doesn’t matter what position we must take. Because that’s how you end up with Queers for Palestine. That’s how you end up with the fact that they’re pushing actual racist gun laws. Because that is the standard. Because it has to be. No, no. We have to make sure these people are disarmed so we can keep the oppressor / oppressee mindset continuing. Sorry, we can’t side and agree with common sense issues like civil rights. Evan Nappen 10:26 And the most fundamental of all civil rights is the right to be armed. I mean, look right now at what’s going on in Iran. Gee, why haven’t the people risen up to get rid of that evil, terroristic, ruthless regime? Page – 4 – of 11 Why? They don’t have the guns. They don’t have the guns. That’s the problem. That is the big problem. And we have, as an insurance policy in America the Second Amendment, and it’s a check on tyranny. Okay? Enemies, both foreign and domestic, all right? This is why it’s there. And you can see countries that have disarmed their civilian population, and then you see what they do to them. You can see that taking place. Not just in countries as extreme as Iran, or as extreme even as North Korea, or others, what we think of as dictatorships or totalitarian states. But just look now at the U.K. and what is going on there. And Teddy, I think in Press Checks, you’re going to be talking about that, and there you can see what. I’m not going to, we’ll just put that as a little teaser. We’re going to get into that, and it’s critical. So, I want to applaud John Petrolino and Citizens Committee (CCRKBA.org) for pushing to get these records, and as we can expose the cover up. Because why? Why not release them? What is it that they’re so afraid of us finding out, right? You know, there’s something there. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. There’s something going on there, and I can’t wait to find out the truth. We will get to the truth. Evan Nappen 12:25 Hey, let me tell you about our good friends at WeShoot. WeShoot is a fantastic range down in Lakewood, New Jersey, where Teddy and I shoot. We got our training and certificates at WeShoot, and it’s a great resource, as well. They are having a big March Madness sale, and this sale is going until Tuesday the 31st. Here’s some of these deals in their March Madness. First of all, they have, for only $249, you can have a family membership with unlimited range access passes, priority lane assignment, 5 free guest passes, 3% instant cash back in rewards, 5% off accessories, special pricing on ammo and targets. This includes a spouse and all children under 21. This is regularly $425 for a family membership. Valid until 3/31. You can get this fantastic deal for only $249. This is a fantastic bargain. You’ll be able to access the wonderful range and all of these great benefits that WeShoot offers. So, you want to check out WeShoot in Lakewood. Go to their website, weshootusa.com. So this is a great family membership sale. Evan Nappen 14:07 They’re also offering, in the March Madness sale, 20% off all their used guns. Twenty percent off all used guns. That is a fantastic sale. You want to go there and see what great pre-loved guns are there, which you can acquire for a 20% discount. They’re also offering 10% off all Savior Range Bags and Accessories. These are, of course, the wonderful Savior products, and they are doing 10% on that for their March Madness. So, go to WeShoot and check out these great sales. You can get fantastic deals on firearms and a family membership. What a great way to have great family time, what a great family activity. Take your family to the range, enjoy a great day of shooting, and really celebrate being an American in this 250th year of our birth here in this great country. And do it at WeShoot. Evan Nappen 15:30 Let me also mention our good friends at the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs. They are the stalwart defenders of our Second Amendment rights in New Jersey. They are the key group, and you need to belong to the Association. Make sure you belong. We’re going to have a bigger fight now coming up with our new governor, who will be on the same path as the old governor, being an oppressor of gun rights. You can rest assured that we’re going to be dealing with all kinds of stuff, and we’ll be talking about it on the show. But make sure you belong to the preeminent gun rights group in Page – 5 – of 11 New Jersey, the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs. You can join them at anjrpc.org, anjrpc.org. Evan Nappen 16:21 I must shamelessly promote my book, New Jersey Gun Law, the Bible of New Jersey gun law. Make sure you get your copy. It will help you not to become a GOFU in New Jersey. I’ve written it to protect my fellow gun owners, and you can get your copy at EvanNappen.com. Just go to EvanNappen.com and order your copy. You’ll be glad you did. It’s over 500 pages. Yeah, that’s what it takes to try to make any sense of New Jersey gun laws, and it’s all done in a question and answer format to make it as user friendly as we possibly can. Teddy, what do you have for us today? Teddy Nappen 17:12 Well, as you know, Press Checks are always free, and I always want to look to, what would the Left do, if the Left had unfettered power? Let’s say Kamala won, the House and Senate are in their favor, and they followed James Carville’s, you know, we’re going to pack the Court. Also, you know, make Puerto Rico a state and everything that they can, so they can pass whatever agenda. What does that look like? I always will point to Canada and then much further along, the U.K. In the U.K., one of the things that has been very prevalent in their politics is there have been a heavy push of the anti-knife movement. You know, they already cracked down as hard as they possibly could on guns. Evan Nappen 18:07 So, now they need some other inanimate object to blame. Teddy Nappen 18:10 Correct! And I was looking to, okay, who is the “EveryTown” of the U.K.’s anti-knife movement? Who is the group that is pushing for all this? What is the driving force? Because there’s always some group. There’s always one. There’s always the, you know, Moms Demand Action, which is also funded by “EveryTown”. You also have Giffords. You have all these groups. Who is the one pushing for this in the U.K.? And they’re very proud of it. They admitted it on their site, “Blades Down” group. (https://bladesdown.co.uk/) It is an organization founded in the U.K. “Blades Down exists to protect young lives and strengthen communities. We work with young people and families to prevent knife crime through education, . . .” oh, propaganda, “. . . early intervention . . .” Ah, legislation to take away your rights. “. . . and practical skills.” Oh, practical skills, so you can make clear your argument for wanting to disarm your people. “By building confidence, promoting safer choices and equipping communities with life saving knowledge . . .” I love how they dress all that stuff up. And by the way, they love how they promote that we’ve removed 199 knives out of our community. Evan Nappen 19:30 199 knives. Oh, my. Okay. Teddy Nappen 19:35 Amazing. Okay. Page – 6 – of 11 Evan Nappen 19:36 A whole 199? Yeah, wow. Teddy Nappen 19:39 And I love the advertisement. I thought a knife would protect me. I didn’t know it would change everything. Evan Nappen 19:46 You know, interestingly, about knives and protection. That is the gateway self-defense tool for women, believe it or not. Studies have shown that when women want to defend themselves, and if they’re not otherwise trained in any other type of defense, they will often go first to a knife, because they are most comfortable with knives. Normally, you know, having grown up in the kitchen, etc, there’s a familiarity to a knife. So, the knife becomes the first weapon used by women, often those that are victims of domestic violence or have been victims of crime, etc. And then once they want to grow from the knife as their primary self-defense tool, they will often discover firearms, and that is very interesting. Because what the U.K. is doing is they want to ban knives. They want everyone to be defenseless, particularly women who would go to knives even first. Teddy Nappen 21:08 They saw the article about the little girl defending herself against the pedophile and. Evan Nappen 21:13 Correct! Teddy Nappen 21:14 With a knife, and they thought, right. We have to disarm the little girl to make sure the pedophile isn’t hurt. Evan Nappen 21:20 Yeah, so in the U.K., folks don’t realize, but historically, believe it or not, the modern, the modern gun ban, gun rights oppression movement actually came here from the U.K. after World War One. This had taken effect in the U.K., and the same political forces started the movement in the United States to go after guns. And originally, they were successful in going state by state, getting different states to pass gun laws. So much so that the NRA back then, I mean, they were naive. They actually had what were called the model gun laws, and they were putting out to states. This is the National Rifle Association. They put out to states what were the model gun laws that NRA wanted to see passed. It was essentially the NRA supporting gun laws. And they focused on, number one, things other than firearms. And remnants of that law going back 1920s era, back then. Evan Nappen 22:57 Those remnants are in New Jersey’s law. They actually have roots going back to what the NRA pursued back then, out of naivete. I mean, they were, you know, plainly naive about it. But this is why, and also the head of the NRA at the time was a kind of a, he was pro-oppression, pro-gun rights oppression. You know, he was always kind of a problematic guy that you would never think today would Page – 7 – of 11 be ahead of that organization. But regardless, they pushed these state model, state gun laws. And so, if you look, for example, where New Jersey had the ban on blackjacks, switchblades, slungshot, etc, this kind of thing, which then became slingshots because they didn’t know what a slungshot was. Well, that actually goes back to the model gun laws that NRA was pushing. It even contained elements for permitting, for carry and all that kind of stuff, way back. Evan Nappen 24:05 And that actually originated and came to NRA from England. It came over from the U.K., and it planted the groundwork in the States. Then what happened was it became too much with different states, not blah, blah, blah, and it went national. And by the time it went national, well, what was it? It was the NFA, the National Firearms Act. And the National Firearms Act was looked at, look, we can just get a one federal law. We don’t have to do these state laws. And that’s why, when the National Firearms Act finally passed in the form that it became, and I read through all the committee hearings, watching the NFA progress. It originally, the original NFA wanted to ban all handguns. They wanted to ban all, not just full auto, but all semi autos and full autos, and magazines over 12 rounds. That was the original, original NFA. And then through the committees, you saw them say, well, okay, what do we allow? 22 handguns. And then, okay, well, how about we keep semi-autos. And then you see, and then it finally took shape to what it is as we know it today. Evan Nappen 25:23 At the time, the NRA, in The Rifleman, you know, in the “American Rifleman” magazine, said we’ve solved the gun control problem for America, and they were proud of it. And look, I’m not doing or saying this to bash NRA. It’s not why. We’ve got to know the true history of our mistakes. Okay? And it was mistake. We see it now, plain as can be. It was plainly a mistake, but it happened. We need to recognize it, and we need to try to fix past mistakes. You know, ignoring them and putting them under the rug isn’t a good idea. So, know this history, okay? Because we don’t want to repeat this history. And yet here, Teddy, you see with knives. We don’t have, yet, in this country, an anti-knife movement in the way we have an anti-gun movement. But once they take care of getting their agenda of oppressing and disarming and disenfranchising us of gun rights, you can rest assured that it’ll be knives next. Teddy Nappen 26:28 Well, I’ll give you a worse one for you. This is something they push right now. By the way, this is out of Ellsmore Port. (https://bladesdown.co.uk/ellesmere-port-leading-the-way-with-safer-knife-swaps/a/) Leading the way for safer knife, for safer knife swaps. “Blades Down” has created a community supported with local families to do the “Let’s Be Blunt” campaign, where you can exchange your kitchen knives for safer alternatives. Literally turning in sharp knives so you can have a dull knife. If I could write a Monty Python, this would be it. You’ve heard of the Ministry of Silly Walks. Here’s the Ministry of Dull Knives. These people are retarded with the things that they are actually pushing for. Literally the Ministry of Dull Knives. Evan Nappen 27:19 That’s the best! Page – 8 – of 11 Teddy Nappen 27:20 Dull knives. Evan Nappen 27:22 Okay, listen, man. The whole world of knives. I mean, I’m into knives as much as guns. Is what knives will stay sharpest the longest? How great an edge can you hold on the knife? Make it as sharp and sharpening his whole knives. And here, the whole effort is pushing “dull knives”. That is hilarious. Hilarious. Evan Nappen 27:43 What? Teddy Nappen 27:43 It gets even worse. Then they said, oh, we need a crackdown. They’re pushing the Government to crack down on Facebook Marketplace because people are buying kitchen knives on Facebook Marketplace without age verification. Huh? What does that sound? Quite familiar. Think of Gun Broker. Think of any other thing. This is what they do. They crack down on any forms of, you know, freedom finding a way, and by the director. And so I traced it. I went even further. Okay, who is funding this group? Who’s their Bloomberg ass group? Who is pushing for all this? Apparently, it is out of this group known as the Ben Kinsella Trust. (https://bladesdown.co.uk/facebook-marketplace-knives-being-sold-without-age-verification/) And this is the U.K. London crackdown on knives, where, you know, have pushed all the laws of trying to stop people from possessing knives. Have pushed for all the anti-knife laws. They’re the ones funding all this group. Guess who’s one of their sponsors? Facebook! Teddy Nappen 27:44 They’re literally complaining about Facebook Marketplace having that, but also Facebook is their sponsor. Evan Nappen 28:29 That’s hilarious. Well. Teddy Nappen 28:29 But this is the thing. Big tech is not your friend. They absolutely supported the Democrat Party. They are the number one funder of the Democrat movement. When it comes to rights, they do not care. So, it’s just disgusting. And remember, in the U.K. for laws, the maximum penalty for illegally carrying a knife is up to four years in State Prison. If you, quote, unquote, here’s it, “you have to have a good reason for carrying your knife.” What are the good reasons ? For your work, for religious purposes, and for a national costume. I like how that was a reason. Evan Nappen 29:36 A national costume. Yeah. Page – 9 – of 11 Teddy Nappen 29:39 Because you can’t say national, you know, like Scots carrying their Dirks. No, no, no. You can’t be too nationalistic here. And, of course, they have their rigmarole ban lists of knives that we’ve talked about. Evan Nappen 29:50 Well, you know, New Jersey’s knife ban, quote, unquote, does talk about, under subsection D, “manifest lawful purpose”, which seems to be pretty damn vague anyway. And with Bruen talking about right to defense outside the home, I think that law is ripe to be attacked. So, it’s in a way, similar, but it’s not. The problem there is on outside the home for carry. Whereas you’re exempted under other weapons, subsection D, you have an exemption under N.J.S. 2C:39-6e., to possess knives in your home. When it comes to carrying them, then you need a “manifest lawful purpose”, which is very similar to what the U.K. has. However, they’re actually going way further. They’re wanting to ban. They have the knife surrender bins. They’re actually doing a “dull your knife” campaign, stupid like that. Actually, you know, some people like you think, like, if you really hate somebody, it’s like, I’m going to slice you up with a dull knife, right? That’s even worse. But maybe that’s where they’re going. Teddy Nappen 31:09 Don’t worry. They’re doing their best cracking down on the rapes from going from 19,000 to 70,000 in the UK, because they let mass migration in from individuals who, you know, let’s just say don’t. Evan Nappen 31:22 No, no, Teddy, it’s not cause of them. It’s cause of knives. It’s because of knives. Teddy Nappen 31:25 Yeah, that’s the issue. Evan Nappen 31:26 It’s knives. Stabbings. It’s sharp knives. Sharp knives are the reason for the massive increase of rapes. If we at least have dull knives, we’ll address that issue, right? Teddy Nappen 31:40 Yeah, and the rampant stabbings are from which individuals? Sorry, we can’t report on that because that’s racist. Evan Nappen 31:46 Oh, right. So, this is one thing, though. You can still buy unregistered knives in America. You can buy knives, and there’s no permit required. Yet! There’s no place that I’m aware of anywhere in the U.S. that requires a knife permit. Now, you may think that’s outrageous. Who would? How could they ever pass a law to require you to have a permit for a knife? Well, let me tell you, right now. I have a knife permit that permits a serialized knife that was done by Russia. Russia. Soviet Union. I have the actual permit and the knife that goes with the permit. It’s just a very basic, five-inch blade hunting knife. They had knife control, knife registration, and you needed a permit. And I bet, in the U.K., they want to do something similar, right? Page – 10 – of 11 Teddy Nappen 32:54 Funny enough. That’s in their charter. That’s in the “Blades Down” charter. Demanding. Evan Nappen 32:59 There you go. How did I know? How did I guess that? Teddy Nappen 33:01 Amazing. It’s amazing. It’s almost like they don’t even hide it anymore, that they are Marxists and push Soviet styles. It’s how you have Mamdani. Evan Nappen 33:10 Exactly! Teddy Nappen 33:12 With the Government-run groceries, which I love. One of my friends, is like, it’s not Soviet because they still allow for other grocery stores. Oh, really? What do you think happens when you run up a Government grocery store? What happens to the other grocery stores? They’re gonna fold and leave. Like it’s, it’s the level of how are they this retarded? Do they not pick it up, like it’s? Evan Nappen 33:39 Well, they have an agenda, of course. But listen, the important thing is, stock up on knives. Buy as many knives as you want to and can afford. They’ll have, you’ll have all of these “no-paper knives”. Now is your golden opportunity to buy and stock up knives of all types and sizes and shapes. If you want to understand all the knife laws, well, look in my book, New Jersey Gun Laws. I do a very thorough explanation of New Jersey’s knife laws, and you can still get knives by mail. You can still possess them without any special permits or permission, and there’s no registration of knives. And here’s the kicker. Knives are still protected under the Second Amendment. It’s not the right to keep and bear guns. It’s the right to keep and bear arms. And knives are arms, as well as very utilitarian with multi purposes. They end up being pretty good investments, too, depending on what you want to collect. So, happy knife hoarding. Just shake your head when you look around at what the formerly Great Britain is doing. Evan Nappen 35:01 Hey, I want to tell you about this week’s GOFU, which is the Gun Owner Fuck Up. And we love to talk about GOFUs, because it’s actual cases, real things, where people have made mistakes. You get to learn very inexpensively, for free, what others have made costly errors regarding guns and firearms and what we care so much about. This week’s GOFU is about AI. Let me just tell you. You know, AI is interesting. It’s fun. It has a lot of potential, but don’t rely on AI for your gun law advice or for anything along those lines. If you use, you know, these AI platforms, any of this stuff, and you ask them questions, you better verify and get confirmation. Because these AI responses, they can hallucinate. They give supposedly law that isn’t even actual law. I mean, we’ve seen actual cases with clients getting into trouble because they’re relying on AI, which is, at this time, utterly unreliable. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have good uses and purpose, and it may have great things in the future, all that, all that. Page – 11 – of 11 But right now, folks. If you go to AI as your source, so that you don’t want to get into trouble under New Jersey gun law, you are making a big mistake, a big GOFU. Evan Nappen 36:52 This is Evan Nappen and Teddy Nappen reminding you that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens. Speaker 2 37:03 Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state. Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S5 E283_Transcript About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.Known as “America's Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it's no wonder he's become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets. Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It's Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News. As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists. He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America. Email Evan Your Comments and Questions  talkback@gun.lawyer Join Evan's InnerCircleHere's your chance to join an elite group of the Savviest gun and knife owners in America.  Membership is totally FREE and Strictly CONFIDENTIAL.  Just enter your email to start receiving insider news, tips, and other valuable membership benefits.   Email (required) *First Name *Select list(s) to subscribe toInnerCircle Membership Yes, I would like to receive emails from Gun Lawyer Podcast. (You can unsubscribe anytime)Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank.var ajaxurl = "https://gun.lawyer/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";

Have you ever wondered how those in highly demanding jobs that require almost 24/7 attention to the job manage to do it? Well, I've been researching and found a few common habits that may help you get more out of your day. Let's begin… Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The 2026 Spring 50 Sale Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 410 Hello, and welcome to episode 410 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  It seems everyone feels under pressure with increasing workloads and demands on their time. And research is backing this up.  Instead of reducing the workloads of the typical knowledge worker, AI is increasing it. In one study published last month in the Harvard Business Review, 83% of knowledge workers reported an increase in their workloads after adopting AI tools.  Yet even in the age before AI, smartphones, and desktop computers, there were jobs that required an intensity few people could or would endure for very long.  For example, if you were to look at the daily schedules of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, you would see an official workday beginning around 6:30 am and ending well after 7:00 pm, 7 days a week.  Just look at pictures of President Carter on his inauguration day and compare them to pictures of him on President Reagan's inauguration day; you can see the toll the presidency had on Carter. It seemed to have aged him 20 years, and yet it was only four.  If we were to look at President Obama's schedule. While he did not typically start work until around 9:00 am, he would work well into the night, catching up on briefing documents and other background reading. In total, he was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.  Yet each of these leaders used techniques that helped maintain some calm amid otherwise chaotic days. They were well-tested, proven techniques that so many people seem afraid to use today.  This week's question is about these techniques and how you might adopt some of them to manage your workload while still having time for rest and family.  Let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Aaron. Aaron asks. Hi Carl, what advice would you give to someone who cannot get on top of their work, no matter how many “time blocks” they put on their calendar?  Hi Aaron, thank you for your question. Now, you didn't specify what kind of work you do, but I can answer based on what I've learned from former world leaders and CEOs and how they managed their days when facing global challenges. I know not all of us are running a major country, but lessons from people like Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Ford may help you see that there are ways to take control of your time, do the things you want to do, and get a lot done.  The first approach almost all highly effective people do is to protect time for quiet work. This might not necessarily be deep focused work; it could be reading reports or, in the case of presidents and prime ministers, briefing documents prepared for them by their staff.  Of the people I have read about and studied, all of them protected some time during the day. Mostly, this was early in the morning or late at night.  John F Kennedy, for instance, would read the newspapers at 6:30 am, before he met anyone in his office. This gave him a heads-up on emerging world events and often meant he knew more about a subject than any of his aides did.  One interesting note about Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, was that they both took a speed-reading course when they were younger, and it is reported that John Kennedy could read 1,200 words in one minute.  Imagine that. That's going to save you a lot of time. That's being able to read one of my longer blog posts in a single minute!  As a side note, it is reported that Theodore Roosevelt would read a book a day, sometimes two, as well as all his briefing documents.  Now, I suspect that in the early to mid 20th century, with no computers, people read far more than we do today. If you are reading thousands of words a day, you're naturally going to become a faster reader.  Presidents Nixon, Kennedy and Johnson would read briefing documents late into the night. In the case of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, this was often until 2:00 am in the morning.  President Obama also read late into the evening, from around 8:30 pm, after spending some time with his family, he would go to a quiet room and read until midnight or 1 am.  The advantage of doing their reading late at night was that they were unlikely to be disturbed, and it was quiet.  One thing you could do is set aside time somewhere in your day for undisturbed quiet work. Whether that is reading, working on a project or simply replying to your emails and messages.  Just this one change in your day will relieve some of the pressure you may be feeling. It will give you time to work on the non-urgent things that, if you ignore, will soon become urgent and add to the stress and anxiety that working reactively inevitably causes.  Now let's talk about structuring your day.  This is something that, if you're not doing, you'll find yourself getting pulled all over the place with no chance of getting on with anything important.  Structuring your day means planning out what you will do and when. When will you do your most important tasks of the day? When and where are your meetings? When will you take time to rest and relax with your family?  If you begin any day not knowing this, your day will run away with you.  Again, let me give you an example of a US president.  Jimmy Carter would disappear into the living quarters of the While House at precisely 6:30 pm every evening to have dinner with his family.  No matter what was going on in the world. Whether it was a Middle Eastern oil crisis, spiralling inflation or some other world crisis (sound familiar?), Carter would never miss his family's dinner hour. It was sacred.  During that time, nobody from his office was allowed to interrupt him, no matter what was going on in the world. That could wait an hour. Spending some quality time with his family could not. His daughter was young at that time, and she would go to bed around 8 or 9 pm.  Could you do that? Could you “disappear between 12 pm and 1 pm, cut off from the outside world; no phone or computer for one hour, so you could stop and enjoy lunch with your family or friends? It's easy to believe that we have to be “available” all the time. No, you do not.  Not even the leader of the Western world needed to be available every hour and minute of the day.  You're not dealing with a world crisis where people's lives are at stake. You're likely dealing with more mundane issues, like a customer who is frustrated because their ordered electric window motor hasn't arrived as promised. Or a boss who suddenly becomes agitated because sales dropped 12% last month.  Gee whizz! What can you do right now? Probably nothing. You're not going to be able to miraculously produce an electric window motor in a few seconds, nor can you change last month's sales figures.  These things can wait an hour or two. They really can!  This is why, when I get clients to do the “perfect week” exercise, I ask them to do their personal life first. This is the one area most people will sacrifice for their work.  When will you spend time with your family? When will you exercise? When will you spend time on your hobby?  These should be your non-negotiables every day.  President Eisenhower would stop work at 3:30 pm every day to spend an hour or two practising his golf on the White House putting green. President Johnson would go for his daily swim at 2:00 pm every day.  And Gerald Ford would start his day with an hour on his custom-built static bicycle and finish off with 50 push-ups. Every day!  It did not matter what was going on in the world; these presidents knew that exercise was important for them to function, and they made sure they were clear-headed enough to make the right decisions on some of the world's biggest and most urgent problems.  Your customer's missing electric window motor or your boss fretting about a 12% drop in sales is nothing compared to what these presidents had to deal with every day.  Make sure that what is important to you is prioritised, time protected and non-negotiable.  Urgent events will pass, and your being unavailable for an hour or two is not going to significantly affect the result one way or the other.  Another part of all these presidents' days was taken straight out of Winston Churchill's daily routine.  The daily nap.  When you are tired, stressed, anxious, and worn down by the constant noise and decision-making, you will no longer be able to make good, rational decisions. It's as if your brain tightens up and can no longer access your creative thinking.  Winston Churchill discovered this while serving in the army in India in the early 1900s. India is very hot during the day, and it was customary among the officer class to take naps during the warmest part of the day.  Churchill discovered that by taking a proper nap mid to late afternoon, you could do high-quality work well into the evening. And so, when he returned to the UK, he continued to take naps.  As Churchill said, "Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.” Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter all took daily naps. Ranging from 30 to 60 minutes. It was their way of shutting out the noise of presidential work and giving their brains time to re-energise and refresh.  I remember when I first came to Korea and discovered that many of the office workers I was teaching were working 18-hour days and surviving on only 3 to 4 hours of sleep.  I asked them how they managed to do that six days a week, and they replied that they took a nap when they returned from lunch. Korean office workers are legendary for eating a full lunch in less than fifteen minutes. That left them with forty-five minutes to an hour for a nap.  Not so common today, working hours in Korea have reduced over the last ten years or so, but back in the early 2000s, work hours here were gruelling. So there you go, Aaron. There are ways of managing our workloads. It may mean you need to consider redesigning your work hours. The 9-to-5 concept is a relatively recent one. Before the 1980s, people in positions of authority would take longer lunches, and these were often social; and they would do much of their focused work either early in the morning or late at night (Tim Cook still does this)  But whatever you do, put your life first. Work is fleeting. Yes, it's a part of your life and an important one, but it is only a part of your life. Your personal life matters too.  Put your family and friends and health, both physical and mental, first. Then decide how you will structure your days so that the important things get done.  I hope that has helped. And don't forget that my Spring sale ends on Tuesday, 31 March (two days left). If you want to pick up my recent Time-Based Productivity course (which includes free access to the Time Sector System course) for just $99.00, you have about 48 hours left to get it.  Plus, you can save $50 on my 2-session coaching programme. A great way for me to help you personally get control of your system so you are more focused and clear-headed about what needs to be done and when.  I will put all the details in the show notes. Thank you, Aaron, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening.  It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.  

Scrap quilts. Sewing bees. Secret codes. Political activism. Controversies. Three of your new favorite Culcitologists – Olivia Joseph, Luke Haynes, and Joe Cunnignham – are stitched together for one mega episode on one of the most underappreciated and widely practiced arts in the world: quilting. We cover donated quilts, galleries vs. linen closets, incarcerated quilters, the ONE person you do not want to enter a fair with, quilting and covid, the Gee's Bend Alabama quilters who turned modern art criticism on its head, and the icons you need to know about. Also: washing, preserving, appraising, repairing, and enjoying quilts. It'll change the way you interact with your aunt, your local thrift store, art shows, and your very bed itself.  Visit Joe's website and follow him on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook Visit Luke's website and follow him on Instagram Follow Olivia on LinkedIn Donations went to the National AIDS Memorial, Visit Gee's Bend, San Diego Craft Collective, and Crafting the Future Download the FREE Ologies x Luke Haynes Quilt Pattern PDF More episode sources and links Other episodes you may enjoy: Museology (MUSEUMS), Genealogy (FAMILY TREES), Indigenous Fashionology (NATIVE CLOTHING), Cabinology (CABINS), Modern Toichographology (MURALS & STREET ART), Canistrumology (BASKET WEAVING), Mythology (STORYTELLING), Venereology (SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS) 400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topic Smologies (short, classroom-safe) episodes Sponsors of Ologies Transcripts and bleeped episodes Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes! Follow Ologies on Instagram and Bluesky Follow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTok Editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake Chaffee Managing Director: Susan Hale Scheduling Producer: Noel Dilworth Transcripts by Aveline Malek  Website by Kelly R. Dwyer Theme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.