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What happens when a childhood dream refuses to let go? In this episode, I sit down with cartoonist and Lum and Abner historian Donnie Pitchford to explore how old-time radio, comic strips, and a love for storytelling shaped his life. Donnie shares how he grew up inspired by classic radio shows like Lum and Abner, pursued art despite setbacks, and eventually brought the beloved Pine Ridge characters back to life through a modern comic strip and audio adaptations. We talk about creativity, persistence, radio history, and why imagination still matters in a visual world. If you care about classic radio, cartooning, or staying true to your calling, I believe you will find this conversation both inspiring and practical. Highlights: 00:10 Discover how a childhood love of Lum and Abner sparked a lifelong dream of becoming a cartoonist. 08:00 Hear how college radio and classic broadcasts deepened a passion for old time radio storytelling. 14:33 Understand how years of teaching broadcast journalism built the skills that later fueled creative success. 23:17 Learn how the Lum and Abner comic strip was revived with family approval and brought to modern audiences. 30:07 Explore how two actors created an entire town through voice and imagination alone. 1:00:16 Hear the vision for keeping Lum and Abner alive for new generations through comics and audio. Top of Form Bottom of Form About the Guest: Donnie Pitchford of Texas is a graduate of Kilgore College, Art Instruction Schools, Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Texas at Tyler. He has worked in the graphic arts industry and in education, teaching at Hawkins High School, Panola College, and Carthage High School at which he spent 25 years directing CHS-TV, where student teams earned state honors, including state championships, for 20 consecutive years. In 2010, Donnie returned to the endeavor he began at age five: being a cartoonist! The weekly “Lum and Abner" comic strip began in 2011. It is available online and in print and includes an audio production for the blind which features the talents of actors and musicians who donate their time. Donnie has created comic book stories and art for Argo Press of Austin, illustrated children's books, written scripts for the "Dick Tracy" newspaper strip, and produced the science fiction comedy strip "Tib the Rocket Frog." He has collaborated with award-winning writers and cartoonists George Wildman, Nicola Cuti, John Rose, Mike Curtis, Joe Staton, and others. In 2017, Donnie began assisting renowned sculptor Bob Harness and currently sculpts the portraits for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame plaques. Awards include the 1978 Kilgore College "Who's Who" in Art, an Outstanding Educator Award from the East Texas Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs in 1993, the CHS "Pine Burr" Dedicatee honor in 2010, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2018 from Spring Hill High School. In 2024, Donnie was inducted into the City of Carthage Main Street Arts Walk of Fame which included the placement of a bronze plaque in the sidewalk and the Key to the City. Donnie and his best friend/wife, Laura, are members of First Methodist Church Carthage, Texas. Donnie is a founding officer of the National Lum and Abner Society and a member of Texas Cartoonists, Ark-La-Tex Cartoonists, Christian Comic Arts Society, and the National Cartoonists Society. Ways to connect with Michaela**:** https://www.facebook.com/groups/220795254627542 https://lumandabnercomics.com/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:21 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. We have Donny Pitchford as our guest today. You're probably going, who's Donnie Pitchford? Well, let me tell you. So years ago, I started collecting old radio shows. And one of the first shows that I got was a half hour episode of a show called Lum and Abner, which is about a couple of characters, if you will, in Pine Ridge, Arkansas. And I had only heard the half hour show sponsored by frigid air. But then in 1971 when ksi, out here in Los Angeles, the 50,000 watt Clear Channel station, started celebrating its 50 year history, they started broadcasting as part of what they did, 15 minute episodes of lemon Abner. And I became very riveted to listening to lemon Abner every night, and that went on for quite a while. And so I've kept up with the boys, as it were. Well, a several years ago, some people formed a new Lum and Abner society, and Donnie Pitchford is part of that. I met Donnie through radio enthusiast of Puget Sound, and yesterday, USA. And so we clearly being interested in old radio and all that, had to have Donnie come on and and talk with us. So Donnie, or whatever character you're representing today, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Donnie Pitchford  02:58 Huh? I'm glad to be here. Michael Hingson  03:00 He does that very well, doesn't he? It's a Donnie Pitchford  03:04 little tough sometimes. Well, I'm really glad to be here. Thank you. Michael Hingson  03:10 Well, I appreciate the audio parts of lemon Abner that you you all create every week, and just the whole society. It's great to keep that whole thing going it's kind of fun. We're glad that that it is. But let's, let's talk about you a little bit. Why don't you start by telling us about the early Donnie, growing up and all that. I'm assuming you were born, and so we won't worry about that. But beyond that, think so, yeah. Well, there you are. Tell us about tell us about you and growing up and all that, and we'll go from there. Donnie Pitchford  03:42 Well, I was born in East Texas and left for a little while. We lived in my family lived in Memphis, Tennessee for about seven years, and then moved back to Texas in 1970 but ever since I was a kid this I hear this from cartoonists everywhere. Most of them say I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was five years old. So that's in fact, I had to do a speech for the Texas cartoonist chapter of the National Cartoonist Society. And that was my start. I was going to say the same thing, and the President said, Whatever you do, don't do that old bit about wanting to be a cartoonist at age five. Everybody does that, so I left that part out, but that's really what I wanted to do as a kid. And I would see animated cartoons. I would read the Sunday comics in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and then at some point, my dad would talk about radio, and my mother would talk about listening to radio. We would have the reruns of the Lone Ranger television show and things like Sky King and other programs along those lines, and my parents would all. Way say, Well, I used to listen to that on the radio, or I would hear Superman on the radio, or Amos and Andy or whatever was being rerun at that time, and that fascinated me. And I had these vague memories of hearing what I thought were television programs coming over the radio when I was about two years old. I remember gunshots. I remember, you know, like a woman crying and just these little oddball things. I was about two years old, and I kept thinking, Well, why are we picking up television programs on my mother's radio? Turns out it was the dying gasps of what we now call old time radio. And so at least I remembered that. But when I was about, I guess eight or nine we were, my dad took me to lunch at alums restaurant in Memphis, and I saw that name, and I thought, What in the world? So what kind of name is that? And my dad told me about London Abner, and he said it reminds me. It reminded him of the Andy Griffith Show or the Beverly Hillbillies. I said, I'd love to hear that. He said, Ah, you'll never hear it. He said, those were live they don't exist, but years later, I got to hear them. So yeah, but that's how I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and coming up with my own characters and drawing all the time and writing stories and that sort of thing. Michael Hingson  06:24 So when did you move back from Memphis to Texas? Donnie Pitchford  06:28 July 2, 1970 I just happened to look that up the other day. How old were you then? I was 12 when we came back. All right, so got into, I was in junior high, and trying to, I was trying to find an audience for these comic strips I was drawing on notebook paper. And finally, you know, some of the kids got into them, and I just continued with that goal. And I just, I knew that soon as possible, you know, I was going to start drawing comics professionally. So I thought, but kept, you know, I kept trying. Michael Hingson  07:06 So you, you went on into college. What did you do in college? Donnie Pitchford  07:11 Well, more of the same. I started listening to some old time radio shows even as far back as as high school. And I was interested in that went to college, first at a college called Kill Gore College, here in East Texas, and then to Stephen F Austin State University. And I was majoring in, first commercial art, and then art education. And I thought, well, if I can't go right into comics, you know, maybe I can just teach for a while. I thought I'll do that for a couple of years. I thought it wouldn't be that long. But while I was at Stephen F Austin State University, the campus radio station, I was so pleased to find out ran old time radio shows. This was in 1980 there was a professor named Dr Joe Oliver, who had a nightly program called theater of the air. And I would hear this voice come over the radio. He would run, he Well, one of the first, the very first 15 minute lemon Abner show I ever heard was played by Dr Oliver. He played Jack Benny. He played the whistler suspense, just a variety of them that he got from a syndicated package. And I would hear this voice afterwards, come on and say, It's jazz time. I'm Joe Oliver. And I thought, Where have I heard that voice? It was, it's just a magnificent radio voice. Years later, I found out, well, I heard that voice in Memphis when I was about 10 years old on W, R, E, C, radio and television. He was working there. He lived in Memphis about the same time we did. Heard him on the campus station at Nacogdoches, Texas. Didn't meet him in person until the late 90s, and it was just an amazing collection of coincidences. And now, of course, we're good friends. Now he's now the announcer for our audio comic strip. So it's amazing how all that came about. Well, I Michael Hingson  09:16 I remember listening to sort of the last few years of oval radio. I think it was, I don't remember the date now, whether it's 57 or 50 I think it's 57 the Kingston Trio had come out with the song Tom Dooley, and one day I was listening to K and X radio in Los Angeles. We lived in Palmdale, and I heard something about a show called suspense that was going to play the story of Tom Dooley. And I went, sounds interesting, and I wanted to know more about it, so I listened. And that started a weekly tradition with me every Sunday, listening to yours truly Johnny dollar and suspense, and they had a little bit of the FBI and peace and war. Then it's went into half and that that went off and Have Gun Will Travel came on, and then at 630 was Gun Smoke. So I listened to radio for a couple of hours every week, not every Sunday night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And so that's how I really started getting interested in it. Then after radio went off the air a few stations out in California and on the LA area started playing old radio shows somebody started doing because they got the syndicated versions of the shadow and Sherlock Holmes with Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. And I still maintain to this day that John Gielgud is the best Sherlock Holmes. No matter what people say about Basil Rathbone and I still think Sir John Gielgud was the best Sherlock Holmes. He was very, very good. Yeah, he was and so listen to those. But you know, radio offers so much. And even with, with, with what the whole lemon Abner shows today. My only problem with the lemon Abner shows today is they don't last nearly long enough. But that's another story. Donnie Pitchford  11:11 Are you talking about the comic strip adaptation? Okay, you know how long, how much art I would have to 11:21 do every week. Michael Hingson  11:25 Oh, I know, but they're, they're fun, and, you know, we, we enjoy them, but so you So you met Joe, and as you said, He's the announcer. Now, which is, which is great, but what were you doing then when you met him? What kind of work were you doing at the time? Donnie Pitchford  11:45 Well, of course, there was a gap there of about, I guess, 15 years after college, before I met him. And what ended up happening my first teaching job was an art job, a teaching art and graphic arts at a small high school in Hawkins, Texas, and that was a disaster. Wasn't a wasn't a very good year for me. And so I left that, and I had worked in the printing industry, I went back to that, and that was all during the time that the National London Abner society was being formed. And so I printed their earliest newsletters, which came out every other month. And we started having conventions in MENA, Arkansas and in the real Pine Ridge and the my fellow ossifers As we we call ourselves, and you hear these guys every week on the lemon Abner comic strip. Sam Brown, who lives in Illinois, Tim Hollis, from Alabama. Tim is now quite a published author who would might be a good guest for you one day, sure. And just two great guys. We had a third officer early on named Rex riffle, who had to leave due to various illnesses about 1991 but we started having our conventions every year, starting in 1985 we had some great guests. We brought in everybody we could find who worked with lemon Abner or who knew lemon Abner. We had their their head writer, Roswell Rogers. We had actors, I'm sure you've heard of Clarence Hartzell. He was Ben withers, of course, on the Old Vic and Sade show. He was Uncle Fletcher. We had Willard Waterman, parley Bayer, some of their announcers, Wendell Niles. And my memory is going to start failing me, because there were so many, but we had Bob's, Watson, Louise curry, who were in their first two movies. We had Kay Lineker, who was in their third movie. The list goes on and on, but we had some amazing when did Chester lock pass away? He passed away? Well, Tuffy passed away first, 1978, 78 and Chet died in 1980 sad. Neither of them, yeah, we didn't get to media. Yeah, we didn't meet either one of them. I've met Mrs. Lock I've met all of chet's children, several grandchildren. We spoke to Mrs. Goff on the phone a time or two, and also, tuffy's got toughie's daughter didn't get to meet them in person, but we met as many of the family as we could. Michael Hingson  14:32 Still quite an accomplishment all the way around. And so you you taught. You didn't have success. You felt really much at first, but then what you taught for quite a while, though, Donnie Pitchford  14:45 didn't you? Yes, I went back to the printing industry for about a year, and in the summer of 85 about two weeks before school started, I had got a call that they needed someone to teach Broadcast Journalism at. Carthage High School, and we had a department called CHS TV. I ran that for 25 years. I taught classes. We produced a weekly television program, weekly radio program. We did all kinds of broadcasts for the school district and promotional video. And then in the last I think it was the last 10 years or so that I worked there, we started an old time radio show, and we were trying to come up with a title for it, and just as a temporary placeholder, we called it the golden age of radio. Finally, we said, well, let's just use that, and I think it's been used by other people since, but, but that was the title we came up with. I think in 19 I think it was in 93 or 9495 somewhere in there. We started out. We just ran Old Time Radio, and the students, I would have them research and introduce, like, maybe 45 minutes of songs, of music, you know, from the 30s, 40s, maybe early 50s, big band and Sinatra and Judy Garland and you name it. Then, when the classes would change, we would always start some type of radio program that was pre recorded that would fill that time, so the next class could come in and get in place and and everybody participated, and they went out live over our cable television channel, and we would just run a graphic of a radio and maybe have some announcements or listing of what we were playing. And we did that for several years, usually maybe two or three times a year. And then in I think it was 2004 or so, we had an offer from a low power FM station, which was another another county over, and we started doing a Sunday night, one hour program each week. And I think we ended up doing close to 300 of those before I left. And so we got old time radio in there, one way or the other. Michael Hingson  17:03 Well, I remember. I remember, for me, I went to UC Irvine in the fall of 1968 and by the spring the last quarter of my freshman year, I had started getting some old radio shows. So started playing shows, and then in the fall, I started doing a three hour show on Sunday night called the Radio Hall of Fame, and we did radio every night. And what I didn't know until, actually, fairly recently, was our mutual friend Walden Hughes actually listened to my show on Sunday, and so did the gas means actually, but, but we had a low power station as well, but it made it up, and so people listened to it. And I've always been proud of the fact that during the fact that during the time I ran the Radio Hall of Fame, I'd heard of this show called 60 minutes with a guy named Mike Wallace, but never got to see it. And then it was only much later that I actually ended up starting to watch 60 Minutes. Course, I always loved to say I would have loved to have met, met Mike Wallace and never got to do it, but I always said he had criminal tendencies. I mean, my gosh, what do you think he was the announcer on radio for the Green Hornet, a criminal show, right? Sky King, a lot of criminals. Clearly the guy. Anyway, I would have been fun to meet him, but, Donnie Pitchford  18:31 and his name was Myron. Myron Wallach at the time. Wallach, you're right. I think that's right. Michael Hingson  18:37 But it was, it was fun and and so I've actually got some Sky King shows and green Hornets with him. So it's, it's kind of cool, but Right? You know, I still really do believe that the value of radio is it makes you imagine more. I've seen some movies that I really like for that the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy back in 1955 I thought was such a good movie because they didn't show the plants taking over the humans. It was all left to your imagination, which was so cool, and they changed all that in the later remake of it with Leonard Nimoy, which I didn't think was nearly as good, not nearly as suspenseful. But anyway, that's just my opinion. But radio, for me was always a and continues to be a part of what I like to do. And so I've been collecting shows and and enjoying and, of course, listening to lemon Abner, So what made you decide to finally end teaching? Donnie Pitchford  19:38 Well, you know, I could only do that so long. I was getting I was getting very tired, getting kind of burned out, and I had to have a change. There's something had to change. And I was able to take a few years early and retire, and I still the whole time I had a. That it was like a haunting feeling. I, you know, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I would pray, you know, you know, Lord, is there some way can I, can I get out of this? And can I do what I really want to do? And I had some mentors that was finally able to meet people that I would write letters to as a kid, a cartoonist and comic book editor named George Wildman was one of them. He was nice enough to answer my letters when I was a kid, and I'd send him drawings, and he would encourage me, or he would send little corrections on there, you know. And another one was a gentleman named high Eisemann, who passed away recently at age 98 on his birthday, but men like this inspired me, and that it kept at me through the years. I finally met George in 1994 at a convention of the the international Popeye fan club. And I'm I'm at high the same way, and also a writer named Nicola Cuddy, who wrote some Popeye comics. I met him the same way, same event, we all became friends, and I had a good friend named Michael Ambrose of Austin, Texas, who published a magazine devoted to the Charlton Comics company. Sadly, he's deceased now, but Mike and I were talking before I retired, and finally I got out of it. And he said, now that you're out of that job, how would you like to do some art? I said, That's what I want to do. So he gave me the opportunity to do my first published work, which was a portrait of artist George Wildman. It was on the cover of a magazine called Charlton spotlight, then I did some work for Ben Omar, who is bear Manor media publisher for some books that he was doing. One was Mel Blanc biography that Noel blank wrote, did some illustrations for that. This was all happening in 2010 and after that. So I was getting it was getting rolling, doing the kind of work I really wanted to do. And there's a gentleman named Ethan nobles in Benton, Arkansas, who wanted to interview me. I'd gotten, I don't know how he I forgot how he got in touch with me. Maybe he heard me on yesterday USA could be wanted to interview me about London Abner. And so he was starting a website called first Arkansas news. And somewhere in early 2011 we were talking, and I said, you know, you want this to be an online newspaper, right? He said, Yes. I said, What about comics? He said, I hadn't thought about that. So I said, Well, you know, you're a big Lum and Abner fan. What if we could we do a Lum and Abner comic strip? He said, Well, who would Where would I get? Who would do? And I said, Me. So I drew up some proposals, I drew some model sheets, and we did about four weeks of strips, and got approval from Chester lock Jr, and he suggested there's some things he didn't like. He said, The lum looks too sinister. He looks mean. Well, he's mad. He said he's mad at Abner. This won't happen every week. He said, Okay, I don't want LOM to be I said, Well, you know, they get mad at each other. That's part of the that's the conflict and the comedy Michael Hingson  23:30 at each other. Yeah. Donnie Pitchford  23:33 So we, we ironed it all out, and we came up with a financial agreement, and had to pay royalties and one thing and another, and we started publishing online in June 2011, and about six weeks later, the MENA newspaper, the MENA star in MENA, Arkansas, which was the birthplace of Lyman, Abner, Chet Locke and Norris Goff, they picked it up, and then we had a few other newspapers pick it up. And you know, we're not, we're not worldwide, syndicated in print, but we're getting it out there. And of course, we're always online, but and the first Arkansas news went under three or four years later, and so now we have our own website, which is Lum and Abner comics.com so that's where you can find us Michael Hingson  24:24 online. So where's Pine Ridge? Donnie Pitchford  24:28 Pine Ridge is about 18 miles from Mena, Arkansas. MENA is in western Arkansas, and Pine Ridge is about 18 miles east, I believe I'm trying to picture it in my mind, but it's it's down the road, and it actually exists. It was a little community originally named for a postmaster. It was named waters, waters, Arkansas, and in 1936 the real. At cuddleston. He was a real person who owned a store there in waters, and was friends with the locks and the golfs with their parents, as well as Chet and Tuffy. But he proposed a publicity stunt and an actual change of name to name the community Pine Ridge. So that's how that happened. Michael Hingson  25:24 Now, in the original 15 minute episodes, who is the narrator? Donnie Pitchford  25:28 Well, it depends what era their first one trying to remember. Now, Gene Hamilton was an early announcer in the Ford days, which was the early 30s. We don't have anything recorded before that. Charles Lyon was one of the early announcers, possibly for for Quaker Oats. I don't have any notes on this in front of me. I'm just going on memory here. Memory at the end of a long week. Gene Hamilton was their Ford announcer. Carlton brickert announced the Horlicks malt and milk did the commercials when they 1934 to 38 or so. Lou Crosby took over when they were sponsored by General Foods, by post them, the post them commercials, and Lou stayed with them on into the Alka Seltzer era. And his daughter, the celebrity daughter, is Kathie Lee Crosby, you may remember, right, and she and her sister Linda, Lou were a couple of our guests at the National lemon Avenue society convention in 1996 I think let's see. Crosby was Gene Baker came after Crosby, and then in the 30 minute days, was Wendell Niles. Wendell Niles, yeah, in the CBS the 30 minute series and Wendell. We also had him in Mina, super nice guy when it came, when it got into the later ones, 1953 54 I don't remember that announcer's name. That's when they got into the habit of having Dick Huddleston do the opening narration, which is why we now have Sam Brown as Dick Huddleston doing that every week. Michael Hingson  27:27 So was it actually Dick Huddleston? No, it Donnie Pitchford  27:30 was North golf, tough. He always played the part of Dick Huddleston. Okay, the only, the only time that, as far as I know, the only time the real dick Huddleston was on network radio, was at that ceremony in Little Rock Arkansas, when they changed the name of the town that the real dick Huddleston spoke at that event. And we actually, we discovered a recording of that. I was just gonna ask if there's a recording of that there is. Yeah, it's on 12 inch, 78 RPM discs. Wow. And they were probably the personal discs of lock and golf, and they weren't even labeled. And I remember spinning that thing when Sam Brown and I after we found it, it was down in Houston, and we brought them a batch of discs back, and I remember spinning that thing and hearing the theme song being played, I said, this sounds like a high school band. And suddenly we both got chills because we had heard that. I don't know if it was the Little Rock High School band or something, but it's like, Can this be? Yes, it was. It was. We thought it was long lost, but it was that ceremony. Wow. So that was a great find. Michael Hingson  28:45 Well, hopefully you'll, you'll play that sometime, or love to get a copy, but, Donnie Pitchford  28:50 yeah, we've, we have we played it on yesterday, USA. Oh, okay, so it's out there. Michael Hingson  28:57 Well, that's cool. Well, yeah, I wondered if Dick Huddleston actually ever was directly involved, but, but I can, can appreciate that. As you said, Tuffy Goff was the person who played him, which was, that's still that was pretty cool. They were very talented. Go ahead, Donnie Pitchford  29:19 I was gonna say that's basically tough. He's natural speaking voice, yeah, when you hear him as Dick Huddleston, Michael Hingson  29:24 they're very talented people. They played so many characters on the show. They did and and if you really listen, you could tell, but mostly the voices sounded enough different that they really sounded like different people all the time. Donnie Pitchford  29:41 Well, the fun thing are the episodes where, and it's carefully written, but they will, they will do an episode where there may be seven or eight people in the room and they get into an argument, or they're trying to all talk at the same time, and you completely forget that it's only two guys, because they will overlap. Those voices are just so perfectly overlapped and so different, and then you stop and you listen. So wait a minute, I'm only hearing two people at a time, but the effect is tremendous, the fact that they were able to pull that off and fool the audience. Michael Hingson  30:15 I don't know whether I'd say fool, but certainly entertained. Well, yeah, but they also did have other characters come on the show. I remember, yes, Diogenes was that was a lot of fun listening to those. Oh yeah, yeah, that was Frank Graham. Frank Graham, right, right, but, but definitely a lot of fun. So you eventually left teaching. You decided you accepted jobs, starting to do cartoons. What were some of the other or what, well, what were some of the first and early characters that you cartooned, or cartoons that you created, Donnie Pitchford  30:50 just, you mean, by myself or Well, or with people, either way, I did some things that were not published, you know, just just personal characters that I came up with it would mean nothing to anybody, but a little bit later on, I did a little bit of I did a cover for a Popeye comic book. Maybe 10 years ago, I finally got a chance to work with George Wildman, who was the fellow I talked about earlier, and it was some of the last work he did, and this was with Michael Ambrose of Argo press out of Austin, Texas. And we did some early characters that had been published by Charlton Comics. They had, they had characters, they were, they were rip offs. Let's be honest. You know Harvey had Casper the Friendly Ghost. Well, Charlton had Timmy, the timid ghost. There, there was Mighty Mouse. Well, Charlton Comics had atomic mouse, so and there was an atomic rabbit. And Warner Brothers had Porky Pig. Charlton had pudgy pig, but that was some of George's earliest work in the 1950s was drawing these characters, and George was just he was a master Bigfoot cartoonist. I mean, he was outstanding. And so Mike said, let's bring those characters back. They're public domain. We can use them. So I wrote the scripts. George did the pencil art. Well, he inked the first few, but Mike had me do hand lettering, which I don't do that much. So it was that was a challenge. And my friend high Iseman taught lettering for years and years, and so I was thinking, high is going to see this? This has to be good. So I probably re lettered it three times to get it right, but we did the very last story we did was atomic rabbit and pudgy pig was a guest star, and then George's character named brother George, who was a little monk who didn't speak, who lived, lived in a monastery, and did good deeds and all that sort of thing. He was in there, and this was the last thing we did together. And George said, you know, since I've got these other projects, he said, Do you think you can, you can ink this? So that was a great honor to actually apply the inks over George's pencil work. And I also did digital color, but those were some things I worked on, and, oh, at one point we even had Lum and Abner in the Dick Tracy Sunday comic strip, and that was because of a gentleman named Mike Curtis, who was the writer who lived in Arkansas, was very familiar with Lum and Abner, and he got in touch with me and asked, this was in 2014 said, Would it be possible for me to use Lum and Abner in a Sunday cameo? So I contacted the locks. First thing they first thing Chet said was how much I said, I don't think they're going to pay us. I felt like, Cedric, we hunt, no mom, you know. And I felt like he was squire skimp at the time, yeah, but I said, it's just going to be really good publicity. So he finally went for it, and Lum and Abner had a cameo in a Sunday Dick Tracy comic strip, and about four years later, they honored me. This was Mike Curtis, the writer, and Joe Staton, the artist, who was another guy that I grew up reading from as a teenager, just a tremendous artist, asked if they could base a character on me. And I thought, what kind of murderer is he going to be? You know, it was going to be idiot face or what's his name, you know. So no, he was going to be a cartoonist, and the name was Peter pitchblende. Off, and he was, he said his job was to illustrate a comic strip about a pair of old comedians. So, I mean, who couldn't be honored by that? Yeah, so I don't remember how long that story lasted, but it was an honor. I mean, it was just great fun. And then then I had a chance to write two weeks of Dick Tracy, which was fun. I wrote the scripts for it and and then there's some other things. I was able to work with John rose, a tremendously nice guy who is the current artist on Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. We did a story, a comic book story, on Barney Google on Snuffy Smith in a magazine called Charleton spotlight, and I did the colors, digital coloring for that. So just these are just great honors to me to get to work with people like that. And Nick Cuddy, I did some inking, lettering coloring on some of his work. So just great experience, and Michael Hingson  36:02 great people, going back to atomic rabbit and pudgy pig, no one ever got in trouble with, from Warner Brothers with that, huh? Donnie Pitchford  36:09 Well, not, not on atomic rabbit, however, pudgy pig created a problem because George was doing some art, and I think somebody from Warner Brothers said he looks too much like Porky, so the editor at the time said, make one of his ears hang down, make him look a little different. But pudgy didn't last long. Pudgy was only around maybe two or three issues of the comic book, so, but yeah, that's George. Said they did have some trouble with that. Michael Hingson  36:44 Oh, people, what do you do? Yeah, well, I know you sent us a bunch of photos, and we have some of the Dick Tracy ones and others that people can go see. But what? What finally got you all to start the whole lemon Abner society. Donnie Pitchford  37:07 Oh, well, that goes back to 1983 right, and I'll go back even farther than that. I told you that my dad had mentioned lemon Abner to me as a kid. Dr Joe Oliver played a 15 minute lemon Abner show on KSA you at Stephen F Austin State University. That got me. I was already into old time radio, but it was the next summer 1981 there's a radio station, an am station in Gilmer, Texas Christian radio station that started running Lum and Abner every day. First it was 530 in the evening, and then I think they switched it to 1215 or so. And I started listening, started setting up my recorder, recording it every day. And a friend of mine named David Miller, who was also a radio show collector, lived in the Dallas area, I would send them to him, and at first he wasn't impressed, but then suddenly he got hooked. And when he got hooked, he got enthusiastic. He started making phone calls. He called Mrs. Lock chet's widow and talked to her. He spoke to a fellow who had written a number of articles, George Lily, who was an early proponent or an early promoter of lemon Abner, as far as reruns in the 1960s and it was through George Lilly that I was put in touch with Sam Brown in Dongola, Illinois, and because he had contacted Mr. Lilly as well. And before long, we were talking, heard about this guy named Tim Hollis. Sam and I met in Pine Ridge for lemon Abner day in 1982 for the first time, and hit it off like long lost friends and became very good friends. And then in 84 I believe it was Sam and Tim and Rex riffle met again, or met for the first time together, I guess in Pine Ridge. And I wasn't there that time. But somehow, in all of that confusion, it was proposed to start the national lemon Abner society, and we started publishing the Jot them down journal in the summer of 1984 Michael Hingson  39:43 and for those who don't know the Jotham down journal, because the store that lemon Abner ran was the Jotham down store anyway, right? Donnie Pitchford  39:50 Go ahead, yes. And that was Tim's title. Tim created the title The Jotham down journal, and we started publishing and started seeking information. And it started as just a simple photocopy on paper publication. It became a very slick publication. In 1990 or 91 Sam started recording cassettes, reading the journals, because we were hearing from Blind fans that said, you know, I enjoy the journal. I have to have somebody read it to me. This is before screen readers. And of course, you know this technology better than I do, but before any type of technology was available, and Sam said, Well, I'll tell you. I'll just start reading it on tape and I'll make copies. Just started very simply, and from then on, until the last issue in in 2007 Sam would record a cassette every other month, or when we went quarterly, four times a year, and he would mail those to the the blind members, who would listen to those. And sometimes they would keep them, and sometimes they would return them for Sam to recycle. But incidentally, those are all online now, Michael Hingson  41:03 yeah, I've actually looked at a few of those. Those are kind of fun. So the London Avenue society got formed, and then you started having conventions. Donnie Pitchford  41:14 Yes, yes. First convention was in 1985 and we did a lot of things with we would do recreations. We would do a lot of new scripts, where, if we had someone that we got to the point where we would have people that hadn't worked with lemon Abner. So we would have lemon Abner meet the great Gildersleeve. Actually, Willard had worked on the lumen Abner half hour show at some point. I believe les Tremain had never worked directly with them, but he was well, he was in some Horlicks malted milk commercials in the 1930s and of course, the Lone Ranger was never on the London Abner show and vice versa, until we got hold of it. So we had Fred Foy in 1999 and he agreed to be the announcer, narrator and play the part of the Lone Ranger. So we did Lum and Abner meet the Lone Ranger, which was a lot of fun. We had parley bear, so Lum and Abner met Chester of Gun Smoke. And those were just a lot of fun to do. And Tim, Tim would write some of them, I would write some of them, or we would collaborate back and forth to come up with these scripts. Did love and amner, ever meet Superman? No, we never got to that. That would have been great. Yeah, if we could have come up with somebody who had played Superman, that would have been a lot of fun. We had lemon Abner meet Kathie Lee Crosby as herself. Yeah, they met Frank brazzi One time. That must be fun. It was a lot of fun. We had some people would recreate the characters. We had the lady who had played Abner's daughter, Mary Lee Rob replay. She played that character again, 50 years later, coming back home to see, you know, to see family. Several other things, we had London Abner meet Gumby one time. Of all things, we had Dow McKinnon as a guest. And we had Kay Lineker come back and reprise one of her roles, the role she played in the London Abner movie. Bob's Watson did that as well. Some years we didn't have a script, which I regret, but we had other things going on. We had anniversaries of London Abner movies that we would play. So whatever we did, we tailored it around our guest stars, like Dick Beals, Sam Edwards, Roby Lester, gee whiz. I know I'm leaving people out. Michael Hingson  43:52 Well, that's okay, but, but certainly a lot of fun. What? Yes, what? Cartoonist really influenced you as a child? Donnie Pitchford  44:01 Oh, wow. I would say the first thing I saw that got my attention was the Flintstones on on prime time television, you know, the Hanna Barbera prime time things certainly Walt Disney, the animation that they would run, that he would show, and the behind the scenes, things that would be on the Disney show, things like almost almost anything animated as a kid, got my attention. But Walter Lance, you know, on the Woody Woodpecker show used to have, he'd have little features about how animation was done, and that that inspired me, that that just thrilled me. And I read Fred lachel's Snuffy Smith Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. Tracy, which that was a that's why the Dick Tracy connection, later was such a big deal for me. Almost anything in the Sunday comics that was big. Foot. In other words, the cartoony, exaggerated characters are called, sometimes called Bigfoot, Bigfoot cartooning, or Bigfoot characters. Those were always the things I looked for, Bugs Bunny, any of the people that worked on those some were anonymous. And years later, I started learning the names of who drew Popeye, you know, like LZ seagar, the originator, or bud sagendorf or George Wildman, and later high eysman. But people like that were my heroes. Later on, I was interested in I would read the Batman comics, or I would see Tarzan in the newspaper. I admired the work of Russ Manning. Michael Hingson  45:49 Do you know the name Tom Hatton? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yes. Tom did Popeye shows on KTLA Channel Five when I was growing up, and he was famous for, as he described it, squiggles. He would make a squiggle and he would turn it into something. And he was right on TV, which was so much fun. Donnie Pitchford  46:09 We had a guy in Memphis who did the same thing. His name was, he's known as Captain Bill, C, A, P, you know, Captain Bill. And he did very much the same thing. He'd have a child come up, I think some, in some cases, they're called drools. Is one word for them. There was a yeah, in Tim hollis's area, there was cousin Cliff Holman who did that. And would he might have a kid draw a squiggle, and then he would create something from it right there on the spot, a very similar type of thing, or a letter of the alphabet, or your initials, that sort Michael Hingson  46:43 of thing. Yeah. Tom did that for years. It was fun. Of course, I couldn't see them, but he talked enough that I knew what was going on. It's kind of fun. My brother loved them, yeah? So later on, when you got to be a teenager and beyond what cartoonist maybe influenced you more? Donnie Pitchford  47:03 Well, I would have to say George, probably because I was corresponding with him, right? Also, I would see the work of Carl Barks, who created Uncle Scrooge McDuck and the Donald Duck comics and all that. His stuff was all in reprint at that time, he was still living, but I didn't know he could be contacted. I didn't try to write to it, right? Years later, years later, I did get an autograph, which was, was very nice. But those people, a lot of people, Neil Adams, who did Batman, the guys at Charlton Comics, Steve Ditko, who was the CO creator of spider man, but he had a disagreement with Stan Lee, and went back to Charlton Comics and just turned out 1000s of pages, but his work was was inspirational. Another was Joe Staton, who was working at Charleton comics, who I got to work with on several projects later on, and I would say just all of those guys that I was reading at the time. Pat Boyette was another Charlton artist. I tend to gravitate toward the Charlton company because their artists weren't contained in a house style. They were allowed to do their own style. They didn't pay as much. But a lot of them were either older guys that said, I'm tired of this, of the DC Marvel system. I want to just, you know, have creative freedom. Charlton said, come on. And so they would work there and less stress, less money, probably one guy named Don Newton started there and became a legend in the industry at other companies. So I found all of those guys inspiring, and I felt I could learn from all of them. Michael Hingson  48:59 Well, you always wanted to be a cartoonist. Did you have any other real career goals, like, was teaching a goal that you wanted to do, or was it just cartooning it? Donnie Pitchford  49:07 Well, it was just a secondary, you know, as I said, when I started, I thought, I'll just do that for a few years. You know, I didn't know it was going to be like 27 but I we had a lot of success. We had, I had some student groups that would enter video competitions. And for 20 straight years, we placed either first, second or third in state competition with one Summit, one entry, another or another every year. And that was notable. I mean, I give the kids the credit for that. But then about five or six of those years, we had what we call state championship wins, you know, we were like the number one project in the state of Texas. So, you know, we had some great success, I think, in that so a lot of years there, I really, you know, that was a blessing to me. Was that career, you. Well, it just, it just got to be too much time for change. After a while, Michael Hingson  50:05 was art just a talent that you had, and cartoon drawing a talent you had, or, I don't remember how much you said about did you have any real special training as such? Donnie Pitchford  50:14 Well, all of my training was, I just couldn't afford to go to a specialized school. You know, at one time, the Joe Kubert School opened just about the time I graduated high school, it was in New Jersey. I just couldn't make that happen, so I went to state colleges and universities and did the best I could. I took commercial art classes, drawing classes, design classes, even ceramics, which came in very handy when I did some sculpting here in the last eight or nine years and worked as an assistant to a sculptor named Bob harness who lives here in Carthage, but I never had any actual comic strip slash comic book training, so I learned as much of that as I could from guys like George wild. And then after I started the lemon Avenue comic strip, an artist named Joe, named Jim Amish, who worked for Marvel, did a lot of work for the Archie Comics. And tremendous anchor is his. He's really a tremendous anchor, and does a lot of ink work over other artists pencils. Jim would call and say, he said, I want to give you some advice. I'm like, okay, at 3am he's still giving me advice. So I'd go around for two or three days feeling like a failure, but then I would, I would think about all the lessons, you know, that he had told me. And so I learned a lot from Jim and tremendous, tremendous guy. And I would listen to what high, sometimes high would call up and say, Why did you use that purple beg your pardon. So it was fun. I mean, those fellows would share with me, and I learned a great deal from those guys. Michael Hingson  52:11 Are you in any way passing that knowledge on to others today? Donnie Pitchford  52:16 I don't know that I am. I've had an offer or two to do some teaching. I just don't know if I'm if I'm going to get back into that or not. Yeah, I'm so at this point, focused on, quote, unquote, being a cartoonist and trying to make that, that age five dream, a reality, that I'm not sure I'm ready to do that again. And you know, I'm not, I'm not 21 anymore. Michael Hingson  52:45 I didn't know whether you were giving advice to people and just sort of informally doing it, as opposed to doing formal teaching. Donnie Pitchford  52:51 Well, informally, yes, I mean, if anybody asks, you know, I'll be glad to share whatever I can. But yeah, I'm not teaching any classes at this point. Michael Hingson  53:01 Well, you have certainly taken lemon Abner to interesting places in New Heights. One, one thing that attracted me and we talked about it before, was in 2019, lemon Abner in Oz. That was fun. Donnie Pitchford  53:17 Well, the credit for that goes to Tim Hollis. Tim wrote that as a short story years ago when he was first interested in lemon Abner. And I don't know if he ever had that published through the International oz society or not. I don't remember, but Tim later turned that into a radio script when we had a batch of guests. This was in 2001 we had, let's see Sam Edwards, Dick Beals, Roby Lester and Rhoda Williams. And each of them had done something related to Oz, either the children's records or storybook records or animation or something. They were involved somewhere in some type of Oz adaptation. So Tim turned his short story into a radio script that we performed there at the convention. So that was a lot of fun. And then he suggested, Why don't I turn that into a comic strip story? So that's what we did. But that was fun, yeah, and we used the recordings of those people because they had given us permission, you know, to use a recording however we saw fit. The only problem is we had a mistake. The fellow that was running the sound had a dead mic and didn't know it. Oh, gosh. So some of them are bit Off mic in that audio, but we did the best. I did the best I could Michael Hingson  54:40 with it's it sounded good. I certainly have no complaints. 54:45 Thank you for that. Michael Hingson  54:47 I I said no complaints at all. I think it was really fun and very creative. And it's kind of really neat to see so much creativity in terms of all the stuff that that you do. As a cartoonist, me having never seen cartoons, but I learned intellectually to appreciate the talent that goes into it. And of course, you guys do put the scripts together every week, which is a lot of fun to be able to listen to them well. Donnie Pitchford  55:17 And that's what that was, the audience I hoped that we would would tap into right there and it, it was guys like you that would would talk to me and say, What am I going to do? You know, I can't see it. So that's why the audio idea came about. And it's taken on a life of its own, really. And we've got Mark Ridgway, who has created a lot of musical cues for us that we use and Michael Hingson  55:45 who plays the organ? Donnie Pitchford  55:47 That's Mark Ridgway. It is Mark, okay, yes, yes. And it's actually digital, I'm sure. I think it's a digital keyboard, Michael Hingson  55:55 yeah, but it is. It's a, it's a really good sounding one, though. Donnie Pitchford  55:59 Yes, yes. There are a few cues that I did, which probably are the ones that don't sound so good, like if we ever need really bad music. If you remember the story we did, and I don't remember the name of it, what do we call it anyway? Lum tries to start a soap opera. Think this was about a year ago. Yeah, and Cedric is going to play, I don't remember it was an organ or a piano, and I don't remember what he played, but whatever it was, I think was Mary Had Michael Hingson  56:32 a Little Lamb, Mary's, Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano. Sort of kind played. Donnie Pitchford  56:35 It was played very badly, well that, yes, it was on purpose. When mom plays lum tries to play the saxophone. That was me, and I hadn't played this. I used to play the sax. In fact, I played in a swing orchestra here in Carthage, Texas for about five years back in from the early 90s. And so I had this idea, and I hadn't played the horn probably since, probably in 20 years, and his. So I got it out, and I thought, you know, it's gonna sound terrible because it needs maintenance, but it doesn't matter. It's lump playing it, so I got to play really badly. Michael Hingson  57:14 It was perfect. It was perfect, Donnie Pitchford  57:16 yeah, because it had to sound bad. Michael Hingson  57:19 How do y'all create all these different plots. I remember so many, like the buzzard, you know, and, oh yeah, that was fun. And so many. How do you come up with those? Donnie Pitchford  57:28 Well, I used to get some really good ideas while mowing the yard. Don't ask me, why? Or I get ideas. I get ideas in the weirdest thing, weirdest places. Sometimes I have ideas in the shower. You know, I said, I better write this down. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, but there the ideas just come to me. Yeah? The buzzard was fun. I'd had that one. Pretty creative. Yeah, the one about, the one about, let me see. Oh, there was one we did, where wasn't the buzzard? What was that other one? I called the Whisper? Yeah, there was a strange voice that was coming lum thought it was coming from his radio. And he turns his radio off, and He still hears it, and it was a villain who had somehow hypnotized everyone so that they wouldn't see him and he would use his voice only. And then there's a character I came up with, and let me see Larry Gasman played it, and I called him Larry John Walden, and he was the only guy he was blind. He was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized because he couldn't see the you know, I use the old thing about the watch in front of the eyes. I mean, he was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized, so he wasn't fooled by the whisper, and he could track him, because his hearing was so acute that he was able to find him. In fact, I think he could hear his watch ticking or something like that. So he was the hero of that piece. But, well, I just, I just think up ideas and write them down. Tim Hollis has written some of the scripts, maybe three or four for me, I've adapted some scripts that London Abner did that were never broadcast or that were never recorded. Rather, I've adapted a few, written several, and I keep saying, Well, when I completely run out of ideas, I'll just have to quit. Michael Hingson  59:32 Well, hopefully that never happens. What? What are your future plans? Donnie Pitchford  59:38 Well, right now, there's nothing major in the works other than just maintaining the strip, trying to continue it, trying to make it entertaining, and hopefully doing a little work on the website and getting it into the hands of more people. And I'd like to increase. Least newspaper coverage, if at all possible. And because this thing doesn't, you know, it's got to pay for itself somehow. So you know, I'm not getting rich by any means. But you know, I want to keep it fun. I want to keep having fun with it. Hopefully people will enjoy it. Hopefully we can reach younger readers, listeners, and hopefully lemon Abner can appeal to even younger audiences yet, so that we can keep those characters going. Michael Hingson  1:00:29 Yeah, there's so much entertainment there. I hope that happens now in the the life of Donnie Pitchford. Is there a wife and kids? Donnie Pitchford  1:00:40 Yes, there's a wife of almost 40 years. We unfortunately don't have any children. We've almost feel like we adopted several children all the years we were teaching. We we've adopted several cats along the way. And so, you know, we've had cats as pets for almost ever, since we were married. But that's she's, she's great, you know, she's, she's been my best friend and supporter all these years. And we were members of first Methodist Church here in Carthage, Texas, and doing some volunteer work there, and helping to teach Sunday school, and very involved and active in that church. Michael Hingson  1:01:19 So I have a cat, and I hear her outside, not outside the house, but outside the the office here, she wants me to go feed her, and we, we shaved her yesterday because her hair gets long and Matt's very easily. So she got shaved yesterday. So she's probably seeking a little vengeance from that too, but, but my wife and I were married 40 years. She passed away in November of 2022 so it's me and stitch the cat and Alamo the dog, and Karen is monitoring us somewhere. And as I tell everyone, I've got to continue to be a good kid, because if I'm not, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be good. But it's a lot of fun. Well, I want to thank you for being with us today. This has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot, but it's just been great to have another podcast talking about old radio shows. And you said again, if people want to reach out, they can go to lemon Abner comics.com if people want to talk to you about doing any kind of cartooning or anything like that. What's the best way they can do that? Donnie Pitchford  1:02:24 Well, they can go to the London Abner dot lumen, Abner comics.com website, and there's a contact a link right there at the top of the page. So yeah, they can contact me through that. Probably that's the easiest way to do it. Michael Hingson  1:02:37 Okay, well, I want to thank you again for being here, and I want to thank all y'all out there. That's how they talk in Texas, right? It's all y'all for everybody. Donnie Pitchford  1:02:46 Well, some of them do, and some of them in Arkansas do too. Well, yeah. Michael Hingson  1:02:49 And then there's some who don't, yeah, y'all means everything, and it Speaker 1  1:02:54 don't, yeah, I don't think squire skimp says it that way. Michael Hingson  1:02:58 Well, Squire, you know, whatever it takes. But I want to thank you all for being here, and please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. Donnie would appreciate it. I would appreciate it, and also give us a review. We'd love to get your reviews, so please do that. If you can think of anyone else who ought to be a guest, and I think Donnie has already suggested a few. So Donnie as well, anyone else who ought to come on the podcast, we'd love it. Appreciate you introducing us, and you know, we'll go from there. And I know at some point in the future, the Michael hingson Group Inc is going to be a sponsor, because we've started that process for lemon. Abner, yes, thank you. Thank you. So I want to, I want to thank love and Squire for that 1:03:45 years. Well, it's been my pleasure. Michael Hingson  1:03:50 Well, thank you all and again, really, seriously, Donnie, I really appreciate you being here. This has been a lot of fun. So thank you for coming. Donnie Pitchford  1:03:58 Thank you. It's been a great honor. I've appreciated it very much. Michael Hingson  1:04:06 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

In the early 1960s, R.J. Reynolds, one of the largest and most profitable tobacco companies in the U.S. at the time, wanted to diversify its business. Its marketing strategies had been highly successful in selling its top brands, like Camel, Winston and Salem cigarettes, and executives thought, Why not apply the same strategies to, say, the food industry?So in 1963, R.J. Reynolds acquired Hawaiian Punch. It marked the beginning of the tobacco industry's entry into the food sector. In the following decades, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris expanded aggressively into the food industry, acquiring major brands, like Del Monte, Nabisco, General Foods, Kraft and 7UP, where they produced hyperpalatable, chemically-engineered foods now known as ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. These products were marketed especially to children and other vulnerable groups. In Berkeley Talks episode 229, Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy in the School of Medicine at UC San Francisco, discusses how ultra-processed foods — like cookies, sodas, instant noodles, fish sticks and cereals — are a direct legacy of the tobacco industry, and are responsible for a dramatic rise in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases across the country. “About 60% of the calories in Americans' diets are from ultra-processed foods,” says Schmidt, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event in May. “In the mid-'80s, when we see ultra-processed foods starting to scale up in the American food supply, we also see obesity starting to really rise. That is the moment when some of the largest food companies are owned by tobacco companies.”This talk took place on May 5, 2025, and was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) and Berkeley Public Health. It was moderated by Isabel Madzorera, an assistant professor in food, nutrition and population health at Berkeley Public Health and co-faculty director at the Berkeley Food Institute.Watch a video of the event on the Berkeley Food Institute's YouTube page.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by HoliznaCC0.Photo by Cory Doctorow via Wikimedia Commons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Much like the popularity of methylene blue, the building popularity of nicotine pouches has produced a sort of health sub-culture within the larger context of a generally unhealthy population. Whereas methylene blue is relatively new to the public, nicotine has been around, and much more popular, for a lot longer. Sure, methylene blue has certain medical benefits, namely as a supplement for those with methemoglobinemia, though too much of the substance can cause the same condition. Though it goes with anything - quantity, quality, long term use, additional additives, and health context matter. The same goes for nicotine pouches. Nicotine, especially the non-smoked kind, can benefit cognition, memory, and concentration to a small degree, though delivery mechanisms and quality matter greatly.  Could it be that these recent health potions are nothing more than a commodifying and monetizing not only of health but of the healthcare revolution?The bottom line is this: Big Tobacco lied, obfuscated and killed for decades. By the 1980s and 1990s, studies, high profile cases, and lawsuits put some final nails in their coffin. It was around this time that these companies began to diversify heavily. Phillip Morris purchased General Foods, Kraft, and Miller Brewing in the 80s, and a little later Nabisco in 2000. R.J. Reynolds had purchased the same company in the 80s. They also had control of Pacific Hawaiian products since the 60s. These acquisitions allowed tobacco companies to apply cigarette marketing tactics, like targeting children and minorities, and to develop "hyper-palatable" foods high in fat, sugar, and sodium, influencing the U.S. food system for decades.Vaping was then introduced in the early 2000s and within a few years Big Tobacco was diversifying again. In 2014 MarkTen e-cigarettes were introduced by Altria (Phillip Morris) and Vuse was introduced by R.J. Reynolds (BAT). Soon after Altria introduced ON!, British American Tobacco (R.J. Reynolds) launched VELO, and Phillip Morris acquired ZYN. When vaping began to develop a bad reputation for some, the industry convinced many that cigarettes were the safer choice, while others kept vaping for the same reason.Although these companies had marketed nicotine gum and patches for decades, the market grew rapidly as people tried to stop smoking in general. But what about the market for non-smokers? Well, that's where ON!, ZYN, and VELO come in. Instead of chewing tobacco, cigarettes, patches or gum, pouches were for all non-smokers and promoted as having health benefits. By the time these pouches were largely under the control of Big Tobacco there began a campaign of promotion on social media, primarily TikTok, for flavored nicotine pouches - as with flavored cigarettes and vapes. Now they have been picked up by conservatives and those leaning in the direction of MAHA. It all makes sense, too, when considering what the HHS and NIH have done so far under RFK Jr. Although certain vaccines are longer advised for healthy kids and pregnant women, the HHS and NIH are investing millions, maybe billions, in “universal influenza and coronavirus vaccines.” With Project Stargate there is further investment in personalized medicine and vaccines, followed up in May, 2025, with three other interesting developments. May 5 saw the White House strip regulations for domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing and May 12 saw the White House authorize that “the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary) shall facilitate direct-to-consumer purchasing programs for pharmaceutical manufacturers that sell their products to American patients at the most-favored-nation price." On May 19 the HHS posted about RFK Jr meeting with technocrats “creating wearable devices, AI tools, and personalized apps that empower Americans to take control of their health.” What all of this really does is allow for the mass collection of personal health data so that even more accurate health models can be created in order to personalized marketing and products that can be sold directly to the public with no middle party, while also empowering insurance companies to take advantage of knowing who can be charged more for private decisions. This isn't revolution, it's commodification and monetization. And at the very least, anyone advocating for methylene blue, itself a “fetotoxic agent,” or nicotine pouches without first examining all the free ways we can be healthier, or without noting that the first is a dye and the second is sold by a famously corrupt and evil industry, is either untrustworthy, ignorant, or a sell out. *The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, you can subscribe below underneath the show description.-FREE ARCHIVE (w. ads)SUBSCRIPTION ARCHIVEX / TWITTER FACEBOOKYOUTUBEMAIN WEBSITECashApp: $rdgable Paypal email rdgable1991@gmail.comEMAIL: rdgable@yahoo.com / TSTRadio@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-secret-teachings--5328407/support.

When I say Burger Chef to most people, they might recognize the name from its appearance on Mad Men, but most people haven't heard of. This, despite it being the second largest fast food chain in the United States by 1973. Its rise was dramatic, its fall, sad. On this episode of the show, I want to talk to you about this wonderful fast food restaurant. I start the show talking about my childhood visits to the chain. They were all solo trips with my mom and I loved all of them. The place had character and tasty food, plus they had some great options for kids. All things I will talk about during the show. After my story I move on to the chain itself, I talk about its connection to Burger King, its growth, franchising, innovations, sale to General Foods and its decline. My mom lamented the loss of this chain. She was convinced it was a higher quality offering than other chain. It just goes to show that a lot can go wrong when managing a fast food chain and that it can be difficult to recover when things go wrong. Starting in the early eighties, they start converting Burger Chefs, mostly to Hardees. Bu the memory of BC lingered and Hardees has re-released the Big Shef a few times. Its been a decade since they release it last and I don't see it happening again. I think that is a good indicator of people's interest in the chain. My hope is that by talking about Burger Chef, I can inspire a few people to remember or seek out more info about it.

In this episode, Tom Oliver shares his career journey that began as an 'Army brat,' his aspirations to attend the Air Force Academy, and how he navigated challenges during his military service, including life-threatening situations while flying. After transitioning to the corporate world, Tom excelled in turnaround and crisis management roles at companies like General Foods, Nabisco, and Dole Food Company, showcasing his ability to streamline processes and improve performance metrics. Later, Tom ventured into entrepreneurship, founding a successful medical device company. Throughout his career, Tom emphasizes the importance of mentoring, developing people, and the simple but powerful principle of 'try.'   Episode Highlights: 10:19 Flying Career and Near-Death Experiences 14:31 Transition to the Pentagon 17:01 From Military to Corporate: The Big Shift 27:05 Addressing CEO Burnout 28:06 Revitalizing Dole Food Company 32:36 Innovative Solutions for Workforce Management 37:10 From Corporate to Entrepreneurship 37:41 The Power of Trying   Tom Oliver is a seasoned leader specializing in business turnarounds, change management, and strategy execution. As CEO of CoolSystems, he transformed a struggling startup into a leading medical device company, growing revenues to $19M despite significant challenges. His career highlights include leading PowerBar's $415M acquisition by Nestlé, saving Dole Food Company $131M through global productivity initiatives, and driving a 97% revenue increase at Dolefil. Known for his ability to rebuild companies from the ground up, Tom's focus on innovation, strategic growth, and culture-building consistently delivers extraordinary results across industries.   How to connect with Tom: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasoliver/   For more insights: Follow me on my YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/47GgMdn  Sign up for my Weekly Newsletter:  https://bit.ly/3T09kVc Sign up for my LinkedIn Newsletter: https://bit.ly/49SmRV3 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's surprising to learn that the largest food companies in the world were once owned by big tobacco. During the 1980s through the early 2000s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds acquired and operated Kraft, General Foods, and Nabisco, generating billions in revenue from well-known brands like Oreo cookies, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and Lunchables. When big tobacco controlled these food giants, rates of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases surged across the West. This has led many to ask: Did big tobacco apply its expertise in making cigarettes more addictive to the engineering of processed foods? Joining us today to explore this question is Dr. Tera Fazzino, Associate Director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the University of Kansas. Her ground-breaking research into “hyper-palatable” foods sheds light on how big tobacco may have spoiled the American food supply. Did big tobacco make food addictive? Find out, only on RegWatch by RegulatorWatch.com. Released: October 11, 2024 Produced by Brent Stafford https://youtu.be/kpv32PVXpaI This episode is supported by DEMAND VAPE Make RegWatch happen, go to https://support.regulatorwatch.com #RegWatch #VapeNews

In Breaking Walls episode 151 it's the spring of 1944 and Jack Benny's sponsor, General Foods, thinks he's in a slump. Benny got mad and it changed the broadcasting landscape forever. Tonight, we'll find out how and why. —————————— Highlights: • Benny's Early Radio Career in the 1930s and Ratings Peak • Early Problems with General Foods • Dennis Day Leaves for World War II • Jack Fires General Foods, Signs with American Tobacco • Dick Haymes Replaces Dennis Day as Singer • The Importance of Benny's Supporting Cast • Jack's Split Personality • Danny Kaye Guest Stars To Play Jack in A Movie • The Last General Foods Sponsored Show • Looking Ahead to D-Day's 80th Anniversary —————————— The WallBreakers: http://thewallbreakers.com Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts. To support the show: http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers —————————— The reading material used in today's episode was: • Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny • On The Air — By John Dunning • Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg As well as articles from • Broadcasting Magazine • Radio Daily • Variety And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny's 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way. —————————— On the interview front: • Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com. • Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC's The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org • Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney • Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver. • Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson —————————— Selected music featured in today's episode was: • The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky —————————— A special thank you to Ted Davenport, Jerry Haendiges, and Gordon Skene. For Ted go to RadioMemories.com, for Jerry, visit OTRSite.com, and for Gordon, please go to PastDaily.com. —————————— Thank you to: Tony Adams Steven Allmon Orson Orsen Chandler Phil Erickson Gerrit Lane Jessica Hanna Perri Harper Thomas M. Joyce Ryan Kramer Earl Millard Gary Mollica Barry Nadler Christian Neuhaus Ray Shaw Filipe A Silva John Williams Jim W. WildEyeWheel —————————— WallBreakers Links: Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

In the fall of 1944 after Jack's switch to Lucky Strike, General Foods did move a show opposite Jack. It wound up being The Kate Smith Show. The company uprooted Smith's Friday program, countering Benny with a One-Hundred-Seventy-Thousand-Dollar ad campaign. While they did temporarily put a dent into Benny's rating, Kate Smith lost forty-percent of her audience, dropping to ninety-third place in the overall ratings. The following season General Foods moved her back to Friday, but Kate Smith never again had another Top-fifty show. Well, that brings our look at Jack Benny's show in the spring of 1944 to a close. I mentioned that Benny's last episode for General Foods aired on June 4th, 1944. Our next episode of Breaking Walls will move only two days into the future, for perhaps the most important day in broadcasting history. Next time on Breaking Walls, we spotlight radio broadcasting on June 6th, 1944 to align ourselves with the Country's heartbeat on the day the invasion of western Europe finally began. The reading material used in today's episode was: • Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny • On The Air — By John Dunning • Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg As well as articles from • Broadcasting Magazine • Radio Daily • Variety And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny's 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way. On the interview front: • Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com. • Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC's The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org • Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney • Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver. • Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson Selected music featured in today's episode was: • The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky

June 4th, 1944 was the last Grape Nuts Flakes sponsored Jack Benny Program. Jack took out a full page ad in Variety thanking General Foods and their agency Young and Rubicam for ten years of partnership. Six days later, the American Cigarette and Cigar Company deposited two hundred thousand dollars in a special exploitation account for the program. On June 23rd they wrote to Jack stipulating some terms of the agreement. The program would be broadcast live coast-to-coast 7:00PM eastern war time, with a transcribed rebroadcast by transcription between 12:30 and 1:00AM New York time for West Coast stations. In August, Benny left on a three-week USO tour of Australia and the South Pacific. On August 28th, American Tobacco announced that Pall Mall's product scarcity didn't justify a twenty-five thousand dollar per week expenditure. Lucky Strike would sponsor the show. The following week they announced a comprehensive, multimedia ad campaign. It was estimated to cost over a quarter million dollars. This changed the company with which Jack was signed from the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to the American Tobacco Company, and was made official on September 26th, 1944.

With Jack's contract with General Foods nearing its close, the only thing left to do was count down the remaining episodes. On May 21st, 1944, Jack and the gang discussed split personalities. Jack thinks it's ridiculous, but later realizes he has one too. In other news this episode marks the debut of the spoof commercial for Sympathy Cough Syrup. Its tagline “Sympathy spelled backwards is Yhtapmys” became famous.

By the spring of 1944, Benny's ratings had continued slipping. That season, his 23.7 rating meant he'd lost roughly four million weekly listeners in just three years. At the end of this season, his contract with General Foods was up. Here's Jack Benny talking about that time. There was tension between the two parties because Benny had helped save Jell-O from going out of business. Jack was also upset with what he felt were second-rate accommodations provided by General Foods during the cast's ongoing army base trips. Since Benny had full control of his show as NBC guaranteed him the Sunday time slot over any sponsor Benny could sell his program to the highest bidder. Benny's management team quietly held a sealed auction for sponsorship on February 24th. George W. Hill, the President of American Tobacco, wanted Benny's show. His chief account executive was thirty-six-year-old Pat Weaver, the future president of NBC. A surprise winner was announced: Ruthrauff & Ryan, agency for American Tobacco's Pall Mall cigarettes, bid twenty-five thousand dollars per-week for three thirty-five week seasons. That's roughly Four-Hundred-Forty Thousand Dollars today. The weekly money was payable to Benny for all payroll and production costs. They also included an additional two-hundred-thousand dollars, or three-point-five million today, over the three years for marketing and promotion. American Tobacco also agreed to pay for any network and carrier line charges. The advertising community was stunned. General Foods considered retaliating against Jack by moving The Fanny Brice Show to CBS opposite the Benny program. They also publicized the fact that they were now sponsoring three programs, The Aldrich Family, The Meredith Wilson Show, and Mr. Ace and Jane, for the same cost as just the Benny program. On April 10th, 1944, Jack officially signed a three-year contract with the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to advertise Pall Mall cigarettes for twenty-two thousand dollars per broadcast, including a West Coast rebroadcast. The three-year contract would begin on July 1st, 1944, and run through June 30th, 1947. American Tobacco also had a three year option to renew. Benny was the executive producer. He funded the entire production cost out of his pay. In the case that any cast member, or Jack himself, missed a program, Jack was to furnish a substitute actor for ten thousand dollars, at his own expense. If Jack was absent for six consecutive broadcasts, American had the right to terminate the current season, but not the entire contract. Jack also had to make up for any of his absences by adding additional programs at the end of the season. In the midst of this, on April 30th, 1944 The Jack Benny Program signed on from the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Seattle, Washington. With Dennis Day gone to war, Dick Haymes substituted as the program's singer.

Mel Blanc joined the show on February 19th, 1939. Benny was adding a new touch to the miser theme: a polar bear, who would live in his basement and help protect his money. The bear was christened Carmichael, and in 1941, according to Rochester, he ate the gas man. On Sunday December 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Manila, thrusting the United States into World War II. That evening, The Jell-O Program signed on at 7PM eastern time. This is audio from that night. Benny's show peaked in 1941 with an average rating of 30.8. By 1942 Jack was beginning to get into disagreements with General Foods. Variety reported as early as 1939 that the sponsor wanted to change Jack's sponsorship to Grape Nuts Flakes. Jack resisted the move. The Jell-O brand had become uniquely associated with Benny. However, by 1942 with wartime sugar rationing, General Foods pushed the product change through. Variety reported on March 4th, 1942 that Benny would take Grape Nuts Flakes, while Kate Smith would now be sponsored by Jell-O. General Foods claimed the output of Jell-O would be so limited by the fall that they couldn't justify the cost of Benny's show. The Jack Benny Program cost General Foods twenty-two-thousand dollars per week. Kate Smith's show only cost ten thousand. With the October 4th, 1942 season premiere the show became The Grape-Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny. Benny wasn't thrilled, also feeling General Foods hadn't done enough to promote his show. After back-to-back seasons with a rating over thirty points, Benny 1942-43 rating slipped to 26.3, losing roughly two million listeners. Jack had a unique contract. Thanks to a verbal agreement with NBC's President Niles Trammel, Jack controlled his Sunday timeslot. At the end of Jack's next contract he was free to approach any sponsor, pending NBC's approval. It meant that General Foods could lose their top star and their top time slot.

In March of 1932 Jack Benny was headlining on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll's Vanities when friend Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on Ed's radio show. At the time Benny had no great interest in radio, but he went on Sullivan's quarter-hour show March 19th, 1932, as a favor. His first line was “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?” Canada Dry Ginger Ale's advertising agency heard Benny and offered him a show. Benny debuted on NBC's Blue Network on May 2nd, 1932. This initial series aired Mondays and Wednesdays. Benny's wife of five years, Sadye Marks, who'd performed with him on Vaudeville, joined the cast on August 3rd as Mary Livingstone. In storyline she was a young Benny fan from Plainfield, New Jersey. Eventually she read humorous poetry and letters from her mother, and much later she would become a main deflator of Benny's ego. On October 30th, 1932 the show moved to CBS. During this time Benny began ribbing his sponsor in a gentle, good-natured way. Canada Dry got upset, and despite a rating in radio's top twenty, they canceled the show after January 26th, 1933. Chevrolet, which had recently lost Al Jolson, was waiting in the wings. On Friday, March 17th, 1933 at 10PM from New York, Benny debuted with The Chevrolet Program over NBC's Red Network. The June 23rd, 1933 episode was the last of the season as well as Mary Livingstone's twenty-eighth birthday. Howard Claney was announcer with Frank Black as orchestra leader and James Melton as the tenor. When the show returned in the fall it was on Sundays at 10PM from New York. Benny's program slowly began to morph from variety into more developed comedic skits. He also started to show the character traits that would come to define his persona. Unfortunately, Chevrolet didn't like the series and fired him after the April 1st, 1934 episode. But, the General Tire Company immediately scooped him up. Benny debuted on their program the following Friday, April 6th, 1934 at 10PM. There, he first worked with announcer Don Wilson. Wilson would remain with Benny until 1965. Often the butt of weight-based jokes, Wilson's deep belly laugh that could often be heard above the studio audience and his deep, rich voice became a show trademark. This is audio from that April 6th, 1934 episode. That summer Mary and Jack adopted their daughter Joan. She was two weeks old. Jack later said in his autobiography that as Joan grew older, she came to look like he and Mary. She had Mary's face with Jack's blue eyes and his love for music. Benny, Don Wilson, and Mary Livingstone worked together, along with tenor Frank Parker and orchestra leader Don Bestor on The General Tire Show until September 28th, 1934. Then, General Foods came calling. They wanted Benny's help saving a gelatin product of theirs called Jell-O, which was getting badly beaten by Knox Gelatin in sales. On October 14th, 1934 Benny moved to Sunday nights at 7PM from NBC's Blue Network. His rating immediately leapt into the top five. On April 7th, 1935 the show was regularly broadcast from New York for the final time. The Jell-O Program would be moving to Hollywood. Benny simultaneously made Broadway Melody of 1936 and It's In The Air on film. Until the mid-1930s, New York and Chicago were the main broadcasting hubs. Frank Nelson remembered early Hollywood radio. Nelson began working with Benny in June of 1934. Even in 1935, it was still more costly for shows to originate from Southern California. Here's actress Mary Jane Higby, who grew up in Los Angeles, but moved to New York in 1937, explaining why. On November 3rd, 1935 Kenny Baker joined the show as the new singer. That year, Benny's show climbed to second overall in the ratings. The following year Benny made The Big Broadcast of 1937 on film, and on October 4th, 1936 Phil Harris debuted as the new band leader. With Phil Harris in place, Benny's most-famous cast was taking shape.

At 7PM eastern time over Mutual Broadcasting's flagship WOR, The Mysterious Traveler went on the air. Written and directed by Robert Arthur and David Kogan, The Mysterious Traveler debuted on Mutual December 5th, 1943. Maurice Tarplin played the title role with a good-natured malevolence. The traveler mostly narrated from an omniscient perch. He rode a phantom train by night. The opening signature was the distant wail of a locomotive whistle, fading in gradually until the rumble of the train could be heard. David Kogan and Robert Arthur had met in Greenwich Village, New York, partnering on Mutual's Dark Destiny. After it was canceled, they came up with the Mysterious Traveler concept and prepared three sample scripts. Norman Livingston bought it for WOR. As independent producers, they were paid a flat rate for the whole package. Any money they saved by using the same actor in multiple roles went into their own pockets, so they used the best character actors in New York. Kogan also directed the series. On Easter Sunday, episode 19, “Beware of Tomorrow,” aired just as a gloomy dusk descended upon New York. Opposite The Mysterious Traveler, The Jack Benny Program signed on live, coast-to-coast at 7PM from WEAF in New York and at 4PM from KFI in Los Angeles. By April of 1944, Benny's writing team consisted of Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsberg, John Tackaberry, and this man, George Balzer. By the spring of 1944, General Foods had been sponsoring the program for ten years, first with Jell-O and then Grape Nuts Flakes. Benny's ratings had quietly been slipping since 1941. At the end of this season, his contract with General Foods was up. There was tension between the two parties because Benny had helped save Jell-O from going out of business. Benny had full control of his show. NBC also guaranteed his Sunday time slot for as long as he wanted it. This position allowed Benny to sell his program to the highest bidder. George W. Hill, the President of American Tobacco, wanted Benny's show. His chief account executive was thirty-six-year-old Pat Weaver, the future president of NBC. Benny's management team quietly held a sealed auction for sponsorship on February 24th. A surprise winner was announced: Ruthrauff & Ryan, agency for American Tobacco's Pall Mall cigarettes, bid twenty-five thousand dollars per-week for three thirty-five week seasons. The weekly money was payable to Benny for all payroll and production costs. They also included an additional two-hundred-thousand dollars over the three years for marketing and promotion. American Tobacco also agreed to pay for any network and carrier line charges. The advertising community was stunned. The Easter Sunday program was Pall Mall's audition. In the end, this would be the only Jack Benny episode to have a Pall Mall commercial. Pat Weaver and George W. Hill knew no one would take Ruthrauff & Ryan's bid for Pall Mall seriously. Had Foote, Cone & Belding, American Tobacco's agency for its top cigarette, Lucky Strike, entered the fray, the attention would have driven up the price. The last Benny show sponsored by General Foods was June 4th, 1944. Benny took out a full page ad in Variety thanking General Foods for ten years of sponsorship. In August, he left on a three-week USO tour of Australia and the South Pacific. On August 28th, American Tobacco announced that Pall Mall's sales didn't justify a twenty-five thousand dollar per week expenditure. Lucky Strike would sponsor the show. The following week they announced a comprehensive, multimedia ad campaign. It was estimated to cost over a quarter million dollars. Lucky Strike would sponsor The Jack Benny Program beginning October 1st, 1944.

This episode of The Meaningful Revolution podcast features David Deutsch, a renowned copywriter and creativity coach whose work has generated over a billion dollars in direct sales. Our conversation delves into copywriting, the importance of finding one's voice as a writer, the fundamentals of copywriting, and how AI can be used to enhance the creative process - without replacing human touch. Deutsch shares personal anecdotes and insights from his successful career, offering practical advice for entrepreneurs and writers eager to improve their skills and connect with their audience through impactful copywriting. Guest Bio: David is a world-renowned direct response copywriter, copy and creativity coach and creative strategist. He started at the famous Madison Avenue advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, founded by the legendary David Ogilvy, where he worked with clients such as American Express, General Foods, and Merrill Lynch. He then switched to direct response – selling products and services directly – with print advertising, through the mail, and online. All told, he has generated more than a billion dollars in direct sales for clients. Today, David works with a wide range of clients in the U.S. and around the world – from consumer products giant Procter & Gamble to small startups. In addition to copywriting for selective projects, he offers copywriting and creativity coaching and training. For some companies, David acts as a part-time creative director, working with and improving the output of the organization's in-house and/or freelance copywriters, as well as, when desired, helping to integrate AI into the copy process without compromising quality. His products include A-List Copywriting Secrets, his copywriting course, Idea Power, a training on how to come up with great ideas, Inner Circle group coaching. Follow Up With David: Go to www.SpeakingOfWriting.com for two free reports, one on copywriting and one on creativity Join us! Hey! Have a question about this episode? Join Shawn this Friday for a LIVE debrief on this episode with Dr. Sera Lavelle in our community space! Join us at www.mr.shawnbuttner.com! If you loved this episode, you might also love our last episode with psychologist Dr. Sera Lavelle: https://www.shawnbuttner.com/podcasts/the-meaningful-revolution/episodes/2148564512

David & Susan Schwartz - The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z. This is episode 641 of Teaching Learning Leading K12, an audio podcast. David Schwartz is the author of several books, most recently “The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age,” (Basic Books, 2017). He holds a BA from Stanford and a PhD from MIT. He has had a varied career, as a foreign policy specialist, an investment banker, and HR specialist, and an executive search recruitment professional. David spent much of his youth in San Francisco, where his parents were early members of Price Club, Costco's predecessor.   Susan Schwartz received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia University and has worked at Nabisco and General Foods. After leaving corporate America, she worked freelance making TV commercials for thirteen years before joining her husband David in executive search consulting. She worked as a professional baker for two years after college. She grew up in Philadelphia where she delighted in shopping at Costco with her beloved parents. She became a member of Costco in 2009. Susan and David are proud grandparents and avid birdwatchers. Our focus today is their book The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z.   A little bit about The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z…   In their book, The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z (September 12, 2023; Hot Dog Press, LLC), they hope to share with the over 3.2 million people who enter one of Costco's warehouses every day the answers to some pressing questions, such as how does Costco keep the price of its foot-long hot dog at $1.50? In a whimsical A to Z format, the book covers topics ranging from Chicken and Eggs to more serious topics like Costco's Code of Ethics, Sustainability and Good Works. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing. Before you go... You could help support this podcast by Buying Me A Coffee. Not really buying me something to drink but clicking on the link on my home page at https://stevenmiletto.com for Buy Me a Coffee or by going to this link Buy Me a Coffee. This would allow you to donate to help the show address the costs associated with producing the podcast from upgrading gear to the fees associated with producing the show. That would be cool. Thanks for thinking about it.  Hey, I've got another favor...could you share the podcast with one of your friends, colleagues, and family members? Hmmm? What do you think? Thank you! Okay, one more thing. Really just this one more thing. I mentioned in the opening of the show that you could hear me interviewed on Behind the Mic about my podcast Teaching Learning Leading K12. Click this link Behind the Mic: Teaching Learning Leading K12 to go listen. You are AWESOME! Thanks so much! Learn More: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Costco-Treasure-Hunt/dp/1959505009/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3N65CBLG53JD&keywords=the+joy+of+costco&qid=1687273574&sprefix=the+joy+of+costco%2Caps%2C110&sr=8-1 Length - 50:18

An heiress receives accolades for all her efforts to help the less fortunate, but her good deeds aren't as helpful for her marriage.December 1932, Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton is hailed for all her work to help the needy during the Great Depression. She works on multiple committees providing food and unemployment relief to the point of getting positive press and recognition. Her husband E.F. Hutton however is not so thrilled and is dabbling with various females on the side.Other people and subjects include: Barbara Hutton, Prince Alexis Mdivani, royal Mdivani siblings, Franklyn Hutton, Edna Woolworth Hutton, Eleanor Post Hutton Sturges, Preston Sturges, Nedenia Hutton – Dina Merrill, Preston Sturges, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, President Franklin Roosevelt, Lindbergh baby kidnapping, General Foods, Birds Eye, frozen food, food drives, soup kitchens, breadlines, unemployment, needy, homeless, charity, committees, rising crime, watchdog, special award, bodyguards, Pinkerton agents, debutante ball, divorce, infidelity, Salvation Army, U.S. Flag Association, Marjorie Post Hutton Canteen, Edward F. Hutton Emergency Food Station, Hell's Kitchen, Mar-a-Lago, Hussar V yacht, trouble with sources, rabbit hole of research, 1932 – 1934 darkest years of the Great Depression, 1929 Wall Street Crash, Dust Bowl Storms, 1932 & 2024 presidential elections, pandemic, lockdowns, World War II, global war, civil war, positive press, change inevitable--Extra Notes / Call to Action:New York Adventure Club www.nyadventureclub.comThe fee is $12 each, live with one week access after.Monday, January 22nd, 5:30pm EST / 2:30pm PST – Waldorf Astoria Hotel Part 1: A New Standard of Luxury (pre-1929), Come learn more about the Astor family dispute behind the famous hotel and its construction as well as the hotel's influence on luxury travel and fine dining. Connections to the Titanic as well as other events and famous people will also be explored. But all good things come to an end.https://www.nyadventureclub.com/event/the-waldorf-astoria-hotel-part-i-a-new-standard-of-luxury-webinar-registration-780312454557/Monday, January 29th, 5:30pm EST / 2:30pm PST – Waldorf Astoria Hotel New York Part 2: Manhattan's Grandest Hotel (1931-present), The second version of this fine luxury hotel comes during the dawn of new era which will bring new challenges and excitement. A lingering Astor family connection adds to the saga until a new family the Hilton dynasty rises and takes over. More celebrities and events will add to allure of this hotel. Finally, updates reveal the recent renovations, an auction, and the future for the third incarnation.https://www.nyadventureclub.com/event/the-waldorf-astoria-hotel-part-ii-manhattans-grandest-hotel-webinar-registration-780312524767/Share, like, subscribe--Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.Opening Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance BandsSection 1 Music: Let's All Go To Mary's House by The Savoy Orpheans, Album Fascinating Rhythm – Great Hits of the 20sSection 2 Music: Button Up Your Overcoat by Jack Hylton, Album Fascinating Rhythm – Great Hits of the 20sSection 3 Music: Plain Mary Jane by Mrs. Jack Hylton, Album The Great British Dance BandsEnd Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands--https://asthemoneyburns.com/TW / IG – @asthemoneyburnsFacebook – https://www.facebook.com/asthemoneyburns/

Welcome to another fascinating episode of Adam's Archive! I'm your host, Austin Adams, and today we're diving deep into some of the most compelling and lesser-known stories of political intrigue and historical conspiracies.

In this episode of Causes or Cures, Dr. Eeks chats with Dr. Tera Fazzino about her research on how the biggest US tobacco companies owned the leading food companies from 1988 to early 2000s and disproportionately produced hyper-palatable foods (HPFs). She explains what a hyper-palatable food is and how they are created, the theory for why some Americans get hooked on them, and how these foods may impact our health. Then she takes us back in history to describe when and why the tobacco industries owned and controlled leading food companies (Kraft, Nabisco, General Foods...) and how her and her team determined that they were making hyper-palatable foods. She also discusses what is happening with the current food industry, why this is a big public health issue, and what we can do to move toward a healthier food supply. Dr. Fazzino is Associate Director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the University of Kansas and a Professor in the Department of Psychology.  She has a doctorate in experimental psychology and her research focuses on addiction, obesity, eating disorders and health-risk behaviors. You can contact Dr. Eeks at bloomingwellness.com.Follow Eeks on Instagram here.Or Facebook here.Or Twitter.On Youtube.Or Threads.SUBSCRIBE to her newsletter here.Support the show

Rob and Super Friend Chris Franklin discuss the SUPER FRIENDS SPECIAL from General Foods! Plus another installment of For All Merchkind and Listener Feedback! Check out images from this comic by clicking here! E-MAIL: firewaterpodcast@comcast.net Follow FOR ALL MANKIND on Twitter: @ForAllMankindSF You can find FOR ALL MANKIND on these platforms: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/for-all-mankind-a-super-friends-podcast/id1481080710 Amazon Music Spotify Stitcher This episode is sponsored by InStockTrades.com! Opening and closing themes by Hanna Barbera. This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Thanks for listening!

Rob and Super Friend Chris Franklin discuss the SUPER FRIENDS SPECIAL from General Foods! Plus another installment of For All Merchkind and Listener Feedback! Check out images from this comic by clicking here! E-MAIL: firewaterpodcast@comcast.net Follow FOR ALL MANKIND on Twitter: @ForAllMankindSF You can find FOR ALL MANKIND on these platforms: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/for-all-mankind-a-super-friends-podcast/id1481080710 Amazon Music Spotify Stitcher This episode is sponsored by InStockTrades.com! Opening and closing themes by Hanna Barbera. This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Thanks for listening!

By 1954 ninety-eight percent of homes had a radio set. There were still nineteen million U.S. houses that could only be reached by radio. Procter & Gamble led the way with over fourteen million dollars spent, and forty companies, including General Foods, Colgate-Palmolive, Liggett & Myers, Campbell's Soups, S.C. Johnson, and Coca-Cola spent at least one million dollars on radio advertising. However, the four national networks continued a five-year downward trend in radio ad sales. Network radio gross revenue peaked in 1948 at just under two-hundred million dollars. In 1953, it was down to one-hundred sixty million. While TV hadn't fully supplanted radio's total reach, it had decimated its prime-time audience share. On CBS-TV I Love Lucy led all shows with a rating of 58.8. It was seen in over fifteen million homes. Radio's top show, The Lux Radio Theater, was heard in just under three million. The networks reduced ad sale charges for the sixth consecutive year, hoping to offset TVs broadening market share. It didn't work. For the first time in sixteen years revenue fell. The only category to see an increase in sales was local advertising, and even that rose less than one percent. Shows canceled in the first half of 1954 included The Quiz Kids, Dr. Christian, Front Page Farrell, Bulldog Drummond, Rocky Fortune, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Six Shooter. West-coast actors, like Herb Vigran and Herb Ellis were moving into TV, but television was already going through budgetary changes. Radio's top show, People Are Funny had a rating of 8.4. Along with oncoming transistor sets, nearly thirty million cars now had radios, but there was still no system to measure this audience. The next year it was estimated that out-of-home listening added an additional forty percent to at-home audiences. People Are Funny's actual rating was closer to twelve. But these incidentals didn't matter to the industry's character actors. Network production habits were changing. More and more documentaries and news were airing from New York, more and more drama was airing from Los Angeles. That summer, NBC shifted the production of Barrie Craig to hollywood.

On Sunday January 1st, 1956 NBC's Monitor broadcast New World Today. 1956 was a Presidential election year. At the time of this broadcast, Dwight Eisenhower, who'd had a heart attack in September, was still debating whether he would run for a second term. He'd decide in February, eventually winning re-election. After the censuring of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, the Red Scare had subsided, overtaken by fear of communism in other parts of the world and general war with Russia. Meanwhile, In January of 1956 Orson Welles appeared with The New York City Center Theater Company playing King Lear. He was finally home again. In February he traveled to Las Vegas where he performed a variety act at the Riviera Hotel. Welles was then contracted by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz to create a TV pilot for Desilu Productions. The short film was written and directed by Orson Welles, based on the short story "Youth from Vienna" by John Collier. Joi Lansing and Rick Jason star as a narcissistic couple faced with an irresistible temptation concocted by a scientist. Welles was the on-screen narrator. It was called The Fountain of Youth and considered a dark comedy. Desi Arnaz conceived the series, proposing to Welles that he host and narrate. Arnaz later wrote that before signing the deal he clarified the finances with Welles: "I am not RKO. This is my 'Babalu' money." Filming took five days in early May. The total cost was nearly fifty-five thousand dollars. Arnaz reported that CBS gave the series a slot, with General Foods as a sponsor, but the challenges in getting Welles to commit to a series lasting more than thirty weeks were daunting. The series did not go to air. The pilot was later broadcast on September 16th, 1958, during NBC's Colgate Theatre. That Spring, the Rock n' Roll era officially arrived. On April 6th, 1956, Elvis Presely signed a three-film deal with Paramount Pictures. By the end of the month, his single, “Heartbreak Hotel” rose to the top of the charts. It would remain there into June. Meanwhile, Orson Welles appeared as himself on October 15th, 1956 in a very famous episode of I Love Lucy. Two days later, he was on the radio for a special one-off program adapting Philip Wylie's 1954 novel about post-nuclear civilization. It was called Tomorrow and syndicated by ABC and the Federal Civil Defense Administration. The next month, on November 13th, 1956, his daughter's first birthday, Welles appeared on NBC Radio's Biography In Sound for his old mentor Alexander Woollcott, who had passed away in 1943.

I'm so excited to announce that with this episode we have hit a new milestone and that is #300 episodes of The VentureFizz Podcast!!! Did you know that my first interview was published 5 years ago, so I am blown away to reach this milestone. Starting a podcast is not necessarily hard, but keeping up with it is certainly one of the trickiest parts. I believe that the key criteria for a successful, long standing podcast is that the host needs to be genuinely interested in the topic that is being discussed. It goes without saying that I am fascinated by the journey of building startups and I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to interview so many amazing entrepreneurs and investors. I want to thank them all for taking the time to share their stories and advice with our audience. So, for Episode #300, I couldn't think of a better guest than Diane Hessan - Entrepreneur, Investor, Board Member, and Columnist. Diane has accomplished so much through out her career and during this interview she shares so many great stories from each step along the way including building Communispace (now called C Space) which was the first company to leverage social media for consumer insights. We had a lot of ground to cover, so we discuss a lot including: * Diane's background story growing up in Pennsylvania and why she completed her undergrad at Tufts in three years, plus the story of her very unique application to Harvard Business School. * Her career path as a Brand Manager for General Foods and later rising through the ranks at The Forum Corporation. * The full story of Communispace and how the company pivoted and disrupted the market research industry which led to an acquisition by Omnicom. * Authoring a book and becoming a nationally recognized expert on the American voter. * Serving on the Board of Directors at companies like Panera Bread, Brightcove, Eastern Bank, and others. * What it's like giving a commencement address. * Saying “yes” and the importance of serendipity. * And so much more! Ok quick side note, as you know this is Episode #300. This means we have quite the library of interviews with entrepreneurs and investors in the tech industry. I interview legends like Diane who are wildly successful, but I also interview first time entrepreneurs, as I like to provide insights and advice for entrepreneurs at different stages. So, if you haven't explored our full catalogue, you can go to venturefizz.com/podcast or any of the major streaming players like Spotify, Apple, Google Play, Soundcloud, and others. I hope you find these interviews useful, as there are so many great lessons learned!

CB Bowman: Known as the Courage Consultant, CB is the host of the very popular "Courage: To Leap & Lead" podcast, and is the CEO of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. CB is a global "Certified Master Corporate Executive Coach" with experience working in marketing, coaching, and branding. CB join Leadership NOW with Dan Pontefract to discuss her latest book, “Courage: to Leap and to Lead.” CB strongly believes that master-level corporate executive coaches have to be “enterprise-wide business partners™" with their clients, yes, full of courage. She is formerly head of branding for ready-to-eat cereals for General Foods. She was responsible for the visual impact of Post Cereals for iconic brands such as Honey Bunches of Oats, Golden Crisps, and Pebbles. CB was also responsible for their classic brands including Post Shredded Wheat, Grape Nuts, Shake N' Bake and Raisin Bran, and won several awards for product marketing and branding. Named one of the Power List of the Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership by Leadershum; Top 50 coaches in the world by Thinkers50; and Global Gurus also named her as one of the top 15 experts in branding. More about Dan Pontefract and Leadership NOW at https://www.danpontefract.com More about CB Bowman at https://courage-consulting.com/

During his 35-year career with General Foods, William Mitchell invented some of America's favorite, fun, and time-saving junk foods. From quick-set Jell-O to Cool Whip, learn how he did it in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/famous-inventors/meet-man-invented-cool-whip-tang.htmSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Disrupting Publishing with Simply Media Deaver Brown, Simply Media   – The Sharkpreneur podcast with Seth Greene Episode 885 Dave Deaver Brown Following several decades of management and executive experience, Deaver Brown matriculated at Harvard College. Majoring in history, he graduated Magna Cum Laude and set his sights on graduate school. Deaver Brown continued on at Harvard, entering the Business School with a focus on marketing and business. In 1968, he attained his MBA. Entering the workforce, Deaver Brown accepted a position in Product Management at General Foods. He oversaw the Cool Whip, Awake, and Birds Eye Vegetables products, which contributed to increases in the company's overall sales. Armed with education and hands-on experience, Deaver Brown then founded Cross River, maker of the Umbroller stroller, as Co-CEO with his co-founder Alexandre Goodwin. Shortly after launching the company, Deaver Brown premiered the nation's first stick folding stroller, propelling Cross River to the number one market share in both Canada and the U.S., among other countries. Cross River was sold to Rubbermaid, now Rubbermaid Newell. In 1977, he founded Deaver Brown & Associates, a consulting and sales firm. As President, he worked closely with Petersen Baby Products to spin off various physical and real estate properties, preparing the company for sale to Cosco, Inc. Deaver Brown was instrumental in landing Ames, Hills, Toys“R”Us, Zayre, TJ Maxx, and Caldor accounts for Cosco as well as participating in their LBO from Walter Kidde and later the sale of the company to Dorel of Montreal Canada. In 1982 Deaver Brown joined the 3 co-founders of American Power Conversion (APCC-NASDAQ) as the first VP of Sales; assisted to get the venture capital investment to assist the company making the transition from solar inverters into UPS's power protection devices for the emerging PC business. APCC went on to ride the growth of the PC market as the leader in that market due to the brilliant engineers from MIT and Lincoln labs who created the best products at the lowest prices in the marketplace. APCC became one of the most successful companies in the 1990s after their IPO in 1988. It was later sold for over $6 billion, with no secondary stock offering required to get there, other than for current shareholders to liquidate some of their shares in an orderly manner. While consulting for his own company, Deaver Brown was welcomed as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at American Power Conversion. As the first to hold that position at APC, Brown found himself charged with numerous responsibilities: Deaver Brown wrote a business plan and raised money for the company, played a pivotal role in transitioning from solar inverters to internal uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), and installed a specific beep sound effect in machines to alert the users to conditions such as low power. Following six years at Pride Retail Systems, an automator of retail systems, as CEO, Deaver Brown helped sell the rights to Digital Equipment (DEC) before becoming the publisher of Simply Magazine in 1997, where he has increased revenue to more than 12 times its previous amount since joining.   Listen to this informative Sharkpreneur episode with Deaver Brown about disrupting the publishing industry with Simply Media. Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week's show: - How products with lower prices make more in sales. - Why it's important for serial entrepreneurs to listen to their customers. - How people learn more from shorter lectures, speeches, and courses. - Why entrepreneurs must have a vision and follow through on it to be successful. - How to create and foster good relationships with giant retail companies.   Connect with Deaver: Guest Contact Info   Links Mentioned: simplymedia.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Disrupting Publishing with Simply MediaDeaver Brown, Simply Media – The Sharkpreneur podcast with Seth Greene Episode 885 Dave Deaver BrownFollowing several decades of management and executive experience, Deaver Brown matriculated at Harvard College. Majoring in history, he graduated Magna Cum Laude and set his sights on graduate school. Deaver Brown continued on at Harvard, entering the Business School with a focus on marketing and business. In 1968, he attained his MBA. Entering the workforce, Deaver Brown accepted a position in Product Management at General Foods. He oversaw the Cool Whip, Awake, and Birds Eye Vegetables products, which contributed to increases in the company's overall sales.Armed with education and hands-on experience, Deaver Brown then founded Cross River, maker of the Umbroller stroller, as Co-CEO with his co-founder Alexandre Goodwin. Shortly after launching the company, Deaver Brown premiered the nation's first stick folding stroller, propelling Cross River to the number one market share in both Canada and the U.S., among other countries. Cross River was sold to Rubbermaid, now Rubbermaid Newell. In 1977, he founded Deaver Brown & Associates, a consulting and sales firm. As President, he worked closely with Petersen Baby Products to spin off various physical and real estate properties, preparing the company for sale to Cosco, Inc. Deaver Brown was instrumental in landing Ames, Hills, Toys“R”Us, Zayre, TJ Maxx, and Caldor accounts for Cosco as well as participating in their LBO from Walter Kidde and later the sale of the company to Dorel of Montreal Canada.In 1982 Deaver Brown joined the 3 co-founders of American Power Conversion (APCC-NASDAQ) as the first VP of Sales; assisted to get the venture capital investment to assist the company making the transition from solar inverters into UPS's power protection devices for the emerging PC business. APCC went on to ride the growth of the PC market as the leader in that market due to the brilliant engineers from MIT and Lincoln labs who created the best products at the lowest prices in the marketplace. APCC became one of the most successful companies in the 1990s after their IPO in 1988. It was later sold for over $6 billion, with no secondary stock offering required to get there, other than for current shareholders to liquidate some of their shares in an orderly manner. While consulting for his own company, Deaver Brown was welcomed as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at American Power Conversion. As the first to hold that position at APC, Brown found himself charged with numerous responsibilities: Deaver Brown wrote a business plan and raised money for the company, played a pivotal role in transitioning from solar inverters to internal uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), and installed a specific beep sound effect in machines to alert the users to conditions such as low power.Following six years at Pride Retail Systems, an automator of retail systems, as CEO, Deaver Brown helped sell the rights to Digital Equipment (DEC) before becoming the publisher of Simply Magazine in 1997, where he has increased revenue to more than 12 times its previous amount since joining. Listen to this informative Sharkpreneur episode with Deaver Brown about disrupting the publishing industry with Simply Media.Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week's show:- How products with lower prices make more in sales.- Why it's important for serial entrepreneurs to listen to their customers.- How people learn more from shorter lectures, speeches, and courses.- Why entrepreneurs must have a vision and follow through on it to be successful.- How to create and foster good relationships with giant retail companies. Connect with Deaver:Guest Contact Info Links Mentioned: simplymedia.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CHAPTER ONE:We assume that every plumber can plumb, right?We assume that any A/C company can make the house warm in winter, cool in summer.We assume that every jeweler can sell us a diamond, and a lawyer must know the law, or he wouldn't have a license to practice.So how do we choose who to use?“In the 1950s, consumer packaged goods companies like Procter and Gamble, General Foods and Unilever developed the discipline of brand management – or marketing as we know it today – when they noticed the quality levels of products being offered by competitors begin to improve. A brand manager would be responsible for giving a product an identity that distinguished it from nearly indistinguishable competitors“– “How Brands Were Born: A Brief History of Modern Marketing,” a story in The Atlantic, 2011We choose the name we think of first and feel the best about. When no such name springs to mind, we type our problem into Google and a thundering horde of names appears.How often is your name the one that is clicked?When the customer types their problem into Google instead of typing your name, you get a high-cost, low-CAP click. [Conversion, Average sale, Profit margin] When the customer types your name, you get a low-cost, high-CAP click.Most ads communicate information, but good ads build relationship. You want yours to be the name they think of first and feel the best about.You want them to type your name into Google.Boring ads are about you and your company. Exciting ads are about the customer. Show them a movie on the visuospatial sketchpad of Working Memory, the movie screen of the mind!You can do this. Use your words. Use mass media.CHAPTER TWO:Most ads are not written to persuade. They are written not to offend.(Read more about this in today's rabbit hole.)This is why most ads are flaccid, impotent, and ignored.EXAMPLE: a few of you mentally raised your eyebrows at the words flaccid and impotent. You would tell me those words should be changed. Perhaps I should shorten it to say, ‘This is why most ads are ignored,' or soften it further by saying, ‘This is why some ads are less effective than they might have been.”It is never wise to willfully insult a person, but the risk of insult is the price of clarity.When asked to look at a piece of ad copy, well-meaning people instinctively scan it for images, ideas, and language that might be softened.Effective ads do not hit softly.Effective ads have impact. They challenge your previously held beliefs and send thousands of gallons of water spewing into the air when they knock down a fire hydrant while attempting to parallel park. Fleeing the scene, they almost run over a little dog. An old lady with a funny hat thrashes the air with her walking stick and shouts old-lady curses. We are glad the little dog is okay.CHAPTER THREEThe role of Human Resources and Public Relations is to broker a lasting peace.In their world, harmony and empowerment and inclusiveness are the rule.To allow the people under their care to be criticized and disparaged is unthinkable.They seek peace, harmony, and happiness for everyone.Social Media marketers live in that world, too.They are doctors and nurses in a beautiful place where people receive the loving attention they deserve.But…The role of the ad writer is to be a warrior.In their world, differentiation and ever-increasing dominance are the rule.To allow the...

Both of these eponymous foods feature chocolate, but they also both feature some issues with timelines and attribution that need to be unraveled.  Research: Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell. “The Baker Chocolate Company: A Sweet History.” History Press. Charleston, S.C. 2009. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/bakerchocolateco00samm/page/80/mode/2up “Celebrating Not-So-German Chocolate Cake.” NPR. All Things Considered. June 23, 2007. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11331541 Asher Edwards advertisement. Goldsboro Messenger. Nov. 18, 1878. https://www.newspapers.com/image/62317791/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Pat's Steak House advertisement. The Welsh Citizen. October 12, 1951. https://www.newspapers.com/image/855431677/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “This is the Youngland Look for Fall.” Lincoln Journal Star. July 19, 1959. https://www.newspapers.com/image/312770953/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “A Tested Recipe.” Star Tribune. Dec. 2, 1901. https://www.newspapers.com/image/180802997/?terms=%22German%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “Miss Florence Davis Charms Family With German Chocolate Cake Recipe.” Denton Record-Chronicle. January 27, 1952. https://www.newspapers.com/image/36794004/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “German Sweet Chocolate Cake.” The Guthrie Daily Leader. Feb. 3, 1957. https://www.newspapers.com/image/591933621/?clipping_id=79147909&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjU5MTkzMzYyMSwiaWF0IjoxNjczNjYzMDYxLCJleHAiOjE2NzM3NDk0NjF9.1-IZfz1ipCaYbFDzYrvI4l8vbgh-yruhCMNpjLUZVe4 “County Cook's Corner.” Taylor Daily Press. July 24, 1955. https://www.newspapers.com/image/52547082/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Bode, Mary Jane. “Anything, Just So Long As It Is With Chocolate.” Austin American-Statesman. Sept 4, 1958. https://www.newspapers.com/image/356073125/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Lundeen, Kay. “Buttermilk Mystery Solved.” The Eugene Guard. August 21, 1958. https://www.newspapers.com/image/140086242/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “German Chocolate Cake.” Chickasha Daily Express. April 28, 1957. https://www.newspapers.com/image/591919201/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Garrison, Eudora. “Here's That Chocolate Cake Again.” The Charlotte Observer. Oct. 10, 1958. https://www.newspapers.com/image/619939965/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “Curried Chicken Asparagus Salad.” Cookin' With Daisy. Irving News Record. May 10, 1956. https://www.newspapers.com/image/44445870/?terms=%22Summer%20German%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 United States Copyright Office. “Works Not Protected by Copyright.” Circular 33. March 2021. https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf “History of Pecans.” Texas A&M. https://pecankernel.tamu.edu/history-of-pecans/ Dysard, Virginia. “German's Cake Sweeps Country.” Sept 1, 1958. https://www.newspapers.com/image/398144745/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 “German Sweet Chocolate Cake.” The Llano News. June 6, 1957. https://www.newspapers.com/image/11305935/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Lacy, Mary. “Favorite Recipes – Jefferson County Variety.” Waurika News-Democrat. January 31, 1957. https://www.newspapers.com/image/590019658/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Treaster, Hazel Hogan. “Home Tested Recipes.” Oklahoma City Advertiser. January 11, 1957. https://www.newspapers.com/image/594427114/?terms=%22German%27s%20Chocolate%20Cake%22&match=1 Byrn, Anne. “American Cake.” Rodale. 2016. Eschner, Kat. “Tootsie Rolls Were WWII Energy Bars.” Smithsonian. Feb. 23, 2017. Hirschfeld, Leo. “Process of making candy.” 1907. https://patents.google.com/patent/US903088 “Kills Himself in Hotel.” New York Times. January 14, 1922. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/01/14/109830963.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 Kawash, Samira. “Tootsie Roll Tragedy: The Real Leo Hirschfeld Story.” CandyProfessor. Jan. 4, 2014. Accessed on Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160319022205/http://candyprofessor.com/2014/01/04/tootsie-roll-tragedy-the-real-leo-hirschfeld-story/ Kawash, Samira. “Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2013. Tootsie Roll Industries. “Company Timeline.” https://tootsie.com/interactive-timeline/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds. Marjorie had an insatiable drive to live and love and to give more than she got. From crawling through Moscow warehouses to rescue the Tsar's treasures to outrunning the Nazis in London, from serving the homeless of the Great Depression to entertaining Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Hollywood's biggest stars, Marjorie Merriweather Post lived an epic life few could imagine. Marjorie's journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father's barn as a young girl. No one could have predicted that C. W. Post's Cereal Company would grow into the General Foods empire and reshape the American way of life, with Marjorie as its heiress and leading lady. Not content to stay in her prescribed roles of high-society wife, mother, and hostess, Marjorie dared to demand more, making history in the process. Before turning thirty she amassed millions, becoming the wealthiest woman in the United States. But it was her life-force, advocacy, passion, and adventurous spirit that led to her stunning legacy. And yet Marjorie's story, though full of beauty and grandeur, set in the palatial homes she built such as Mar-a-Lago, was equally marked by challenge and tumult. A wife four times over, Marjorie sought her happily-ever-after with the blue-blooded party boy who could not outrun his demons, the charismatic financier whose charm turned to betrayal, the international diplomat with a dark side, and the bon vivant whose shocking secrets would shake Marjorie and all of society. Marjorie did everything on a grand scale, especially when it came to love. Bestselling and acclaimed author Allison Pataki has crafted an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life woman, a powerful story of one woman falling in love with her own voice and embracing her own power while shaping history in the process. Join us in this zoom meeting to discuss this great book. Host: Randi Shelton E-Mail: rshelton820@gmail.com Co-Host Ruth ann Acosta, E-Mail: ruth1244@gmail.com

Remission of 'Incurable Disease' in Plant-based Processed Food Addiction Recovery.' Once upon a time, the tobacco industry took over Kraft, Nabisco, and General Foods and secretly addicted millions of people to processed foods. Sadly, the addictive consumption of processed foods resulted in an epidemic of physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral diseases. Millions of people died. Today's episode features a panel discussion with plant-based Addiction Reset Community (ARC) managers and members who have overcome their food addiction and as a result have seen their diet-related diseases go into remission. Participating members: Heather Hewett, Board Certified Traditional Naturopath, Clinical Nutritionist, author of Natural Health Simplified, Director of Addiction Reset Community and Addiction Reset Community FARA-Certified Manager Jamie Morgan Reno, MBA, ICF-PCC, Speaker, Author, Health Coach and Leadership Development Professional Brenda McGinley, MSM, Health & Wellness Coach (Specializing in WFPB eating), ARC Manager. Cathy Fleming, ARC Manager Trainee Outreach Manager, ARC Manager. Joan Ifland. Dr. Ifland has been creating breakthroughs in recovery from food addiction from 1999 with the publication of her first popular book. In 2018 her textbook was published, Processed Food Addiction: Foundations, Assessment, and Recovery (CRC Press) and she founded the online peer support, The Addiction Reset Community (ARC). The textbook is the first academic publication describing how to diagnose and treat processed food addiction, as well as establishing the scientific basis for the disease.

By October 31st, 1948, The Mutual Broadcasting System's flagship WOR in New York was approaching its twenty-seventh anniversary. It was argued that no station matched its signal coverage. WOR-Mutual was known for its cop shows, soap operas, and on Sundays, it's mysteries. At 4PM eastern time, House of Mystery signed on for General Foods. John Griggs was Roger Elliott, ghost hunter and scientist of the supernatural. The show was directed by Olga Druce, who guided the program along a fine line. Because House of Mystery was geared for children, it couldn't be overtly gruesome or vulgar.

I asked this week's guest - my dear friend Ozzie - to send his Bio and he sent me the following.You definitely don't want to miss meeting Cousin Ozzie this Wednesday, September 14th, at 7:00 pm EDT.He will NEVER let you down.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. The topic is "The People Side of Lean." Our guest is Jeffrey Liker, academic, consultant, and best-selling author of The Toyota Way (https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/B09BDC3525/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2JABTVWQBAZC8&keywords=the+toyota+way&qid=1661872838&sprefix=the+toyot%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-1). In this conversation, we talk about how to develop internal organizational capability and problem-solving skills on the frontline. If you liked this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/). If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 84 on The Evolution of Lean (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/84). Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (https://trondundheim.com/) and presented by Tulip (https://tulip.co/). Follow the podcast on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/75424477/). Trond's Takeaway: Lean is about motivating people to succeed in an industrial organization more than it is about a bundle of techniques to avoid waste on a factory production line. The goal is to have workers always asking themselves if there is a better way. Transcript: TROND: Welcome to another episode of the Augmented Podcast. Augmented brings industrial conversations that matter, serving up the most relevant conversations on industrial tech. Our vision is a world where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is the People Side of Lean. Our guest is Jeffrey Liker, academic, consultant, and best-selling author of The Toyota Way. In this conversation, we talk about how to develop internal organizational capability, problem-solving skills on the frontline. Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip. Jeffrey, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. JEFFREY: Thank you. TROND: So I think some people in this audience will have read your book or have heard of your book and your books but especially the one that I mentioned, Toyota. So I think we'll talk about that a little bit. But you started out as an engineering undergrad at Northeastern, and you got yourself a Ph.D. in sociology. And then I've been reading up on you and listening to some of the stuff on the musical side of things. I think we both are guitarists. JEFFREY: Oh, is that right? TROND: Yeah, yeah, classical guitar in my case. So I was wondering about that. JEFFREY: So I play also a classical guitar now. I played folk and rock earlier when I was young. But for the last more than ten years, I've been only studying classical guitar. TROND: Well, so then we share a bunch of hours practicing the etude, so Fernando Sor, and eventually getting to the Villa-Lobos stuff. So the reason I bring that up, of course, beyond it's wonderful to talk about this kind of stuff with, you know, there aren't that many classical guitarists out there. But you said something that I thought maybe you could comment on later. But this idea of what happened to you during your studies of classical guitar actually plays into what you later brought into your professional life in terms of teaching you something about practicing in particular ways. So I hope you can get into that. But obviously, you've then become a professor. You are a speaker and an advisor, and an author of this bestseller, The Toyota Way. Now you run some consulting. And I guess I'm curious; this was a very, very brief attempt at summarizing where you got into this. What was it that brought you into manufacturing in the first place? I mean, surely, it wasn't just classical guitar because that's not a linear path. [laughs] JEFFREY: No. So for undergraduate, I had basically studied industrial engineering because I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. And my father was an engineer. And then I literally took a course catalog and just started reading the descriptions of different kinds of engineering. And industrial engineering was the only one that mentioned people. And in theory, industrial engineering is a systems perspective which integrates people, materials, methods, machines, the four Ms. And in the description from Northeastern University, they said it's as much about human organization as it is about tools and techniques. So that appealed to me. When I got to Northeastern...I was not a particularly good high school student. So I didn't have a lot of choices of what colleges I went to, so Northeastern was pretty easy to get into. But they had a cooperative education program where you go to school, and you work. You go back and forth between school and work and had a pretty elaborate system for setting you up with jobs. I got one of the better jobs, which was at a company called General Foods Corporation at the time, and they make things like Jell-O, and Gravy Train dog food, and Birds Eye vegetables, and a lot of other household names, Kool-Aid, all automated processes, even at that time in the 1970s. And they had been experimenting with something called socio-technical systems, which is supposed to be what I was interested in, which is bringing together the social and technical, which no one at Northeastern University had any interest in except me. But I was very interested in this dog food plant where they were written up as a case study pioneer. And the basic essence of it was to give groups of people who are responsible, for example, for some automated processes to make a certain line of Gravy Train dog food, give them responsibility for all their processes, and they called them autonomous workgroups. And what we try to do is as much as possible, give them all the responsibility so they can work autonomously without having to go and find the engineer or deal with other support functions, which takes time and is kind of a waste. So that fascinated me. I studied it. I wrote papers about it even in courses where it didn't fit. But the closest I could get to the social side was through sociology courses which I took as soon as I was able to take electives, which was about my third year. And I got to know a sociology professor closely and ultimately decided to get a Ph.D. in sociology and did that successfully, published papers in sociology journals at a pretty high level. And then discovered it was really hard to get a job. TROND: Right. [laughs] JEFFREY: And there happened to be an advertisement from an industrial engineering department at University of Michigan for someone with a Ph.D. in a social science and an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering. And I was probably the only person in the world that fit the job. And they were so excited to hear from me because they had almost given up. And I ended up getting that job quickly then getting to Michigan excited because it's a great university. I had a low teaching load. They paid more than sociology departments. So it was like a dream job. Except once I got there, I realized that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing [chuckles] because it wasn't a sociology department. And I had gotten away from industry. In fact, I was studying family development and life's course development, and more personal psychology and sociology stuff. So I was as far away as I could be. So I had to kind of figure out what to do next. And fortunately, being at Michigan and also being unique, a lot of people contacted me and wanted me to be part of their projects. And one of them was a U.S.-Japan auto study comparing the U.S.-Japan auto industry going at the same time as a study at MIT and Harvard that ultimately led to the book The Machine That Changed the World, which defined lean manufacturing. So this was sort of a competitive program. And they asked me to be part of it, and that's what led to my learning about Toyota. I mean, I studied Toyota, Nissan, Mazda mainly and compared them to GM, Ford, and Chrysler. But it was clear that Toyota was different and special. And ultimately, then I learned about the Toyota Production System. And from my perspective, not from people in Toyota, but from my perspective, what they had done is really solve the problem of socio-technical systems. Because what I was seeing at General Foods was workers who were responsible for technical process and then were given autonomy to run the process, but there was nothing really socio-technical about it. There was a technical system, and then there was social system autonomous work groups and not particularly connected in a certain way. But the Toyota Production System truly was a system that was designed to integrate people with the technical system, which included things like stamping, and welding, and painting, which were fairly automated as well as assembly, which is purely manual. And Toyota had developed this back in the 1940s when it was a lone company and then continued to evolve it. And the main pillars are just-in-time and built-in quality. They have a house, and then the foundation is stable and standardized processes. And in the center are people who are continuously improving. Now, the socio-technical part the connection is that just-in-time for Toyota means that we're trying to flow value to the customer without interruption. So if what they do is turn raw materials into cars that you drive, then anything that's turning material into a component or car physically is value-added, and everything else is waste. And so things like defects where you have to do rework are waste. And machines are shut down, so we have to wait for the machines to get fixed; that's waste. And inventory sitting in piles doing nothing is waste. So the opposite of waste is a perfect process. And Toyota also was smart enough, and all that they figured out was more like folk learning or craft learning. It was learning from doing and experience and common sense. And they didn't particularly care about linking it to academic theories or learning from academic theories, for that matter. So their common sense view is that the world is complicated. Humans are really bad at predicting the future. So the best we can do is to get in the ballpark with what we think is a good process and then run it and see how it fails. And then the failures are what lead to then the connection of people who have to solve the problems through creative thinking. So that was the integration that I did not see before that. TROND: Just one thing that strikes me...because nowadays, comparing the U.S. or Europe and Asia in terms of business practices, it's sort of like, oh, of course, you have to compare them because they are culturally different. But it strikes me that in the automotive industry, was it immediately really clear to you at the outset that there would be such striking differences between the Japanese and the U.S. auto industry? Or is that actually something that had to be studied? Or was it something that was known, but no one really knew exactly what the differences were? JEFFREY: So it wasn't like the American auto companies figured out that if they get good at using chopsticks, they'll be good at making cars. They weren't looking for something peculiar in Japanese culture. But they were addressing the more general problem, which was that Japanese companies were making small fuel-efficient cars at low cost with high quality. And none of the American companies could do that. The costs were higher. The quality was terrible compared to Japan. They took a long time to do everything, including developing cars. So somehow, the Japanese were purported, they weren't convinced this was true, but according to the evidence, the Japanese were purported to be better at just about everything. And the Americans wanted to know why particularly. And at that time, there had been an oil crisis, and there was a demand for small cars. The real question they were interested in is how could they make small cars that were competitive with the Japanese? So they had to understand what the Japanese were doing. Now, they realized that some of what the Japanese were doing were purely technical things that had nothing to do with culture. And then there was also a level of attention to detail and motivation that maybe was, for some reason, peculiar to Japan. But they needed to figure out how to replicate it in the United States. And then, in addition to that, they had Americans like Dr. Deming, who had gone to Japan and taught the Japanese supposedly quality control methods. And Japanese companies had taken quality control methods that were created in the United States more seriously than the American companies. So part of it was relearning what came from America to Japan and got done better. So it wasn't necessarily this kind of strange place, and how can we emulate this strange culture? TROND: Right. But that becomes then your challenge then, right? Because what you then discover is that your field is immensely important to this because what you then went on to do is...and I guess part of your consulting work has been developing internal organizational capability. These are skills that particular organizations, namely Toyota, had in Japan. So you're thinking that this then became...it's like a learning process, the Japanese learned some lessons, and then the whole rest of the automotive industry then they were trying to relearn those lessons. Is that sort of what has been happening then in the 30 years after that? JEFFREY: Yeah, the basic question was, why are they so good? Why are we so bad? And how can we get better in America? Then there were lots of answers to that question coming from different people in different places. My particular answer was that Toyota especially had developed a socio-technical system that was extremely effective, that was centered on people who were developed to have the skills of problem-solving and continuous improvement. And while the study was going on, they were doing a study out of MIT that led to The Machine That Changed the World. And around that same time, a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors had been formed called NUMMI. It was in California. And in their first year, it was launched in 1983, and in the first year, they had taken what was the worst General Motors plant in the world, with the worst attendance, the worst morale, workers who were fighting against supervisors every day, including physically fighting with them, terrible quality, and General Motors had closed the plant because it was so bad. And then, in the joint venture, they reopened the plant and took back 80% of the same workers who were like the worst of the worst of American workers. And within a year, Toyota had turned the plant around so that it was the best in North America with the best workers. TROND: That's crazy, right? Because wouldn't some of the research thesis in either your study or in the MIT study, The Machine That Changed the World, would have to have been around technology or at least some sort of ingenious plan that these people had, you know, some secret sauce that someone had? Would you say that these two research teams were surprised at finding that the people was the key to the difference here or motivating people in a different way? JEFFREY: Well, frankly, I think I probably had a better grasp that people were really the key than most other researchers because of my background and my interest in human-centered manufacturing. So I was kind of looking for that. And it was what the Toyota people would say...whenever they made a presentation or whenever you interviewed them, they would say, "People are kind of distracted by the tools and methods, but really at the center are people." And generally, most people listening to them didn't believe it, or it didn't register. Because Toyota did have cool stuff, like, for example, something called a kanban system, which is how do you move material around in the factory? They have thousands of parts that have to all be moved and orchestrated in complicated ways. And Toyota did it with physical cards. And the concept was a pulse system that the worker; when they see that they're getting low on parts, they take a card and they post it. They put it in a box, and then the material handler picks it up. And they said, okay, they need another bin of these. On my next route, I'll bring a bin of whatever cards I get. So they were replenishing the line based on a signal from the operator saying, "I need more." So it was a signal from the person who knows best what they need. And it also, from Toyota's point of view, put the employee in the driver's seat because now they're controlling their supply in addition to controlling their work process. And it didn't require that you predict the future all the time because who knows what is happening on the line and where they're backed up, and where they maybe have too many parts, and they don't need more? But the worker knows. He knows when he needs it and when he doesn't. It was kind of an ingenious system, but the fact that you had these cards moving all over the factory and thousands of parts are moving just to the right place at the right time based on these cards, that was fascinating. So a lot of the consumers were more interested in that than they were in the people aspect, even though Toyota kept talking about the people aspect. TROND: But so this is my question, then there was more than one element that they were doing right. JEFFREY: There were multiple elements, yeah. TROND: There were multiple elements. Some of them were structural or visual, famously. JEFFREY: Right. TROND: But you then started focusing, I guess, on not just the people aspect, but you started structuring that thinking because the obvious question must have been, how can we do some of this ourselves? And I guess that's my question is once you and the team started figuring out okay, there are some systematic differences here in the way they motivate people, handle the teams, but also structure, honestly, the organizational incentives minute by minute, how then did you think about transferring this? Or were you, at this point, just really concerned about describing it? JEFFREY: Like I said, I was kind of unusual in my background, being somewhere between industrial engineering and sociology and being in industrial engineering departments. So maybe I wasn't as constrained by some of the constraints of my academic colleagues. But I never believed this whole model that the university gathers information structures that formulates it, then tells the world what to do. I never thought that made any sense. And certainly, in the case of lean, it didn't, and it wasn't true. So the way that companies were learning about this stuff was from consultants, largely, and from people who had worked for Toyota. So anybody who had worked for Toyota, even if they were driving a forklift truck, in some cases, suddenly became a hot commodity. I consulted to Ford, and they were developing the Ford Production System. They were using a consulting firm, and all their consulting firm's business was to poach people from Toyota and then sell them as consultants to other companies. And that company literally had people every day of the week who were in their cars outside the gates of Toyota. And as people came out, they would start talking to them to try to find people that they could hire away from Toyota. TROND: It's funny to hear you talking about that, Jeff, right? Because in some way, you, of all people, you're a little bit to blame for the fame of Toyota in that sense. I mean, you've sold a million books with The New Toyota -- JEFFREY: Well, that was -- TROND: I'm just saying it's a phenomenon here that people obsess over a company, but you were part of creating this movement and this enormous interest in this. [laughs] JEFFREY: I didn't feel that that was...I personally had a policy because I had a consulting company too. So I personally had a policy that I would not hire somebody away from Toyota unless they were leaving anyway. That was my personal policy. But the important point was that there were a lot of really well-trained people coming out of Toyota who really understood the whole system and had lived it. And they could go to any other company and do magic, and suddenly things got better. [laughs] And what they were doing was setting up the structures and the tools, and they also were engaging the people and coaching the people. They were doing both simultaneously, and that's how they were trained. Toyota had sent an army of Japanese people to America. So every person who was in a leadership position had a one-on-one coach for years, a person whose only reason for being in the United States was to train them. So they got excellent training, and then they were able to use that training. And then other people once they had worked with a company and then that company got good at lean, then, within that company, you'd spawn more consultants change agents. Like, there was a company that I was studying called Donnelly Mirrors that made exterior mirrors for cars. And one of the persons that was trained by a Toyota person became a plant manager. And he ended up then getting offered a job as the vice president of manufacturing for Merillat Kitchen Cabinets. And now he's the CEO of the parent company that owns Merillat. And he's transformed the entire company. So little by little, this capability developed where most big companies in the world have hired people with lean experience. Sometimes it's second generation, sometimes third generation. And there are some very well-trained people. So the capability still resides within the people. And if you have someone who doesn't understand the system but they just set up a kanban system or they set up quality systems, and they try to imitate what they read in a book or what they learned in a course; usually, it doesn't work very well. TROND: Well, that was going to be my next question. Because how scalable is this beyond the initial learnings of Toyota and the fact that it has relied so heavily on consulting? Because there is sort of an alternate discourse in a lot of organizational thinking these days that says, well, not just that the people are the key to it but actually, that as a leader, however much you know or how aware you are of people processes, it is the organization itself that kind of has to find the answers. So there's perhaps some skepticism that you can come in and change a culture. Aren't there organizations that have such strong organizational practices, whether they are cultural in some meaningful way or they're simply this is the way they've done things that even one person who comes in has a hard time applying a Toyota method? What do you think about that kind of challenge? JEFFREY: Okay, so, anyway, I think what you said is...how I would interpret it is it's a gross oversimplification of reality. So first of all, in the second edition of The Toyota Way, because I realized from the first edition, which was fairly early back in the early 2000s, I realized that some people were taking my message as copy Toyota, even though I didn't say that in the book. And I specifically said not to do that, but I said it in the last chapter. So I put out the second edition a year ago, and I say it in the first page or first few pages. I say, "Don't copy Toyota," and explain why. And then, throughout the book, I say that, and then, in the end, I say, "Develop your own system." So it's probably repeated a dozen times or more with the hope that maybe somebody would then not ask me after reading it, "So, are we supposed to copy Toyota?" So the reason for that is because, as you said, you have your own culture. And you're in a different situation. You're in a different industry. You're starting in a different place. You're drawing on different labor. You have maybe plants around the world that are in different situations. So the other thing I said in the book, which is kind of interesting and counterintuitive, is I said, "Don't copy Toyota; even Toyota doesn't copy Toyota." TROND: So what does that mean? Did they really not? JEFFREY: What it means is that...because Toyota had this dilemma that they had developed this wonderful system in Japan that worked great, but they realized that in auto, you need to be global to survive. So when they set up NUMMI, that was the first experiment they did to try to bring their system to a different culture. And in reality, if you look at some of the cultural dimensions that make lean work in Japan, the U.S. is almost opposite on every one of them, like, we're the worst case. So if you were a scientist and you said, let's find the hardest place in the world to make this work and see if we can make it work, it would be the United States, particularly with General Motors workers already disaffected and turned off. So Toyota's perspective was, let's go in with a blank sheet of paper and pretend we know nothing. We know what the total production system is and what we're trying to achieve with it. But beyond that, we don't know anything about the human resource system and how to set it up. And so they hired Americans, and they coached them. But they relied a lot on Americans, including bringing back the union leader of the most militant union in America. They brought him back. TROND: Wow. JEFFREY: And said, "You're a leader for a reason. They chose you. We need your help. We're going to teach you about our system, but you need to help make it work." So that created this sort of new thing, a new organizational entity in California. And then what Toyota learned from that was not a new solution that they then brought to every other plant, whether it was Czechoslovakia, or England, or China. But rather, they realized we need to evolve a cultural system every time we set up a plant, starting with the local culture. And we need to get good at doing that, and they got good at doing it. So they have, I don't know, how many plants but over 100 plants around the world and in every culture you can imagine. And every one of them becomes the benchmark for that country as one of their best plants. And people come and visit it and are amazed by what they see. The basic principles are what I try to explain in The Toyota Way. The principles don't change. At some level, the principle is we need continuous improvement because we never know how things are going to fail until they fail. So we need to be responding to these problems as a curse. We need people at every level well trained at problem-solving. And to get people to take on that additional responsibility, we need to treat people with a high level of respect. So their model, The Toyota Way, was simply respect for people and continuous improvement. And that won't change no matter where they go. And their concept of how to teach problem-solving doesn't change. And then their vision of just-in-time one-piece flow that doesn't change, and their vision of building in quality so that you don't allow outflows of poor quality beyond your workstation that doesn't change. So there are some fundamental principles that don't change, but how exactly they are brought into the plant and what the human resource system looks like, there'll be sort of an amalgam between the Japanese model and the local model. But they, as quickly as possible, try to give local autonomy to people from that culture to become the plant managers, to become the leaders. And they develop those people; often, those people will go to Japan for periods of time. TROND: So, Jeff, I want to move to...well, you say a lot of things with Toyota don't change because they adapt locally. So my next question is going to be about future outlook. But before we get there, can we pick up on this classical guitar lesson? So you were playing classical guitar. And there was something there that, at least you said that in one interview that I picked up on, something to do with the way that guitar study is meticulous practice, which both you and I know it is. You literally will sit plucking a string sometimes to hear the sound of that string. I believe that was the example. So can you explain that again? Because, I don't know, maybe it was just me, but it resonated with me. And then you brought it back to how you actually best teach this stuff. Because you were so elaborate, but also you rolled off your tongue all these best practices of Toyota. And unless you either took your course or you are already literate in Toyota, no one can remember all these things, even though it's like six different lessons from Toyota or 14 in your book. It is a lot. But on the other hand, when you are a worker, and you're super busy with your manager or just in the line here and you're trying to pick up on all these things, you discovered with a colleague, I guess, who was building on some of your work some ways that had something in common with how you best practice classical guitar. What is that all about? JEFFREY: Well, so, first of all, like I said, the core skill that Toyota believes every person working for Toyota should have is what they call problem-solving. And that's the ability to, when they see a problem, to study what's really happening. Why is this problem occurring? And then try out ideas to close the gap between what should be happening and what is happening. And you can view that as running experiments. So the scientific mindset is one of I don't know. I need to collect the data and get the evidence. And also, I don't know if my idea works until I test it and look at what happens and study what happens. So that was very much central in Toyota. And they also would talk about on-the-job development, and they were very skeptical of any classroom teaching or any conceptual, theoretical explanations. So the way you would learn something is you'd go to the shop floor and do it with a supervisor. So the first lesson was to stand in a circle and just observe without preconceptions, kind of like playing one-string guitar. And the instructor would not tell you anything about what you should be looking for. But they would just ask you questions to try to dig deeper into what's really going on with the problems or why the problems are occurring. And the lesson length with guitar, you might be sweating after 20 minutes of intense practice. This lesson length was eight hours. So for eight hours, you're just on the shop floor taking breaks for lunch and to go to the bathroom and in the same place just watching. So that was just an introductory lesson to open your mind to be able to see what's really happening. And then they would give you a task to, say, double the productivity of an area. And you would keep on trying. They would keep on asking questions, and eventually, you would achieve it. So this on-the-job development was learning by doing. Now, later, I came to understand that the culture of Japan never really went beyond the craftsman era of the master-apprentice relationship. That's very central throughout Japan, whether you're making dolls, or you're wrapping gifts, or you're in a factory making a car. So the master-apprentice relationship system is similar to you having a guitar teacher. And then, if you start to look at modern psychology leadership books, popular leadership books, there's a fascination these days with the idea of habits, how people form habits and the role of habits in our lives. So one of my former students, Mike Rother, who had become a lean practitioner, we had worked together at Ford, for example, and was very good at introducing the tools of lean and transforming a plant. He started to observe time after time that they do great work. He would check in a few months later, and everything they had done had fallen apart and wasn't being followed anymore. And his ultimate conclusion was that what they were missing was the habit of scientific thinking that Toyota put so much effort into. But he realized that it would be a bad solution to, say, find a Toyota culture -- TROND: Right. And go study scientific thinking. Yeah, exactly. JEFFREY: Right. So he developed his own way in companies he was working with who let him experiment. He developed his own way of coaching people and developing coaches inside the company. And his ultimate vision was that every manager becomes a coach. They're a learner first, and they learn scientific thinking, then they coach others, which is what Toyota does. But he needed more structure than Toyota had because the Toyota leaders just kind of learned this over the last 25 years working in the company. And he started to create this structure of practice routines, like drills we would have in guitar. And he also had studied mastery. There's a lot of research about how do you master any complex skill, and it was 10,000 hours of practice and that idea. But what he discovered was that the key was deliberate practice, where you always know what you should be doing and comparing it to what you are doing, and then trying to close the gap. And that's what a good instructor will do is ask you to play this piece, realize that you're weak in certain areas, and then give you an exercise. And then you practice for a week and come back, and he listens again to decide whether you've mastered or not or whether he needs to go back, or we can move to the next step. So whatever complex skill you're learning, whether it's guitar, playing a sport, or learning how to cook, a good teacher will break down the skill into small pieces. And then, you will practice those pieces until you get them right. And the teacher will judge whether you got them right or not. And then when you're ready, then you move on. And then, as you collect these skills, you start to learn to make nice music that sounds good. So it turns out that Mike was developing this stuff when he came across a book on the martial arts. And they use the term kata, which is used in Japanese martial arts for these small practice routines, what you do repeatedly exactly as the master shows you. And the master won't let you move on until you've mastered that one kata. Then they'll move to the second kata and then third. And if you ask somebody in karate, "How many katas do you have?" They might say, "46," and you say, "Wow, you're really good. You've mastered 46 kata, like playing up through the 35th Sor exercise. So he developed what he called the improvement kata, which is here is how you practice scientific thinking, breaking it down into pieces, practicing each piece, and then a coaching kata for what the coach does to coach the student. And the purpose of the scientific thinking is not to publish a paper in a journal but to achieve a life goal, which could be something at work, or it could be that I want to lose weight. It could be a personal goal, or I want to get a new job that pays more and is a better job. And it becomes an exploration process of setting the goal. And then breaking down the goal into little pieces and then taking a step every day continuously toward, say, a weekly target and then setting the next week's target, and next week's target and you work your way up the mountain toward the goal. So that became known as Toyota Kata. He wrote a book called Toyota Kata. And then, I put into my model in the new Toyota Way; in the center of the model, I put scientific thinking. And I said this is really the heart and soul of The Toyota Way. And you can get this but only by going back to school, but not school where you listen to lectures but school where you have to do something, and then you're getting coached by someone who knows what they're doing, who knows how to be a coach. TROND: So my question following this, I think, will be interesting to you, or hopefully, because we've sort of gone through our conversation a little bit this way without jumping to the next step too quickly. Because the last question that I really have for you is, what are the implications of all of this? You have studied, you know, Toyota over years and then teaching academically, and in industry, you've taught these lessons. But what are the implications for the future development of, I guess, management practice in organizations, in manufacturing? Given all that you just said and what you've previously iterated about Toyota's ideas that not a lot of things change or necessarily have to change, how then should leaders go about thinking about the future? And I'm going to put in a couple of more things there into the future. I mean, even just the role of digital, the role of technology, the role of automation, all of these things, that it's not like they are the future, but they are, I guess, they are things that have started to change. And there are expectations that might have been brought into the company that these are new, very, very efficient improvement tools. But given everything that you just said about katas and the importance of practicing, how do you think and how do you teach preparing for the future of manufacturing? JEFFREY: And I have been working with a variety of companies that have developed what you might call industry 4.0 technologies, digital technologies, and I teach classes where a lot of the students are executives from companies where in some cases, they have a dual role of lean plus digitalization. So they're right at the center of these two things. And what I learned going back to my undergraduate industrial engineering days and then to my journey with Toyota, I was always interested in the centrality of people, whatever the tools are. And what I was seeing as an undergraduate was that most of the professors who were industrial engineers really didn't have much of a concept of people. They were just looking at techniques for improving efficiency as if the techniques had the power themselves. And what I discovered with people in IT, and software development, and the digital movement is often they don't seem to have a conception of people. And people from their point of view are basically bad robots [laughs] that don't do what they're supposed to do repeatedly. So the ultimate view of some of the technologists who are interested in industry 4.0 is to eliminate the people as much as possible and eliminate human judgment by, for example, putting it into artificial intelligence and having the decisions made by computers. I'm totally convinced from lots of different experiences with lots of different companies that the AI is extremely powerful and it's a breakthrough, but it's very weak compared to the human brain. And what the AI can do is to make some routine decisions, which frees up the person to deal with the bigger problems that aren't routine and can also provide useful data and even some insight that can help the person in improving the process. So I still see people as the ultimate customer for the insights that come out of this digital stuff, Internet of Things, and all that. But in some cases, they can control a machine tool and make an automatic adjustment without any human intervention, but then the machine breaks down. And then the human has to come in and solve the problem. So if you're thinking about digitalization as tools to...and sometimes have a closed loop control system without the person involved. But in addition, maybe, more importantly, to provide useful data to the human, suddenly, you have to think about the human and what makes us tick and what we respond to. And for example, it's very clear that we're much better at taking in visual information than text information. And that's one of the things that is part of the Toyota Production System is visual management. So how can you make the results of what the AI system come up with very clear and simple, and visual so people can respond quickly to the problem? And most of these systems are really not very good. The human user interface is not well designed because they're not starting with the person. And the other thing is that there are physical processes. Sometimes I kind of make a sarcastic remark, like, by the way, the Internet of Things actually includes things. TROND: [laughs] JEFFREY: And there's a different skill set for designing machines and making machines work and repairing machines than there is for designing software. There are a lot of physical things that have to go on in a factory, changing over equipment, be it for making different parts. And the vision of the technologists might be we'll automate all that, which may be true. Maybe 30 years from now, most of what I say about people will be irrelevant in a factory. I doubt it. But maybe it's 100 years from now, but it's going to be a long time. And there was an interesting study, for example, that looked at the use of robots. And they looked at across the world jobs that could be done by a human or could be done by a robot. And they found that of all the jobs that could be done by a human or a robot, 3% were done by robots, 97%...so this kind of vision of the robots driven by artificial intelligence doing the work of people is really science fiction. It's mostly fiction at this point. At some point, it might become real, but it's got a long way to go. So we still need to understand how to motivate, develop people. But particularly, the more complex the information becomes and the more information available, the more important it is to train people first of all in problem-solving and scientific thinking to use the data effectively and also to simplify the data because we're actually not very good at using a lot of data. We actually can't handle a lot of bits of data at a time like a computer can. So we need simple inputs that then allow us to use our creativity to solve the problem. And most of the companies are not doing that very well. They're offering what they call digital solutions, and I hate that term, on the assumption that somehow the digital technology is the solution. And really, what the digital technology is is just information that can be an input to humans coming up with solutions that fit their situation at that time, not generic solutions. TROND: It's fascinating that you started out with people. You went through all these experiences, and you are directly involved with digital developments. But you're still sticking to the people. We'll see how long that lasts. I think people, from the people I have interviewed, maybe self-selected here on the podcast, people and processes seem enormously important still in manufacturing. Thank you for your perspective. It's been a very rich discussion. And I hope I can bring you back. And like you said if in X number of years people are somehow less important...well, I'm sure their role will change, will adjust. But you're suspecting that no matter what kind of technology we get, there will be some role, or there should be some role for people because you think the judgment even that comes into play is going to be crucial. Is that what I'm -- JEFFREY: There's one more thing I want to add. If you look at industry 4.0, it'll list these are the elements of industry 4.0, and they're all digital technologies. But there's something that's becoming increasingly popular called industry 5.0, where they're asking what's beyond industry 4.0? Which has barely been implemented. But why not look beyond it? Because we've talked about it enough that it must be real. Once we kind of talk about something enough, we kind of lose interest in it. We want to go on to the next thing. So none of these things necessarily have been implemented very well and very broadly. But anyway, so industry 5.0 is about putting people back in the center. So I call it a rework loop. Uh-oh, we missed that the first time. Let's add it back in. TROND: So then what's going to happen if that concludes? Are we going to then go back to some new version of industry 4.0, or will it -- JEFFREY: Well, industry 4.0 is largely a bunch of companies selling stuff and then a bunch of conferences. If you go and actually visit factories, they're still making things in the same way they've always made them. And then there's a monitor that has information on a screen. And the IT person will show you that monitor, and the person on the floor may not even know what it is. But there's a disconnect between a lot of these technologies and what's actually happening on the shop floor to make stuff. And when they do have a success, they'll show you that success. You know, there's like hundreds of processes in the factory. And they'll show you the three that have industry 4.0 solutions in there. And so it's a long way before we start to see these technologies broadly, not only adopted but used effectively in a powerful way. And I think as that happens, we will notice that the companies that do the best with them have highly developed people. TROND: Fantastic. That's a good ending there. I thank you so much. I believe you've made a difference here, arguing for the continued and continuing role of people. And thank you so much for these reflections. JEFFREY: Welcome. Thank you. My pleasure. TROND: You have just listened to another episode of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was the People Side of Lean. Our guest was Jeffrey Liker, academic, consultant, and best-selling author of The Toyota Way. In this conversation, we talked about how to develop internal organizational capability. My takeaway is that Lean is about motivating people to succeed in an industrial organization more than it is about a bundle of techniques to avoid waste on a factory production line. The goal is to have workers always asking themselves if there is a better way. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 84 on The Evolution of Lean. Hopefully, you will find something awesome in these or in other episodes. And if you do, let us know by messaging us, and we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented Podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operation platform that connects people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring, and you can find Tulip at tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy; we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube. Augmented — industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: Jeffrey Liker.

As a child, watching her mother paint everyday, Linda Schreyer learned that with persistence and a creative spark there wasn't anything that she couldn't achieve. Linda is a music composer, television screenwriter, published author and writing teacher. She graduated from New York University and The School of Visual Arts studying electronic music with Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and began her entertainment career as a composer of film scores.  A Clio award nominee, Linda became a jingle writer for General Foods, Coty Perfume, Lady Stetson, Xerox, Chrysler, Caloric Kitchens, L'Eggs, Heinz, Jello, and more.  In the late 1980s, her career as a writer shifted to words instead of music.  Linda has  written over 1000 hours of serial television including  Port Charles,  Sunset Beach, General Hospital, and the Bold and Beautiful. She co-wrote and produced the television movie, A Place at the Table for NBC for which she received a Christopher award and an Ollie award.  In 2004, she traveled to Moscow for Sony Pictures Television International where she wrote for the series, Poor Anastasia Sins of the Father and created dear Masha for Russian television.  Linda taught a team of Russian writers  how to write for serial television. She received a grant from the Austrian Ministry of Culture to write The Goldsmith's Daughter,  a play-in-progress about her family and pre-war Vienna.  Linda has mentored countless writers on completion of their books, taught classes since 1995, and conducted large writing workshops for organizations. Her books include From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster, a biography of producer Mark Damon.  Tears and Tequila with Joanne Lawman is her first novel.  What You Will Hear in This Episode:  Linda's personal story. Linda's first scoring projects. Writing jingles.  Songwriting and activism Writing and producing for film. Christopher award.  Writing a script vs writing a screenplay Learning to stand up for herself. Longstory writing.  Soaps and Russia Teaching writing. From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster. Advice for aspiring writers. Finding a writing coach/mentor. Quotes “It never really occurred to me to do anything else, but be a creative person.” “One of the things I learned is that I can do anything that I set my mind to.” “I am an experienced learner. I don't learn from people telling me. I learn from doing it.” “I've suffered from imposter syndrome, but the truth is I never let any of it stop me. “ “If you wanna do something, learn from the craft that already exists.” “There's no magic in writing. There is extreme hard work. To be in a community of writers, even if it's only a two person community is essential because writing is a solitary profession.” Mentioned: David Lucas Alan Menken Heart and Soul Music https://bonniemarcusleadership.com/ https://web.facebook.com/bonnie.marcus/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonniemarcus https://twitter.com/selfpromote https://www.instagram.com/self_promote_/ Gendered Ageism Survey Results Forbes article 5 Tips to own the superpower of your age IAMMusicGroup Purchase my book Not Done Yet on Amazon If you enjoyed this episode of Badass Women Podcast, then make sure to subscribe to the podcast and drop us a five-star review.  

Edwin Perkins took inspiration from Jello to create a mail order empire.  Oh Yeah! From a General Store to a major brand. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well it's us. But, we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those. [BWS AD] Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast. I'm Dave Young, alongside Stephen Semple, and Stephen you, made my heart just go pitter-patter because you chose a brand for this week's podcast that was invented and created in my home state of Nebraska. Stephen Semple: Yes, sir. Your home state of Nebraska. Dave Young: Not everybody really knows this. It's a weird thing. I'm not even sure I knew it when I was a kid, right, but Kool-Aid, if you say, "Hey, Kool-Aid man," that stuff was invented by a guy in Hastings, Nebraska. But, you probably know all the details, because you're the one that goes out and finds the details. I just know that it was invented in Hastings, Nebraska. In fact, there's a wing of the Hastings Nebraska Museum that's full of Kool-Aid information. Stephen Semple: Yeah, dedicated to Kool-Aid, and there's even a cool book you can get from them. You really know you're special, I have with me here a Funko pop Kool-Aid man. Oh yeah. Dave Young: The whole toy thing. That's a beautiful thing right there. Stephen Semple: Yeah, you know you're a big deal when that happens. Right? Big, big deal. Kool-Aid goes way back. It was invented in 1927 by Edwin Perkins, and in 1953 the company was sold to General Foods. You're a pretty big deal when General Foods comes along and buys you up. It's really interesting how big Kool-Aid became selling these five and 10 cent packages of mix that you add water and sugar to. It's really quite incredible. Dave Young: You had to bring your own sugar, and probably more expensive than the powder. Stephen Semple: Yeah, but it's a cool story. Edwin Perkins was born in Louis, Iowa on January 8, 1889. He grew up in Henley, Nebraska and he helped out in the family general store. In the 1880s, if we go back to the 1880s, general stores were a lot more like dry goods and household items, and there was even often a Post Office attached to them. Usually the Post Office was kind of the social center for the community. Dave Young: Dude, in Nebraska, the Post Office in a lot of towns still is that. Stephen Semple: Still is that, is it? Dave Young: Of course. Stephen Semple: Wow. Dave Young: I mean, and I'm talking about the tiny towns, a thousand and under. That's where you run into people. If you ever need to steal a car, go to a Post Office in a small town somewhere, there will be three or four cars out front with their engine running while they go in and get their mail. Stephen Semple: I just want to say that I don't condone any of these things Dave's suggesting. Dave Young: Maybe I should say, if you ever want to borrow somebody's car, if you need to run over to the general store and pick up some Kool-Aid. Stephen Semple: This is the environment Edwin grew up in. The other thing that was interesting, the stores of the day, they didn't advertise, but they often promoted products in the window. It was sort of seeing all of this that he grew up in. One day he decided to send away for Dr. JM Thornberg's Mixing Guide, which was a guide for making toiletries and other items that he could sell. He started making these little products that they could sell in the general store, and he saved up his money, and one of his first business ventures was he bought a small printing press.

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

Joining me this week is NYTimes bestselling author Allison Pataki, whose books have been translated into 20 languages. She has written six historical novels, two childrens books, and a memoir. Allison's latest novel, “The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post,” explores the true story of America's first cereal heiress Marjorie Post. Marjorie blossomed from humble beginnings to become an internationally-renowned millionaire before the age of thirty. Throughout her long life, Marjorie married and divorced four times, and became a philanthropist, world traveler, she was the creator of Mar-a-Lago, a frequent Presidential host and the first female CEO of General Foods. Allison shares with us what drew her to Marjorie, how she got into her headspace, the challenges of creating a first person narrative for a woman nearly lost to history, and so much more. Then, Allison treats us to a reading from “The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.”allisonpataki.com@allisonpataki#writersforukraineJoin us on Patreon: Patreon.com/parisundergroundradioFind Us OnlineWebsite: https://www.parisundergroundradio.com/storytimeinparisFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/parisundergroundradioInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/parisundergroundradio/CreditsHost and Producer: Jennifer Geraghty. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: @jennyphoria; Website: http://jennyphoria.comMusic CreditsHip Hop Rap Instrumental (Crying Over You) by christophermorrow https://soundcloud.com/chris-morrow-3​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/2AHA5G9​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/hiYs5z4xdBU​About UsSince well before Victor Hugo looked up at Notre Dame and thought, "Huh... what if a hunchback lived in there?" authors have been inspired by Paris. The Storytime in Paris podcast will help keep this tradition alive with short interviews and readings from your favorite contemporary authors with a French connection. Every episode will feature five questions, asked by you, our authors' biggest fans, and answered live on air. Then, our authors will treat us to a reading of an excerpt from their book. Who knows? Maybe you'll even be inspired to write your own Great French Novel. Happy listening! 

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl. Brice began portraying the character of Baby Snooks in 1912 in Vaudeville, and her commitment to the role was impressive, as she portrayed Snooks from then until her death in 1951. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing under the original title of Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate give you a glimpse into the past.

Shop Talk shares sage advice from Dolly Parton handed down from her Mom. Caught My Eye includes the first condom approved by the FDA for backdoor use and a must-see documentary, “Audible.” Marjorie Merriweather Post is our Business Birthday. She was the wealthiest woman in the world when she took over the family company that became General Foods. She also liked all things Russian and frat boys. We're all business. Except when we're not. Apple Podcasts: apple.co/1WwDBrCSpotify: spoti.fi/2pC19B1iHeart Radio: bit.ly/2n0Z7H1Tunein: bit.ly/1SE3NMbStitcher: bit.ly/1N97ZquGoogle Podcasts: bit.ly/1pQTcVWPandora: pdora.co/2pEfctjYouTube: bit.ly/1spAF5aAlso follow Tim and John on:Facebook: www.facebook.com/focusgroupradioTwitter: www.twitter.com/focusgroupradioInstagram: www.instagram.com/focusgroupradio 

Charles “Chuck” Coonradt is Founder and CEO of The Game of Work, which was founded in 1973, and dedicated to the success of its corporate clients. Graduate of Michigan State University and internationally recognized in the fields of goal setting and profit improvement, as an author, consultant, and speaker. His five best-selling books The Game of Work, The Better People Leader, Scorekeeping For Success, Managing The Obvious, and The Four Laws of Financial Prosperity have been labeled management “must reads”, and most recently Forbes Magazine called Chuck “The Grandfather of Gamification”.  He is a contributing author to multiple editions of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series and is quoted in dozens of other books.  Chuck is very involved in educating the next generation of business leaders and is a founding member of the School of Entrepreneurship, Brigham Young University.  His community involvement includes being a Board Member for Habitat for Humanity, as well as a former Board Member for the Utah Winter Sports Alliance, and a volunteer at the 2002 Winter Olympics.            The Game of Work's client list includes many Fortune 500 companies, as well as other nationally and internationally recognized firms. Companies that have successfully utilized and implemented Chuck's unique concepts include Pepsi, US Postal Service, General Foods, Leslie's Poolmart, Nordstrom, The US Air Force, Boeing, American Express, Marker Bindings, Molina Healthcare, Coca-Cola Consolidated, The Chicago Tribune, Coors Brewing and International Paper. Chuck has also spoken for organizations worldwide, including Petco, Microsoft, SkyWest Airlines, Time Warner Cable and YPO (Young Presidents Organization).  Over one million executives, managers, and supervisors on five continents have been exposed to Chuck's ideas on feedback, scorekeeping, goal setting, coaching, personal choice and accountability.            What you'll learn about in this episodeWhy can ten people with a basketball and a hoop achieve teamwork, goal directed activity, and become a well managed team in a matter of minutes during a lunch break, but those same ten people can totally fail to achieve that kind of harmony on the job.   My guest today Chuck Coonradt is the founder of The Game of Work, a company that teaches executives how to turn business into a game by keeping score. Chuck is one of the world's leading measurement experts.    In this episode we're going to dive into this question and many others surrounding employee engagement, performance and the game of work. How to measure what you want more ofHow to create clearly defined goalsHow to provide better feedback and more consistent coaching using a higher degree of personal choiceResources:    Websites: http://www.gameofwork.com/ LinkedIn Personal:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckcoonradt/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChuckCoonradtAdditional Resources:Fair Deb Episode LinkGallup 2020 Employee Engagement Poll

On this episode, we start with the Newsletter Nugget segment and go back to September 1974.Commercial of the Week: From 1977, a commercial for the Mariner featuring the “More To Like” sloganSurprise of a Prize: A 1969 press photo of Frank Thomas, Jr. issued by General Foods announcing his appointment as chairman of Burger Chef Systems.

David wraps up his conversation with John Bello, the Chairman of beverage company Reed's Inc. and Managing Director of JONA investments. In the first part of the podcast, John discussed his amazing career which included stops with General Foods, Pepsi and the NFL and founding the beverage company SoBe. In part two, John shares how he got involved with a second beverage company, his philanthropic pursuits, and why his alma mater, Tufts University, means so much to him.

This week David welcomes John Bello, the Chairman of beverage company Reed's Inc. and Managing Director of JONA investments. John has had a remarkable career that began with a tour of duty in Vietnam, corporate stops with General Foods, Pepsi and the NFL and founding the beverage company SoBe. In part one, John discusses how the Vietnam War prepared him for a life in business, his groundbreaking run with the National Football League, and how he got involved in the beverage industry.